1 Corinthians 5:6 - Hammer & Heart Part Deux

 

1 Corinthians 5:6

 

NKJV

Your glorying is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?

 

NLT

Your boasting about this is terrible. Don’t you realize that this sin is like a little yeast that spreads through the whole batch of dough? 

 

This verse continues the story of the “tolerance” of the church at Corinth. Read this chapter from the start if you need an update, but in short…there was a man living in open sin with his father’s wife, something even the pagans were hesitant to do.  Apparently, he was unrepentant in his sexual immortality. To be clear, sexual immortality is anything that is outside of what God created in marriage between a man and a woman. This man was outside of God’s intention.

 

All that said, I want to focus on a couple of things.  First, the folks at Corinth were bragging about how tolerant they were.  “look at us, we see the world is changing.  God’s word doesn’t apply to this situation because the world is different.” Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?  Our world, and some churches, will tell us that times have changed and what was considered a sin, is no longer sin and that we should embrace it.  This couldn’t be further from the truth.  Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow (Hebrews 13:8).  That means that despite how our world changes, God’s plan for us is still the same.  That what God called sin 6,000 years ago…is still sin today. God is intolerant of sin, but He still wants people to come to the saving grace of Jesus Christ.  We should be the same.

 

Second, if we allow unrepentant sin in fellow believers to go unchallenged…it can destroy the whole church. Leaven was used in making bread. A bit of risen, aged dough from the previous batch would be stored away as the starting point for the next batch of dough. Working this tiny piece into a new batch introduced leavening agents which would spread to every piece of the new material. If the leaven was bad, the bacteria in it would quickly spread to the rest of the dough, making the bread worthless. So, how can we tell if someone is living in unrepentant sin?  We can’t unless they show it to us.  Our reaction should be one of sorrow when we see this. How can we help bring this brother, or sister, back into a relationship with God?

 

We could probably put on our self-righteous garments pretty easily when we start this process. I would warn you to get the plank out of your eye before even broaching this with someone.  Don’t  be a hypocrite. I hope we approach this with the same mercy that we would want applied to us.  We should be prepared to judge at the same level we would want to be judged.  Approach it with love and kindness…and truth, always with the truth of God.

 

Mercy, love, and truth,

cej