From Calvin's commentary on 1 Cor. 3...
'rev'mwc, here is what you are missing. This church at Corinth was newly formed. How long had it been in existence is something I do not know. You can expect babes to stumble and, yes, even fall. But I am looking at those who are mature(at least should be) in the faith. It is like baptizing pre-teen people and twenty five years later, they are still living and looking like the world.
Paul Washer is a blessed reformed baptist teacher that has many sermons on youtube. He said he went to a funeral of a man who lived like the world, sold drugs, was unruly, was an drug addict(iirc) and died. The pastor preached his funeral and preached him into heaven. Why? He was there when he was 'saved' and baptized at the ripe old age of nine. Balderdash!! He lived unruly and ungodly for years. That is not the fruit of a christian.
That man in a incestious relationship was not converted, in my opinion. Look at all the language Paul uses to describe him.
Paul spent what was beliveved to be 18 months in Corinth when first establishing the church on the second missionary journey believed to be from A.D. 49-52, the book of 1 Corinthians was written in what is belived to be A.D. 53-54 so the believers there had been saved approximately 4 years. With 18 months under the apostle plus anther 20-30 months after that. Paul had to write them and called them babes. I guess a babe in Christ could be 4 years old. I think there are many babes in Christ who have been saved over 10 years and failed to grow and mature. But that would make many of them carnal.
now as for the man in 1 Corinthians 5:
Here we see Calvin on this:
"For as the salvation equally with the condemnation of the spirit is eternal,
he takes the condemnation of the flesh as meaning temporal condemnation. “
We will condemn him in this world for a time, that the Lord may preserve him in his kingdom.” This furnishes an answer to the objection, by which some endeavor to set aside this exposition, for as the sentence of excommunication is directed rather against the soul than against the outward man, they inquire how it can be called
the destruction of the flesh My answer, then, is, (as I have already in part stated,)
that the destruction of the flesh is opposed to the salvation of the spirit, simply because the former is temporal and the latter is eternal. In this sense the Apostle in
Hebrews 5:7, uses the expression
the days of Christ ’
s flesh, to mean
the course of his mortal life. Now the Church in chastising offenders with severity,
spares them not in this world, in order that God may spare them. (282) Should any one wish to have anything farther in reference to the rite of excommunication, its causes, necessity, purposes, and limitation, let him consult my Institutes."
Here again we see Calvin stating the man was saved and his soul preserved for eternity, but that the fleshly living he was guilty of was to be dealt with by the church. He sees him as saved but practicing sin.
Henry states:
"Others think the apostle is not to be understood of mere excommunication, but of a miraculous power or authority they had of delivering a scandalous sinner into the power of Satan, to have bodily diseases inflicted, and to be tormented by him with bodily pains, which is the meaning of the destruction of the flesh.
In this sense the destruction of the flesh has been a happy occasion of the salvation of the spirit. It is probable that this was a mixed case. It was an extraordinary instance: and the church was to proceed against him by just censure; the apostle, when they did so, put forth an act of extraordinary power, and gave him up to Satan, nor for his destruction, but for his deliverance, at least for the destruction of the flesh, that the soul might be saved. Note, The great end of church-censures is the good of those who fall under them, their spiritual and eternal good. It is that their spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus, 1 Corinthians 5:5. Yet it is not merely a regard to their benefit that is to be had in proceeding against them."
One more John Gill:
(November 23, 1697-October 14, 1771) an English Baptist, a biblical scholar, and a staunch Calvinist.
Verse 5
"To deliver such an one unto Satan,.... This, as before observed,
is to be read in connection with 1 Corinthians 5:3 and is what the apostle there determined to do with this incestuous person; namely,
to deliver him unto Satan; by which is meant, not the act of excommunication, or the removing of him from the communion of the church, which is an act of the whole church, and not of any single person; whereas this was what the church had nothing to do with; it was not what they were to do, or ought to do, but what t
he apostle had resolved to do; and which was an act of his own, and peculiar to him as an apostle, see
1 Timothy 1:20. Nor is this a form of excommunication; nor was this phrase ever used in excommunicating persons by the primitive churches; nor ought it ever to be used;
it is what no man, or set of men, have power to do now, since the ceasing of the extraordinary gifts of the Spirit, which the apostles were endowed with; who, as they had a power over Satan to dispossess him from the bodies of men,
so to deliver up the bodies of men into his hands, as the apostle did this man's:
for the destruction of the flesh; that is, that his body might be shook, buffeted, afflicted, and tortured in a terrible manner; that by this means
he might be brought to a sense of his sin, to repentance for it, and make an humble acknowledgment of it:
that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus; that he might be renewed in the spirit of his mind, be restored by repentance, and his soul be saved in the day of Christ; either at death, when soul and body would be separated, or at the day of the resurrection, when both should be reunited; for the flesh here means,
not the corruption of nature, in opposition to the spirit, as a principle of grace, but the body, in distinction from the soul: nor was the soul of this man, only his body, delivered for a time unto Satan; the end of which was,
that his soul might be saved, which could never be done by delivering it up to Satan: and
very wrongfully is this applied to excommunication; when it is no part of excommunication, nor the end of it, to deliver souls to Satan, but rather to deliver them from him. The phrase seems to be Jewish, and to express that extraordinary power the apostles had in those days, as well in giving up the bodies to Satan, for
a temporal chastisement, as in delivering them from him. The Jews say, that Solomon had such a power; of whom they tell the following storyF5:
"one day he saw the angel of death grieving; he said to him, why grievest thou? he replied, these two Cushites have desired of me to sit here, "he delivered them to the devil"; the gloss is, these seek of me to ascend, for their time to die was come; but he could not take away their souls, because it was decreed concerning them, that they should not die but in the gate of Luz, מסרינהו שלמה לשעירים "Solomon delivered them to the devils", for he was king over them, as it is written,
1 Chronicles 29:12 for he reigned over them, that are above, and them that are below.'
The phrase is much the same as here, and the power which they, without any foundation, ascribe to Solomon, the apostles had: this is their rod which they used,
sometimes in striking persons dead, sometimes by inflicting diseases on them themselves; and at other times by delivering them up into the hands of Satan to be afflicted and terrified by him, which is the case here. And it may be observed, that the giving up of
Job into the hands of Satan, by the Lord, is expressed in the Septuagint version by the same word as here; for where it is said,
Job 2:6 "behold, he is in thine hand"; that version renders it, "behold, παραδιδωμισοι αυτον, I deliver him to thee", that is, to Satan; and which was done,
that his body might be smote with sore boils by him, as it was; only his life was to be preserved, that he was not suffered to touch."
All these men saw the man in 1 Corinthians as saved that is his soul was preserved, but the flesh should be destroyed if the man repented not of walking in that sin.
this teaching which you stated needed to eradicated goes back to the Apostle Paul, it was seen by Calvin, Henry and John Gill. They saw the teaching of carnal believers as truth based on what Paul wrote here in Corinthians, so why should it be eradicated?
