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“Just Once Before I Die”
Community Accountability, pt.2: Corrective Discipline

1 Corinthians 5

1 It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans, for a man has his father’s wife. 2 And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you.  3 For though absent in body, I am present in spirit; and as if present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing. 4 When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus, 5 you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. 6 Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? 7 Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. 8 Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.  9 I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people— 10 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. 11 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. 12 For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? 13 God judges those outside. "Purge the evil person from among you."

Four years ago, Ron Sider wrote a terribly disturbing page-turner entitled The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience.  The book is a riveting and chilling expose about the church’s moral collapse in modern day America.  Sider quotes poll after poll and study after study showing that the behavior of professing evangelical Christians in North America is roughly the same as and, in many cases, even worse than our non-Christian neighbors.  He quotes Michael Horton alluding to “survey after survey demonstrating that evangelical Christians are as likely to embrace lifestyles every bit as hedonistic, materialistic, self-centered, and sexually immoral as the world in general.”  He quotes Alan Wolfe, director of the Boisi Center for Religion and Public Life, as saying that, “The truth is there is increasingly little difference between an essentially secular activity like the popular entertainment industry and the bring-‘em-in-at-any-cost efforts of evangelical megachurches.”  He quotes George Barna as saying that, “Every day, the church is becoming more like the world it allegedly seeks to change.”  He quotes the African Christian and professor, Lamin Sanneh, as saying that, “the cultural captivity of Christianity in the West is nearly complete.”

Then Ron Sider passes on a story from a South African Christian friend of his named Graham Cyster.  I would like for all of you to listen closely to Cyster’s story:

     Graham Cyster, a Christian I know from South Africa, recently told me a painful story about a personal experience two decades ago when he was struggling against apartheid as young South African evangelical.  One night, he was smuggled into an underground Communist cell of young people fighting apartheid.  “Tell us about the gospel of Jesus Christ,” they asked, half hoping for an alternative to the violent communist strategy they were embracing.
     Graham gave a clear, powerful presentation of the gospel, showing how personal faith in Christ wonderfully transforms persons and creates one new body of believers where there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, rich nor poor, black nor white.  The youth were fascinated.  One seventeen-year-old exclaimed, “That is wonderful!  Show me where I can see that happening.”  Graham’s face fell as he sadly responded that he could not think of anywhere South African Christians were truly living out the message of the gospel.  “The the whole thing is a piece of sh--,” the youth angrily retorted.  Within a month he left the country to join the armed struggle against apartheid – eventually giving his life for his beliefs.1

This story devastated me.  Had I lived in South Africa when this happened would Graham Cyster have been able to say, “Wyman Richardson.  He’s following Jesus like that”?  And what about our church?  If we were located in Johannesburg instead of Dawson could Graham Cyster have pointed to us and said, “That congregation over there, First Baptist.  They’re living this kind of life”?

We are trying to lead First Baptist Dawson back to the historic Baptist model of covenant membership precisely for this reason:  our lives are largely indistinguishable from those of non-Christians, and this is undermining our witness and our fellowship in the gospel.  This process has been a bit unnerving for me at times, but I am resolved that it is worth it if we can reverse the trend of “ask-nothing membership” that has eroded our foundation as a church.

Sider’s book broke my heart.  He went on in page after page proving his thesis that there is a “scandal of the evangelical conscience,” and the scandal is that we don’t seem to have much of a conscience.

Then, near the end of his book, Sider offered some suggestions.  When I read these, I could not believe my eyes.  Sider is considered a more moderate Baptist, but do you know what he recommended?  He recommended that churches seriously reconsider the biblical teachings of church discipline and how they could serve to call us back to Christian character.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, a New Testament church, an “authentic community around the whole gospel for the glory of God,” is a committed, covenanted body of believers who embrace the whole counsel of God, including the New Testament ministry of church discipline.

Our text this morning is a case study in church discipline.  It is a strange and sad story of the Corinthian church’s failure to address serious and unrepented-of sin in their midst.  Specifically what was happening was this:  a man in the church was having a romantic affair with “his father’s wife.”  This was likely his step-mother, though we cannot be sure.  Regardless, it was a relationship that was inappropriate and scandalous anyway you sliced it.  This was a tragedy, to be sure, but even more tragic to Paul was the fact that the Corinthian church had simply decided to accept it.  After all, they reasoned, nobody’s perfect.  After all, they said, we don’t want to judge.  After all, they reasoned, confrontation is uncomfortable.  But Paul saw the issue differently.  Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit Paul challenged the believers to think correctly and to exercise church discipline against the brother.  In this way, Paul argued, he might be brought to repentance and restored in his relationship with the Lord and the church.

What is interesting about this case study is that it reveals a number of insights into what covenanted church life meant in the New Testament and what it should mean for us as well.  So let’s consider what this strange episode means for First Baptist Dawson.

I. A New Testament church has a commonly recognized and agreed upon standard of living. (vv.1-3,6)

Now, 1 Corinthians 5 may seem to prove the opposite point:  that the early church clearly did not have a commonly recognized and agreed upon standard of living.  But, in fact, it proves that they did.  Consider, for instance, how Paul’s outrage reveals his knowledge that the church actually knew better.  There is no way to read 1 Corinthians 5 and conclude that the Corinthian believers were sinning in ignorance.

1 It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans, for a man has his father’s wife.

The 4th century church father John Chrysostom sees evidence in verse 1 that Paul is unbelievably ashamed and embarrassed of the sin that has been tolerated in the church.  “The extreme foulness of the deed,” he writes, “causes Paul to shrink.  He hurries over it with a sense of embarrassment, aggravating the charge by implying that even to speak about it was intolerable.”2

Indeed, the nature of the sin scandalizes Paul!  But their reaction to the sin is what truly shocks him.

2 And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you.  3 For though absent in body, I am present in spirit; and as if present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing.

They had become arrogant about it.  This means at least that they did not call sin, “sin,” but it probably also means that some of the Corinthians Christians were actually celebrating the relationship.  Maybe they were arrogantly telling themselves that they were open-minded and tolerant.  Maybe they were congratulating themselves for being so progressive, for being cosmopolitan, for being liberal minded.  Maybe they were arrogantly telling themselves that they weren’t as backward and intolerant and judgmental as some of the churches that took a dim view of things like these kinds of relationships.  Who knows?  But they had grown arrogant and their hearts had become so hardened that they had not mourned over the sin as they should have.  Their lack of mourning causes Paul to mourn, and their arrogance breaks Paul’s heart.

So Paul passes the judgment that the Corinthians should have passed:  the brother should be removed from the church so that his heart can be broken and his attention regained.  His removal was also important because if the church did not remove him his bad example would spread in the church.

6 Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?

“Leaven” is frequently used in scripture as an image of sin.  The Jews, of course, ate unleavened bread at the Passover.  A little leaven would contaminate unleavened bread.  It just took a little leaven to leaven an entire lump.  We might put it like this:  “One bad apple spoils the bunch.”

This is the ministry of corrective church discipline:  it seeks to gain the rebellious member’s attention and repentance by putting him or her outside of the sweet fellowship and spiritual protection of the church.  But for our purposes this morning, let me just point out what ought to be obvious:  Paul is appealing to a standard of behavior that the church knew.  In other words, there was an agreed-upon line that they had crossed.  Had there not been an agreed-upon line then Paul would no doubt have written more tenderly and simply informed the church of what was good behavior and what was bad behavior.

Perhaps this will help us understand why our forefathers often had people sign covenants, or something very much like it, when they joined the church.  Earlier Baptists saw evidence of covenant commitment in the New Testament.  They knew that Paul’s very outrage revealed the fact that there was a standard of behavior that was not to be traversed.  Furthermore, they understood that these standards and expectations need to be taught, embraced, and agreed upon if the ministry of church discipline was to be possible.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, listen to me very carefully:  the church cannot expect right living if it does not (a) communicate what is expected and (b) ask the church to agree and commit itself to this standard.  This is the role that church covenants have traditionally played in Baptist life.  They are expressions of basic behavioral standards that the congregation is to agree to and join around.

Our forefathers knew this.  Over the last 70-80 years, we forgot this.  And now we have the situation that Sider describes so powerfully in his book:  there is virtually no difference between us and the world.  When we stopped saying the covenant together, we stopped rehearsing aloud together our expectations and our standard.  When we stopped asking members to join around the covenant, we separated Christian confession from Christian expectation.

Listen very closely:  when we started simply assuming that everybody knew the standard, many forgot the standard altogether.  Oh, we kept talking about “being saved,” but we stopped talking about what “being saved” meant.

Covenant membership seeks to reverse this tragic trend. 

Paul’s very challenge to the Corinthians was predicated upon a recognition that being a Christian meant living a certain way.  Paul’s instructions that the Corinthian congregation repent of their arrogance and remove the rebellious member itself recognizes that the congregation is a covenanted community of commitment and expectation.

Let us return to appropriate, biblical, God-honoring covenant expectations.  It is only in this context that something like biblical church discipline makes sense at all.

II. A New Testament church sees a vital connection between how we live and our relationship with Jesus Christ. (vv.4-5,7-8)

We as modern American evangelical Christians have done something to Christianity that the early church would not have recognized:  we have separated our lifestyles from our confession.  In other words, we believe it is possible to say that Jesus is my Savior but that He is not my Lord.  But this is a distinction that the New Testament knows nothing about.

A New Testament church is a church which recognizes and encourages the connection between confession of faith and discipleship.  We see this reality in 1 Corinthians 5.  Paul informs the church of what they are to do in the case of the rebellious church member:

4 When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus, 5 you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.

Now that is a terrible sounding idea:  “you are to deliver this man to Satan.”  What can this mean?  The 4th-5th century church father, Theodore of Mopsuestia, correctly notes that, “This is not to be taken literally.  What Paul means is that the person concerned should be put out of the church and forced to live in the world, which is ruled by Satan.  That way he will learn to fear God and escape the greater punishment that is to come.”  And the 5th century father, Severian of Gabala, correctly says about this text that, “What he means is that this man should be exposed to the hardships of life.”3

I agree with these Fathers.  To “deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh” is to remove the spiritual protection of the church so that a rebellious brother in Christ can receive the full brunt of consequence for his rebellion.  The idea is that when this happens he will be broken under these consequences and under an awareness of his own separation from God and he will repent and come home.  This is why the last part of verse 5 is so very important:  “you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.”  You and I instinctively want to shield one another from consequences, but let us note that the New Testament views consequences as a powerful motivator for bringing us back to Christ when we rebel.

Notice what is happening here:  God’s Word is telling us that a believer who claims to know Christ but who does not obey Christ is a believer who is attempting something unnatural, disruptive, and self-defeating.

This is why the New Testament viewed the church as a covenanted body of believers.  This is why the early Baptists wrote and joined around church covenants.  This is why our forefathers who founded this church in 1849 had a keen sense of the connection between Christian confession and Christian living.  They realized that a believer in Christ ought not become comfortable with rebellion.  He certainly should not be led to believe that his rebellious behavior is acceptable and ok.  The role of the church covenant is to remind us again and again of this fact:  our confession of faith ought to impact how we live.

But Paul goes even further.  Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, also points out that when a believer is allowed to separate his confession from his life it has the potential to cause others in the church to do the same:

7 Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. 8 Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

The purpose of a covenant is to remind us that we are to be a faithful, to be, as Paul puts it, “a new lump.”  And notice the nouns he uses in verse 8 to describe a New Testament church:  “sincerity” and “truth.”

Think about it:  “sincerity” and “truth.”

The call for the church to embrace a covenantal model of membership is nothing more than a call for us to embrace sincerity and truth.  Sincerity in who we claim to be and truth in our walk with Christ.

Finally, 1 Corinthians 5 shows us that:

III. A New Testament church will call its membership away from lifestyles that destroy our spiritual identity, witness, and health.

A New Testament church encourages its members to walk in covenant faithfulness and a New Testament church calls its members away from destructive lifestyles that ruins our witness and disrupts our walk with Jesus.

The Corinthian believers drew the wrath of the Apostle Paul precisely because they failed to call the offending member away from his destructive lifestyle.  The church father John Chrysostom makes the interesting point that “they did not allow the offender to repent because of their boasting in him.”4 

When we fail to patiently, lovingly, but clearly call one another to covenant faithfulness, we are actually not allowing one another to repent.  When you tell a brother or sister in Christ that, really, their sinful behavior is no big deal, you are removing the pressure of correction and shame that compels us to repent.

The 4th century church father, Ambrosiaster, made an even more astute observation:  “The sin of one person contaminates many if it is not dealt with once it is known, and so does the sin of the many who know what is happening and either do not turn away from it or pretend that they have not noticed it.  Sin does not look like sin if it is not corrected or avoided by anybody.”5

Hear that last statement again:  “Sin does not look like sin if it is not corrected or avoided by anybody.”

When you affirm a fellow believer in their sinfulness you are obscuring the sinfulness of sin to such a point that, as Ambrosiaster put it, “sin does not look like sin.”

Sin looks like sin when it is seen in the light of obedience.  This is one of the major contributions of a church covenant:  it consistently reminds us of what obedience and virtue and truth is.  When a church becomes covenant-saturated it makes our disobedience that much more stark.  When the standard becomes clear and beautiful, the violation of the standard becomes tragic and heartbreaking.

This is why Paul says that the Corinthians should have “mourned” the brother’s rebellion.  A rebellious believer, like a rebellious church, is a deep and painful tragedy that ought to be mourned.

A New Testament church is a place of love, patience, understanding, tolerance, and grace.  But it is a love and patience that refuses to abandon brothers and sisters in Christ to the sin that destroys and cripples us.

An “authentic community around the whole gospel for the glory of God” is a church that practices the twin ministries of formative church discipline (building disciples) and corrective church discipline (calling disciples back to discipleship).  This is how we become authentic.  This is how we mean what we say.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us become a covenanted body of faithful believers that walk in incarnated agape love with one another.

Let us become a church.

1. Ron Sider, The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2005), p.13-15.
2. Gerald Bray, ed., 1-2 Corinthians. Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1999), p.46.
3. Ibid.
4. Judith L. Kovacs, ed., 1 Corinthians. The Church’s Bible, Robert Louis Wilken, gen. ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2005), p.85.
5. Ambrosiaster, Romans and 1-2 Corinthians. Ancient Christian Texts. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Academic, 2009), p.142.