Chapter 4 ended with Paul asking whether he should come with a rod or in love. Chapter 5 shows exactly why a rod is now on the table: a case of incest inside the Corinthian church, a relationship even the pagan city around them would have found shocking, and the congregation’s actual response is not grief but pride. Paul’s answer runs in two directions at once — remove the offender for the sake of the whole body, and remember, in the same breath, exactly what that body is: unleavened bread, because Christ their Passover has already been sacrificed.
A study in 1 Corinthians 5 · Arthur Baldwin · StandUp4Jesus.Org · 14 min read
Ye Are Puffed Up, And Have Not Rather Mourned
“It is reported commonly that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father’s wife.”
1 Corinthians 5:1
Paul does not soften the description. “Not so much as named among the Gentiles” means the pagan culture surrounding this church — a culture with a well-earned reputation for immorality — would itself have recoiled from this particular relationship. The Corinthian church has managed to tolerate something even Corinth itself would not.
“And ye are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he that hath done this deed might be taken away from among you.”
1 Corinthians 5:2
“Puffed up” is the third time this exact phrase has now appeared in this letter, and each time it describes pride standing exactly where grief belongs. Whatever pride the Corinthians are actually feeling — perhaps over their own broad-mindedness, perhaps simply distracted by their other quarrels — Paul’s diagnosis is that the appropriate response to this situation was mourning, and it never came.
“For I verily, as absent in body, but present in spirit, have judged already, as though I were present, concerning him that hath so done this deed, In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, To deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.”
1 Corinthians 5:3-5
“That the spirit may be saved” is the clause that keeps this from being simple expulsion for its own sake. Even the most severe discipline this letter prescribes is aimed, in the end, at the offender’s own eventual salvation — a shock painful enough to break through denial, not a permanent verdict of rejection.
Christ Our Passover Is Sacrificed For Us
“Your glorying is not good. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump?”
1 Corinthians 5:6
Paul’s image here is drawn from ordinary baking, and every reader would recognize it instantly: leaven does not stay contained to the corner of the dough where it was added. Tolerated sin in a congregation behaves exactly the same way, spreading through the whole body rather than remaining the private business of one member.
“Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us.”
1 Corinthians 5:7
“The sacrificial lamb represents ‘the Lamb of God,’ in whom is our only hope of salvation. Says the apostle, ‘Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.’ … It was not enough that the paschal lamb be slain; its blood must be sprinkled upon the doorposts; so the merits of Christ’s blood must be applied to the soul.”
Ellen G. White · Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 277
“As ye are unleavened” is a striking piece of grammar — not a command to become unleavened, but a statement that they already are, in Christ, and are simply being told to purge out what does not belong there anymore. The Corinthians’ actual identity, Paul insists, was settled the moment Christ their Passover was sacrificed; the discipline this chapter calls for is bringing their practice into line with a status they already hold, not earning a new one.
“Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”
1 Corinthians 5:8
“The use of unleavened bread also was significant. It was expressly enjoined in the law of the Passover, and as strictly observed by the Jews in their practice, that no leaven should be found in their houses during the feast. In like manner the leaven of sin must be put away from all who would receive life and nourishment from Christ.”
Ellen G. White · Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 278
Paul’s readers would have known the Passover ritual well enough to feel the force of this image immediately — a Jewish household did not merely avoid adding new leaven during the feast, it actively searched the house to remove whatever leaven was already there. “Keep the feast” is not a one-time act of discipline; it describes an ongoing way of life, continually searched and continually purged, lived in permanent view of the sacrifice that made the feast necessary in the first place.
Not To Company With Fornicators
“I wrote unto you in an epistle not to company with fornicators: Yet not altogether with the fornicators of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or with idolaters; for then must ye needs go out of the world.”
1 Corinthians 5:9-10
This is a rare glimpse of a Corinthian letter that did not survive — Paul has already written to them once on this subject, and is now clarifying a point they apparently misunderstood. Avoiding every sinner in the surrounding pagan world was never the instruction; taken that far, the church would have to physically leave the planet to obey it.
“But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an one no not to eat.”
1 Corinthians 5:11
“Christ’s example forbids exclusiveness at the Lord’s Supper. It is true that open sin excludes the guilty. This the Holy Spirit plainly teaches.”
Ellen G. White · The Desire of Ages, p. 656
The line Paul draws is precise: the six categories named here (fornicator, covetous, idolater, railer, drunkard, extortioner) are not being singled out as worse sinners than anyone else, but as sins that, once openly identified within the fellowship, change what continued table fellowship with that person would actually communicate. This study’s own source, discussing an entirely different setting — the Lord’s Supper itself — still reaches back to this exact verse for the one clear exception to Christ’s own example of open fellowship: open, unrepentant sin, not private failure or disputed opinion, is what excludes.
Put Away From Yourselves That Wicked Person
“For what have I to do to judge them also that are without? do not ye judge them that are within?”
1 Corinthians 5:12
Paul’s own jurisdiction, by his own account, stops at the church door. He has no interest in policing the moral standards of pagan Corinth, and does not pretend to any such authority. What happens inside the fellowship that claims Christ’s name is a different matter entirely, and that is the only matter this whole chapter has actually been about.
“But them that are without God judgeth. Therefore put away from among yourselves that wicked person.”
1 Corinthians 5:13
The chapter’s closing command is blunt on purpose, after twelve verses of careful reasoning to get there. “Put away” is not Paul improvising a harsh punishment out of personal irritation; it is the conclusion every image in this chapter — the spreading leaven, the sacrificed Passover, the meaning of the feast itself — has been quietly building toward. A body that will not purge what threatens the whole lump has, in the end, not really grasped what its own Passover cost.
