1 Corinthians 5 Study Notes

5:6 Boasting (Gk kauchama) within the corporate body gives rise to tolerance of corporate sins (cp. v. 2, “arrogant”). The leaven of arrogant hypocrisy had spread throughout the Corinthian batch of dough.

5:7-8 With a wordplay on the expression Christ our Passover lamb, Paul offered a threefold solution to this corporate arrogance: (1) their recognition of what Christ as their Passover lamb did to deliver them from death; (2) their acknowledgment that Christ as their Passover lamb rendered them clean (unleavened) before the Lord; and (3) their remembrance that as they observed Christ as the Passover lamb, they were to purge their household of malice and evil to celebrate with sincerity and truth.

5:9 Paul’s prohibition against associating with sexually immoral people was consistent with his warning in a previous letter, which is long since lost.

5:10 Paul corrected a mistaken perception that his admonition in the letter (v. 9) had prohibited them from mixing socially with nonbelievers (the immoral people of this world). He actually had meant not to mix with “insiders” who lived like “outsiders,” believers who live like unbelievers (3:3).

5:11 The Corinthian believers were not to mix with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister and yet is sexually immoral, but they were also to avoid any professing believer who was greedy, an idolater or verbally abusive, a drunkard or a swindler. To eat with such people could be taken as a sign of condoning their worldly lifestyle. The Pharisees had this same impression of Jesus but were mistaken (Mk 2:16-17).

5:12-13 Paul concludes by quoting God’s repeated exhortation in Dt (13:5; 17:7,12; 19:19; 21:21; 22:21,24; 24:7) to show that the church, just as Israel, must remove from their midst those who live in flagrant rebellion against God’s law.