ordinary christianity for the world.
Corinth, A Church Divided, 1 Corinthians 5:6-13
Poetic Praise
Infection
1 Corinthians 5:6-13
We have seen that the corrupt leaders of the Corinthian church boasted about the very thing that corrupted them. Paul called them "puffed up" in verse two. He repeats the charge in verse six by telling them that their "boasting is not good." As we saw in the previous chapter, their main problem was not the outright sin — though it was a very heinous sin. Rather, their main problem was their pride that kept them from repentance. God can forgive every sin, except the pride that keeps a person from coming to God for forgiveness.
Medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas said that pride or "inordinate self-love is the cause of every sin (1,77) ... the root of pride is found to consist in man not being, in some way, subject to God and His rule." Pride is one of the classic Seven Deadly Sins. In other words, pride not only gives birth to other sins, but even more deadly, it often keeps people from turning to God for forgiveness and repentance. Paul was suggesting that the Corinthian pride in their church, in its success and affluence, interfered with their exercise of humility. Proverbs 3:34 tells us that God is stern in dealing with the arrogant, but to the humble He shows kindness.
Pride is built on spiritual blindness. How so? To encounter God is to encounter our own frailty and sinfulness in the same way that a well-lit bathroom mirror shows the flaws in our complexion. Like Oedipus, we are driven to gouge out our eyes at the sight of our own wretchedness and wander away from our heavenly home, ashamed but unwilling to admit our shame. But unlike Oedipus, we build up lots of illusions about who we are and what we are about. We have a false understanding of ourselves.
We busy ourselves with career, family — even church work — thinking we are being driven by a strong work ethic, high moral values or the fire of the Holy Spirit. But too often, we are turning away from God by turning away from ourselves, by not seeing ourselves truthfully. Everyone else can see that we are putting on a show, but we can't see it. There's a log in our eye. We are blinded by the glare of our own pride. Coworkers may dislike us (we rationalize that they are just jealous), our children may self-destruct or leave us (we rationalize that they are ungrateful), and we may never truly pray but only stand in the presence of a god we have created to make ourselves feel better. And in the midst of it all we adamantly refuse to see.
Because humility is the opposite of pride, it serves as a kind of antidote to keep pride in check, to keep the infection of pride from giving birth to more sin. Pride is a kind of spiritual virus. Paul refers to it as leaven. Leaven is what you put in bread to make it rise or puff up. Leaven causes fermentation, which produces gas, which causes the bread to expand. Fermentation causes organic things to break down. It is a kind of rot.
Paul alludes to all of this in his single question, "Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?" (v. 6). In other words, leaven spreads through a loaf of bread like a virus. A little leaven will effect the whole loaf. Paul doesn't use the word virus, it was not available to him or to the Greek language. Virus is a product of modern science — not that science invented the virus. Rather, science invented the technology which allowed us to identify the reality and function of viruses. Viruses have always been around, but prior to the development of modern science we didn't have the tools to see them or analyze them. Earlier generations called them diseases or illnesses of various kinds. Nonetheless, the analogy remains — pride is a disease.
As with any disease there are two primary concerns: 1) containment, and 2) cure. A disease must be contained to keep it from spreading to other people, and most often disease is spread through contact or proximity. Then it must be cured.
Not only will a disease effect one's whole body, but it will effect one's family and friends if you are not careful. Paul's point was that pride is contagious just like diseases are contagious. Just like leaven effects the whole loaf, so the contagious disease of pride can effect the whole body of Christ, the church. The disease of pride must be contained just as a contagious disease must be contained to keep it from spreading. The person who is ill must be isolated from other healthy people to eliminate or reduce the possibility of contaminating others. We'll come back to this analogy shortly.
But first, note Paul's use of the Passover here. Doesn't it seem odd that the subject of the Passover comes up in the middle of Paul's rant against sexual immorality? He speaks of keeping the Passover festival or feast (heortazõ) in honor of Christ, who he describes as "our Passover lamb" (v. 7). Yes, Paul is alluding to the Christian sacrament of Communion, but there is more. Yes, Paul is suggesting that Holy Communion replace Passover as a Christian holiday or festival, but there is more.
Paul is alluding to the very essence or substance of Christian culture — Communion. But I don't just mean the ten minutes it takes on Sunday morning to eat bread and drink wine together. Communion is more than that. Part and parcel of the service of Communion is Christian fellowship and all of the relationships, traditions, authorities and associations implied therein. We see this fact in the previous section where Paul spoke of removing the offending person from the fellowship of believers.
Paul was alluding to excommunication, as we have previously discussed. Excommunication accomplishes two things: 1) it forbids the excommunicant from receiving Communion, and 2) it forbids the body of Christ from fellowshipping with those who are under this discipline. In other words, Communion and Christian fellowship are linked together through the structure, authority and discipline of church practice. Communion is an expression of Christian culture, Christian social organization.
Why are they linked? Because Communion is a reflection of the whole organizational structure — the biblical understanding of Christ as Lord, the authority of the church and its officers, and the common bond of love that is the basis of Christian relationships. Thus Communion is both the root and the flower of Christian culture. Don't think of Communion as an isolated, fragmented part of a worship service. Rather, think of it as an integral part of Christian life, both of the life of the individual Christian and the life of the Christian community. Think of it as the glue that holds Christianity together.
Communion is not an isolated, fragmented element of Christian worship. Rather, Communion is an expression of the wholeness, inter relatedness and integrity of Christian society. No one can celebrate Communion alone. It requires the whole structure or apparatus or fellowship of the Christian church, which in turn is composed of individuals, families, traditions, practices, formalities, habits, laws, customs, relationships, etc. And if we eliminate any of these constitutive elements or reduce the church to a subset of any of these elements we diminish the church and the Lord of the church. The church or Christianity is the totality of biblical culture.
Paul was saying that Communion is like the Old Testament Passover. The Passover was a week-long festival set in the context of the Hebrew calendar and Hebrew society. It was a major cultural event in the life of Israel. And Paul was using it to refer to the holistic or all-encompassing nature of biblical culture. Paul was saying that just as Passover had been a central event in the life of Israel, so Communion is a central event in the life of the Church.
Paul was telling us what we need to do to encourage and protect Christian culture. He said that two things are required: 1) cure and 2) containment. The cure is salvation by grace alone, the foundation of Christian life. No one can be a Christian apart from God's gift of salvation by grace or regeneration. Once people are Christian, once they have been saved and baptized into the church, then the need for containment comes into play. Here we come back to the analogy of pride or, more generally, sin as a contagious disease.
There are two aspects of this containment. First, Christians need to fellowship with other Christians. There are a lot of reasons for this. Because our values and interests change once we have been converted, we find that we have less and less in common with people who are not Christian. Our circle of friends changes because we like being with Christians more than with non Christians. The old adage is that birds of a feather flock together. Christian fellowship becomes a source of joy.
But there is another aspect of this containment. Just as it is good for us to spend time with other Christians, Paul tells us that it is not good for us to spend time with certain sinners. Paul does not mean that we should avoid all sinners, because if we do that we can be with no one — not even ourselves. Paul says this in verses nine and ten, " I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people — not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world." In other words, the effort to avoid all sinners is futile. It can't be done. It's impossible.
But Paul goes on to specify one special kind or group of sinners that are particularly harmful to the body of Christ, and whom we should avoid. "But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler — not even to eat with such a one" (v. 11 — italics mine). The problem is not unconverted sinners, not those who are merely unsaved. It is not a problem to associate or fellowship with heathens. Rather, Paul tells us that the real danger is associating or fellowshipping with people who identify themselves as Christian, but who continue sinning — hypocrites. Those who say they believe one thing but live as if they believe another.
The real danger to Christianity is not sinners, but hypocrites — people who identify themselves as Christian but who disregard the practice or essence of Christianity, which is submission to Jesus Christ and the avoidance of sin as it is described in the Bible. Again, we must note that no one is ever completely free from sin in this life. The difference between a Christian and a hypocrite is that a Christian repents of his sin — daily, whereas the hypocrite does not repent. He wallows or stagnates in sin. He makes no effort to resist or avoid it.
Christians struggle against sin. Christians make a serious effort to avoid sin. They don't wallow in it. They don't excuse themselves from the difficulties of sanctification or spiritual growth, which necessarily involves ongoing moral improvement. They understand that Christ has called His people away from sin and into perfect righteousness. Christians are engaged in the struggle to avoid or resist sin.
The Corinthian leaders were hypocrites. They were proud of themselves, proud that they had been able to lead such a large, dynamic and powerful church — even while engaging in the sexual shenanigans that Paul had previously mentioned. What did it matter? they thought. The church grew anyway. The success of the church made them think that their own sin was irrelevant.
To the contrary, Paul was suggesting that if the Corinthians continued to fellowship with proud and sinful leaders, they would become increasingly infected with pride and sin themselves. This is an absolutely crucial verse for understanding how Christians are to relate to each other and to the wider culture, to any culture that is not Christian, not biblical. It means that we are to avoid sin, to avoid those elements of culture that promote or celebrate sin.
That does not mean avoiding all people who are sinners, but it means avoiding people who disregard the subtly and seriousness of sin. We are to avoid those who don't use sin as an opportunity to personally repent and turn to Christ for forgiveness, to avoid those who are not thrown to their knees when they find themselves (again or still) entangled in sin. Christians cannot be hypocritical with regard to sin because people cannot disregard or celebrate sin and be genuinely Christian. A hypocrite is someone who professes beliefs and opinions that he or she does not hold in order to conceal his or her real feelings or motives.
Think of cognitive dissonance. We have talked about that before. Cognitive dissonance involves believing two or more completely incompatible things to be true. Believing that one can freely engage in known sin and still be a Christian is an example of cognitive dissonance or hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is going to church, but not being faithful, not practicing the discipline of the faith, not doing all you can to avoid sin. Hypocrites wink at sin. They don't take it seriously. Paul said in verse eleven that we are not to fellowship — or even to eat — with such a person.
We cannot avoid all hypocrites because we cannot avoid ourselves. Yes, we are all hypocrites to some extent because no Christian can be fully Christian apart from living in a Christian culture. The critical issue seems to revolve around pride. Are we haughty hypocrites who make light of our lapses into sin? Or are we humble hypocrites who repent and turn away from sin by turning to the gospel of grace and freely — even enthusiastically — embrace the burden of Christ's discipline? Do we turn away from sin wherever we encounter it? Do we actively expose it as sin in order to warn our brother and sisters of the danger?
In verse twelve Paul goes on to say that Christians are to judge one another, and that we are not to judge those outside of the church. "God judges those outside" (v. 13). Don't miss the caustic damnation that is in Paul's voice and in his meaning here. He means that those outside of the church are subject to the judgment and damnation of God apart from Christ. God's mercy is directed to those who are covered by the blood of Christ, those who are in the church — Christians. All others are subject to God's judgment without regard to the propitiation of Jesus Christ. He means that God's grace comes only through Jesus Christ and His church.
Those in the church have submitted themselves to Jesus Christ and to His representatives — to the judgments of the leaders of the church, of whom Paul is chief. However, Christians understand submission to the authority of the church to be a good thing because Christians have the well-being of other Christians as a top priority. It is by submitting to Jesus Christ through the church that Christians are spared exposure to the judgment and damnation of God. In the effort to help one another avoid sin Christians enjoy the benefits of spiritual growth and sanctification. Subjection to Christ is the only alternative to subjection to the Old Testament judgment of God, the judgment that destroyed Israel in A.D. 70.
Paul concludes by citing the command given many times in Deuteronomy to "Purge the evil person from among you" (v. 13). Paul says here that the heart or intent of the Deuteronomic law still applies to the church. Jesus said, "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 5:17-20).
This is the good news of the gospel of grace because it has been and yet will be accomplished by Jesus Christ.
