Part 757 (1/2)
4:21. What will you? Shall I come to you with a rod? Or in charity and in the spirit of meekness?
1 Corinthians Chapter 5
He excommunicates the incestuous adulterer and admonishes them to purge out the old leaven.
5:1. It is absolutely heard that there is fornication among you and such fornication as the like is not among the heathens: that one should have his father's wife.
5:2. And you are puffed up and have not rather mourned: that he might be taken away from among you that hath done this thing.
5:3. I indeed, absent in body but present in spirit, have already judged, as though I were present, him that hath so done,
5:4. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, you being gathered together and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus:
5:5. To deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.
5:6. Your glorying is not good. Know you not that a little leaven corrupteth the whole lump?
5:7. Purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new paste, as you are unleavened. For Christ our pasch is sacrificed.
5:8. Therefore, let us feast, not with the old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness: but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
9. I wrote to you in an epistle not to keep company with fornicators.
5:10. I mean not with the fornicators of this world or with the covetous or the extortioners or the servers of idols: otherwise you must needs go out of this world.
5:11. But now I have written to you, not to keep company, if any man that is named a brother be a fornicator or covetous or a server of idols or a railer or a drunkard or an extortioner: with such a one, not so much as to eat.
5:12. For what have I to do to judge them that are without? Do not you judge them that are within?
5:13. For them that are without, G.o.d will judge. Put away the evil one from among yourselves.
1 Corinthians Chapter 6
He blames them for going to law before unbelievers. Of sins that exclude from the kingdom of heaven. The evil of fornication.
6:1. Dare any of you, having a matter against another, go to be judged before the unjust: and not before the saints?
6:2. Know you not that the saints shall judge this world? And if the world shall be judged by you, are you unworthy to judge the smallest matters?
6:3. Know you not that we shall judge angels? How much more things of this world?
6:4. If therefore you have judgments of things pertaining to this world, set them to judge who are the most despised in the church.
6:5. I speak to your shame. Is it so that there is not among you any one wise man that is able to judge between his brethren?
6:6. But brother goeth to law with brother: and that before unbelievers.
6:7. Already indeed there is plainly a fault among you, that you have law suits one with another. Why do you not rather take wrong? Why do you not rather suffer yourselves to be defrauded?
A fault... Lawsuits can hardly ever be without a fault, on the one side or the other; and oftentimes on both sides.