Jesus gave a solemn warning at the close of the Sermon on the Mount: “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter.” (Matt 7:21).

Why would entry into heaven be denied someone who professes Christ as Lord? Jesus explains in verse 23. They are condemned because they “practice lawlessness.” The apostle John expresses a similar idea in 1 John 3:10 when he says that everyone who practices sin is not born of God. These words are haunting, and their meaning is inescapable. Those who practice sin will not inherit the kingdom of heaven, regardless of their claim to be followers of Christ.

Jesus preached a gospel of repentance, yet this has been lost and replaced with a message of free grace that promises heaven but says little of pursuing holiness. This diluted gospel enables people to comfortably remain in their sin and still hold on to the false hope of eternal life.

Therein lies the problem. The Church was saved to glorify God in the world through the proclamation of the truth and the witness of a transformed life. But as this trend of diminishing the call to personal holiness continues, the inevitable result is an increasingly worldly Church that is losing its influence on the culture and the world. Why? Because the Church is becoming filled with people no different than the world, making the true saving work of God harder and harder to see.

If the Church is going to be distinct again, we must work hard to make sure that our character squares with our message. We must be faithful to preach the gospel of grace, faithful to live lives that are forever changed by that grace, and faithful to lovingly confront one another when we are living in ways contrary to that grace.

Paul told the Ephesians that we are saved by grace through faith, and that as such we are God’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works which God has prepared beforehand for us to walk in (Eph. 2:8-10). The Church must address the leaven of sin in its midst, because a little leaven will leaven the whole lump of dough. This is why Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 5 how we are to treat those who claim to be believers and yet are living in open sin.

Ignoring our responsibility to deal with sinning brothers endangers the unity and purity of the body. However, indiscriminate application can cause us to violate other scriptural mandates, so we must be careful to understand the proper application of this passage in Church life.

The Context

The Corinthian Church had a member who was engaged in a physical relationship with his stepmother. This was unnatural and ungodly, and as Paul lamented, this kind of thing did not even happen among the Gentiles. Yet for some time the Corinthians were tolerating this kind of behavior in the Church, to the point that Paul had to hear about it from someone who was likely a part of the Church.

The sin was obviously done in the open because it was reported back to Paul, and it was clearly known by the Church because Paul does not give the sinning man’s name in this letter. Paul only had to refer to the sin itself for the Corinthians to immediately know who he was talking about. In addition, this sin had to be going on long enough for others to find out and report back to Paul, and for Paul to then write this letter to the Corinthian Church.

The Corinthians’ Error

To make matters worse, the Church was not doing anything about this sin in their midst. Paul responded by rebuking them for being arrogant and not addressing the matter. In fact, he chides them for not mourning over the man’s sin.

Why did Paul believe the Corinthians were guilty of arrogance? In verse 6, he says “your boasting is not good”. Either the Corinthians were boasting in this man’s sin, or they were boasting in their freedom to teach that someone could call themselves a child of God and yet live like the devil.

Either way, Paul says this is preposterous arrogance. It was an affront to God, which at its heart is pride and arrogance, to overlook sin in the Church as if it is acceptable for a regular church member to live this way. As a result, the Church had become stained and needed to remove the leaven from its midst.

The Apostle’s Response

Paul told the Corinthians that he had already turned the brother over to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, which simply means that Paul prayed for God to remove the man’s protection and give him over to Satan’s activity so that he would be broken and return to God in true repentance. Then Paul instructed the Church to follow his example and do the same, because the professing Christian who lives in open and unrepentant sin has no place among God’s people and within God’s protection.

The Exhortation to the Church

This wasn’t the first time Paul had warned the Corinthians about associating with immoral people, but they likely interpreted his earlier admonishment to mean that they were to stay away from immoral people who were not a part of the Church.

Paul used the epistle of 1 Corinthians to clarify his intent. In verse 11 Paul explained that they were to stay away from any “so called brother” who was living in open immorality because he would leaven the dough of holiness with his ungodly living.

The Church was expected to take a stand against unholy and immoral living, and Paul explained exactly the kind of living that must be avoided. They were not to associate with “the immoral person, or the covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or a swindler” and were instructed to “not even eat with such a one.”

The apostle’s meaning could not have been clearer. The wicked practices of this world have no place in the Church, and the gospel of grace in no way undermines God’s call to holiness.

But how do we go about carrying out the apostle’s instructions? What does he mean to “not even associate” with the so-called brother?

The idea is that we are not to hang out with him as if there were nothing wrong. We are to keep him out of the activities of the Church and away from regular fellowship with God’s people, and to go so far as to not even eat with him. No regular member is to engage in normal fellowship with the unrepentant sinner, and his friendships and fellowship with the Church are to be broken off while he remains in unrepentant sin.

Some would object to this on the grounds that it is not our place to judge the sinner. Others have desired to be faithful to God with respect to sinning brothers, but have struggled with how this applies when that sinning brother is a member of their family.

We’ll address those and other questions in part two.

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