12 When the Church Looks the Other Way (1 Corinthians 4:17-5:5)

Krisan Marotta: Thank you for joining me today for the Wednesday in the Word podcast. I'm Krisan Marotta, and this is the podcast where we explain not only what scripture means but how we figure it out. Today we're going to be studying 1 Corinthians 4, verse 17 through chapter 5, verse 5. This is the 12th talk in our series on the book of 1 Corinthians. You can find the lecture notes for today's talk on the link below the podcast, so no worries if you don't have anything to take notes with and you want to remember something, it's all there in the lecture notes. Alternately, you can find those notes on my website. Just go to wednesdayintheword.com slash 1 Corinthians 12. And while you're there, take a moment to check out the website. There is no charge, no spam, no advertisements, only Bible study. Thanks so much for listening today. Let's get started. Well, we have finished the first major section of Paul's letter to the Corinthians, and with 4.17 we're transitioning to a new topic. The topic we're going to talk about today is not a particularly easy one. The passage itself presents some difficulties. It's not easy to understand what Paul has in mind. And then it's been a somewhat controversial passage in the history of the church, so there's a number of things we're going to talk about. We've just finished the first major section of the letter, which runs from chapter one to chapter four, where Paul was addressing the factions in the church, but more importantly, he was addressing the underlying theology that led to those divisions. Now he has just finished encouraging the Corinthians to be imitators of him as their father in the faith, and that rather than judging and condemning him as some of them have, Paul has encouraged them to see him as their spiritual father in the faith. So I'm going to read four sixteen through eighteen. Therefore I exhort you, be imitators of me. For this reason I have sent to you Timothy, who is my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, and he will remind you of my ways which are in Christ, just as I teach everywhere in every church. Now some have become arrogant as though I were not coming to you. So in four seventeen Paul says Timothy is going to remind you about who I am and how I taught and what I taught you and what kind of life I live and how to speak because I want you to imitate that in me. Timothy can instruct you in how to imitate me. I think that's the transition. And perhaps Timothy is the one who is carrying this letter back to Corinth. So he starts this section, I want you to be imitators of me, and I'm sending Timothy to remind you of what it means to imitate me. Some of you have become arrogant. Some of you are not imitating me. You're puffed up and full of yourselves and are the opposite of what I'm instructing you to do. And some of you feel the freedom to disregard my instructions because you think you'll never see me again. You're not paying any attention to what I'm teaching you. I think that's essentially what's going on here. In four eighteen, when he says some are arrogant, we've talked about this before. This arrogance springs from the situation we've been discussing in the last few weeks. Some in the Corinthian church see themselves as superior to Paul such that they can judge him and find him deficient. So they have set themselves up as judges of who and what is wise and who the best teacher is, and they think Paul is lacking. And they think the fact that Paul has sent Timothy in his place is confirmation that Paul isn't trustworthy or he's somehow unreliable. I think the idea is see, we know he's unreliable because why doesn't Paul come himself? Why did he send Timothy? Later in Second Corinthians he's going to respond to a similar charge. Paul had told them that he would visit them on his way back from Macedonia, but he ends up deciding to return to Ephesus via a different route, and they charge him with lying and speaking out of both sides of his mouth, a charge that he's going to deny. And I think there's something similar here. He's telling them, look, you've got it wrong, I am going to come to you, Lord willing, but when I do, you better adjust your attitude. Look at nineteen through twenty one. But I will come to you soon at the Lord wills, and I shall find out not the words of those who are arrogant but their power, for the kingdom of God does not consist in words but in power. What do you desire? Shall I come to you with a rod or with love and a spirit of gentleness? Now some groups have taken this language at the end of chapter four about power and words and built a theology of tongues and prophecy on it. And their thinking goes something like this. They would say, See, your group just has words, but our group has power and words, and our power is evidenced by the fact that we speak in tongues and we have this ecstatic prophecy. You only have words, where's your power? And they refer to this language in the end of chapter four to say, look, you guys talk the good talk, but we've got the real deal because we've got the power, and that's exactly what Paul was talking about here in chapter four. Well, you might guess I don't think that is the kind of thinking that Paul has in mind. Consider again the context of these verses. From my reading, I think there are two main possible interpretations of these verses, and neither one of them supports the idea of tongues and prophecy as the power he's talking about. The first option is one we've seen Paul talk a lot about before. He talks a lot about the power of the Spirit at work in living out the Christian life and proclaiming the gospel. So when folks encounter the gospel, they only see and understand it and embrace it if the Spirit of God is at work in them to soften their hearts, open their eyes, and give them understanding. He could mean the power in that sense. As we live our lives after initial belief, the Spirit gives us understanding. The Spirit causes growth and maturity such that we become grounded in the truth, and when hard times hit, we cling to our faith. And Paul refers to that as a miraculous work of the Spirit. So he could mean either the initial work of the Spirit to give us the eyes to see and embrace the faith, or the ongoing work of the Spirit to teach us and mature us as we go through this journey of faith. It's possible he means something like that here. Let's see if your words are in fact leading to changed lives. Is your claim to faith just an empty claim or is it a genuine claim such that we see the power of the Spirit at work in you, giving you understanding, maturing your faith, and producing fruit? And that's a good possible interpretation. There's a second interpretation, and at this point I lean towards it, but I'm not sure it makes all that much difference, but I do lean toward this, and that is that Paul is referring to the power of God to use miracles and signs and wonders to authenticate the apostolic ministry. Paul talks about the power of God at work in his own proclamation of the gospel, that when he spoke among them, God confirmed that he was who he said he was, and that Paul was in fact speaking for God. So Paul's apostolic ministry was verified by the miracles or the signs that God performed when Paul was teaching. So his apostolic authority has been verified by the works of God that were done through Paul such that there can be no doubt over whether Paul is worth listening to or not. Given that the Corinthians are questioning Paul's authority, this strikes me as the more likely option that he's saying, look, my message can be shown to be true. It can be shown to be a real proclamation of the gospel from God because God himself has authenticated it through his power and his signs. Is he doing that through you? Is he doing that through your message? You've disregarded my teaching and rejected my authority. Where are the signs from God to authenticate your right, that your message is true? So Paul's authority is based on being an apostle chosen by God. He knows what he knows because God taught him and God confirmed his authority with miracles. He was credentialed in a sense by the power of God. The miracles he performed confirmed that he has the words of life. God's not performing miracles through the folks in Corinth. They're just proclaiming themselves as judges and the rulers of who is wise and what is wise in their arrogance. God's not credentialing them. Their claims are just words. Paul's claims are based on the power of God performing miracles through him. And when it comes to prophets and apostles, we know they are who they say they are because they are credentialed by the power of God and the miracles. I think the point he's making is look, Corinthians, you think the issue is who can be the most clever in their words, are eloquent in their arguments, or poetic in their language, and you've been judging and rejecting me because you find me dull and dry, but that's not really the issue. The issue is who has the words of life, to whom has God revealed his message, and who has God validated as his spokesman? The issue is what is God doing? Where is the power of God at work? God is miraculously changing people's hearts and lives, and he's authenticating the message of the apostles through signs and miracles. So the power of God is doing both of those things. The message of the gospel is not just words, the message of the gospel has the power to change lives, and God authenticates it through his signs. So I wouldn't take Paul as saying you should only listen to those who can perform miracles to verify their message. That's not his point. We don't have apostles with that kind of authority today. At least I would argue there are no apostles today who can speak or write inerrantly and who have authority like Paul and the other apostles did. The foundation has been laid and there's no need to lay it again. Now we're building on that foundation. There's no need to credential us the way the apostles needed credentialing. The way we evaluate teachers today is to compare what they say to the foundation, to the scriptures, and see how well we're building on that foundation. So today we're evaluated by our consistency with the gospel as proclaimed by Paul and the rest of the scripture. Now we still have the writings of Paul and Peter and John and the rest of the New Testament authors and the Old Testament authors, and the standard by which we discern a true message is not whether the speaker performs miracles, but rather how well the content of his or her message conforms to what we know to be true from Scripture. So Paul is not saying you should only listen to those who have spoken in tongues or been confirmed by miracles. I would not understand these verses to mean a teacher is better if a teacher speaks in tongues or otherwise it's just words. In fact, as we get into the letter in Corinth, that really would not make sense because later we're going to see that the church in Corinth was preoccupied with the gift of tongues and they had an awful lot of tongue speaking going on. So for Paul to argue here that they should only listen to tongue speakers it would undermine the argument I think that he's made up to this point and what he's going to say in the future. I think rather part of the reason the Corinthians see themselves as superior is their ability to speak in tongues, and Paul doesn't buy that. He's not persuaded that their tongue speaking authenticates what they're saying in any way. Rather he sees the Corinthians as foolish and unwise as evidenced by the choices they're making, their divisions, and their rejection of Paul and his authority. Speaking in tongues in and of itself is not an indication of wisdom in Paul's mind, but he's going to get into that later in the letter. So this transition then brings us to the next topic that Paul wants to talk about. So I'm going to pick up in four twenty one and read five one and two. What do you desire? Shall I come to you with a rod or with love and a spirit of gentleness? It is actually reported that there is immorality among you, and immorality of such a kind as does not exist even among the Gentiles, that someone has his father's wife. You have become arrogant and have not mourned instead, so that the one who has done this deed would be removed from your midst. Okay, it's a little hard to see the transition here, but here's how I think this ties in. He said, You have arrogantly questioned my motives and said that I am not coming to Corinth for nefarious reasons. Well you'd better ask yourself how you want me to come. I can come with a rod of rebuke or I can come with a spirit of gentleness. Because the sorts of things going on in your church deserve rebuke. I may have to come to you in order to discipline and correct you. First, there's this arrogance we've been talking about, and if that's not enough, there's sexual immorality among you and of such a kind that it's not even tolerated among the pagans, for a man has his father's wife. I think his father's wife here refers to this man's stepmother, not his biological mother, and let's try to figure out what's going on here. Leviticus chapter 18 contains various prohibitions of sexual relationships. eighteen seven prohibits a sexual relationship with your father and a sexual relationship with your mother, and then in eighteen eighteen, which immediately follows, it prohibits a sexual relationship with your father's wife. And most scholars take that to mean your stepmother because we've just said your mother in the previous verse and now your father's wife, well, who is this person must be your stepmother. Because the context strongly suggests that these are two different people. Well, since Paul knew the Old Testament well, it's hard to imagine that Paul would use the language of Leviticus and mean something different by it than Leviticus meant. So I think the situation we're looking at here is not a blood relative, but someone who married my father. The interesting question for us as Bible students is why is Paul so upset about it and why would he bring this problem into the discussion at this point in his argument? Now remember, Paul knew the details of the situation and we don't. He doesn't give us the specifics. So we have to speculate a bit about what's going on and why Paul reacted to it. One option is this man is having an affair with his stepmother while his father is still alive. From a biblical standpoint and also in Paul's culture, an affair in and of itself would be immoral because sexuality outside the marriage relationship was immoral. But this situation goes a step further because the affair is with his father's wife. So that situation would be highly offensive to the community, and everyone, both Christian and pagan and Jew, would regard it as immoral. Even the most promiscuous pagans would say this man has crossed a line in taking his father's wife. He needs to honor his father, not disregard him. One reason Paul might bring this up now is because this situation is so highly offensive to both the Christian and the pagan communities that Paul just has to deal with it. Not even the morally loose Gentiles would tolerate this situation, even they would draw a line at that kind of relationship. So that's one possibility. There's another possibility. Suppose the situation is this. Over time, the son and the young widow, who are now close in age and probably know each other well, fall in love and decide to get married. As I understand it, and I may be wrong, but as I understand it, Leviticus 18 would prohibit that kind of relationship as well. It was something you're not supposed to do. Now it's tricky because many of the Old Testament prohibitions are intended to illustrate spiritual truths. In some cases, the action that's prohibited in and of itself is not wrong or immoral, but it illustrates a principle that God wanted his people to understand. And in those cases, it's always more important to get the principle. Because these regulations were shadows of a reality that God wants us to learn. Eventually the shadow gives way to the reality. For example, boiling a baby goat in its mother's milk. At face value, there's nothing wrong with killing a baby goat to eat it, and there's nothing wrong with cooking with goat's milk. There's nothing intrinsically evil in either of those actions, alone. I may be wrong, but here's what I think is going on there. The mother's milk was intended to give life to her offspring. That's what God created it for. To use the very thing that was intended to give life to the offspring to give death to the offspring instead is offensive. It's the opposite of what God intended. So the prohibition is there to make us think about not going against the way God created things to be. Now notice in Paul's discussion he never addresses the woman involved in this relationship. I think that probably tells us she was not a believer. Paul has made a distinction about judging insiders and outsiders, judging believers and nonbelievers, and he has said it's not the business of the church to judge nonbelievers. So I think that's why she's not mentioned. There's another piece of evidence we have to help us unravel the situation, and that comes from Acts 15 and what we call the Council of Jerusalem. That chapter records a meeting in Jerusalem where church leaders came together to decide what restrictions to put on the Gentiles. The situation there is that many Gentiles had become believers, and now we have this mixed church of Jew and Gentile for basically the first time, and some of their Gentile behavior is offensive to Jewish believers who have been trained their whole lives that some behavior is wrong and offensive to God. So how do we successfully integrate a Jewish culture and a Gentile culture into one church? We're all believers now, but there are just certain actions and activities that the Jews are going to find so offensive, even if they're permitted, we're not their Jews are not really able to look past them. So they were trying to figure out what restrictions ought we to put on the Gentiles and ask the Gentiles to accommodate these Jewish sensibilities. For example, let's not eat things that have been strangled. It's not that you as Gentiles have a moral obligation to avoid strangled meat, it's that you're accommodating for the sake of your Jewish brethren. Now one of the things that comes out of that list in Acts 15 is fornication. And if we understand that word in the traditional sense of sexuality before marriage, it really makes no sense for it to be on the list. Fornication is not optional for Jews or Gentiles, it's prohibited for everyone. What makes What's more sense in the context is that by fornication they mean the broader Jewish understanding. The Jews had a broad definition of fornication that included not just sexuality outside marriage, but all the kinds of relationships that were prohibited in Leviticus 18. So a relationship like a son marrying his father's young widow may have been allowed by the Gentiles because there was no blood relationship, but it would be offensive to the Jews because of Leviticus eighteen. So I think in Acts 15 what they're asking the Gentiles to do is to abide by some of these other restrictions which are legal and may be acceptable in the Gentile world, but would be morally offensive to the Jews. So all of that makes me think that this situation is an affair while the father is still alive because Paul finds it so perverse and suggests that the pagans would also find it perverse. They might find it acceptable for a son to marry his father's widow, but they would not find it acceptable for him to have an affair with his stepmother while his father was still alive. And Paul presents it as this is a situation that is clearly and obviously against the moral order of God. For this man to take this action is a rebellion against God's. Now we have to realize immorality is a universal human affliction. All of us are immoral. Just look at the teaching of Jesus about committing adultery in our hearts. None of us are sexually pure. All of us need repentance and forgiveness in this area and many others. Sexuality involves powerful desires and we frequently misuse them. I don't think Paul is saying cast out anyone who is sexually immoral. If that were the case, we'd all just have to leave right now. Sin is a reality we all wrestle with, so it's not this, uh oh, there's a sinner among you. This is a situation where a man is openly and willfully defying God's moral requirements, and the church is ignoring it, and maybe they even think it's kind of cool. Here's someone who claims to be a believer and then says, but you know, I'm not gonna let the gospel influence my choices. Yeah, I'm a believer and all, but that Leviticus stuff, no way. I don't care what God says. This is what I want. It's that kind of defiance and rebellion. And the community is looking at that and saying, Okay, we'll be open minded if it works for you, go ahead. Or perhaps this man is so rich and powerful they don't want to risk offending him by calling out his behavior. Either way, Paul is concerned with this blatant disregard of God's law by the man in question, and he's even more concerned with the attitude the church is taking toward it. He's upset that the church doesn't even seem to be bothered by this situation, and that's what he's addressing. So I think the wrong application of this passage would be to start ostracizing anyone whose sin is no longer hidden because all of us are going to fail that test. Rather, Paul's saying the gospel ought to make a difference in my life and my choices. If I have faith, then I ought to be asking the question, what does God want for my life? How should I follow him? What is the right thing to do in this situation? If I'm not interested in those questions and in fact have rejected them in favor of what I want to do, then it calls into question the genuineness of my claim to faith. So in 5 2 he says, You have become arrogant and have not mourned instead, so that the one who has done this deed would be removed from your midst. I think Paul's concerned with the church's attitude. He's saying, You've become arrogant. Do you think you know better than Leviticus? Do you know better than Moses? Do you know best how these situations ought to be handled such that you can say, Oh, we're so open-minded and progressive and we're not all hung up about sexuality the way Paul is. As the argument develops, we're going to see that many in Corinth have a very casual attitude toward sexuality, and Paul's going to rebuke them and encourage them to change their behavior in light of the lordship of Christ. Later in 1 Corinthians, he's going to address a different issue and address those who think that sexuality is beneath them, even if they're married, they refrain from sexuality because they think they're just so spiritually elite and above it. So we're going to see both these problems in the same church, but I think it's rooted in the same attitude of we know better than God about what's right and wrong. We also know that the Platonic Greek idea that the physical was inferior to the spiritual was very widespread at the time. The Greek idea was that everything physical is inherently evil and profane and dirty. On the other hand, everything that is spiritual is clean and pure, and that's where heaven's to be found. Now if you believe in this split, this dichotomy between the physical and the spiritual, you can react to that two different ways. One is to say, it doesn't matter what I do with my physical body because I'm so spiritual and above that. So you might find religious people acting immorally because they claim, you know, what I do with my body doesn't matter, and we're going to see that later in this chapter two. The other way to respond is to avoid the physical altogether so as not to soil yourself. This is the aesthetic approach. And I think we're going to see both these attitudes addressed in this letter to Corinth, and both could result from this Greek idea that what happens to the body is of no account. And there's an arrogance in that. The arrogance is that they think they have a better understanding about sexuality than the apostles and the prophets. You know, they're those naive people who get hung up on this old musty Jewish behavior, but we we're sophisticated, we really understand. And in fact, it's kind of a badge of honor that we tolerate all kinds of relationships. And Paul's saying you ought to be mourning that attitude, not be arrogant about it. Paul is concerned that the Corinthians have not taken this step of removing the offender. So what does he expect them to do? Let's look at three through five. For I, on my part, though absent in body but present in spirit, have already judged him who has so committed this as though I were present. In the name of our Lord Jesus, when you are assembled and I with you in spirit with the power of our Lord Jesus, I have decided to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. How to apply what Paul says here is a pretty big issue in the church throughout history, and there's a lot of questions about how do we apply this today, and not all sincere believers are going to come down in the same spot. Here's my best guess, here's what I think he's saying. I think it's something like this. True, I, Paul, am not physically present with you yet, but even at this distance I can see what you're not seeing. You have not responded properly to this situation. You ought to assemble yourselves together as a group, joined by your common belief in Christ, and when you come together, it will be as if I am there with you because I fully support this step, and I encourage you to take it. So even though I'm not physically present, I would be with you in spirit and support this step because it needs to happen. When you gather, remember you're not trying to solve this problem alone. Remember our Lord and the power of his spirit are at work in you. So verse five, deliver this man to Satan. How we read this depends on the presuppositions we bring to the Bible and in some sense the picture of theology we already have. If you believe that the organized church as an institution is the medium of God's grace, then you might conclude church leaders have the power to cut someone off from grace. If, on the other hand, you start with a more charismatic perspective, then you might believe that God has given us the power to bind and lose Satan and you are giving Satan the power to afflict this person. Well, I don't start with either of those ideas, and those aren't the conclusions I reach. Rather, I think Satan is called the ruler of this world. We have been delivered from the kingdom of darkness, the domain of Satan, and we are now headed to the kingdom of life thanks to the cross of Christ. In this world, Satan has a relatively free hand, but believers are no longer under his domain, we are now under the domain of Jesus. We don't belong to this world anymore, we now belong to God. And I think what he's saying is, what I want you to say to this man is we cannot treat you any longer as a believer. We can't treat you as one who has turned away from the world and identified yourself with God. By willfully rejecting God's authority in your life and by living in rebellion to what God values, you have revealed whose child you are and it's not Jesus. So we're not going to encourage you in that hypocrisy and self-deception. We can no longer treat you as a believer because you're not living as a believer would live. We can't treat you as one who has repented and turned away from the world, and so we're going to give you back to the world because you are living under the domain of the prince of this world. You're not living as if you believe the gospel, so we're no longer going to treat you as a believer. Because we want to make it clear that right now we don't buy your claim to faith because you have so clearly rejected the implications of the gospel. Whatever words you say, your actions are revealing that you're not following Christ, you're following Satan, the God of this world. I think that's what he's saying here. Now why should we do this? Paul gives two reasons. One reason is for the person's sake, and the other reason is for the sake of the church. He says in five five, I have decided to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. The goal of taking this action is the person's redemption, that ultimately this person would find his way back to God and repent from his ways and find mercy and grace. That phrase destruction of the flesh is a little hard to make sense of. It sounds like Paul's talking about death or the destruction of the body, but what doesn't make sense is we know that killing the body does not save the spirit. So how would one lead to the other so that his spirit might be saved? Well, I think there are a couple of options. One is that this man has been indulging his flesh is in immorality, and Paul may mean just turning away from that, resulting in the destruction or the ending of indulging his fleshly desires. Another option is that Paul often means by flesh everything we are apart from God, so our sinful selves apart from any action or work of God, and he could mean just turning away from our sinful selves and turning back to God. Or he could mean afflict his circumstances, make it more difficult for him so that he will wake up and see the situation as it really is. Now ultimately all of those would have the effect of getting the man to turn from his current path and turn back and find God. And I think that's however you understand that phrase, that's the goal. We want to get this man's attention so that he deals with the reality of the choices he's making. And Paul is concerned that the church is ignoring blatant immorality, and he wants them to take steps for that person's sake to accomplish their redemption. The other half of the equation is what their lack of response reveals about the Corinthian church, and that's the second reason that he's going to discuss in the section we're going to look at in the next podcast. So to wrap this up, I want to talk about two ways we can respond to this section. And we humans tend toward one of the two extremes. On the one hand, we run towards self-indulgence and doing what we want despite what God thinks. And that's what this man is doing, and that's one of the things Paul's saying, that's wrong. You cannot run towards self-indulgence. If you claim to believe the gospel, it needs to make a difference in the way you live your life. The other way we can respond to these kinds of situations is to conclude, hey, I'm not like that guy. I've got it all together and start judging everyone else. And we want to avoid that extreme as well. We want to find that place in the middle where I recognize I'm a sinner in need of mercy. Yes, I'm committed towards striving after righteousness and goodness and holiness, and I'm also committed to encouraging others to strive for it as well. So I know myself to be a sinner in need of God's mercy, but at the same time I believe the moral standards of God are true and right, and I want to follow them and urge you humbly and respectfully to follow them as well. So we can make a mistake on either side. We can ignore the moral demands of God and be like this man and say, hey, I can do whatever I want, I'm forgiven, and I don't care what God thinks anyway. Or we can acknowledge the moral demands of God and get puffed up about, hey, look, I'm doing really well, unlike you. We can fall off that horse on either side, and both of them are a problem. Now Paul's going to continue this discussion in the section we're going to look at in the next podcast, so I am going to leave you hanging a little bit because there's a lot more to say and a lot more questions to answer, but I don't want to get into them until we've looked at the rest of his argument. So hang on and join me next week. You've been listening to the Wednesday in the Word podcast. My mission is to explain not only what a passage means, but how I reach those conclusions. If this podcast has been helpful to you or you've enjoyed listening, please leave a positive comment on Apple Podcast or your favorite podcast platform, because it really helps others find the podcast. And most importantly, tell your friends about the podcast. Tell them what you've learned. It's very easy to subscribe, just go to wednesdayintheword.com and click on subscribe to this podcast, and it will show you how.