Important Reminders

1 Corinthians 5 gives us some important reminders that we in the twenty-first century church need:

1. Sexual immorality in all of its forms is an affront to God.  While we have grace in Jesus, that grace is not an invitation to license.  It appears that because of grace the Corinthians were celebrating what even their pagan neighbors would have recognized as abhorrent.  Paul commands the Corinthians to live up to who they have become in Christ.

2. We cannot distance ourselves from the world.  We should have relationships with non-Christians for the sake of winning them to Christ.  Paul says that it is the sinful in the church that we should avoid not the sinful in the world.  I think the implication here is that there is a missionary motive.  We should not be so withdrawn from the world that we can't have conversations about Jesus.

3. The church needs to discipline those who sin without repentance.  The point of this discipline is to win people back to God, not to humiliate or embarrass. The church cannot tolerate what God deems as wrong when it is carried out with a stubborn, unrepentant heart.