1 Corinthians 5; 1 Corinthians 6; 1 Corinthians 7; 1 Corinthians 8

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1 Corinthians 5

1 Now, it is actually being said that there is sexual immorality among you so terrible that not even the heathen would be guilty of it. I am told that a man is sleeping with his stepmother!
2 How, then, can you be proud? On the contrary, you should be filled with sadness, and the man who has done such a thing should be expelled from your fellowship.
3 And even though I am far away from you in body, still I am there with you in spirit; and as though I were there with you, I have in the name of our Lord Jesus already passed judgment on the man who has done this terrible thing. As you meet together, and I meet with you in my spirit, by the power of our Lord Jesus present with us,
5 you are to hand this man over to Satan for his body to be destroyed, so that his spirit may be saved in the Day of the Lord.
6 It is not right for you to be proud! You know the saying, "A little bit of yeast makes the whole batch of dough rise."
7 You must remove the old yeast of sin so that you will be entirely pure. Then you will be like a new batch of dough without any yeast, as indeed I know you actually are. For our Passover Festival is ready, now that Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.
8 Let us celebrate our Passover, then, not with bread having the old yeast of sin and wickedness, but with the bread that has no yeast, the bread of purity and truth.
9 In the letter that I wrote you I told you not to associate with immoral people.
10 Now I did not mean pagans who are immoral or greedy or are thieves, or who worship idols. To avoid them you would have to get out of the world completely.
11 What I meant was that you should not associate with a person who calls himself a believer but is immoral or greedy or worships idols or is a slanderer or a drunkard or a thief. Don't even sit down to eat with such a person.
12 After all, it is none of my business to judge outsiders. God will judge them. But should you not judge the members of your own fellowship? As the scripture says, "Remove the evil person from your group."
Scripture taken from the Good News Translation - Second Edition, Copyright 1992 by American Bible Society. Used by Permission.

1 Corinthians 6

1 If any of you have a dispute with another Christian, how dare you go before heathen judges instead of letting God's people settle the matter?
2 Don't you know that God's people will judge the world? Well, then, if you are to judge the world, aren't you capable of judging small matters?
3 Do you not know that we shall judge the angels? How much more, then, the things of this life!
4 If such matters come up, are you going to take them to be settled by people who have no standing in the church?
5 Shame on you! Surely there is at least one wise person in your fellowship who can settle a dispute between fellow Christians.
6 Instead, one Christian goes to court against another and lets unbelievers judge the case!
7 The very fact that you have legal disputes among yourselves shows that you have failed completely. Would it not be better for you to be wronged? Would it not be better for you to be robbed?
8 Instead, you yourselves wrong one another and rob one another, even other believers!
9 Surely you know that the wicked will not possess God's Kingdom. Do not fool yourselves; people who are immoral or who worship idols or are adulterers or homosexual perverts
10 or who steal or are greedy or are drunkards or who slander others or are thieves - none of these will possess God's Kingdom.
11 Some of you were like that. But you have been purified from sin; you have been dedicated to God; you have been put right with God by the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
12 Someone will say, "I am allowed to do anything." Yes; but not everything is good for you. I could say that I am allowed to do anything, but I am not going to let anything make me its slave.
13 Someone else will say, "Food is for the stomach, and the stomach is for food." Yes; but God will put an end to both. The body is not to be used for sexual immorality, but to serve the Lord; and the Lord provides for the body.
14 God raised the Lord from death, and he will also raise us by his power.
15 You know that your bodies are parts of the body of Christ. Shall I take a part of Christ's body and make it part of the body of a prostitute? Impossible!
16 Or perhaps you don't know that the man who joins his body to a prostitute becomes physically one with her? The scripture says quite plainly, "The two will become one body."
17 But he who joins himself to the Lord becomes spiritually one with him.
18 Avoid immorality. Any other sin a man commits does not affect his body; but the man who is guilty of sexual immorality sins against his own body.
19 Don't you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and who was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourselves but to God;
20 he bought you for a price. So use your bodies for God's glory.
Scripture taken from the Good News Translation - Second Edition, Copyright 1992 by American Bible Society. Used by Permission.

1 Corinthians 7

1 Now, to deal with the matters you wrote about. A man does well not to marry.
2 But because there is so much immorality, every man should have his own wife, and every woman should have her own husband.
3 A man should fulfill his duty as a husband, and a woman should fulfill her duty as a wife, and each should satisfy the other's needs.
4 A wife is not the master of her own body, but her husband is; in the same way a husband is not the master of his own body, but his wife is.
5 Do not deny yourselves to each other, unless you first agree to do so for a while in order to spend your time in prayer; but then resume normal marital relations. In this way you will be kept from giving in to Satan's temptation because of your lack of self-control.
6 I tell you this not as an order, but simply as a permission.
7 Actually I would prefer that all of you were as I am; but each one has a special gift from God, one person this gift, another one that gift.
8 Now, to the unmarried and to the widows I say that it would be better for you to continue to live alone as I do.
9 But if you cannot restrain your desires, go ahead and marry - it is better to marry than to burn with passion.
10 For married people I have a command which is not my own but the Lord's: a wife must not leave her husband;
11 but if she does, she must remain single or else be reconciled to her husband; and a husband must not divorce his wife.
12 To the others I say (I, myself, not the Lord): if a Christian man has a wife who is an unbeliever and she agrees to go on living with him, he must not divorce her.
13 And if a Christian woman is married to a man who is an unbeliever and he agrees to go on living with her, she must not divorce him.
14 For the unbelieving husband is made acceptable to God by being united to his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made acceptable to God by being united to her Christian husband. If this were not so, their children would be like pagan children; but as it is, they are acceptable to God.
15 However, if the one who is not a believer wishes to leave the Christian partner, let it be so. In such cases the Christian partner, whether husband or wife, is free to act. God has called you to live in peace.
16 How can you be sure, Christian wife, that you will not save your husband? Or how can you be sure, Christian husband, that you will not save your wife?
17 Each of you should go on living according to the Lord's gift to you, and as you were when God called you. This is the rule I teach in all the churches.
18 If a circumcised man has accepted God's call, he should not try to remove the marks of circumcision; if an uncircumcised man has accepted God's call, he should not get circumcised.
19 For whether or not a man is circumcised means nothing; what matters is to obey God's commandments.
20 Each of you should remain as you were when you accepted God's call.
21 Were you a slave when God called you? Well, never mind; but if you have a chance to become free, use it.
22 For a slave who has been called by the Lord is the Lord's free person; in the same way a free person who has been called by Christ is his slave.
23 God bought you for a price; so do not become slaves of people.
24 My friends, each of you should remain in fellowship with God in the same condition that you were when you were called.
25 Now, concerning what you wrote about unmarried people: I do not have a command from the Lord, but I give my opinion as one who by the Lord's mercy is worthy of trust.
26 Considering the present distress, I think it is better for a man to stay as he is.
27 Do you have a wife? Then don't try to get rid of her. Are you unmarried? Then don't look for a wife.
28 But if you do marry, you haven't committed a sin; and if an unmarried woman marries, she hasn't committed a sin. But I would rather spare you the everyday troubles that married people will have.
29 What I mean, my friends, is this: there is not much time left, and from now on married people should live as though they were not married;
30 those who weep, as though they were not sad; those who laugh, as though they were not happy; those who buy, as though they did not own what they bought;
31 those who deal in material goods, as though they were not fully occupied with them. For this world, as it is now, will not last much longer.
32 I would like you to be free from worry. An unmarried man concerns himself with the Lord's work, because he is trying to please the Lord.
33 But a married man concerns himself with worldly matters, because he wants to please his wife;
34 and so he is pulled in two directions. An unmarried woman or a virgin concerns herself with the Lord's work, because she wants to be dedicated both in body and spirit; but a married woman concerns herself with worldly matters, because she wants to please her husband.
35 I am saying this because I want to help you. I am not trying to put restrictions on you. Instead, I want you to do what is right and proper, and to give yourselves completely to the Lord's service without any reservation.
36 In the case of an engaged couple who have decided not to marry: if the man feels that he is not acting properly toward the young woman and if his passions are too strong and he feels that they ought to marry, then they should get married, as he wants to. There is no sin in this.
37 But if a man, without being forced to do so, has firmly made up his mind not to marry, and if he has his will under complete control and has already decided in his own mind what to do - then he does well not to marry the young woman.
38 So the man who marries does well, but the one who doesn't marry does even better.
39 A married woman is not free as long as her husband lives; but if her husband dies, then she is free to be married to any man she wishes, but only if he is a Christian.
40 She will be happier, however, if she stays as she is. That is my opinion, and I think that I too have God's Spirit.
Scripture taken from the Good News Translation - Second Edition, Copyright 1992 by American Bible Society. Used by Permission.

1 Corinthians 8

1 Now, concerning what you wrote about food offered to idols. It is true, of course, that "all of us have knowledge," as they say. Such knowledge, however, puffs a person up with pride; but love builds up.
2 Those who think they know something really don't know as they ought to know.
3 But the person who loves God is known by him.
4 So then, about eating the food offered to idols: we know that an idol stands for something that does not really exist; we know that there is only the one God.
5 Even if there are so-called "gods," whether in heaven or on earth, and even though there are many of these "gods" and "lords,"
6 yet there is for us only one God, the Father, who is the Creator of all things and for whom we live; and there is only one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things were created and through whom we live.
7 But not everyone knows this truth. Some people have been so used to idols that to this day when they eat such food they still think of it as food that belongs to an idol; their conscience is weak, and they feel they are defiled by the food.
8 Food, however, will not improve our relation with God; we shall not lose anything if we do not eat, nor shall we gain anything if we do eat.
9 Be careful, however, not to let your freedom of action make those who are weak in the faith fall into sin.
10 Suppose a person whose conscience is weak in this matter sees you, who have so-called "knowledge," eating in the temple of an idol; will not this encourage him to eat food offered to idols?
11 And so this weak person, your brother for whom Christ died, will perish because of your "knowledge"!
12 And in this way you will be sinning against Christ by sinning against other Christians and wounding their weak conscience.
13 So then, if food makes a believer sin, I will never eat meat again, so as not to make a believer fall into sin.
Scripture taken from the Good News Translation - Second Edition, Copyright 1992 by American Bible Society. Used by Permission.