Sexual Immorality Defiles the Church
You are sexually immoral of a particularly bad kind, men sleeping with their "father's wife". Remove those who have done this from among you. Although I am not there in the flesh, I am there in spirit and have already judged guilty the person who has done this. You are to "deliver this man to Satan" so his spirit may be saved "in the day of the Lord".
I have a few comments here.
First, why "father's wife"? why not "mother"? This is just strange terminology.
Second, he just said not to judge last chapter, and yet here he is judging when he isn't even there.
Third, what does delivering him to Satan mean? It sounds like he is saying kill him and send him to hell, but I think that might be based on the modern take on things. For if you sent him to hell in the way we think about it, he would never be saved.
You shouldn't boast.
Agreed.
When I said not to associate with sexually immoral people, I am not saying that you cannot associate with outsiders who don't follow our rules, for this would restrict all contact with outsiders. But you should not associate with those inside the church who do these things. You shouldn't judge outsiders, that is for God to do, but cleanse the church from within.
Again, he is saying to judge right after he said not to judge.
If Christians couldn't judge others, what the hell else would they do? Jeez, you think Paul could have made up his mind on this....
ReplyDeleteI know, it's pretty ridiculous. He says not to judge right in the middle of a super judgy letter.
Delete"First, why "father's wife"? why not "mother"? This is just strange terminology." I would venture to say that during this time, women were still considered property and not really people. You are probably familiar with this Old Testament verse about rape. What good is a non virgin woman to a man trying to marry her off? I've heard the justification for this verse is "hey, you break it, you buy it." Still sickening to me, but that's the mindset from my understanding.
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes to staying away from those in the Church that do those things, doesn't it contradict with was said in chapter 2? Unless I am misunderstanding here.. I do agree that we should hold ourselves to a higher standard than others, and can see how one Christian might tell another "dude, we need to hold ourselves to a higher standard than everyone else since we have to lead by example." However, I think that just judging them when God should be the one who passes judgement is just redundant. Especially if Heaven and Hell are eternal. Sorry, I'm not even really sure what my point here was.