1 Corinthians 5

Berean Standard Bible

Chapter summary

Paul addresses reports of severe sexual immorality within the Corinthian church involving a man who is living with his father’s wife. He criticizes the congregation for their pride instead of mourning and instructs them to remove the man from their fellowship by handing him over to Satan. Using the metaphor of leaven working through dough, Paul urges the believers to cleanse out the old yeast and observe the festival with sincerity and truth. He clarifies a previous instruction, explaining that they should not associate or share a meal with anyone bearing the name of a brother who engages in sexual immorality, greed, idolatry, verbal abuse, drunkenness, or swindling. Finally, Paul distinguishes between insiders and outsiders, stating that God judges those outside the church while the community is responsible for judging those inside and expelling the wicked person.

Summary automatically generated from the Bible text.

Words of Jesus in red

¹It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is intolerable even among pagans: A man has his father’s wife. ²And you are proud! Shouldn’t you rather have been stricken with grief and have removed from your fellowship the man who did this? ³Although I am absent from you in body, I am present with you in spirit, and I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did this, just as if I were present. ⁴When you are assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus and I am with you in spirit, along with the power of the Lord Jesus, ⁵hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved on the Day of the Lord. ⁶Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven works through the whole batch of dough? ⁷Get rid of the old leaven, that you may be a new unleavened batch, as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. ⁸Therefore let us keep the feast, not with the old bread, leavened with malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and of truth. ⁹I wrote you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people. ¹⁰I was not including the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. ¹¹But now I am writing you not to associate with anyone who claims to be a brother but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or a verbal abuser, a drunkard or a swindler. With such a man do not even eat. ¹²What business of mine is it to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? ¹³God will judge those outside. “Expel the wicked man from among you.”

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Louis Segond 1910 and Berean Standard Bible: public domain. Cross references: open-cross-ref, Creative Commons BY 4.0.