08/18/2024 – Day 077 – 1 Corinthians – Chapters 5 – 6 // Chapter 5: 9 – 13: “The Church and the World”.
For this Day 077, the 08/09/2020 post covers 5: 12 – 13 – “finding a mentor that will tell you what you don’t want to hear but need to hear.” For today, I present the commentary from William Barclay’s “Letter to the Corinthians”:
“It appears that Paul has already written a letter to the Corinthians in which he had urged them to avoid the society of evil men. He had meant that to apply only to members of the Church; he had meant that wicked men must be disciplined by being ejected from the society of the Church until they mended their ways. But some at least of the Corinthians had taken this to be an absolute prohibition, and of course, such a prohibition could be observed only if they withdrew themselves from the world altogether. In a place like Corinth it would have been impossible to carry on a normal life at all without associating in ordinary everyday affairs with those whose lives the Church would condemn.
But Paul never meant that; he would never have recommended a Christianity which withdrew from the world; to him it was something that had to be lived out in the world. ‘God,’ as the old saint said to John Wesley, ‘knows nothing of solitary religion. And Paul would have agreed with that.
It is very interesting to see the three sins which he chooses as typical of the world; he names three classes of people.
(i). There are the fornicators, those guilty of lax morality. Christianity alone can guarantee purity. The root cause of sexual immorality is a wrong view of men. In the end it views men as beasts.
It declares that the passions and instincts which they share with the beasts must be shamelessly gratified and regards the other person merely as an instrument through which that gratification can be obtained. Now Christianity regards man as a child of God, and, just because of that, as a creature who lives in the world but who always looks beyond it, a person who will dictate his life by purely physical needs and desires, one who has a body but also a spirit. If men regarded themselves and others as the sons and daughters of God, moral laxity would automatically be banished from life.
(ii). There are those who are greedy for this world’s goods. Once again only Christianity can banish that spirit. If we judge things by purely material standards, there is no reason why we should not dedicate our lives to the task of getting. But Christianity introduces a spirit which looks outwards and not inwards. It makes love the highest value in life and service the greatest honor. When the love of God is in a man’s heart, he will find his joy not in getting but in giving.
(iii). There are the idolaters. Ancient idolatry is paralleled in modern superstition. There can have been few ages so interested in amulets and charms and luck-bringers, in astrologers and horoscopes, as this. The reason is that it is a basic rule of life that a man must worship something. Unless he worships the true God he will worship the gods of luck. Whenever religion grows weak, superstition grows strong.
It is to be noted that these three basic sins are representative of the three directions of a man sins.
(a). Fornication is a sin again a man’s own self. By falling to it he has reduced himself to the level of an animal; he has sinned again the light that is in him and the highest that he knows. He has allowed his lower nature to defeat his higher and made himself less than a man.
(b). Greediness is a sins against our neighbors and our fellow men. It regards human beings as persons to be exploited rather than as brothers to be helped. It forgets that the only proof that we do love God must be the fact that we love our neighbors as ourselves.
(c). Idolatry is a sin against God. It allows things to usurp God’s place. It is the failure to give God the first and only place in life.
It is Paul’s principle that we are not to judge those outside the church. ‘Those outside’ was a Jewish phrase used to describe people outside the Chosen People. We must leave their judgment to God who alone knows the hearts of men. But the man within the Church has special privileges and therefore special responsibilities; he is a man who has taken an oath to Christ, and can therefore be called in question for how he keeps it.
So Paul comes to an end with the definite command, ‘Put away the wicked man from amongst you.’ That is a quotation from Deuteronomy 17:7 and 24:7. There are times when a cancer must be cut out; there are times when drastic measures must be taken to avoid infection. It is not the desire to hurt or the wish to show his power that moves Paul; it is the pastor’s desire to protect his infant Church from the ever threatening infection of the world.”
Questions for fellowship generation, the lifelong sanctification process:
- What does the text reveal about God’s character?
- How has this reading generated prayer for you and/or us?
- What themes stand out to you in this bible study?
- How does our reading fit into the bigger picture (creation, the fall, restoration, etc.)?
- What verse(s) jumped out at you like never before? Is it explainable at this point?
- Do you have any questions you would like to put before the group as to how to interpret any particular verse(s) in our reading. Let scripture testify to scripture: Share with us where you sense contradiction between passages elsewhere.
- What did you find convicting and inspiring at the same time? Share with us how the Spirit of God is working within you as a messenger, both within and outside of our fellowship group.
- Share with the group how our study is calling or confirming to you a new mission to glorify God in our times.