He leads me …

Then you must throw this man out and hand him over to Satan so that his sinful nature will be destroyed and he himself will be saved on the day the Lord returns. (1 Corinthians 5:5 NLT)

Wow! Handing a fellow believer over to satan appears to be really extreme. Just imagine what could be done to them.

Let us look into the situation a bit more and we can see that it is not actually unreasonable. If we go to the beginning of the chapter we read in verses 1 and 2 –

I can hardly believe the report about the sexual immorality going on among you—something that even pagans don’t do. I am told that a man in your church is living in sin with his stepmother. You are so proud of yourselves, but you should be mourning in sorrow and shame. And you should remove this man from your fellowship (NLT).

We see from this that one of the believers has been in a sexual relationship with his stepmother. If non-Christians know this is wrong, why is a believer doing it? Especially when Paul had already written to the church about this very thing. We see this in verses 9 and 11 –

Verse 9 - When I wrote to you before, I told you not to associate with people who indulge in sexual sin.

Verse 11 - I meant that you are not to associate with anyone who claims to be a believer yet indulges in sexual sin.

They had been warned.

Some call this excommunication, where the believer is requested to leave the church until such time as they repent of their sin and ask for forgiveness. Spiritually speaking the exclusion means that the man was being ‘handed over to Satan’, or to put it another way - because he is outside the church, he is in satan’s territory. He is back in the world of corruption where he would be likely to suffer the physical and/or emotional consequences of his sin.

If this seems to be familiar, it is probably because Jesus taught about the same thing when He spoke about the prodigal son. In Luke 15:12-24 in the NLT version we read –

The younger son told his father, ‘I want my share of your estate now before you die.’ So his father agreed to divide his wealth between his sons. “A few days later this younger son packed all his belongings and moved to a distant land, and there he wasted all his money in wild living. About the time his money ran out, a great famine swept over the land, and he began to starve. He persuaded a local farmer to hire him, and the man sent him into his fields to feed the pigs. The young man became so hungry that even the pods he was feeding the pigs looked good to him. But no one gave him anything.

“When he finally came to his senses, he said to himself, ‘At home even the hired servants have food enough to spare, and here I am dying of hunger! I will go home to my father and say, “Father, I have sinned against both heaven and you, and I am no longer worthy of being called your son. Please take me on as a hired servant.”’

“So he returned home to his father. And while he was still a long way off, his father saw him coming. Filled with love and compassion, he ran to his son, embraced him, and kissed him. His son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against both heaven and you, and I am no longer worthy of being called your son.’

“But his father said to the servants, ‘Quick! Bring the finest robe in the house and put it on him. Get a ring for his finger and sandals for his feet. And kill the calf we have been fattening. We must celebrate with a feast, for this son of mine was dead and has now returned to life. He was lost, but now he is found.’ So the party began.

This is the sort of outcome that Paul was looking for. The sinner would come to his senses, repent and seek forgiveness.

There was another reason that Paul requested that the sexually immoral man be made to leave the church. The whole church knew what had been happening and according to Paul they were proud of what was happening (verse 2). Paul had to have the man removed as an example to the rest of the church, so that they could see that there were serious consequences for this type of action. The congregation would then see that Paul was not just a talker, but that he backed up what he taught with action. The result of this should have been that the church folk would look at themselves and make sure that their own lives were in order.

Another point is that if the church were proud of the sinner’s actions, it would be most likely that the Corinthians outside the church would see what was going on too. They would be mocking the church for saying what not to do, but still allowing it to happen. Then when they saw the man was excommunicated from the church, they would see that Christian standards were very important for the church and any breaches were dealt with. This was a big witness to anyone who thought that the church was weak and hypocritical.

In today’s churches, this kind of action is unlikely to bring a sinner to repentance, because they can so easily just go to another church and pretend that nothing had happened. Hopefully the churches in the region have an effective Ministers Fraternal where -

·      Ministers from various churches meet regularly and build relationships and trust together.

·      Where there is regular prayer for the city as well as for each leader and their church needs.

·      Where the combined churches have a united vision for their region.

This network will enable church leaders to advise the others if a wayward believer leaves their church, so that if the sinner attends another local church, the new church are aware of the sinner’s history.

We just need to bear in mind that excommunication is only used is serious cases that affect the life of the church as well as the sinner. In most cases church disciple will follow the method given by Jesus in Matthew 18:15-17 where the issue is not generally known, and which we will look at in Part Two.

The sin that has been addressed here has been sexual immorality. But what other sins qualify? 1 Corinthians 5:11-12 in the Amplified Bible tells us -

I have written to you not to associate with any so-called [Christian] brother if he is sexually immoral or greedy, or is an idolater [devoted to anything that takes the place of God], or is a reviler [who insults or slanders or otherwise verbally abuses others], or is a drunkard or a swindler—you must not so much as eat with such a person. For what business is it of mine to judge outsiders (non-believers)? Do you not judge those who are within the church [to protect the church as the situation requires? 

Although this is written about men, Bible commentators agree that it is to both men and women. The list can also be enlarged to include anything that breaks the law. All proceedings are to be done in love, for both the good of the church as well as the sinner.