Cleaning up the Church – 1 Corinthians 5:8-13

Good morning church! A warm welcome to everyone who has joined us at the hall in-person and on Zoom. Over the last few months, we’ve been going through this series titled The Church: God’s Dwelling Place from the letter of 1^st Corinthians. And what we’ve learnt so far is that God’s residence is not in a building or a religious location but among His people – His redeemed people who have been rescued by Jesus Christ.

And if we are indeed God’s dwelling place, then what’s one of the key trademarks that should identify us? Our Pursuit of Purity! Our longing and growth in purity so that we can look more and more like our Savior Jesus Christ.  

Today we arrive in a passage that is connected to the passage we studied a couple of weeks back. In case some of us missed it that week, I’d encourage us to go back and listen in because we covered quite a bit on the topic of purity which flows into our passage today.

We will recap a few things today as well, but I’d highly recommend that we go back and listen in to that sermon to help us draw clearer connections.

At the end of every Gathering service, we usually share announcements and one of the last announcement slides is the slide on “Clean Up”. We’re requested to keep the hall clean since this is an office space that is being used from Monday through Friday. It’s a request and a call to “Clean up”.

Now the question that the passage today is asking us is this – if the church is no longer a building but the redeemed people of God, then what does “Cleaning up the church” look like? We are not talking about picking up physical trash and litter anymore, we’re talking about cleaning up our lives. The process of cleaning up is called Repentance which means turning away from sin & turning toward God. So we’ll be using the word “Cleaning” & “Repentance” interchangeably today. What does cleaning up the church actually look like?

1. It’s not superficial cleaning (v8)

8 Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

Let’s recap the context of this passage. At the time, there was some serious sexual misconduct reported in the Corinthian church. There was an active church member who had physical relations with his stepmother and this was in public knowledge within the church.

Not only was the Corinthian church aware of this, they were okay with it perhaps even defending the sin. And we get indications of this in v2 where Paul calls out their arrogance and in v6 where he calls out their boasting. So we can see here that Paul is not only holding the man who committed sexual immorality responsible, but he’s also holding the church accountable for the way in which they are responding to the sin.

He’s basically telling them “You can’t simply be okay with this. You can’t be tolerating and defending this sin. You need to address and renounce this sin”.

And so in v5, Paul instructs the church to discipline this man by putting him out of the protection and safety of the church. So you can imagine that it’s a very painful situation for the Corinthian church because they’ve gotten to know this man relationally but now because of his persistent unrepentance, they will have to remove him from the church. That’s how we arrive at V8 where we’re told that this “Cleaning & cleansing” can’t be superficial. It can’t be surface level cleaning. How did we arrive at that conclusion? It’s because of the reference to the “festival” – the festival of Unleavened bread.

During the festival of unleavened bread, the people of Israel were commanded to remove every single ounce of leaven from their homes and consume only unleavened bread for a week. This was to help them remember the haste in which God rescued his people from the hands of the Egyptians. And this activity to remove leaven from their homes was not a trivial or optional thing because if there was anyone who ate bread with leaven in during that week, he or she would cut off from the people of Israel. This was a serious command. Anyone with a Jewish background would read V8 & would immediately understand the seriousness of it. This is not superficial cleaning of the house. This is thorough deep cleaning of the house which is required.

And what is the leaven which needs to be removed as believers? Not yeast or baking soda or baking powder. The leaven is “malice and evil” – referring to the intent of our hearts wanting to do what is sinful, conspiring to do what is sinful. Have you and I ever thought of our own

hearts in this way? One filled with malice and evil? The problem is not just the sinful things that we say and do, the problem stems from a heart that is terribly sinful.

The heart is deceitful above all things,

    and desperately sick;

    who can understand it? (Jer 17:9)

The humbling part is to realize that even my 7-month-old daughter has the same heart condition. She’s too small to talk or make sense of the world, but she already has a heart which is wired with malice and evil. Which is why she needs the grace of God in Jesus as so do we – for the thorough deep cleaning activity of our hearts. And so we need grace to help us repent not only of our actions and words, but we need grace to help us repent of what’s there in our hearts as well.

But not only is not superficial cleansing,

2. It’s not external cleaning (v9-10)

9 I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people— 10 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.

When Paul starts this verse, he’s referring to an earlier letter written to the Corinthian church which is not part of the Bible. (Paul wrote other letters as well but not all of them were included as part of Scripture). In that letter, Paul told the Corinthians to not associate with the sexually immoral.

In this letter, he felt the need to clarify what he meant by that instruction. Paul is clarifying that the command to not associate with the sexually immoral was in the context of the local church and not with respect to unbelievers in the world because then we would need to go out of this world. In other words, Paul is telling them that they don’t “clean themselves” up by escaping or running away from the world! 

That’s an interesting principle because it means that we are not called to abandon all our interactions with unbelievers. We are not called to unfriend or unfollow our unbeliever friends and family. We are not called to become a monk and isolate ourselves from the world.

We are called to be present in the middle of a broken world but not conformed by it. We are called to be in the world but not of it. Isn’t it interesting that in Jesus’ high priestly prayer in John 17:15, He doesn’t pray for us to be removed from the world:

15 I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one.

Jesus’ prayer echoed the same thing – not to abandon or avoid the world but to be in the world and yet protected from the influence of Satan and the world. Isn’t it encouraging to know that’s the prayer Jesus prayed for you and me?

The other reason why we need to be in the world is to provide them with an opportunity to hear the Gospel and visually see what a changed life in Jesus looks like.

14 How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard?[a] And how are they to hear without someone preaching? Romans 10:14

An unbelieving world would be denied an opportunity to hear and respond to the Gospel if all believers everywhere decided to isolate themselves.

But just a word of caution – although we’re called to not abandon our interactions with unbelievers in the world, we need to be discerning to not put ourselves in positions where we may be tempted to go away from the Lord.

If we’re aware of situations and conversations with unbelievers which can put us in positions where we’ve have struggled in the past and are vulnerable, it would be wiser & better to avoid those situations for the sake of our faith.

We’re not being unloving to our friends by avoiding those gatherings but rather it’s the right thing to do out of our reverence and love to God (and that takes precedence over everything else).

In fact, what it might require us is to have an honest conversation with our unbelieving friends letting them know that we really value the friendship with them but as a result of our relationship with Jesus, we wouldn’t be able to participate in certain settings and situations as we once did. And who knows – God might use that as an opportunity to

witness to our unbelieving friends because they’ll be interested to know what brought about such a radical change in our lives so much so that we’re willing to give up on the things that we once enjoyed.

So it’s not superficial cleaning, neither is it external cleaning,

3. It is internal cleaning (v11-13)

11 But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler—not even to eat with such a one. 12 For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church[b] whom you are to judge? 13 God judges[c] those outside. “Purge the evil person from among you.”

It’s a call to perform internal cleaning within the church. In V11, Paul clarifies that the instruction to not associate with someone is in the context of the local church. He’s saying that “anyone who bears the name of the brother” – in other words he professes to be a believer, he claims to be a believer or has labelled himself as a follower of Christ AND if that person “is guilty of sexual immorality or greed or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard or swindler” – then we should disassociate ourselves from him and at the end of V11 “not even eat with him”.  

I know this seems quite harsh or extreme but let’s understand the context to this instruction. This instruction is concerning the person who committed sexual misconduct in the church and is continuing in persistent unrepentance.

It isn’t as though the man was ignorant or unaware of the gravity of his sin, he was quite aware and was still continuing in blatant defiance. And it’s only after exhausting all attempts of calling & persuading the man to repentance is when they arrived at the unfortunate extreme decision to excommunicate him.

Because what was at stake was what it was going to do to the rest of the church and also the church’s witness to a lost world. If the church continued tolerating and turning a blind eye to the sin, it would have caused other believers to wrongly assume that God doesn’t really have a high standard for purity and it’s okay for them to remain in sin and unrepentance. Purity is an occasional good to have, but blatant sinning is the norm.

Think about what they would have been communicating to the outside world? They would be communicating a message that they were just like the rest of the world with no motivation or desire to grow in purity. So excommunicating the man who did this wasn’t a random decision taken in the spur of the moment, it was something that was long drawn, painful and arrived after many attempts to persuade.

So there was a specific case in the church which was being addressed here but just before we pat ourselves in the back thinking that we’re not guilty of extreme sins like the one that is described in this chapter, I want us to take a look at the sins mentioned in V11, we can find a lot of culturally acceptable sins.

• Sexually immoral – God’s boundaries are too restrictive, all I want is to find a way to satisfy my desire right now
• Greed – I just have an insatiable desire for more gain and to accumulate more
• Idolater – I find my security and blessing in someone or something else apart from God
• Reviler – Since these people don’t meet my expectations and don’t do as I say, I’m going to tear them down
• Drunkard – I just want to let loose and lose control of myself over alcohol
• Swindler / extortioner – I’ll use force or threats to get what I want from them

What we realize is that this list is not talking about some extreme perverse individual on the other side of the globe, this is actually hitting quite close to home. If we’re being brutally honest, all of us would admit to struggling with some of these sins even right now in this season.

Does that mean that church needs to disassociate themselves from us? Am I going to be an outcast? I’m not even saying this to say add guilt and shame upon us, but to actually point us to the cross of Christ where we see how Jesus faced the weight of abandonment when our sins were placed upon Him.

‭2 Corinthians 5:21 ESV‬

[21] For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

And because Jesus faced that for us, we don’t have to ever face that from the Father. We only have to face the acceptance and delight of the Father. And because that’s God’s inclination toward us, we know we can repent and turn back and that’s what we are called to do today.