Immorality in the Church, Part 2
1 Corinthians 5:6-13
Let's look at 1 Corinthians chapter 5, 1 Corinthians chapter 5. For our visiting friends, let me just say that we believe in just teaching the Word of God. That's what God has called us to do, and we proceed to just go right through the Word of God from book to book, chapter to chapter, verse to verse; and we find ourselves at this point in 1 Corinthians dealing in the 5th chapter with a study of disciplining immorality in the church. If you're here this morning, and you're kind of an outsider looking in, you're not a Christian. You've never committed yourself to Christ, but you're kind of interested, you've come this far. The message that we're going to give this morning is really geared for Christians. It's geared for our church family. We're happy to have you listen in on it and get the inside scoop in what God has to say about some very basic things for the Christian family.
Also, I would add that this sermon is rated PG, so I just wanna say that at the beginning, because of the nature of the subject, so you'll be prepared, and you won't panic when we get into a few things we're gonna discuss.
The title of our subject is "Disciplining Sin in the Church," and that is the subject of the 13 verses that make up the 5th chapter of 1 Corinthians. Now, the Corinthian letter was written by the Apostle Paul, a Jewish apostle, to a group of Christians in the city of Corinth to straighten out their misbehaviors. They had claimed to be believers in Jesus Christ. They had given their lives to Christ; and, yet, they had proceeded to live the kind of life that is inconsistent with what they believe. There were all kinds of sins and problems manifest among them. Paul writes this letter to deal with those problems. One of the problems he has to deal with is the problem of a tolerance of immorality, and that is the theme of chapter 5.
The great missionary, David Brainerd, who spent his life, and a brief life indeed it was. I think he died before the age of 30. Ministering to American Indians, wrote in his journal these words: "I never got away from Jesus and Him crucified, and I found that when my people were gripped by this great evangelical doctrine of Christ and Him crucified, I had no need to give them instructions about morality. I found that one followed as the sure and inevitable fruit of the other." He also said this in another place: "I find my Indians begin to put on the garments of holiness, and their common life begins to be sanctified, even in small matters, when they are possessed by the doctrine of Christ and Him crucified."
What Brainerd was saying was this: that when a Christian realizes who Christ is and what Christ has done for him so graciously as we have been singing about, it tends to have a dramatic effect on his life, not only in salvation, but in holiness. When I celebrate the cross and the death of Christ in behalf of sin, I can't go out and sin and really, truly be focusing on Christ. If I'm glad He died for me, if I'm concentrating on His paying for my sin, I will not go out overtly and commit sins for which He Himself has died; and so a preoccupation with Christ and the cross is its own deterrent to sin.
Now, that is the reason, precisely, that the Apostle Paul wrote 1 Corinthians 2:2, expressing his perspective when he approached the Corinthians. He says there this: "For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified." Paul went into a city that was immoral. It was the vice capital of the world, of that world, the Greek-Roman world; and he realized that he had to refocus them into a whole kind of life that they were unfamiliar with; and so he focused everything on Christ and the payment of sin on the cross and how Christ had died to deliver us from sin and into a new kind of life. That was his emphasis; and, apparently, as long as he was there emphasizing that, they didn't have any problem. As Brainerd said when his Indians focused on that, "Morality took care of itself." But what happened was, Paul left, and the focus apparently changed; and now he has to write back to them regarding the sins of immorality.
They had lost the concentration on Christ, and they had begun to focus on human teachers. They were glorifying their own human teachers. They were glorifying themselves. They were very egotistical, he says to them in verse 18 of chapter 4, "You are arrogant." He says in chapter 5 verse 2, "You are arrogant." And they had a pride problem. They had turned the focus on themselves and, as a result, immorality had come to exist.
So Paul writes this chapter to deal with the consequences of their sin, their immorality. Now, we discussed the first five verses last time, and we'll look at the last section, from verses 6 to 13 this morning. One of the things that I kept very much aware of as I was studying this chapter was how very current it is. This particular immoral situation, the immoral context in which the Corinthian church existed in that city is no different than today. If there was one way to categorize today, we would have to say we live in a sexually mad society. We've gone totally overboard on the subject of sex. We have perverted a very basic thing that God has designed for the happiness and enjoyment and procreation of man; and we've perverted it and twisted it and pushed it completely outta shape so that it's totally distorted.
D. H. Lawrence, who has written many books, none of which I would recommend. I won't even give you the titles. D. H. Lawrence gives us an idea of the modern mentality. This is what he says, "Give me the body. I believe the body is a greater reality than the life of the mind. With the Greeks, it gave a lovely flicker. Then Plato and Aristotle killed it, and Jesus finished it off; but now the body is really coming to life." Everything for him is the body. Well, you know, that's our whole society. The constant pampering of the body. The constant exploitation of the body. The constant presentation on the screen and wherever else, the body. We are absolutely worshipping the flesh as if it were God. The preoccupation with fashion, with figures, physiques, exposure, pornographic material, on and on and on. The body, we have pushed it so far outta whack, it's incredible.
C. S. Lewis has a beautiful analogy. This is his analogy. He says, "You can get a large audience together for a striptease. There's no question about it. You can get a lot of people to come to a striptease, and they come to watch a girl undress on the stage. Now suppose," he says, "you came to a country where they filled an auditorium a different way. Not by having a girl undress, but that they filled an auditorium. It was packed to the walls; and a guy walked out with a big tray; and the tray was covered with a... with a, some kind of a cloth covering; and wild music began to play and lights began to flash; and all of a sudden, through all of this, in a rather enticing manner, he pulled off the veil; and there on the tray was a pork chop...Wouldn't you think," says C. S. Lewis, "that in that country something had gone wrong with their appetite for food."...
Boy, that is good, isn't it? The Bible, you see, clearly speaks regarding the proper use of the body. In 1 Corinthians 6:13, the Bible says, "The body is not for immorality. It is for the Lord." The body was designed to be used by God, to be blessed by God, to serve God, to be honored. And, yet, what happens in our society? The body is pushed in total distortion to a place of perversion. But, you know, Satan has always done this. How there have been in history some people who fought that, and they went clear the other way. You know, there are some people look at the body as if the body itself were a horrible, evil, rotten, vile thing.
For example, the pagan esthetics in ancient times called the body a tomb. Some early Christians referred to it as a sack of manure, in a very derogatory view of the body. Epictetus referred to himself as a poor soul shackled to a corpse...Plato's account of Socrates' last hour as he says, "I reckon that we make the nearest possible approach to knowledge when we have the least possible communion with the body, and we are not surfeited with the bodily nature, but keep ourselves pure until the hour when God is pleased to release us, and thus having gotten rid of the foolishness of the body, we shall be pure, hold converse with the pure, and know ourselves the clear light everywhere, which is no other than the light of truth."
Now, don't worry about the philosophical jargon. All he's really saying is, "The body's a hang-up. We gotta rid of this evil body." Some Gnostics called marriage a foul, polluted way of life, because it involved sexual relationships. They went to the extreme where any kind of sexual relationship was evil, where the body itself was evil. In fact, in the acts of John, which is an apocryphal writing, not inspired by God, it describes sexual intercourse as an experiment of the serpent which separates from the Lord.
The famous early Father Jerome went so far as to say, "Any bodily contact of any kind is evil." I'll quote him. He said this. "Should your little nephew hang on your neck, pay no heed. Don't return it. Should your father fall on the threshold, trample him under your foot and go your way. Just don't pick him up. With dry eyes, fly to the cross. In such cases, cruelty is the only true affection." That's weird...
Some monks...some monks regarded it a sin to bathe. Kinda like your children, right?...Some monks regarded it a sin to bathe, because then they would see themselves naked. Athanasius boasted of a man named Anthony. He said, "He was such a praiseworthy man, because he never changed his vest or washed his feet." There weren't a lotta people around who could attest to his praiseworthiness, however. And the worst one of all that I found in looking into the history of this thing was that Antonius proudly related that, "Such was the holiness of Simon Stylites, that when he walked, vermin dropped off his body." Now that is the other extreme.
It all kind of came together in a man named Origin, who believed the ultimate act of worship was to emasculate himself, and that's what he did. Now, you see, Satan takes something very normal, very good, very wholesome, very beautiful, very wonderful, the human body, and absolutely perverts the thing. On one end it's an extreme kind of a cynicism that emasculates the body. On the other hand, it's somebody pulling off the cover and everybody screams. It's twisted and perverted from one end to the other; and in the mainstream of God's revelation, God has a plan for the body; and it is for the glory of the Lord.
Your body is a good thing. Otherwise, God wouldn't want it; but He wants it. It says in Romans 12:1, "To present your bodies a living sacrifice...listen to this...holy and acceptable unto God." Nothing wrong with your physical body. God wants to use it. In marriage, there is nothing wrong with the physical act of sexual relationships. Hebrews 13:2 says, "Marriage is honorable, and the bed is undefiled." On the other hand, we have twisted it and perverted it out of whack; and here you have in the Corinthian church an immoral situation where Satan has been allowed to move in and pervert the church so that there is incest going on in the church and not being dealt with. Incest.
Now, Paul says, "What are you gonna do about this? You have a church representing the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ wants His church without blemish, without spot, pure and blameless. He wants a Holy people. He wants a separated, sanctified people. What are you gonna do about the problem in your church?" He gives some guidelines in chapter 5 for dealing with immorality in the church, and here they are. There are four of them. We gave you two last time. Two more today.
What are the guidelines for such discipline in the church? No. 1, the need. This is the idea of recognition. The first thing that has to happen in dealing with immorality in the church is that you gotta recognize that it's there. You have to be sensitive to this as brothers and sisters in Christ. You know, when the church stands oblivious to the sin that's going on in it, it's in a bad, bad situation. If you know of somebody who's living in immorality, if you know of somebody who continues to live a sinful, immoral life in the church, you need to follow the procedure of recognizing that thing, going to that person, according to Matthew 18. We saw all this last week. Apologizing to you who weren't here. And then, though, if they don't listen to you, take two or three witnesses. If they don't listen to them, tell it to the leaders of the church that they might be disciplined. Why? Because God doesn't want impurity in His church. We need to recognize it. We need to see it. When we see it, we need to deal with it.
You know, it's a sad thing when the church gets to the place where it tolerates sin; but look at verses 1 and 2. "It is reported commonly that there is immorality among you, and such immorality as not even as existing among the Gentiles or the pagan: that one should have his father's wife." Incest. You have immorality in your church. It's common knowledge. Everybody knows it, and it's incest; and verse 2 says, "In spite of all of that, you're still arrogant, and you should have been grieving and done something about removing such a thing. Instead of that, you're proud and arrogant."
They were going along saying, "We're the great church, you know, we've got all the spiritual gifts. We've got all the great teachers. We've got all of this and all of that." And He says, "You're all arrogant and puffed up, and you should be mourning and grieving over the sin that is existing in your congregation to the extent that it's common knowledge everywhere.
You know, when the church tolerates sin, the church is in bad shape, isn't it? But it does today. Take the liberal church, for example. Reverend H. A. Williams, who is a preacher, pastor, official in the church in England, who is the dean of Trinity College, Cambridge, wrote an interesting article in which he cited two acts of immorality that were worthy of special praise. This is Reverend H. A. Williams. Listen to what he says. "The first worthy of praise is a Greek film Never on Sunday about a prostitute. She is picked up by a young sailor. In a room, he becomes afraid and nervous and on edge. This is not because he thinks he is embarking on something wicked, but because he distrusts his capacity for physical union. He is a prey to destructive doubts about himself, not to moral scruples. The prostitute gives herself to him in such a way that he acquires confidence and self-respect. He goes away a deeper, fuller person than when he came. What is seen here is an act of charity which proclaims the glory of God."...
He goes on in his article. "The second film is in English, entitled The Mark. It tells of the rehabilitation into normality of a man strongly attracted to small girls. His abnormality, which can do nothing but untold harm to everybody, is due to his fear of commitment to an adult woman. However, in time, a woman of his own age inspires him with enough confidence for them to go away for a weekend together. They have separate rooms at the hotel, but it is clear that, until he sleeps with her, he will not have established enough confidence in himself to deliver him from his utterly destructive abnormality, which tends to exploitation. Will he be able to summon up the necessary courage or not? When he does, and they sleep together, he has been made whole; and where there is healing, there is Christ."
So says Reverend H. A. Williams. That, friends, is the church, not only tolerating sin, but advocating it. Now, you say, "We would never go to that extent." You better believe it. We never would; but I wonder if it's very much worse to just let it exist. It may be a little more subtle; but, frankly, it's just as devastating. The Corinthians probably wouldn't have gone as far as Reverend Williams, but they went far enough to allow sin to become the common ingredient in the life of the community of believers. There must be a recognition of a problem. You've gotta face the fact. Every believer in the church has the responsibility, if he knows of impurity, of dealing with that impurity. It's all of our responsibility.
Once you know the need, the second thing is the method. How do you deal with it? This is the action you take. Paul says in verse 4, "In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when you are gathered together, in my spirit, and the power of the Lord Jesus, deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the Day of the Lord Jesus." Now, he says that if you know about this immorality, and you've gone to the guy, and you've taken two or three witnesses to the guy, and you've gone through all the procedures of disciplining him and trying to get him to change, and he continues, or she continues to live in immorality, the next thing you do is meet together and put him out of the church. Turn him over to Satan.
You say, "But what happens to him?" Don't worry about him. Satan'll take his flesh, and he may destroy his flesh. In other words, the man may go all the way to the place of death; but if he's a Christian in spirit will be saved. Now, don't fear about that. God'll take care of him if he's His child spiritually; but you don't need that kind of pollution in the church. Deal with it and put him out of the church. We went into that in detail last time.
Now, that brings us to the third point. The reason, and for this kind of severe action, there would have to be a rather striking and significant reason, and it is the reason of preservation. You know, if a fellow has cancer, he goes and gets an operation to get the cancer cut out; and the reason is simple. If he leaves it there, it will metastasize; that is, it will spread; and he doesn't want it to spread, so he gets it out; and we always say, "Isn't it great when they got all of it," right? Because it's out; and the same is true in the church. The reason to cut it out is to preserve the rest of the body from being infected with that disease.
Sin is like that. Look at verse 6, "Your glorying is not good. Your arrogance is not good. Your pride doesn't make any sense. You're boasting about your teachers and your factions and your spiritual gifts and all of this, and here you are tolerating this gross vice. What do you have to be proud about? What do you have to celebrate? What do you have to be glorifying yourself for?" Nothing. It's unbelievable that these people, in the midst of this situation, common knowledge, everybody knows they got all these problems; and they're going around proud about it. They think everything's fine with them. They're in great spiritual shape, and it...it really illustrates a basic point, I think, that we need to think about; and that is be careful that you properly evaluate your spiritual condition. You know, it's very easy to just look at yourself very biased and evaluate yourself with all the plus signs and never face the facts.
I'm sure there are Christians who go around thinking they're really doing great, because they never really bother to examine the reality. Put yourself against the searchlight of the Scripture. Get down on your knees and spend a little time with the Holy Spirit, and see what He discloses to you; and I think this is part and parcel of every Christian's life.
In Revelation 3, you have an illustration of this. It says in verse 17, "You say, "I am rich. I'm increased with goods, have need of nothing,' and you don't now that you're wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked." To the Christian church in Laodicea t