Hello all!
Do something twice, it's a habit. So I have a habit of posting my Sermons when I'm preaching at Sanctuary. If you're in the area and sans-Church, come and visit!
Warning, though - tomorrow's Sermon is pretty heavy . . .
Oh, and if you are going to be there, SPOILER ALERT . . .
--
You’re probably feeling like you’ve been hearing from me a bit too much lately, and for that I apologise. The new preaching Roster is in the advanced stages of production – needing only people to say “Yes, I can do it then!” – and so you’ll not be hearing for me for a few weeks at least!
But if anyone thinks I am fiddling the roster to give myself the best topics, let them think again – if I were doing that I’d have given someone else this particular hospital pass!
1 Corinthians chapters 5 and 6 show Paul at his fieriest. He’s coming down very strongly on the church in Corinth.
Now, since we’ve been on hiatus for a fair while, it’s probably worth going back and having a quick refresher on what was going on in Corinth. Corinth was a place visited by Paul during his Second Missionary Journey. We know that its leadership included a couple named Priscilla and Aquilla, who came with the highest of recommendations from Paul. By the time this letter was written, these two were working with Paul in the province of Asia (Probably what we would call Turkey today!), and the leadership that had been left behind appear to have been less talented than these two. Paul has been dealing so far with problems of splitting in the Church. I know how painful that can be – during my childhood I experienced several splits! – and I can see why Paul is passionate about it. He has also had some harsh words for the leadership of the Church, who (reading between the lines of Paul’s letter) have been taking an arrogant approach. Paul counsels humility.
Incidentally, the name of the letter – First Corinthians – is actually slightly incorrect. In fact, as you can read in chapter 5 verses 9-11, there is a letter that Paul sent previous to this one – so technically this letter should be thought of as “Second Corinthians,” and the letter of Second Corinthians is actually THIRD Corinthians. One of my lecturers at university mused aloud as to whether we would include the actual first letter in the canon of the Bible should some archaeologist discover it today!
In any case, Paul now starts dealing with the next important issue of the Corinthian church, and that issue is one we don’t enjoy reading about – the issue of sexual immorality.
The concept of sexual immorality crops up a fair bit in scripture, and you could be forgiven for thinking that the early Christians had an unhealthy obsession with sex. Now, they’d certainly not be the first people having that particular problem, and Christians through the ages have struggled with this issue time and time again. But in this case, there’s a simple reason for all the references to sexual immorality – it was, put simply, possibly the greatest point of difference between the early church and the world around them.
Like today’s society, sex was everywhere in the first century AD. But today’s culture is different in one crucial regard. Today our culture is merely permissive – sexual morality works out basically to “If it feels good do it,” and “Don’t stop anyone having a good time.” Other than that, our culture says that whatever you want to do is fine.
By contrast, sex was found in many aspects of ancient Greek religion. Several of the gods and goddesses were worshiped by the performing of sexual acts, and for these prostitution was a common feature of their temples. So whilst the effect was the same – encouraging a hedonistic and uncontrolled sex life – the reason behind it was different. In Greek culture it was a matter of religion, whereas promiscuous sex in our culture is more likely to be a product of no religion.
So it is that in verse 1, when Paul is describing immorality that “doesn’t even happen among the pagans!” he is really saying something. There was little that was off limits to the locals, yet someone in the church had found a way of going one worse than what you would see there!
In a brief survey of several commentaries, there is a lot of discussion as to what the details actually meant; what is clear is that to some degree the relationship described here is incestuous. It probably didn’t involve a man marrying his own mother, but rather a divorced or widowed stepmother. In either case, this is a story that would have shocked most people, even those outside the Church.
Paul then says that the congregation of the Corinthian church were proud of this. I’m unsure of what he means here, but I’d suggest that they were bragging about how free they were in Christ – “We can even forgive this!”
Now, let’s be clear here. Paul does not, and never DOES have a problem with forgiveness of sin. That’s what the Gospel is all about! The whole point of the Gospel is that no matter who you are and where you come from, and yes, no matter WHAT YOU HAVE DONE, you can come to God, repent and be clean.
But note that step there – the step of repentance. It is important for a person to turn away from sin. In this case here, it would appear that there has been no repentance – the person in question has simply gone on living their life, in this wrong relationship which should never have happened. And if there has been no repentance, then there can be no forgiveness – since the person hasn’t asked forgiveness of their sin, the church isn’t forgiving him, it’s merely permitting him to keep sinning.
More than that, we’re not even talking about someone who has simply failed to move away from the defective sexual attitudes of his society – he’s gone OVER AND ABOVE what happens elsewhere, and the Church is ignoring it.
Paul’s response is found in verses 6-12, and it’s confronting. Paul goes as far as saying “expel the immoral brother from among you!”
Wow. It’s hard to imagine this happening at any church I have ever been associated with.
I am probably not surprising you when I say that this whole concept is really frightening to me. And of course, in a world where there is always another church a couple of kilometers down the road, expelling someone from the church may not have the same effect that it might have had in Paul’s day.
But notice something that a lot of people might not have picked up – verse 5 tells us that the goal of expelling this immoral brother, or to use the term Paul tends to use, “handing him over to Satan,” is “So that the sinful nature may be destroyed and his spirit saved on the day of the Lord.”
In other words, Paul is making it clear that this action is not only for the good of the church but for the good of the person themselves. Paul’s not wanting to punish this person, or at least that’s not his final objective. He wants them to think about what they have done and REPENT!
Now, notice we’re not saying here that every time a person commits any sin they should be excommunicated from the Church. This is a specific kind of sin. It’s not that it’s worse than any other sin, nor is it of an unforgivable nature. It is especially important to understand that this sinner isn’t simply going with the flow. Their sin is so gross and so public that it will cause damage both to the people involved directly and to the reputation of the church, because its nature is shocking EVEN to those outside the church – a good analogy that might strike a chord with us would be the widely publicized cases of clergy being involved in child sexual abuse. So decisive action is needed. And it is critical to note that we’re not talking about a scenario where the person is penitent and broken about their sin, and looking for God to restore them. If that’s the case, then repentance has already occurred (which is, after all, the goal). This is a scenario referring to deliberate, public and unrepentant sin.
Thankfully this is rare. But we in the church have a responsibility all the same, and that is to prevent this from happening!
Paul also has harsh words to say about another stain on the Corinthian church – lawsuits among believers! It appears that some Christians were litigating amongst each other, and that is something Paul finds absolutely reprehensible.
Paul goes as far as saying “Wouldn’t you rather be cheated?”
It’s tough, and sometimes you have no choice in the matter – if another Christian drags you to court, you must attend. But all the same it’s a bad look, and it is one in which the world is watching. Disunity always hurts the church.
Note this – Paul isn’t saying that if you swindle others you should expect them to go easy on you. Rather, he’s using the strongest possible condemnation.
9 Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders 10 nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.
And THAT Is what some of you were, says Paul!
Let’s be clear here. Again, Paul is not saying that any sin is unforgivable before God. In fact, he’s saying the reverse – he’s saying that we need to repent, and that we shouldn’t even be here! The reason there should be no lawsuits among Christians is that WE SHOULDN’T BE SWINDLING EACH OTHER. If there IS someone swindling, then there is already a major problem in the church. And he’s saying that Church leadership should deal with it very seriously.
Now, if Paul was here listening to me preach, assuming he could understand English, I can tell you one thing for sure – he wouldn’t be saying “I want to make sure there are more people being expelled from churches. You need to get rid of the bad eggs!”
Let’s be sure we understand this. Paul’s objective was REPENTANCE. We are all sinners. In fact, it’s fairly obvious that what Paul wants from the Corinthians is an END to situations where Christians need to be expelled!
So how can we do it? How can we make sure that we never have to go to the extremes described here?
There are two ways we can prevent the need to expel immoral people from the Church.
The first of these is to NOT BE ONE. It’s important for all of us to note that this isn’t something that happens to someone else, it can happen to ANY ONE OF US. If that wasn’t clear enough, check out verse 11 – Paul puts the following people in the same category –
· Immoral – people who commit ANY kind of immorality knowingly.
· Greedy – people who want more than is theirs to have.
· Idolaters – people who put something or someone ahead of God in their lives.
· Slanderers – people who gossip and tell bad tales about others!
I won’t be asking for hands up, because I know that each of us would have been in one or more of these situations in the past.
If we are in that situation, or have been in that situation, then the first way we can avoid needing to expel immoral believers, namely ourselves, is to repent when we have done wrong. Repenting firstly to God – agreeing with Him that we have sinned, and fallen short of His glory. And then repenting to those who were affected or hurt by our sin. If we do this, we can at least be in the situation where whatever we have done, we are right with God. Since we sin all the time, repentance to God is something that has to be a fairly common part of each day.
By the way, public repentance is necessary only when the sin itself was public. I would suggest that public repentance should be done with extreme caution – I have been present at church when a person gave a very public repentance for private sin, and the effect of this was more destructive than constructive. If you believe you need to publicly repent of something, it is necessary to first consult the leadership of the church and ask if they also believe you should repent publicly!
The second way we can avoid people getting to the point where expelling them might be needed is to genuinely care about each other. Caring is important in many ways, and one way it helps is this: Sometimes, when we know someone genuinely cares for us, it makes it easier to open up to them. And when we honestly talk to each other about what’s going on in our lives, it may make it clear when we’re heading down the wrong track. If we have good relationships with people at church, we can avoid getting caught up in sin in the first place!
This has been one of the hardest sermons that I have ever written. This is because the very thought of having to expel one of my brothers or sisters from among us is heartbreaking and frightening. I believe I can speak for everyone when I say that I do not EVER want to be in a situation where I am called upon to decide such a thing.
I look at this passage as being a little like the “button” in the briefcase of the US President, that fires the nuclear missiles – it’s a powerful thing, with a lot of tragic implications, and the best thing for everyone is to make sure that the button never needs to be pressed.
No comments:
Post a Comment