1 Corinthians 4:17-5:13

1 Corinthians 4:17-5:13

¹⁷ For this reason I have sent to you Timothy, who is my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, and he will remind you of my ways which are in Christ, just as I teach everywhere in every church. ¹⁸ Now some have become arrogant, as though I were not coming to you.¹⁹ But I will come to you soon, if the Lord wills, and I shall find out, not the words of those who are arrogant, but their power.²⁰ For the kingdom of God is not in words, but in power. ²¹ What do you desire? That I come to you with a rod, or with love and a spirit of gentleness?

5:1 It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and sexual immorality of such a kind as does not exist even among the Gentiles, namely, that someone has his father’s wife. ² You have become arrogant and have not mourned instead, so that the one who had done this deed would be removed from your midst.

³ For I, on my part, though absent in body but present in spirit, have already judged him who has so committed this, as though I were present. ⁴ In the name of our Lord Jesus, when you are assembled, and I with you in spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus, ⁵ I have decided to turn such a person over to Satan for the destruction of his body, so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord.

⁶ Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough? ⁷ Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed. ⁸ Therefore let’s celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, 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 I did not at all mean with the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the greedy and swindlers, or with idolaters, for then you would have to leave the world.¹¹ But actually, I wrote to you not to associate with any so-called brother if he is a sexually immoral person, or a greedy person, or an idolater, or is verbally abusive, or habitually drunk, or a swindler—not even to eat with such a person. ¹² For what business of mine is it to judge outsiders? Do you not judge those who are within the church? ¹³ But those who are outside, God judges. Remove the evil person from among yourselves.