JUDGING AND PUNISHING
1Corinthians 5.1-5In this letter of Paul, he required to remove from the church anyone who are not up to the standards of the Christian and the Gospel of Christ.
Paul was quite appalled when he heard that someone in the church has his father's wife as his own wife, and Paul reply was that even among Gentiles (he meant all unbelievers) he never seen such depravity.
Actually, is nothing new in such perverted behavior, it even mentioned in the Old Testament (Torah) in Leviticus and Deuteronomy as cursed behavior punishable by death. At that time the nation of Hebrews just came from Egypt, very rough and wild people who and carried with them all the Egyptian's mentality, customs, traditions, gods, and also this sexual depravity that he had heard among Corinthians.
GOD also let Israelites know number of times that because of such abominable behavior He is exterminating the nations of Canaan from His sight, giving by this a warning to Israelites not to do such repulsive things.
Now Paul talking to Gentiles not as a teacher but now as a prosecutor and judge, realizing that the church cannot function as it should and even exist if such things happen among its members. Paul goes as far as giving recommendation to the church to give such person "to Satan for the destruction of flesh."
By saying, "giving to Satan" Paul probably meant expelling him from the church to his own devices, leaving him in the world ruled by Satan, away from the holy congregation, to face the consequences of his own action.
Under "destruction of flesh" Paul might meant some of the associated diseases or some physical suffering resulting from such action.
But even under such circumstances the hope of repentance before the Lord and forgiveness from GOD is not lost for such individual. His soul "may be saved in the Day of the Lord Jesus," which means in the Day of the Lord's Judgment of all peoples of the Earth.
The suffering, whatever it may be, perhaps will bring the sinner to his senses and if he regrets his deed, repent from the heart and ask Lord for forgiveness, GOD may will have mercy on him and forgive him his abomination.
THE HOLINESS AND CLEANSING OF THE CHURCH
1Corinthians 5.6-12Why Paul here inserted the Passover Holiday and leaven? It seems like it out of place considering the theme of this chapter. But it actually fits the narrative of the entire theme pointing to cleanness and holiness of the body of Christ, the church. Paul specified here that leaven leavens the whole lump of dough, meaning that any unclean and wicked, spoils, decay, and ruins the entire church, just leaven the dough.
Words, "For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed," perhaps mean that unleavened bread under this context represents cleanness and holiness of the church for which "Christ our Passover," our Mercy and our Salvation, "has been sacrificed," means, gave Himself up to make us worthy, clean, and holy in Him and in His Gospel.
So, because unleavened bread associated with Passover as one continuous Holy Holiday making Passover clean and Holy, the unleaveness - the holiness and cleanness of the church from anything abominable and dirty, which cleansing and sanctifying the church like unleavened bread cleansing and sanctifying people during Passover, presenting the Christ as our unleavened Bread which we suppose to eat (imitate His Life in everything), in order to be innocent and holy as He is.
In other words, everything that defiles the church make the church unworthy of Christ and such church will perish together with this world. Anything and everything unworthy of Christ will perish.
GOD JUDGES THOSE WHO ARE INSIDE AND OUTSIDE
1Corinthians 5.1313. "But those who are outside GOD Judges. Remove the wicked man from among yourselves."
The verse 13 is particularly interesting, dividing people on two separate groups for the Judgment Day of Christ. One group is a Christian group and the other group is the world's group.
Basically, Judgment of GOD passes on all humankind without any difference, according to deeds of each and every men and woman on Earth without any exceptions.
But the most important thing here that the Standard of Judgment of GOD is different between these two groups. The inside group of GOD, the Christian group, will be Judged by GOD according to the Standard of the Gospel of Christ.
The other group is the group that "outside" in the world, outside of Christian influence, the group of the world live according to their own principal, laws, and ideals, they do not acknowledged GOD as their Creator, Master, and King. This group GOD also will Judge according to their own conscience, believes, and deeds.
We do not judge this group of the world, GOD will Judge them, our goal is only to give this worldly group the knowledge of Gospel and bring them to Christ, but keep ourselves clean and holy and protect ourselves from the influence of the world. We should influence the world and not the world shall influence us.
The last words of Paul in this chapter summarizes the whole meaning and point of his writing, "Remove the wicked man from among yourselves." Wickedness has many different forms and shades and of course not only exist in sexual depravity as mentioned in this chapter.
The point is this that if the church defiles itself with something ungodly, perverted, unclean, or wicked, the church must react immediately and fix the problem before it too late and spoiled as a rotten apple. Defiled church is dysfunctional church and would never be accepted by Christ, but most likely will be cursed and perish.
