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June 30, 2017

Please use the comment section on this page to share insights from today’s reading OR your own personal Bible reading.

Reading along with us in 1 Corinthians? Here’s today’s reading:

1 Corinthians 5 (ESV)

It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans, for a man has his father’s wife. 2 And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you.

3 For though absent in body, I am present in spirit; and as if present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing. 4 When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus, 5 you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.

6 Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? 7 Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. 8 Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth… Continue Reading

*If you click “Continue Reading”, you will leave this page and navigate to “bible.com” where you can read the rest of the chapter. Be sure to come back to this page to share what God has revealed to you by commenting below. 

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This Post Has 5 Comments
  1. Never saw this before- to be a new lump! I love that picture! I see lump of clay as well as lump of dough! Just a lump for God to work with how He chooses! ❤️
    “you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. 8Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”

  2. It is interesting that chapter 5 follows chapter 4. In chapter 4 Paul tells us not to judge and here he tells them/us to judge. So there is a judgement that is right and there is a judgement that is wrong. It is wrong to judge someone’s motives or act superior over someone judging yourself to be better than them. But it is right to judge behavior, to call a spade a spade, an adulterer an adulterer…ie defining life according to Biblical standards. It is also right as a body of believers to apply church discipline to the unrepentant. Matthew 18 gives us the procedure/process. Here Paul looks at that last step and recognizes the ill effect that the unrepentant has on the rest of the body. SO the person should be expelled for their own benefit ( so their sin can be confronted in a public way so as to foster repentance) and for the church’s benefit because that yeast of unrepentance can work itself through the whole dough (ie the church)

  3. This chapter of Scripture really makes me terribly uncomfortable, and I know that’s why I stopped reading when we got here. Church discipline is so hard for me, because I’m so concerned with the way people “feel.” Yet I know discipline is for someone’s good, and for the good of the body of Christ, and therefore, when done in love, is a great expression of love for both.

    When I became a parent, I finally understood “This hurts me more than it hurts you.” I hated to “hurt” my child with needed discipline.

    In 1 Corinthians 4:21, we see the concern Paul has for the people he is writing to: “What do you desire? Shall I come to you with a rod, or with love and a spirit of gentleness?”

    1 Corinthians 5:5 – “I have decided to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.”

    My word. Can you imagine being the subject of this pronouncement, and hearing or reading these words? Or his family and friends? What rises up in you? Arrogance? Anger? Fear? Humility? Grief?

    Paul loves them, and is willing to do what needs to be done and say what needs to be said for their good. He knows that immorality left unchecked not only harms the individuals involved, but spreads and infects and transforms the body as a whole.

    Heavenly Father, I confess I have often lacked courage and faith when it comes to this area of body life. I recognize I am lacking in love when my concern for feelings overrides my responsibility to speak truth (in love), and to follow through with discipline when there is no repentance or change. Help me to love. Show me how to love. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

  4. I think it is interesting that Paul makes a distinction between our approach to those who call themselves brothers and those outside the church. Jesus enables us as believers to live a life of victory over sin. We invite unbelievers to know Christ. We remind believers who they are.

    “9 I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people. 10 Yet I certainly did not mean with the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. 11 But now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother, who is sexually immoral, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner—not even to eat with such a person.

    12 For what have I to do with judging those also who are outside? Do you not judge those who are inside? 13 But those who are outside God judges. Therefore “put away from yourselves the evil person.”

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