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1 Corinthians 5

1 Corinthians 5 Summary, Context, and Full Chapter

1 Corinthians 5 confronts a serious case of sexual immorality in the Corinthian church and the community's response to it. Paul corrects their pride, calls for grief and action, and urges believers to keep a pure witness marked by sincerity and truth.

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What happens in 1 Corinthians 5?

Paul reports a troubling sin in the church: a man is living in sexual immorality with his father's wife, and the congregation has not responded with the seriousness it deserves. He tells them to remove the offender from fellowship, warning that unchecked sin spreads through the whole church like leaven through dough. Paul connects their holiness to Christ, our Passover lamb, and calls them to live as a new, purified people. He also clarifies that believers are not to police every sin in the world, but they must deal with serious, unrepentant sin among those who claim to belong to the church.

This chapter comes after Paul's rebuke of pride and division in Corinth. Here he applies that concern to a concrete moral failure, showing that a church shaped by the cross must also be shaped by holiness. The chapter sets up later teaching on how believers should handle disputes and life within the church.

Themes to notice

  • Church disciplinePaul teaches that the church must act when a professing believer remains in serious, unrepentant sin.
  • Holiness and purityThe image of leaven shows how hidden sin can spread and why God's people are called to clear it out.
  • Christ-centered identityBelievers are urged to live as a new people because Christ, their Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.

Questions for 1 Corinthians 5

  • What does Paul say the church should do about a believer who will not turn from serious sin?
  • Why does Paul compare sin to leaven, and what does that mean for the church?
  • How does Christ's sacrifice shape the way believers pursue holiness in this chapter?

Read the full text of 1 Corinthians 5 below, then open it in the reader to highlight, take notes, or ask follow-up Bible questions. No account is required to read.

1 Corinthians 5

Immorality Rebuked

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.

Expel the Immoral Brother

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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