1 Corinthians5chapter 5

1 Corinthians 5:1-2

The report reaching Paul names a case even pagan Corinth did not tolerate, a man living with his father's wife, almost certainly a stepmother rather than his natural mother, the relationship itself already forbidden in Leviticus 18:8. Rather than mourning the sin as a wound to the whole body, the church has stayed puffed up, physioo, the same word chapter 4 diagnosed, evidently treating the case as proof of its own broad-mindedness. The bench reads the contrast as the real scandal, since a body that grieves sin acts against it, and a body that boasts through it has confused liberty with corruption.

1 Corinthians 5:3-5

Paul's judgment is rendered in absence but not in ignorance, absent in body but present in spirit, and the sentence is pronounced in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, with the power of that name standing behind the local church's own gathered authority. To deliver such an one unto Satan names excommunication in its starkest terms, putting the man outside the sphere the church protects and back under the world's own ruler, for the destruction of the flesh, likely bodily suffering rather than damnation. The stated goal keeps the discipline from becoming mere punishment, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus, restoration rather than riddance being the aim the whole action serves.

1 Corinthians 5:6

Paul answers the church's boasting directly, your glorying is not good, refusing to let the case pass as a sign of Corinthian sophistication. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump draws on a proverb every reader of the Passover story already knew, since a household searched its whole house for leaven before the feast, one uncleansed source corrupting the entire batch. The bench reads the image as Paul's warning against tolerated sin's contagion, a single case left unaddressed shaping what the whole congregation will come to accept.

1 Corinthians 5:7

The command follows the proverb's own logic, purge out the old leaven that a new lump might result, the church acting as though preparing for the feast in earnest rather than merely reciting the image. As ye are unleavened states the church's standing already in Christ, the cleansing commanded because of a status already given, not in order to earn one. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us names the theology behind the whole figure, pascha identifying Jesus as the true Passover lamb whose sacrifice both cleanses the household and requires it kept clean.

1 Corinthians 5:8

Therefore let us keep the feast: The feast in view is not the annual Passover but the continuous Christian life lived under its meaning, the church perpetually keeping what the old feast pictured only once a year. Old leaven and the leaven of malice and wickedness are named as the specific corruption to be purged, kakia and poneria together covering both settled ill will and active wrongdoing. Unleavened bread of sincerity and truth sets the positive counterpart, eilikrineia meaning literally judged pure in sunlight, a character with nothing to hide.

1 Corinthians 5:9-10

Paul refers back to an earlier letter to Corinth not preserved in the canon, its command not to company with fornicators evidently misread by the church as a call to withdraw from immoral society altogether. Verse 10 corrects the misunderstanding at once, since avoiding every fornicator, covetous person, extortioner, or idolater of this world would require leaving the world entirely, a separation the gospel never asks of its people. The bench reads the distinction as foundational for Christian engagement with a fallen culture, contact with the world's sin being unavoidable while tolerance of it inside the church is not.

1 Corinthians 5:11

Paul narrows his command to its actual target, a man that is called a brother living in open sin, the vice list naming fornicator, covetous, idolater, railer, drunkard, and extortioner as a representative rather than exhaustive catalogue. With such an one no not to eat likely reaches beyond the Lord's Table to ordinary table fellowship, the shared meal being the plainest sign of unbroken relationship in that culture. The bench notes the discipline's target is the professing brother, not the pagan neighbor, since a church cannot enforce Christ's standard on those who never claimed it.

1 Corinthians 5:12-13

Paul draws the line his own instruction has just implied, the church has no mandate to judge outsiders, them also that are without, while it plainly does have both the right and the duty to judge them that are within. But them that are without God judgeth reserves final judgment on the world to God alone, freeing the church from a task neither given nor possible for it. Therefore put away from among yourselves that wicked person closes the chapter with the command verse 2 should already have carried out, the congregation itself responsible for the discipline Paul has now ordered.