March 28, 2014
Expelled
Occasionally there are known
issues of sin within the body of believers and many of us look to the leadership
to deal with the situation. I’m not absolving the leadership from their responsibility
since the authority given them by God carries a huge measure of accountability.
However, Paul addressed sexual
immorality among believers saying, “And you are proud! Shouldn’t you rather
have been filled with grief and have put out of your fellowship the man who did
this?” (1 Cor 5:2 NIV) Later in the same chapter Paul includes the greedy,
the idolater, slanderer, drunkard, and swindler. To these categories he instructs
that we not associate with them, nor even eat with them; rather we are to expel
them from amongst us. It occurs to me that I can follow Paul’s instructions
even if my leadership fails to do so. I have the ability to put the sexually
immoral brother out of my personal fellowship, I can refuse to associate with him and eat a
meal with him. These passages indicate expelling the wicked
person from the church, but the reality is that “we” are the church. As individual believers we can mentally expel the wicked person from fellowship.
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----I attend a church where scripture is treated like a book of suggestions. I say that more derogatorily than factually. Many there regard the scripture highly. Then Paul states in Romans 14 that we should each be convinced in our own minds about differences, ultimately keeping the faith we have between ourselves and the Lord, if need be. Yet he goes telling us to kick one another out! It’s no wonder some treat scripture like an idea book.
-----But the Lord’s no simpleton. He doesn’t leave His truths laying around the surface of His Word. He makes its truths increase as you grow in knowing Him.
-----When Paul says, “If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know,” (I Cor 8:2) he uses one Greek word at “…knows something…” and a different one at “…ought to know.” The first is like knowledge gotten by watching; the other is like “I’ve done it” knowledge, or at least like “I‘ve studied it to its end“ knowledge. But maybe even more importantly, the second word has also a sense of having invested one’s self into learning, rather than slouching on the bleacher with a beer and slice of pizza in hand observing a game. It is a getting onto the field and a plowing of turf with some hard knocks of your own. Obedience brings His truths to the surface of His Word.
-----Then there is little wonder why so many people are frightened by regarding I Cor 5:2 seriously. They paint its prospect with the derogatory term “shunning”. History is littered with stories of people ruined by shunning. It gains more stories daily. Fellowships all around shun for anything from drinking coffee to using cell phones. But as Paul told the Corinthians that they were babes not understanding the meat of the Word, these people are also acting out their infantile imaginations within observations of some scriptures, rather than acting from actual experiences of obeying what it is.
-----I’m with you, Gail. Paul is talking about the same principle developed throughout Psalms and Proverbs: do not keep company with fools and the unrighteous. Yes that requires discernment, which requires knowing the Lord and His Word, not just imagining Him and taking advantage of His Word. Yet, Paul did not let the Corinthian youthfulness trump his need to command them in an important matter, “…you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh…” (I Cor 5:5) He knocked their beer over and stepped on their pizza while dragging them from the bleachers to the fifty-yard line where they finally got some turf in their faceguards. Consequently, he could later say, “As it is, I rejoice…because you were grieved into repenting.” (II Cor 7:9a) They became a bit less babes through a bit more experience, and thus knew God’s Word a bit better, because they were forced to start from where they were by someone who was already where they needed to be.
-----That is what elders are. The bricks and mortar of the church and its heating and sound systems and carpet and roof conditions and bathroom placements are no more the affairs of the church for the elders’ rule than are the particular songs through which its members express felt faith or whether a cross showing here or there might be too bold. The affairs of the church are its practice of hospitality and kindness and gentleness and goodness and the sincerity in which all its godliness is learned and practiced as well as the wariness from which the fornication and homosexuality and lying and greediness and idolatry and slandering and drunkenness and swindling are not. Our Laodicean churches need to repent and take their first step out of babyhood just like the Corinthians did.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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