Purge the Evil Person From Among You
November 24, 2024
Preached by Ron Smith
Scripture Reading
1 Corinthians 5:6-13
6 Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? 7 Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. 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.
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.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 whom you are to judge? 13 God judges those outside. “Purge the evil person from among you.”
The sin in our lives if left unchecked will run rampant and take over everything. It will leave a path of destruction felt by you and all those around you. The sin in the church that is left unchecked will likewise slowly take over and put everyone in danger.
We are prone to minimize our sin which gives it a breeding ground and sets us down a path of destruction that we did not envision could happen. 1 Corinthians 5 stands as a warning to the church to not minimize the sin and the deadly infiltrating effect it has on the whole community. While it is not a pleasant chapter, it is an important one for us to grasp hold of and understand – both for the vitality of the church, and I will argue for the vitality of your personal walk with Jesus.
While most of you will never experience the upper rungs of church discipline that these verses are speaking of, it is none the less good for all of us to have an understanding of it. If not, we might tend towards turning a blind eye to sin, putting up with more than we should, or wrongly thinking that church discipline is unloving, mean hearted, and devoid of grace.
This morning, I want to use the last sentence of this chapter to help frame our time together – ‘Purge the evil person from among you.’ We’ll consider what this means for the church corporately, why we do it, who the evil person is, and how we purge. And then I want to end by taking a step closer and focus on the implications this has on our personal life.
Purge the evil person from among you – a corporate consideration.
“Purge the evil person from among you.” I am not sure how that sentence hits you, but I have to be honest, it makes me a bit uncomfortable. It’s not purge the evil from among you, it is purge the evil person from among you. “Person” makes this more personable. We are not talking about abstract evil that is ‘out there’, but a person who we know, we love, we care for.
And yet, here it is, and it is a command. We as a church have no choice. We need to do this when necessary.
Purge simply means to remove, to drive away. Obviously, removing or purging someone from the church is a drastic form of church discipline. It is the end of the line. Last week we saw how Matthew 18 lies in the background of this chapter – go to the offending person individually; if that doesn’t work, go to the offending person with witnesses; and if that doesn’t work, take it to the church. Paul is in this upper rung of church discipline.
The question is why is this so important? Why do we need to purge anyone from among us? Paul answers this question with a picture of sorts. Verses 6-8 we find this picture of Passover.
6 Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? 7 Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. 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.
The Corinthians had a pride problem. They thought they were great, the perfect church. So, it is puzzling to Paul how they could allow such flagrant sin to go unchecked. Doesn’t add up. And you know what the Bible says about pride – it comes before the destruction. Pride blinds us to our weaknesses.
The way Paul puts it here is that their pride had blinded them to the fact that ‘a little leaven leavens the whole lump.’ If you have ever made bread, you have seen this in action. Put a little leavening agent in the dough and come back an hour later and that grapefruit sized ball of dough is now the size of a volleyball. That little bit of leaven does its work and spreads out. Just like leaven’s effect on a lump of dough as it infiltrates and aerates it, a little sin in your midst will spread and infiltrate the rest with its corrupting affect. It doesn’t take much. Sin is not passive, and it is never a private affair. It consumes and damages the person and those around.
Paul’s instruction then is to cleanse out the old leaven that they may be a new lump. In other words, deal with the sin. Don’t be blind to it. Don’t act like it is not there. Clean it out. And here is where we find the answer to why purging, why cleaning out is so important. Look again at the end of verse 7,
you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.
That is remarkable. Cleanse out the old leaven that you might be a new lump, as you really are already unleavened. In other words, Paul is saying be who you already are. You are clean, now go and be clean. What makes them clean is none other than Jesus. He is the Passover lamb who has been sacrificed.
This image comes from the OT in the book of Exodus when God delivered the people of Israel out of slavery in Egypt. Despite being told to let the people go, Pharoah would not let them go. So, God brought punishments on the Egyptians in the form of plagues. The last of these punishments was the death of the firstborn in every household. The Lord provided a way of salvation for the children of Israel. He instructed them to take a lamb without blemish, sacrifice it, and put its blood on the doorpost of the house. This way, while they were feasting inside eating the sacrificial lamb, when the Lord came to put to death the firstborn in Egypt, he would see the blood and pass over the house. This is at the same time a terrible picture of God’s wrath and a beautiful picture of his gracious salvation. This feast, the Passover meal, was to be celebrated every year at the same time as a reminder of God’s salvation. And Paul, here is saying that Christ is for us the Passover lamb. He is the sinless one, without blemish, who washes us with his blood. See, we in our sin without the blood of Christ, were open to the judgement of God upon us. We were full of leaven. But because of what he has done for us, we are unleavened. We are clean, we are pure. We have come into the warm sincerity of the gospel and out of the cold miserableness of sin. If you have never been cleansed by Jesus, let him do that today. Stop buying into the cheap empty, rotten, dirty promises that sin so cleverly offers and feast upon the satisfying truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The message here for the church is that we should live in such a way that reflects and reveals the purity we have in Christ. At times, we need to purge because the purity of the church matters.
There are limits to this purging we are to do. Specifically, who is the evil person we are to purge. Let’s read again verses 9-13:
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. 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 whom you are to judge? 13 God judges those outside. “Purge the evil person from among you.”
Apparently, there was another letter that Paul had previously written to the Corinthians. It is a letter that has been lost to us. In that letter Paul had instructed them to not associate with the sexually immoral. The problem is that they didn’t exactly understand what he meant. So, here Paul clarifies that he did not mean the sexually immoral people of this world. Because we would have to go out of the world. It wouldn’t make sense to isolate ourselves from those in the world. That is the very opposite of what we should do as Christians. We are to be salt and light to those around us. Jesus himself was even criticized for eating with such people.
Suffice it to say, when Paul says to purge the evil person from among your midst, he is not speaking of outsiders, or non-believers. He says very clearly, to not associate with those who call themselves brothers or sisters in Christ. Those who claim to be Christians and who participate in the church. Those are the ones Paul has in mind. He further backs this up in verse 12, For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge?
What business is it of ours to judge those who don’t even claim to be one of us? It’s none of our business! And yet, this is all too often the very opposite of what Christian churches do. We can be so quick to judge those outside. We point out the sins of our society. We fixate on righting all the wrongs that are going on in our government, our school systems, the entertainment industry, and we don’t even think twice about what is going on inside the church. (Adult store – taking pictures of license plates). But the reality is as one pastor says, “Sin outside the church is not nearly as dangerous as the sin inside the church.”[1] Our focus is to be on those inside the church who are not living in line with the gospel. *
Notice that Paul lists some particularly awful sins that characterizes these so-called Christians. Before we go forward and look at those sins zoom out and get bird’s eye view of this entire chapter. Pastor Benjamin preached on the first 5 verses last week. There we saw a very specific sin of sexual immorality that had infiltrated the church – a man has his father’s wife. Paul very clearly says that that man should be removed from the church and turned over to Satan for the destruction of his flesh. In the verses we are looking at today, Paul moves from that specific, particular sin, to a broader consideration of different kinds of sins that could happen within the church that would warrant expulsion from the church.
Coming back to who it is we are to purge we can look at the list of sins Paul lists in verse 11 and see that it is the evil person one who is called a brother or sister in the Lord and is sexually immoral, or greedy, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or a swindler. A few of these we might not fully understand. For example, a reviler is a person who is verbally abusive. Who constantly assaults people with their words; tearing them down instead of building them up. And ‘swindler’ is a word that speaks of thieves and robbers but puts an emphasis on violence; those who violently and aggressively take what is not theirs.
In all of these we are not talking about “one off” sins. As in if someone gets drunk, kick him out of the church. Rather these are people are characterized by these sins and have no desire to change. They are unrepentant.
We are to remove the person from the church who professes to be a Christian and is characterized by unrepentant sinful behavior because this does not reflect who Christians truly are as ones cleansed by the blood of Christ our Passover lamb.
This leaves one more question before focusing on us as individuals. That is how? How do we remove the person like this? Let me draw your attention to three words. The first one is ‘judge.’ As we already saw, Paul very clearly says in verse 12 we are to judge those inside, those who are a part of the church. Now as soon as someone mentions the word judge, someone else pulls out the ‘do not judge’ card. The word judge has become a dirty word for us today. And certainly not without reason. I acknowledge that when someone says that we shouldn’t judge or pulls back from this extreme form of church discipline, there are often good well-meaning motives. We want to win the person over with love and grace. We recognize our own sinfulness, and ‘who are we to cast the first stone.’
But, here, we find an admonition to judge those inside the church. Paul is not trying to promote a spirit of judgmentalism where we look at everyone with suspicion. He is also not calling us to condemn people, where we leave grace and love out of the picture. Rather he is calling us to stand behind the judgement that God has already made. It is God who says this behavior is wrong and not in keeping with the gospel.
To think of it in a different light, God has given us a blueprint. He tells us where all the materials belong – where to put the rafters, where to put the load bearing walls, where to put the 2x4s. When we judge, we are simply looking at the blueprint and doing what it tells us to do. We don’t need to judge in the sense of deciding what is right and wrong, deciding if we should or should not put in the load bearing wall. So, to not judge can have devasting consequences for the church just like not putting in the load bearing walls for the house can cause it to collapse.
Ultimately, God is seated on his throne. He sits as the judge. We follow his judgements trusting and believing that his ways are far superior to anything we could come up with no matter how harsh it might seem to us. Only with this understanding are we to judge those inside the church.
A second word I want to point out is ‘associate.’ Paul says to not associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of these sins. To not associate means to not mingle with; to not engage in joint activity with someone; the implication is that there is not to be a close relationship. If we are going to remove someone from the church, it needs to mean something. They need to feel the effect of being removed. They need to feel the effect of going from the warmth of Christian love inside and the cold emptiness outside.
The third word is eat. Paul says to not even eat with such a one. Eating a meal together is a social indicator of relationship in good standing. And the person removed from fellowship, is also removed from the social life of the church members.
As we consider all three of these words – judge, to not associate, not even to eat – we very quickly sense the gravity of the situation. But please recognize it is the loving thing to do. To see a loved one walking towards danger, walking towards a cliff that will lead to certain death and not say anything is wrong. We don’t turn away and say, “well their choice.” It is their choice, but the loving thing to do is throw up your arms, wave them like a maniac and warn them of the impending danger. Let that be the picture that burns in your mind as you read this chapter rather than this idea that when we do this we are just being too judgmental; we are not being loving.
We are to remove the person from the church who professes to be a Christian and is characterized by unrepentant sinful behavior by following God’s judgement by not associating with them, not even eating with them, because this does not reflect who Christians truly are as ones cleansed by the blood of Christ our Passover lamb.
Purge the evil person from among you – a personal consideration.
I want to close by turning our attention to our personal lives now. My hunch, is that most of us are thinking something along the lines of, “whew, this passage isn’t talking about me.” But there are some implications from this passage that we each need to take to heart.
We see in these verses that the purity of the church matters. That purity starts in the heart and life of every one of us. And so, we need to come back to the opening of this sermon and ask ourselves, what sin if left unchecked could lead to this? What sin lurks in my heart that if I don’t rid myself of it, would infiltrate and run rampant in my life and begin to infect the church? Take greed for example. We know what it means to be greedy, but does it really belong in a list like this? What’s the big deal? We live in a society where greed is just part of the undercurrent of culture. We might not get as extreme as what Paul is wanting to underline, but that drive to have more and more is a part of the American Dream. Is greed perhaps more out of control in our lives than what we realize? The point is to look past the extreme view of this list to uncover any way that the less extreme version of these sins has begun to put down roots in our life. We can do this with each one of the things Paul lists.
The puritan John Owen said that we best be killing sin or sin will be killing us. Let’s not turn a blind eye to the sin lurking in the recesses of our heart thinking it’s no big deal. It is eating us alive.
[1] Alistair Begg (https://www.truthforlife.org/resources/sermon/immorality-in-the-church-pt-2/)
Sermon Discussion questions:
Have you ever experienced church discipline gone wrong? Considering 1 Corinthians 5, what could have been done differently?
What sin in our church if we leave unchecked might lead to destruction?
What sins are blind to because of the culture we lived in?
How do we balance speaking out against the evil we see in society and not “judging outsiders?”
Why is church discipline hard? Why is it important?
Do we have the kind of warmth among us that someone would miss it if it was taken from them? Would someone removed from our fellowship feel the difference?