What does the chapter actually say?
Identify the explicit claims before importing later doctrine or assumptions.
1 CORINTHIANS • CHAPTER 5
1 Corinthians 5
Church division, sex, marriage, lawsuits, food, worship, spiritual gifts, resurrection, and community order.
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1 Corinthians 5
WORLD ENGLISH BIBLE
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1
It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and such sexual immorality as is not even named among the Gentiles, that one has his father’s wife.
2
You are arrogant, and didn’t mourn instead, that he who had done this deed might be removed from among you.
3
For I most certainly, as being absent in body but present in spirit, have already, as though I were present, judged him who has done this thing.
4
In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, you being gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ,
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are to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.
6
Your boasting is not good. Don’t you know that a little yeast leavens the whole lump?
7
Purge out the old yeast, that you may be a new lump, even as you are unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed in our place.
8
Therefore let’s keep the feast, not with old yeast, neither with the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
9
I wrote to you in my letter to have no company with sexual sinners;
10
yet not at all meaning with the sexual sinners of this world, or with the covetous and extortionists, or with idolaters; for then you would have to leave the world.
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But as it is, I wrote to you not to associate with anyone who is called a brother who is a sexual sinner, or covetous, or an idolater, or a slanderer, or a drunkard, or an extortionist. Don’t even eat with such a person.
12
For what do I have to do with also judging those who are outside? Don’t you judge those who are within?
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But those who are outside, God judges. “Put away the wicked man from among yourselves.”
PAULINE LETTER
Where this chapter fits
1 Corinthians is an early Christian letter written into specific community circumstances; reading it well requires distinguishing the original audience from later universal application.
Chapter numbers were added long after the biblical books were written.
Read this chapter together with what comes immediately before and after it.
ANCIENT TEXT, MODERN QUESTIONS
Historical claims should be compared with historical evidence.
Scientific claims should be compared with science.
Moral claims should be examined morally.
Theological claims require theological and philosophical argument.
QUESTIONS WORTH ASKING
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What kind of literature is this?
Narrative, poetry, prophecy, law, letters, wisdom, and apocalypse communicate differently.
What historical evidence matters?
Ask whether names, places, institutions, events, customs, and chronology can be independently investigated.
What are the strongest competing interpretations?
Compare serious Jewish, Christian, academic, and skeptical readings rather than caricatures.
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