Biblion Bible Commentary
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Judging Those Inside
1 Corinthians 5:9-13
9 I wrote to you in my letter to have no company with sexual sinners; · WEB
Paul corrects a misreading of his earlier letter: the separation he asked for was from corrupt members, never from a corrupt world.
I wrote to you in my letter to have no company with sexual sinners 1 Corinthians 5:9.
A sentence with a lost letter behind it. Paul had written to Corinth before, and that letter has not survived — so what is called First Corinthians is the first that did. He quotes himself here because the instruction had been misunderstood.
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 1 Corinthians 5:10.
The correction, and the reasoning is almost comic: taken as they took it, the rule would require emigration. Corinth was a port city full of exactly these people, and a church that withdrew from them would have to stop trading, stop working, and stop speaking to its neighbors. Whatever separation Scripture asks for, it is not the kind that removes believers from the people they were sent to.
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 1 Corinthians 5:11.
The line is drawn in an unexpected place. Not around behavior but around profession: anyone who is called a brother. The standard is applied to those who claim it, and the list has six items — of which only one is sexual. Covetousness, slander and drunkenness sit in the same sentence as incest, which is worth registering in a congregation likely to grade sins by their capacity to shock. Don't even eat with such a person removes the most basic social bond of the ancient world, and in this church's life probably included the common meal.
For what do I have to do with also judging those who are outside? Don't you judge those who are within? But those who are outside, God judges 1 Corinthians 5:12–13.
And here is the principle, stated as two jurisdictions. The church's business is the church. Those outside are not the congregation's to adjudicate — God judges them — and the arrangement cuts against the instinct in both directions: it forbids a church to police the morals of its city, and it forbids a church to be indifferent to its own. Corinth had inverted both, tolerating the man inside while presumably feeling superior to the city outside.
The chapter closes with a line from the law, spoken repeatedly to Israel about evil in the camp: put away the wicked man from among yourselves Deuteronomy 17:7 Deuteronomy 22:21. The community that God dwells among has always been responsible for what it houses 1 Corinthians 3:16.
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