Holy People
HOLY PEOPLE Trinity
1 Corinthians Chapter 5 14.3.21
All churches have problems – some big, some small. Did you spot the 2 problems highlighted in 1 Corinthians chapter 5?
At the individual level, there is a man in the church who is having sex with his father’s wife, probably his stepmother. It’s not what we call ‘historical’ … he has her. This is a current ongoing situation.
Corinth was famous for being immoral, but incest, sex within a family, was too much even for them. It is “not even tolerated among pagans” (v1b), and nor it should be!
There is also a problem at the corporate level. “You are arrogant” (v2). The church at Corinth brags about having this man as one of their members. They think it’s a selling point – “we are more progressive than our culture.” “We are loving.” “Others, like Paul are narrow and fundamentalist, but we are tolerant and accepting.”
Surely not! Last month a Sunday live-streamed service from the National Cathedral in Washington DC was led by Bishop Gene Robinson, a man living openly with his homosexual partner. In the service he denounced the preacher for the day for his past condemnation of homosexuality and apologised to those watching for the hurt that his views had caused others.
The Anglican Archbishop of Nigeria recently called homosexuality (not homosexuals) a virus. Last week the Archbishop of Canterbury and other English bishops fell over one another in their rush to condemn what the Nigerian had said.
The cathedral and the denomination pride themselves on their diversity and inclusiveness and they brag about it. After all, aren’t they on the so-called “right side of history”?
There are two problems, then: a man is living in open sin, and thinks it is okay and the church says it is okay. At the individual and at the collective level there are big problems.
How about WHY IT MATTERS? Why is it such a big deal … at both the individual and the collective level?
At the individual level, this man is in big, really big, danger. He says he is a Christian – he “bears the name of brother” (v11) – but there is every chance that his carelessness about his ongoing sin means that he will find out on the day that Jesus returns that he isn’t.
This man seems to have separated what the Lord has joined together. At Passover time one of the rules was to get all the yeast out of the house – every bit of it must go. Paul uses this picture as he speaks of Jesus as out Passover Lamb. What must go so when we follow Jesus? A sinful way of life. Salvation and holiness of life go together. If this man thinks that holiness does not matter, then it may be because he is in fact not saved.
Unless things change in his life, it is likely that his spirit will not “be saved in the day of the Lord” (v5).
WHY does it matter at the corporate level?
Their bragging tolerance is going to kill the church. Paul says in verse 6 that it is like yeast. Put yeast into a lump of dough, and the whole lump gets impacted.
If incest doesn’t matter, why does greed, or gossip or drunkenness or lying or cheating? If we can sideline what God clearly says about sexual sin, why not what he says about Jesus or heaven or hell or anything else at all – or everything he says?
We are told today that Christians have a thing about sex and are always talking about it. If we talk about it, it’s usually because people out there keep making it the big deal – it’s the point at which the attack on Jesus is the hottest just now. If we cave on this one, why shouldn’t we go all the way down on everything else?
There is the WHAT the problem is, individually and corporately and there is WHY it matters individually and corporately.
WHAT? WHY? Next: WHERE TO NOW?
The answer lies probably with what the church does. It must stop seeing the sin of this man as a trophy to be celebrated and to see it for what it really is, through God’s eyes, not the culture’s. They must do something about it.
Jesus spoke about what to do when someone who says he is a Christian sins against you. He says (Matthew 18) that you must speak openly with this man, to win him away from sin. If that doesn’t work, take 1 or 2 others with you and try again. If that doesn’t work, “tell it to the church” so that they can win him back. If that doesn’t work they must excommunicate him … “let him be to you as a Gentile or a tax-collector” – terms for someone outside.
The situation at Corinth was different from that. This man’s sin is public, and it is a sin against the whole church in its effect. The solution is the same …
- verse 2he must be “removed from among you”
- verse 5they are to “deliver this man to Satan” out there.
- verse 11 they are “not to associate with”
- verse 13 “purge the evil doer from among you”.
You don’t lynch Gentiles and tax collectors who do not believe but you don’t treat them as Christians. They must exclude this man from the privileges of belonging to the church of Jesus. How?
Did they formally condemn his sin when the church met? Bar him form the Lord’s Supper or praying at the prayer meeting? No longer call him “brother”? Whatever it was, he knew he was ‘out’.
Is all this really for 2021? This sounds so foreign, we need to pause and answer a few questions or objections which arise fairly naturally for us.
- Didn’t Jesus welcome sinners?
Of course he did. That’s what got him in a lot of hot water with the self-righteous types. If we are like him, we will welcome sinners too. Not in order to sit in judgment on them. Nor to approve their sin, but to lead them to Jesus who forgives and changes people.
Will we welcome gossips and adulterers and swindlers and drunkards here? Of course we will. We would love to see every seat here filled with our fellow sinners.
LGBT pressure groups know that we welcome people, but that’s not enough. Anything short of affirming their lifestyles as good and celebrating them, is not enough. That is certainly NOT what Jesus did when he welcomed prostitutes and crooks and others with respectable sins.
Do people have to clean up their lives in order to come to Jesus? No. Is someone’s sexual sin the big deal for us? No.
When Paul says we are not to associate with men like this man, he made it clear ‘I am “not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers (and so on) since then you would need to go out of this world” (v10).
When someone says he belongs to Jesus, and is part of his church, then things change. These standards are not for people out there, but for people in here who “bear the name of brother” (v11).
Stick with unbelievers and immoral people in whatever way it’s safe to that. God is not suggesting that a church should get out of this world. He is saying however, that we need to get the agenda and ways and approvals of this world out of his church.
- Shouldn’t a “Christian” sinner be even more loved?
Yes. Absolutely. Of course the church at Corinth must love this man, but what would that look like?
What does love look like when you see your child playing with poison or developing bad friendships? What does love look like if you see me growing careless with alcohol or being in church? Since when does loving someone mean you tolerate or affirm or even celebrate what God hates?
Putting this man out of the church is an action of love not of hate, or of self-righteousness. It might hurt him, but if it means he is brought to his senses so “his spirit is saved in the day of the Lord” (v5) won’t you have loved him profoundly?
That is exactly what did happen. They did put him out, and he was distressed about that, and he repented with tears.
When Paul next wrote to this church he could say “this punishment by the majority is enough, so you should rather turn to forgive and comfort him, or he may be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow.” 2 Corinthians 2:6
I reckon every day as he got out of bed, he thanked the Lord that the church had loved him enough to put him out. For that meant he had seen his sin for what it really was. That had led him to deep and heartfelt repentance, and he was rescued.
He was rescued, and so was the church.
- Won’t this lead to a witch hunt?
I lied to someone yesterday. I lusted in my heart the day before. I was lazy last week and failed to do good when I could have. Shall we put me on trial and perhaps excommunicate me?
Should there be a trial for us all? No – that is plainly NOT what God is saying.
This man has not fallen into a careless or occasional sin. His sin has become the way he lives. Mary did not slip up in a heated conversation - she IS a reviler. Bill does not cheat someone in a moment of greed; he IS a swindler. Ian did not drink too much one night last month, he IS a drunkard.
As well as having adopted a sinful; way to live, this man sees nothing wrong with it. Why should he, when the church doesn’t?
Where a sin has become what a person now is … and where there is no repentance from that sin, then, yes, tough and holy love by the church of Jesus is exactly what is required.
There may be other questions or objections, but they will have to wait for another time. For now, let’s move from Corinth to Trinity Church 2021 to finish off:
- Back in chapter 3 God said that every real church is “a holy temple” – holy meaning different and separated. Not fitting in with the agenda out there, but the one in here (Bible). Is that our conscious and intentional mindset and bedrock commitment, regardless of what the culture expects? Are you concerned enough about this to pray that we all stand firm right here?
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Do you think it is so wonderful in this family, that if someone were told he could no longer have the privileges of belonging here that that would cause him distress, or would it be more like the teenager who can’t wait to get out of the family home?
Who makes it so great to be in the family? The family members. You do. You do. You do. And I do. What are you doing to make it such a home a person would hate to be put out of it?
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How committed in love are we to one another, that we will not abandon one another to sin? Do whatever it takes, all the way up to excommunication, to win a brother or sister back to Jesus and to holiness?
Intrusively? No. Forcing personal preferences on others? No. Instead, loving others enough to want to rescue them and loving Jesus enough to want to see his church be as holy as it possible for a church to be.
What if people out there heard that we take open and unrepented of sin seriously? I think it might put some people off, but it might also be that some people begin to take us seriously.
Across the world and especially in Europe, the UK and the US, mainline denominational churches are closing down at the rate of hundreds every week as people walk away in droves. Those churches which think they will stop the drift by adopting a trendy tolerant agenda are fielding the bigger losses. Unbelievers aren’t stupid. They know when a church no longer looks or sounds like a church.
Being a country club where only ‘nice’ people are welcome isn’t going to cut it. Running with the pack makes us worthy of being despised.
According to Jesus, people will know that there is something supernatural about who we are and what we say, when we love each other and hold to his agenda. We are most attractive and compelling when we are different from the culture, not the same as it.
We know how ugly it is in a family home when people are at odds, when there are no standards and there is no deep love. Sentiment and gushiness are thin. We see real heartfelt righteousness and commitment and order as truly beautiful.
Bottom line: This is what God calls us as his family, as “God’s holy temple” to be.
This is part of what it means to be for his praise and greater glory, and that is what we want, isn’t it? It really is, isn’t it?