1 Corinthians 5-6: The uncomfortable truth about church discipline

We move from Corinth’s obsession with leaders to Paul’s hard reset on holiness, showing why unaddressed sin quietly reshapes an entire church. We wrestle with 1 Corinthians 5–6, where accountability, conflict, and sexual integrity all point back to who we are in Christ and what love actually requires. 
• why church discipline feels controversial and how it gets abused 
• the “little yeast” warning and why tolerated sin spreads 
• judging those inside the church rather than policing outsiders 
• why lawsuits between believers signal spiritual defeat 
• the call to flee sexual immorality because our bodies belong to the Lord 
• Jesus’ Matthew 18 process for confronting sin with wisdom and love 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Welcome back to the Out Loud Bible Podcast. This is Mike. We've been going through the book of First Corinthians, which is Paul's letter to the church in Corinth, and they've got um a laundry

Recap Of Corinth’s Divisions

SPEAKER_00 0:23

list of issues, really, just a whole lot of things that have just gotten messy. And we've already addressed in the first few chapters here that there were some factions and some divisions around, oh, well, I follow Paul. Well, I follow Apollos, who is another Bible teacher who is uh who had visited and taught in Corinth for a time. Well, I follow Peter because he's an original apostle. Well, forget those are just men. I follow Jesus, and you're ridiculous for following any human being. Like, there's all this stuff that's just like Paul's trying to make a case that, like, as yeah, we may be apostles, but we're only here to just be an example of what it is to suffer for Christ, to just teach you what you need to know and to get out of the way. So, like, the fact that you're obsessed over who was baptized by who and who follows who shows that you're missing the whole point of our ministry. That was the first thing. Paul moves on to other things starting today here in 1 Corinthians chapter 5. And uh, we'll read chapters five and six, fairly short chapters, but there's kind of a

Why Church Discipline Feels Risky

SPEAKER_00 1:33

lot to unpack here. Paul's talking on the topic of church discipline, which is frankly kind of a controversial topic today. Uh, and I can see why it's controversial. People don't like to be disciplined. People like, I just I don't want to be disciplined. I don't want someone else in my life who has to, who feels like they can discipline me. I don't want to be answerable to someone else. And frankly, also, church discipline has been abused by church leaders who abuse their power and and enforce laws and rituals and obedience to on people that that frankly they're way overstepping and not acting in accordance with what the Bible says and and how a church leader should conduct themselves. So the idea of church discipline is just a sticky, messy topic even today. And and Paul here, he's not necessarily prescribing, well, here's how you do it for all of time, although I think we could pull out some principles that are good even today. Uh, but Paul is addressing certain issues that had come up in a report to him. That it seems like they had written a letter uh that had addressed, hey, we've got these questions, or this is going on, or someone said this. What do you think about this? And so he's responding to these kind of line by line. And we'll see that more as we go through this book. But it's like, and now in regards to this, and then he seems to quote something that that they had said in a letter to him previously, and uh and addressing certain issues. So today he's really starting with uh an issue regarding sexual immorality, and it's in discussions like this in the Bible that it's really easy to kind of point, maybe even chuckle uh or roll our eyes or be disgusted or whatever at what's going on here, kind of like we're watching some soap opera or some reality TV show or some desperate housewives of some city, desperate housewives of Corinth, and just think like, oh man, well, that is a bad issue. And like I'm not saying, I'm not implying that you have the same issue going on in your life, but it's it's really easy to just kind of glaze past this and be like, well, that's some weird immorality issue that they're dealing with, and and I'll just move on to something that looks more relevant. And I look, I get it. I get that that that's fair, I guess, but uh let's make sure that whenever there are sin issues being discussed in the Bible, let's learn some principles. A, that that uh we are not exempt from sin, that if it's not that, then it's gonna be this. If it's not this, it's gonna be that. And uh and that we frankly are only just a couple bad decisions away from arriving in the same situations that we read about here. But by the grace of God, we would still be in these situations. And let's also let ourselves be impacted by the gravity of sin, by the seriousness of sin. The seriousness with which Paul addresses these issues should be the same seriousness we address sin issues in our own lives and frankly in the lives of our brothers and sisters in the church around us. I know, well, you can't tell me what to do. You can't judge me, can we? If we agree that we are brothers and sisters in Christ as the body of Christ in this church, we see here and elsewhere in scripture that we have a responsibility to point out sin, not for the sake of shame or guilt or drama, but for the sake of holiness. God calls us to holiness. We're his bride. We the church are his bride. We should take these sort of scriptures and hold them up as a mirror and say, How are we impure compared to what we see here so that we can be presented as a pure bride of Christ? And I'm gonna deal with my own stuff before I go pointing out anything in anyone else's life, but we should be open and willing to let others point out sin in our lives. Let's see how this pans out here in 1 Corinthians chapter 5 and chapter 6 in the New English Translation. It is actually reported that sexual immorality exists among you, the kind of immorality that's not permitted even among the Gentiles.

Paul Confronts Public Sexual Sin

SPEAKER_00 5:53

So that someone is cohabiting with his father's wife, and you are proud? Shouldn't you have been deeply sorrowful instead and removed the one who did this from among you? For even though I am absent physically, I'm present in spirit, and I've already judged the one who did this, as though I were present. When you gather together in the name of our Lord Jesus, and I am with you in spirit, along with the power of our Lord Jesus, hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. Your boasting is not good. Do you know that a little yeast affects the whole batch of dough? Clean out the old yeast so that you may be a new batch of dough. You are, in fact, without yeast. For Christ, our Passover lamb has been sacrificed. So then let's celebrate the festival not with old yeast, the yeast of vice and evil, but with the bread without yeast, the bread of sincerity and truth. I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people. In no way did I mean the immoral people of the world, or the greedy and swindlers and idolaters, since you would then have to go out of the world. But now I'm writing to you not to associate with anyone who calls himself a Christian who is sexually immoral or greedy or an idolater or verbally abusive or a drunkard or a swindler. Don't even eat with such a person. For what do I have to do with judging those outside? Are you not to judge those inside? But God will judge those outside. But remove the evil person from among you. When any of you has a legal dispute with one another, does he dare go to the court before the unrighteous rather than before the saints? Or do you not know that the saints will judge

Lawsuits Between Believers

SPEAKER_00 8:05

the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you not competent to settle trivial suits? Do you not know that we will judge angels? Why not ordinary matters? So if you have ordinary lawsuits, do you appoint as judges those who have no standing in the church? I say this to your shame. Is there no one among you wise enough to settle disputes between fellow Christians? Instead, does a Christian sue a Christian and do this before unbelievers? The fact that you have lawsuits among yourselves demonstrates that you've already been defeated. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated? But you yourselves wrong and cheat, and you do this to your brothers and sisters. Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Don't be deceived. The sexually immoral, idolaters, adulterers, passive homosexual partners, practicing homosexuals, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, the verbally abusive, and swindlers will not inherit the kingdom of God. Some of you once lived this way, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. Well, all things are lawful for me. Yeah, but not everything is beneficial. All things are lawful for me, but I I will not be controlled by anything. Food is for the stomach, and the stomach

Your Body Belongs To The Lord

SPEAKER_00 9:44

is for food. But God will do away with both. The body is not for sexual immorality, but for the Lord. And the Lord for the body. Now God did indeed raise the Lord, and he will raise us by his power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Should I take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never. Or do you not know that anyone who is united with a prostitute is one body with her? For it said the two will become one flesh. But the one united with the Lord is one spirit with him. Flee sexual immorality. But the immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you're not your own. For you were bought at a price. Therefore, glorify God with your body. Well, this is one of those uncomfortable sections of scripture, isn't it? Paul is very clear here, again, among believers in the church,

Judging Inside The Church

SPEAKER_00 11:06

that we have a responsibility to judge one another. I know, well, you can't judge me. I know we hear that all the time. And look, and Paul even grants, it's like, I'm not saying go judge people outside the church. I'm not saying avoid sinners. If you, if you literally had to avoid sinners, then you would, you would, you would, you couldn't exist in the world, okay? He's saying I'm talking about the people in the church, your brothers and sisters. We are not to coexist with believers who call themselves Christians and yet willingly live in a lifestyle of an ongoing unrepentant sin. No, no, no, we don't we don't coexist with that. And yes, we are to judge that. We're supposed to judge each other. I'm not don't judge those outside the body. Uh we're judge those inside. That's that's part of our role. God's gonna take care of everyone else, but you, you gotta go and remove the evil person among you. Now, Matthew 18, Jesus gives a process for how to go about this. Go talk to the person. If they still don't repent and change their ways, then bring a bring another person, bring,

Matthew 18 Steps For Confrontation

SPEAKER_00 12:18

bring a another person or two and and go talk to them. Most things are gonna kind of die down there. If still nothing, then bring them before the church and see if they're willing to repent publicly. And if still nothing, then yeah, cast them out of the church. Treat them as an as an unbeliever so that they can hopefully be saved in the long run. That's the plan. That's what we're told to do. Why do we just try to just, I don't know, avoid issues in the church? Oh, sure we talk about them to other people. Sure, we talk about them, but we aren't addressing people because we we don't want to be guilty of being accused of judging them. Well, you know what? Frankly, it's very clear here. It is my responsibility as a brother or sister in Christ to judge you, brother or sister, when you're in sin. And you have the responsibility of judging me as well. Again, not for guilt, not for shame, but for correction so that we can get rid of this yeast, that the sin that just spreads if it's left unaddressed. Because Satan does his best work in the underlying things that don't get addressed. And we just want to keep a wide berth around sin. We want to not ruffle things, we don't want to cause waves, we don't want to cause conflict. Well, guess what? Conflict is brewing in the unresolved, unaddressed, unjudged sin. Our inability and our unwillingness to address the tough things and to bring about solutions and to resolve conflicts among our own body does not bode well for our future. Isn't it wild when Paul said in chapter six that we as the saints are going to judge the world in the end times and we're gonna judge angels? What? If we're gonna be doing that, how can we expect to possibly be successful if we can't even judge little disputes among ourselves in church? This idea of of church discipline and reaching out to address sin issues and resolve conflicts in between groups of believers is a muscle we have to work and flex and exercise. Otherwise, Satan's just gonna have a field day in our church. In the meantime, I think we avoid it because we just don't know how and we don't want to look like a bad guy and we don't want to lose friends. Well, like Paul said last episode, be imitators of him. Paul's going to address these things. Let's get a boldness the way Paul does to address issues in the church. Let's also follow Jesus' model in Matthew chapter 18. Go read it again for yourself about how Jesus suggests going out and resolving conflicts and addressing sin issues. And of course, we're supposed to do this in love, we're supposed to do this in truth, and we're supposed to do this with kindness, gentleness, and patience, but that does not mean letting these things go unaddressed for the sake of love or grace or peace. Letting someone stay in their sin is not loving. Letting someone stay in conflict because we prefer our peace is not love, and it's not peace, and it's not an appropriate attitude for the church to have. So, in light of this, do you need to have a tough conversation with someone? Now, by all means, before you go do that, you better be sure to repent before God, make it right with anyone

Preparing For A Tough Talk

SPEAKER_00 15:44

that that you've wronged. We gotta pull out the plank in our own eye before we go point out the speck in another person's eye. But then, do we need to have a tough conversation with someone? I pray that the Lord gives you strength, wisdom, boldness, yes, and great measures of love as you issue great measures of truth in the situation. And I pray that true peace will come out of this, that you will win a brother or sister for the Lord in this conversation. Thankful for you, thankful for the word of God speaking into our lives, and we'll see you next time on the Out Loud Bible Podcast.