Church Discipline | 1 Corinthians

Introduction: Turning to a New Section of 1 Corinthians

We're in a series on Paul's first letter to the Corinthians. The letter was written about 20 years after Jesus rose from the dead, to a church in southern Greece — so around AD 50 or 51/52. The first major section we've covered concerned the Corinthians' divisions over leadership and preaching. Now we move into chapters 5–7, where the next major block concerns their divisions over sex and sexuality.

Two Faithful Paths for Christian Sexuality

Jewish and Christian sexual ethics is actually quite simple. It's hard, but simple. There are two ways a faithful Christian can glorify God, love our neighbors, and follow the way of Jesus with our sexuality:

1. Chaste singleness — abstaining from sexual relations altogether as a faithful, unmarried person. This is Paul's preference, and it's what Jesus himself did.
2. Faithful marriage — sexual relations only within a marriage of one man and one woman, remaining committed until one of you dies.

This is how sex is introduced in Genesis 1–2, celebrated throughout Scripture (including the Song of Songs), and affirmed by Jesus and the apostles.

The reason these are the two faithful paths is that sexual relations are given to us as a picture of a deeper reality — God's love for his people, the love of Christ for the church. That love is exclusive, sacrificial, faithful, and committed. God does not divide his love among other gods, and the church is not meant to worship other gods alongside him.

What Falls Outside God's Design

All other kinds of sexual relationship are off-limits for the Christian and for faithful Jews:

• Fornication — sex with someone you're not married to
• Adultery — sex with someone married to someone else
• Polyamory or polygamy — sex with multiple partners or spouses
• Homosexuality — sex with someone of the same sex
• Pornography — sex with an image of someone else
• Pedophilia — sex with a child
• Bestiality — sex with an animal
• Incest — sex with a relative

These are distortions of God's design biologically (new life comes from male and female union), relationally (children and society flourish best within faithful marriage or singleness), and theologically (human sexuality is meant to picture God's exclusive love for his people).

The Real Dividing Line: Repentance, Not Purity

Many of us have fallen short of this standard in one way or another — probably most of us have. The Corinthians had too, as Paul makes explicit later, saying,

Four Images, One Command

There are four paragraphs in this section of 1 Corinthians 5, and in all four Paul gives essentially the same command using different imagery each time.

In verse 2, Paul speaks of the removal of the man: "Let him who's done this be removed from among you." There's no detail, just the instruction that this man should not be sharing the Lord's Supper with the church.

In verses 4–5, Paul uses a much stronger image—the language of destruction of the flesh.

"You are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh." (v.4)

The idea here is that the church is the house of God, while the world is the dominion of Satan. The man is to be put outside the church into that place "so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord." Tolerating unrepentant sin isn't loving to this man—if you truly love him, you won't tolerate the sin, because you want his spirit to ultimately be saved.

Then Paul shifts to the image of cleansing, the purging of something evil:

"Don't you know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven so that you might be a new lump, as you really are unleavened." (v.6)

Unrepentant sin is like mold. It starts small—just a fleck of green on a loaf of bread—but within days it can take over the whole thing. Tolerating sin isn't just bad for the man; it's bad for the church, because it spreads.

Finally, in verses 11–13, Paul argues that tolerating unrepentant sin isn't loving to God either.

"I'm writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he's guilty of sexual immorality or greed or idolatry or reviling, drunkenness, or swindling—not even to eat with such a one. Purge the evil person from among you." (v.11–13)

Putting these four images together, we can conclude that tolerating unrepentant sin is bad for God, bad for the man, bad for the church, and bad for the world. Paul is calling for a holy intolerance of unrepentant sin—for the glory of God, the good of the man, the good of the church, and the good of the world.

The church is meant to be a place where everyone confesses regularly that we are sinners who fall short—but it is not a place where unrepentant sin is simply tolerated and excused.

Judgment Without Judgmentalism

Christians are called to practice judgment without judgmentalism. This means we must not judge ourselves as better than others, but we must judge good as better than evil.

There is a kind of judgment Christians must exercise—discerning good from evil. And there's a kind we must not—thinking "I'm good, you're bad." We can't swing so far away from being judgmental that we lose the ability to discern right from wrong at all; we still need to be able to say that genocide or slavery is evil.

Sadly, churches often pronounce judgment on the evils of the world while ignoring the evils within the church. Paul says this is backwards. He clarifies in verse 9 that he was never talking about judging outsiders:

"I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with the sexually immoral—not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world... Isn't it those inside the church whom you're to judge? God judges those outside, but you purge the evil person from among you."

Peter says something similar and more concise: "It is time for judgment to begin at the household of God" (1 Peter 4:17). If there is going to be judgment of sin, it needs to start with us—not with pointing at "the terrible world." That posture very quickly breeds moral superiority and pride.

What Does This Look Like in Practice?

So what does Paul's instruction actually mean in practice—remove the man, hand him over to Satan, cleanse the leaven, refuse to eat with him, purge the evil? The honest answer is: it depends.

In Corinth, the man in question was well known—likely a wealthy, influential patron within a church of around 150 people. Everyone already knew what he was doing; it wasn't a secret Paul was disclosing. Because the man and his sin were both public, the response needed to be public too—removed "when you are assembled," as Paul says in verse 4.

This is often the right pattern when the person who has fallen into sin is a leader in the church. If a leader falls into serious sin, it is right for the church to be told and for that person to step down from leadership, and perhaps from the church, for a season. Paul reinforces this in 1 Timothy 5, urging that such leaders be rebuked in the presence of all so others may take warning.

However, many other cases call for a private response—when the person isn't publicly known, or when privacy protects others, such as the sinning person's family or children. In these situations, pastors and elders often deal with this quietly: a private conversation, a private removal from communion or membership for a season, aimed at restoration and repentance.

Sometimes the challenge doesn't come from leaders at all—it comes from ordinary brothers and sisters, a wise friend, or family member who says, "You cannot carry on living like that and turning up at church as if everything is normal." Paul is speaking to the whole church here, not just to leaders.

Following the pattern Jesus gives elsewhere: speak to them privately first, then bring a witness, then bring it to the church, and if there is still no repentance, exclude them.

When Sin Is Hidden

What about unrepentant sin that is private or secret, something no one else even knows about? In one sense, the church exercises this discipline every single time we come to the Lord's Table. Every time we say "this is who the Lord's Supper is for," we are effectively naming who is included and who, for now, is excluded—leaving it to the Holy Spirit and the individual's conscience to respond rightly.

The Heidelberg Catechism captures this well. When asked who should come to the Lord's Table, it answers:

"Those who are displeased with themselves because of their sins, but nevertheless trust that their sins are pardoned and that their remaining weakness is covered by the suffering and death of Christ, and who also desire more and more to strengthen their faith and lead a better life. Hypocrites and those who are unrepentant, however, eat and drink judgment on themselves."

The Lord's Table is a place where everyone who says "I have sinned and fallen short, and I want to come and find mercy" is welcome. But for those who are unrepentant, the table becomes dangerous—as Paul will later say in this same letter, they "eat and drink judgment on themselves."

Two Truths Held Together

In all of this, we are putting on display two vital gospel truths at the same time:

1. Sin is awful, and if you let it, it will kill you.
2. Jesus is wonderful, and if you let him, he will save you.

"For Christ, our Passover Lamb, has been sacrificed. 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." (v.7)

All of us come as empty-handed people who need grace. But we come to a God who has provided a means of reconciliation—a Passover Lamb—so that we might take cover under his blood and find freedom from sin in his presence.