WWUTT 1488 Deliver Such a One to Satan (1 Corinthians 5:4-7)

Church Discipline for Sexual Immorality in 1 Corinthians 5

The Apostle Paul confronts the church in Corinth because of the sexual immorality that they will not deal with. They need to deal with this in confidence, for Christ has said that He is with us when we understand the text.

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Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe Hughes.

Thank you, Becky. Coming back to 1 Corinthians 5, with the Apostle Paul rebuking the church in Corinth for the sexual immorality that they tolerate. I'll begin here by reading the first seven verses in the Legacy Standard Bible the Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Corinth.

It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and sexual immorality of such a kind as does not exist even among the Gentiles, that someone has his father's wife. And you have become puffed up, and have not mourned instead, so that the one who had done this deed would be removed from your midst.

For I, on my part, though absent in body, but present in spirit, have already judged him who has so committed this, as though I were present. In the name of our Lord Jesus, when you are assembled, and I with you in spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus, 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.

Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Clean out the old leaven, so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Christ, our Passover Lamb, also was sacrificed.

Paul’s Judgment Applied to the Church Today

So yesterday, the Apostle Paul, judging from afar, but judging with right judgment, and with them in spirit, is already able to make a determination about this man who is committing sexual immorality, and of such a kind that even the pagans would blush at it.

He's sleeping with his father's wife, with his own stepmother. Such a gross sin, that Paul doesn't even have to be there to know that the evil this man has done is worthy of being put out of the church, so that he would learn not to commit such sexual immorality.

So yesterday, we hear from Paul in verse 3, say, for I, on my part, though absent in body, but present in spirit, have already judged him who is so committed this, as though I were present. Now, the Apostle Paul is not alive on earth anymore today, of course.

He is in heaven above, in glory with God. And we will be with him, along with all the other saints that have gone before us, those who have come to Christ in our present, and those who will come to know the Lord even after we are gone.

We will all be together in glory, rejoicing in Christ. So, you might get to meet Paul someday. In the meantime, he's not with us here on earth, but the same determination that Paul makes here of that church, from a distance, from afar, with him in spirit, you could say of Paul even in these kinds of judgments that need to be made in churches today.

If you've got somebody in a church who is committing sexual immorality, and of such a kind that is worthy of being removed from that congregation, the evil being purged from their midst, being turned over to Satan, Paul's judgment here, 2 ,000 years ago, is the same judgment that should apply even in our present.

So, in this way, Paul present in spirit. And when I say that, I'm not talking like in the Catholic sense, or in the Eastern Orthodox sense. It's not that we can pray to Paul. It's nothing like that. But that the Holy Spirit working through him to make this judgment, such a judgment must still be made in churches where there are those who are committing this open, public, sexual immorality they must be disciplined for.

Paul says in verse four, in the name of our Lord Jesus, when you are assembled, and I, with you in spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus, 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.

So, the Holy Spirit who has led Paul to write this is the same Holy Spirit that is present in the church today, who is with the saints when they have to make such judgments about brothers or sisters in the Lord.

And with the power of the Lord Jesus, we make such determinations, casting a person out from our midst, not by our own wisdom, but according to the judgment of God that is given to us in his word. Now, yesterday I mentioned the instructions that we have in Matthew chapter 18 for dealing with a personal or a private sin that exists in the body of Christ between you and another brother or sister in the Lord.

Let's go and look at that. I mentioned the passage, but I didn't actually go and read it. So, here we are in Matthew chapter 18, and it's verses 15 through 20, where we have these guidelines, they're instructions, commands, on how to confront a brother who has sinned there in the body, in the church that you belong to.

It's specifically a brother or sister who has sinned against you. Here's what we read, Matthew 18, 15. Now, if your brother sins, go and show him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have won your brother.

Now, I'm reading this out of the Legacy Standard translation. The New American Standard says the same thing. If your brother sins, go and show him his fault. But the Christian Standard Bible and the English Standard Bible say, if your brother sins against you.

In the parallel Greek, that's how it reads. So, the Greek would even articulate there, if your brother sins against you. I'm curious as to how the New American Standard Bible and the Legacy Standard Bible dropped the against you.

I'm not sure why that would be the case. You'd have to ask those translation committees. But nevertheless, that's the nature of the sin that's being confronted here, that somebody had sinned against you.

And really, if a person sins in the body of Christ, they do sin against that body. We're seeing that here in the way that Paul is instructing the Corinthians to confront this sinful brother there in their church.

It's affecting the whole church. And the fact that there is this pride, this puffing up that's going on among its members, they've become rather la-di-da about it. And they're tolerating it instead of confronting it and purging the evil person from their midst.

This is old leaven that is leavening the whole lump. And Paul says, get the old leaven out, that we may celebrate the feast, not with the old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

Talking about verse 8 there in 1 Corinthians chapter 5. So in this way, when a person sins, it is against the whole body. The whole body suffers because of a person who is continuing in unrepentant sinfulness.

So if your brother sins in the body, he's sinning against you. If you notice it, if you've seen that he's wandering from the path of righteousness, then you have a responsibility as your brother's keeper to go and confront him in his fault.

Show him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have won your brother. But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you so that by the mouth of two or three witnesses, every fact may be confirmed.

This is verse 16. Matthew 18, 17. And if he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as the Gentile and the tax collector. Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven.

Again, I say to you that if two of you agree on earth about anything that they may ask, it shall be done for them by my Father who is in heaven. For where two or three have gathered together in my name, I am there in their midst.

So consider that statement there. In Matthew 18, verses 19 and 20, compare that with what Paul says here in 1 Corinthians 5, verses 4 and 5. He says, In the name of our Lord Jesus, when you are assembled, and I with you in spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus, 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.

They are acting in the power of Christ who is with them when they make such determinations according to his word. These are instructions, commands that have been given by God on how to deal with one in the body who is in unrepentant sin and must be removed and turned over to Satan.

Let me repeat to you again, Matthew 18, verses 19 and 20. Again, I say to you, Jesus says, that if two of you agree on earth about anything that they may ask. So you're talking about discipline that's even being done in prayer.

God has been appealed to by the people who are having to carry this out by that body, by that church. They're asking for wisdom from God. They're asking from God that they would have the love and the heart and the desire to do what needs to be done.

Whatever you ask, it shall be done for them by my father who is in heaven. Matthew 18, 20, for where two or three have gathered together in my name, I am there in their midst. That, of course, is a verse that is often used, taken out of context to, you know, plug or advertise a church's prayer gathering or something like that.

That's not what that verse is about. The verse is about church discipline and Jesus saying to do these things in confidence that I am with you when you do this on the evidence of two or three witnesses, when you do this as a church body, when you have to put somebody out from your midst, you're not doing anything wrong.

I am with you and have made this same determination with you that this man is not walking with the Lord and needs to be turned over to Satan. He's not with Christ. He is therefore to be separated from the body of Christ because he is not of us.

And so he must be cast out that he may learn this deed is unacceptable. This behavior, this sin does not belong in Christ's body. It affects and infects everybody. So purge the evil person from among you that the body may be pure.

And I'll come back to that again here in a moment in First Corinthians, chapter 15. But once again, Jesus saying where two or three have gathered together in my name, I am there in their midst. So few churches want to do this.

There are so few churches that are doing church discipline because they think it's something unkind, unloving. And they don't want to offend anybody. It would be better for them to be coming here to church than it would be for them to be out in the world.

Right. I've heard that before. Haven't you? I've probably even made that excuse before. And that was before I knew any better. It's something that I heard a lot in youth group, especially. And I had been a youth leader and a youth sponsor at a couple of different churches before I became a pastor.

We would much rather have these teens come be with us on a Wednesday night. Right. We don't want them out in the world going and doing who knows what. And so there's no discipline happening among teenagers.

We just welcome whatever teenagers to come to youth group so that they'll hear the gospel. Unbelievers. We've got unbelievers with us in youth group not being disciplined for their sin at all. They can participate with us because we'd rather have them here to hear the gospel than go out and cause trouble in the world.

That's that's not biblical. There's nothing in the Bible that tells you to do that. As I got older and I got more mature in these things, when I was leading youth, even as a pastor, there was an expectation among those that came to youth group.

You can be here as an unbeliever. I expect you to sit and listen to the message that's being taught. But if after a period of time, that person seems to be unmoved by the message that's being taught, they're just looking to hang out with their friends on a Wednesday night.

Then I'm going to ask them to leave because they're going to be they're going to bring down the entire group. It is therefore going to become acceptable in the eyes of even those believers that are in our midst that I can be an unbeliever and still be part of the church of Christ.

And that's not what Scripture says. You must cast out the one who calls himself a brother and is guilty of this. You should not even eat with such a one. Paul says later on here in verse 11 of this chapter.

And I've had to do that before. We've had to discipline people out of my church. I haven't had to do that since I've been here in Texas. But at my church back in Kansas, where we had had to discipline somebody and either it came before the church for a vote or maybe they on their own said, I don't want to go through this, so I'm just going to leave, you know, so they they left before it ever even came to that.

They might call me up and they'd say, hey, do you want to get together, grab a bite to eat? You want to go out for a coffee or something like that? I don't drink coffee, but that would be the general invitation.

And I would tell them, no, I would say, no, I'm sorry, I can't get together and eat with you. And maybe they would ask why occasionally, like maybe one out of every four times or something. Why not? Why can't we get together and eat or do something?

And I would explain to them why. Because you were in this sin and you would not repent of it. And instead of repenting and going through discipline and remaining with us as a body, you decided to leave and go somewhere else.

According to the command that's given in first Corinthians five, eleven, I can't even be there eating with you not to eat with such a one because it looks like to people who will see us together that I'm accepting of your sin and I'm not.

You need to repent and come back and be restored to this body. But you don't want to do that. That's not popular. Of course, that's considered extremely offensive. There are very few that practice church discipline.

The statistic that I saw years ago, this was probably even eight to ten years ago now. So it's been a while. But the statistic that I saw was that less than 10 percent of churches are even practicing church discipline.

When you go through the the surveys of orthodoxy, like what a church believes Ligonier and Lifeway do this every other year, every even year they're releasing a survey about the state of the church or what the church believes.

When you look at those beliefs and how they come out in that survey, you can tell it's only about eight percent of churches that believe in something that is orthodox, according to what scripture says, according to the Bible, according to God's word.

There are many churches out there believing in things that are heretical. So those two statistics kind of line up that about eight percent of churches are orthodox in their beliefs, a church that you wouldn't call heretical.

And it's only about eight percent that are also practicing church discipline. Isn't that interesting that both of those statistics kind of line up with one another? Why do we practice church discipline?

Why are we supposed to do that? Why should we cast out someone from our midst? Because they refuse to repent. Two reasons, and they're both given here by Paul. Look again at verse five, 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.

So you do this for his benefit or her benefit. The person that needs to be disciplined and removed from the church, you do it for their benefit that they would know not to sin. Paul had said to Timothy in first Timothy, chapter one, that he had turned Hymenaeus and Alexander over to Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme.

He didn't kick them out of the church because they're hopeless. They're never going to repent. They're never going to come back to Christ. And so, therefore, they're not saved. They're not going to heaven.

So we need to remove them from the church. That's that's not what said there. We actually don't know what the eternal state of that person is going to be. We hope that they're going to repent before they have to stand before God in judgment.

But in the meantime, in their behavior that they refuse to repent of, they're going to have to be put out from the church. And this is done so that they may learn. They may learn not to blaspheme regarding Hymenaeus and Alexander.

And this person here that needs to be removed from the church in Corinth delivers such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord, that he also may learn.

I can't do this and consider myself part of the body of Christ. This sin is so serious that it causes me to be separated from the body. And this isn't the church that is doing this to him. It's him who has done this to himself.

So he receives a taste of the judgment of God that would come upon him. So he might experience what it's like to be turned over to Satan and not part of Christ and his body. So that he would realize this sin is so serious it causes me to be separated from God.

He would repent of it. He would come back to the church and be restored. And the grace of God is demonstrated and how wonderful a thing that would be. And we read about this man's story about him being restored back to the church later on in 2nd Corinthians.

We'll look at that later though. We're going to get all the way through this chapter first. So in verse 5, 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.

We turn someone over to Satan for his good or her good for their benefit that they would learn this is wrong and they would repent of their sin before they perish in their sin. As Paul says to the Thessalonians in 2nd Thessalonians chapter 3, do not regard such a one as an enemy but warn him as a brother.

As Paul talks there even about removing somebody from the church who is in unrepentant sin. So that's the first reason why we practice church discipline. We do it for their benefit so that they would repent of their sin.

The second reason why we do it is probably the greater reason. It's for the purity of the church. See, there's no guarantee that the person who is removed from the church is going to repent. But if you remove a sinful person from the body, what you have done is kept the bride of Christ pure, which is something else Paul says as we go on here.

He says in verse 6, your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, also was sacrificed.

This is a reference back to Passover. Now, it's not that unleavened bread is inherently good and leavened bread is inherently bad. This is just the analogy that Paul is using and drawing from the Passover or even the way that the Lord's Supper was partaken in because Christ is with us there at the table when we partake in the Lord's Supper.

So you are unleavened bread. You are to be that bread, the body of Christ. Don't let the old leaven in that leavens the whole lump and ruins the recipe of unleavened bread. Christ, our Passover lamb, was sacrificed.

We are of that Passover. Let us celebrate the feast, not with the old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. And if we are in that pure truth, the good word of Jesus Christ that governs over the church, that is our authority, if we're following that word, then we will, as a church, continue in purity.

And in purity, the impure must be removed. It is not so that we can thump our chest and say of ourselves, hey, look how much better we are than you, because Paul said to this church to mourn. You have become puffed up and have not mourned instead.

You need to mourn over this sin so that you would realize how bad it is and remove them from your midst. But our desire and prayer is still for that person to repent of their sin and come back and be restored to that body.

So we practice church discipline for the benefit of the person that needs to be disciplined, but most of all, for the benefit of the church, for the body of Christ to remain in purity and being sanctified until the day of Christ's return.

We'll stop there and pick up in our study next week. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this good word that has been given to us. And however difficult this may be for us to understand and practice, I pray that we would do so with courage, knowing that Christ is with us when we make these judgments and these determinations according to your word.

These aren't private judgments, but these are things that the whole church must do together in honor and in worship even to our Lord Christ who has called us to holiness and purity. As was said to Israel and as was repeated to us by the Apostle Peter, be holy for God is holy.

It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

Closing Announcements

You've been listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Gabe will be going through a New Testament study. Then on Thursday, we look at an Old Testament book.

On Friday, we take questions from the listeners and viewers. Tomorrow, we'll pick up on an Old Testament study, When We Understand the Text.