“I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people–not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. . . .For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside. ‘Purge the evil person from among you.'” (ESV – Read the chapter)
So in the last note, we talked about the fact that there are times and situations when it is right and appropriate for the church to remove an incorrigibly errant member from its fellowship. I said at the end that there is another part to Paul’s argument here. Verse 11 (the focus of part one) is surrounded by verses dealing with this other part. The ratio is 4:1. Why so much more on this here than that there? Because Paul likely understood that our temptation would be to get his intention in v. 11 backwards (boy was he right!) and he wanted to try and keep us from doing that. Read the rest…
