1 Corinthianschapter 5
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Speaks with:2 Thessalonians 3×6Revelation 2×2Colossians 3×2Revelation 21×1Colossians 2×11 Thessalonians 2×1
Summary
Chapter summary
Notorious fornication among them. A man hath his father's wife. And they are puffed up instead of mourning. Paul commands the church, gathered in the name of the Lord Jesus, to deliver the man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved. Purge out the old leaven; Christ our passover is sacrificed for us. Keep the feast with sincerity and truth. Henry reads the chapter as the principle of church discipline, grounded in the gospel's moral seriousness.
Context
Epistle · Paul — 1 Corinthians overview
- A. 1–5 A Sin the Pagans Would Blush At
- B. 6–8 A Little Leaven and the Feast of Sincerity
- C. 9–13 Put the Wicked Man Out
The outline
A.A Sin the Pagans Would Blush Atvv. 1 to 5
Read vv. 1 to 5 →B.A Little Leaven and the Feast of Sincerityvv. 6 to 8
Read vv. 6 to 8 →C.Put the Wicked Man Outvv. 9 to 13
Read vv. 9 to 13 →
The world behind this chapter
1 Corinthians 5The history
The relationship described — a man with his father's wife, meaning a stepmother rather than his own mother — was forbidden in the Law of Moses and also illegal under Roman law, which treated it as incest. Paul says the case is of a kind not even found among the Gentiles, and he is stating a legal fact, not scoring a point.
The likely reason nobody acted is money and status. If the man was a wealthy patron hosting the church or funding it, expelling him carried a real cost, and in a patronage culture clients did not discipline benefactors.
The Passover language would have been explained to a Gentile congregation: before the feast, every scrap of leaven was hunted out of the house and destroyed. Paul applies the annual spring cleaning to the congregation — a little leaven works through the whole lump.
He also corrects a misreading of an earlier letter. He never told them to avoid immoral outsiders; that would mean leaving the world. The boundary he draws runs around people who claim the name and live otherwise.
What it meant to them
For the first hearers, this was a lesson that a church's holiness is a corporate matter. Their boasting, not just the man's sin, was what Paul calls out — arrogance where there should have been mourning.
And the aim of the discipline is stated in the same breath as the sentence: that his spirit may be saved. Exclusion was a last instrument of rescue, not a way of getting rid of someone.
Sources cited
- Bruce W. Winter, After Paul Left Corinth
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on 1 Corinthians 5. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
Connections from this chapter
v. 7 · A picture of Christ
The Passover lamb -> 'Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.' Depth-2 cross-link from the lintel scene.
Exodus 12:6→You must keep it until the fourteenth day of the month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel will slaughter the animals at twilight.
1 Cor 5:7
This page draws on Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.