Your boasting about this is terrible. Don’t you realize that this sin is like a little yeast that spreads through the whole batch of dough? Get rid of the old “yeast” by removing this wicked person from among you. Then you will be like a fresh batch of dough made without yeast, which is what you really are. Christ, our Passover Lamb, has been sacrificed for us. So let us celebrate the festival, not with the old bread of wickedness and evil, but with the new bread of sincerity and truth. When I wrote to you before, I told you not to associate with people who indulge in sexual sin. But I wasn’t talking about unbelievers who indulge in sexual sin, or are greedy, or cheat people, or worship idols. You would have to leave this world to avoid people like that.
1 Corinthians 5:6-11
Your boasting about this is terrible. It is nothing to boast about. It’s shameful You are proud and boasting about the fact that one of your number is practising incest with his step-mother. Paul says when he talked about these things earlier with the Corinthians that he was not talking about unbelievers. The inference is he was talking about a believer doing things even the unbelievers don’t do. It is the same kind of shock factor that comes with God’s statement to the tribe of Edom in Obadiah 1:11 “When they were invaded, you stood aloof, refusing to help them. Foreign invaders carried off their wealth and cast lots to divide up Jerusalem, but you acted like one of Israel’s enemies.”
Or the shock factor in 2 Sam 12:7 when “Nathan said to David, “You are that man!” concerning the sin with Bathsheba.
In the case of the comment to Edom the idea is you acted just like the enemies of Israel but you are FAMILY, descendants of Esau.
In the case of David, after Samuel used his parable, he then confronts David and says YOU are the man who acted like that. There is shock factor involved in that way it is said in the original language.
The point in each of these incidents is: it shouldn’t ought to be. It goes completely against the grain, against what ought to be the case. Paul said “I told you not to associate with NON-BELIEVERS who indulge in sexual sin, let alone one of the worst kinds of sexual sin. All cultures in the world would make this practise taboo. But in this case I am not talking about UNBELEIVERS who indulge in sexual sin. I AM TALKING ABOUT ONE OF YOUR NUMBER IN CHURCH.
The way the letter is written highlights the shock factor of what is happening. Bear in mind this is not a normal sexual sin, this is at the extreme end. And what’s more the church appears to condone it. But there is more shock factor to come. Tighten your seat belt!
We fear the consequences of confession because we’ve yet to experience the consequences of concealment.
Andy Stanley
There is no right way to do a wrong thing.
Anon