If anything is obvious in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, it is that the church in Corinth was in deep trouble. There was a serious public scandal among the membership. Nothing was being done about it.

This, says the apostle, arises from their pride: “You are puffed up and have not rather mourned, that he who has done this deed might be taken away from among you” (1 Cor. 5:2). They think they are doing fine by not being “judgmental”! Does this ring a bell with respect to the state of too many churches today?

The apostle has diagnosed the problem, but what about the remedy? Illness is one thing—the cure is something else again. In this case the church is both doctor and patient. Both are in need of instruction as to the proper treatment. Both need the right attitude if the treatment is going to be effective! They all need to face the facts of sin squarely and be so humbled before the Lord that they will mourn for the guilty and resolve to deal with it for God’s honor and the sinner’s restoration. Never forget the injunction in Galatians 6💯 “You who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness” (KJV). First Corinthians 5:3-5 helps us answer three leading questions; Why should we deal with public sin in the church? Who must deal with it? And how?

Why Deal with Public Sin? (5:3-4a)

There are at least three reasons for dealing with public sin. The first is simply that it is public. The Latin term for this is fama clamosa, which means literally “noisy rumors.” Whereas private scandals should be kept private if possible and appropriate, public sins must be dealt with publicly. This is obviously the intent of Paul’s raising the matter as he does in 1 Corinthians 5:1-2. The church, in not confronting the problem of open sexual immorality, has added scandal to scandal by failing to exercise a proper discipline.

Second, sin in the church body impacts its life and integrity in serious ways. It contradicts the man’s profession of faith and his membership. It breaks covenant with the body and its confession of Christ, and it violates family and other relationships in the body. Public sins are destructive of the church and her witness for Christ.

Third, and most grievously, it is sin against the Lord Jesus Christ. This has dreadful potential consequences. The sinner hazards a lost eternity for himself. The sin gives opportunity for God’s enemies to blaspheme (2 Sam. 12:14). The example may cause many others to stumble to their own danger in time and eternity. Winking at sin is, in the end, the abandonment of the need we all have of the gospel, the contradiction of the efficacy of the gospel itself, and the denial of Jesus who died for sinners to save them from their sins (Matt. 1:21).

Two practical applications flow from these considerations. The first is that the church must take responsibility and hold her members accountable. The apostle leads from the front: “For I, as absent in body but present in spirit have already judged (as though I were present) him who has done this deed.” (v. 3). This is what they should have done themselves—and could have, had they exercised godly church discipline. The fact is that no discipline will eventually result in no church! Why? Because a church without discipline has become the “world,” as it is opposed to God. The faithful exercise of church discipline is rightly seen as an essential mark of a true church.

The second practical point is to recognize that it is the church’s duty to act in obedience to Jesus, who has set the standard for the church’s dealing with sin (v. 4). The words “In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” mean no more and no less than the measure of the Word (holy Scripture), which declares that Jesus is Lord of the church, and He has given elders in the church this responsibility (Matt. 18:15-20). This is why sin must be dealt with as an essential pastoral duty of the eldership and the people of God—private sin privately and public sin publicly.

Who Is To Deal with Such Sin? (5:4b)

Two answers are given by the apostle. The first is that you are! “When you are gathered together,” indicates that the whole church is involved. This is true even if the elders, as in Jesus’ injunction in Matthew 18:15ff., do the adjudicating. The role of the wider membership is to stand on the Lord’s side in the issues and with respect to the work of the elders (cf., Ex. 32:26: “Who is on the Lord’s side?”). The resolution of public sin (fama clamosa) is to be open, not secret. It is also a tangible witness to Christ and to the world. To cover up public sin is essentially hypocritical in that it paints the church as purer than she actually is, when she should be humbled before God and striving to reclaim the backslider. Does this make you feel uncomfortable? Good—that’s how the Lord wants it. It is serious work, requiring tough love, and it means standing up for Jesus. The world must know we are serious about our need of a Savior, that we are sinners saved by grace who know what it is to need forgiveness in Christ every day, and that in this same Jesus the world will find one who is able to save them too!

The second answer to the question as to who is to deal with sin in the church is the risen Jesus, the “head of the church” and “the Savior of the body” (Eph. 5:23). Paul notes that the church acts in its discipline “with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ” (v. 4). Jesus’ faithfulness to us is sealed by His powerful presence, by the Holy Spirit, in our faithfulness in discipline. This is the force of His words to the future apostles in Matthew 18:18-20: “Assuredly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Again I say to you that if two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them.”

Jesus can and does impose His own discipline when and if we do not, as in 1 Corinthians 11:30: “Many are weak and sick among you.” Jesus is personally committed to His church, and a vital part of that is in His calling us back to personal commitment to Him through bringing us from our backslidings! God is more glorified in the visible godliness of returning sinners than in the bare proclamation of His eternal truth.

How Are We To Deal with Public Sin? (1 Cor. 5:5)

In the case of an unrepentant transgressor, the church is to “deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.” As you read this verse, bear in mind what and to whom it ultimately points. It points to Christ and eternal salvation. Three things in the verse: about what is happening when the determined unrepentant public sinner is “taken away from among you”—the church as a body and a fellowship of members in good standing (v. 2). How and to what ends this is to be done, is specified by the apostle.

To “deliver such a one to Satan” is the judicial abandonment of the unrepentant offender to Satan. It just says to that person that whatever is going on in your heart—and we cannot read the heart—the evidence of your life is that you are sticking to your sin and not walking with the Lord. You have been doing the work of the devil and have refused to be recalled. You are in great danger, because sticking to sin means sticking with Satan! This pronouncement is a solemn appeal to repent and turn to the Lord.

This removal (from membership of the church) is “for the destruction of the flesh.” On the one hand, it is a prediction of the consequences of the sinful choices the offender has made. Turning from the Lord is ruinous; to be judicially abandoned to Satan is to be on a path of godlessness in which your life will sooner or later fall apart. Lot’s wife never learned, and she perished (Luke 17:32). Hymenaeus and Alexander were “delivered to Satan that they [might] learn not to blaspheme” (1 Tim. 1:20). The prodigal son wasted his life but by God’s grace “came to himself”—repented and returned (Luke 15:17). There is here a real note of hope: Will you hear Jesus’ voice in the midst of your self-destruction?

The ultimate goal of this discipline is “that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.” Here is not only hope, but the very motive for church discipline—salvation in Christ and its fruit, eternal life in glory! Six months later, in his second Corinthian letter, Paul comments on the apparent success of this application of church discipline, urging the church to reaffirm love toward the repentant brother and reinstate him to the fellowship in the fullest way:

If anyone has caused grief, he has not grieved me, but all of you to some extent—not to be too severe. This punishment which was inflicted by the majority is sufficient for such a man, so that, on the contrary, you ought rather to forgive and comfort him, lest perhaps such a one be swallowed up with too much sorrow. Therefore I urge you to reaffirm your love to him. For to this end I also wrote, that I might put you to the test, whether you are obedient in all things. Now whom you forgive anything, I also forgive. For if indeed I have forgiven anything, I have forgiven that one for your sakes in the presence of Christ, lest Satan should take advantage of us; for we are not ignorant of his devices. (2 Cor. 2:5-11)

We are called to mourn over sin in the church (1 Cor. 5:2). We are as surely to pray for the repentance and restoration of those who have been disciplined.

Drawing These Strands Together

We can see that Jesus is dealing with His professing people in the church and through her ministry of discipline. The writer to the Hebrews challenges us to welcome discipline as a blessing and an engine of spiritual growth. Too often God needs to rebuke our unwillingness to listen to His gracious invitations to faith and obedience: “You have forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as to sons: ‘My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him; for whom the Lord loves He chastens, and scourges every son whom He receives.’ If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom a father does not chasten? But if you are without chastening, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons” (Heb. 12:5-8). The same writer reminds us of faithful fathers whose discipline bore fruit in our lives, and urges us:

Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, that we may share His holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed. (Heb. 12:9-13)

The implications of the faithful exercise of church discipline—we may call it church accountability—are far reaching. The all-but-universal aversion to public discipline of public sins in the churches is in the end an aversion to the Lordship of Jesus Christ and to His requirement of a pattern of godliness that is visible, personal and accountable. The Apostle Peter warns the church that “the time has come for judgment to begin at the house of God; and if it begins with us first, what will be the end of those who do not obey the gospel of God?” (1 Pet. 4:17). God is not mocked. His sovereignty is absolute; His righteousness is perfection. Without Jesus’ passive obedience (bearing the sins of sinners on the cross, so as to pay the penalty of their sins) and His active obedience (His perfect holiness, to be reckoned to sinners as theirs, so as to render them justified in God’s sight), we have nothing to plead our salvation in our righteousness (see Isa. 64:6). We need Jesus, to know Him personally as our Savior and our Lord, as our sin-bearer and our righteousness.

In Jesus Christ, we who are the church, and those elders who act in leadership as the church, are called to be following Jesus as doers of His Word and not merely hearers. We are to strengthen one another in Christ, according to God’s ordinances. We need churches that practice faithful church discipline. We need to be thankful for such faithfulness. Above all, we must know Christ ourselves—believe Him, trust Him, love Him, obey Him, in and from our hearts. “Now unto Him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy, to the only wise God our Savior, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and forever. Amen” (Jude 24-25).

Part 2 next month: Forgiving the Transgressor