3. On Going to the Prostitutes (6:12–20)

3. On Going to the Prostitutes (6:12–20)

With his opening sentence (5:1) Paul clearly turns to address a new issue, a case of incest that is being at least tolerated, if not actually condoned, among the community of believers. The new topic is conceptually so unlike what has preceded that most scholars see the two sections as related only in terms of how Paul knew about the situation—that this, too, had been reported to him (5:1; cf. 1:11). But that seems to overlook some of the linguistic ties between this section and the conclusion of the preceding one (4:14–21), especially (1) the “arrogance” of “some” (4:18–19) and the arrogance of the church in what follows (5:2, 6), and (2) the lack of “power” among the arrogant (4:19–20) vis-à-vis the “power of our Lord Jesus” (5:4). These may give more logic to the sequence than one might perceive at first glance and would probably be more immediately perceptible if we didn’t have chapter and verse numbers(!). In the final paragraph of the preceding argument Paul finally reasserted his apostolic authority, in the context of those who were “puffed up” against him and his “coming very soon” in order to find out their “power.” What seems to be at stake in the next three sections (5:1–13; 6:1–11; 6:12–20) is the crisis of authority that was a large part of what lay behind the preceding long argument (1:10–4:21), and especially the authority of Paul vis-à-vis the “arrogant” who were responsible for leading the church in its new direction, both theologically/behaviorally and over against Paul.

As in what preceded, however, it is once more Paul vis-à-vis the entire church community, not against the instigators of the problem as such. He has just threatened to come and “find out the power” of the latter (4:19–20); but he has also threatened the whole church that he will come with a rod (4:21) if they do not change their direction back toward his gospel, and thus toward him as well. These next sections amount to something of a test on this very issue. In fact what is most remarkable about the next two issues taken on (5:1–13; 6:1–11) is how little time he devotes to the “sins” (and “sinners”). He does threaten the latter with the grave consequences of their wrongdoing, but he is far more exercised in both cases with the church as a whole and their attitudes. The question is, Will they pay attention to him on these matters when he is “with [them] in Spirit” and “the power of the Lord Jesus,” or will they continue to follow their new prophets who are remaking the gospel into worldly wisdom divorced from truly Christian ethics?

This crisis of authority, then, is what seems to hold the first six chapters of the letter together. It should be noted, however, that there is also a conceptual tie between the first two matters taken up (5:1–13 and 6:1–11). Paul concludes the present argument by stating that believers are not to judge those outside the church; rather, they are to judge those inside, meaning of course the incestuous man. That seems to trigger the next item, in which believers had actually gone to outsiders for judgments that Paul is convinced should have been handled within the believing community. This issue seems to be another that had been reported to him, although he does not specifically say as much.

What is less clear is how the third matter he addresses (6:12–20) follows any of this. It deals with sexual immorality again, to be sure, but it is a considerably different concern from the present one; furthermore, it appears to have more affinities with two later sections (7:1–7 and 8:1–10:22) than it does with either of the two that precede it (5:1–13 and 6:1–11). Without stating the problem, or how he learned about it, Paul suddenly quotes what appear to be Corinthian slogans, but which he then sharply qualifies. This is probably the key to its place in the letter; the crisis of authority is now expressed at a specific theological/behavioral point where he and they (both the instigators and the church that has followed them) are at loggerheads. At the same time it serves as the link to the first section of the letter—all of which deals with the double crisis of authority and gospel—and to his response to their letter to him, in which a somewhat different “official” stance has been assumed between him and them, but one that still reflects the same double crisis.

The issue that is addressed next in the letter has created an enormous number of problems for modern readers. On the one hand, the problem itself and Paul’s solution are rather easy to identify, even though several of the details are puzzling. But for most of us the perplexing questions are, How could such a thing possibly have happened in the first place? and how does the remedy offered apply to the church today?

The problem for Paul is twofold: that a believer is living in an incestuous relationship that even pagans disallowed is bad enough; but far worse is the church’s relaxed attitude toward it—they are arrogant. What is not clear is the relationship of their arrogance to the problem. Are they arrogant in spite of what is going on among them, or because of it? That is, is their attitude one of mere tolerance, or has this matter become for them a kind of cause célèbre in which they have asserted their freedom or new existence in Christ?

Most later believers find it difficult even to imagine that such a thing could have been happening in a Christian church. But that is because of our tacit assumption, as the result of the Judeo-Christian heritage, that people generally took a dim view toward sexual irregularity, even if they did not attach religious significance to it. But such was not the case for Greco-Roman Corinth. In a culture where one could matter-of-factly say, “Mistresses we keep for the sake of pleasure, concubines for the daily care of the body, but wives to bear us legitimate children,” the Judeo-Christian moral restrictions on human sexuality would not necessarily have been easily absorbed by pagan converts. Paul therefore had to address this question regularly in the Gentile churches (cf. 1 Thess. 4:1–8; Col. 3:5–7; Eph. 5:3–13). From the rhetoric (6:9–10) that begins the second part of the explosion that follows, we learn that what the Judeo-Christian culture considered to be sexual immorality had been part of the Corinthians’ previous lifestyle; on the basis of a variety of passages throughout (5:9; 6:12–20; 7:2; 10:8; cf. 2 Cor. 12:21), we may deduce that many had carried that lifestyle into their new existence in Christ. The problem, however, is not simply a relaxed attitude toward this sin, but whether they also tried to give a theological basis for it and thereby to condone it.

As already noted, the argument itself and its overall point are basically easy to determine. The opening sentences (vv. 1–2) state what Paul knows about the problem and give his basic solution to it: they are to put this man outside the believing community—a command that is repeated no less than four times (vv. 2, 4–5, 7, 13). In a passage that is full of exegetical difficulties (vv. 3–5), he then outlines how and why they are to carry out the expulsion, and in the succeeding paragraph (vv. 6–8) he offers by way of analogy his own theological basis for it. He then returns to the church’s attitude (vv. 9–13) and ties it directly to their misunderstanding or disregard of his former letter, in which he had already spoken to these matters. He offers a clarification that concludes the argument as it began: They are “to judge those inside” and in some fashion to expel the incestuous man from the believing community.

As noted earlier, apart from the direct reference to them at the outset (v. 1) neither the man himself nor his sin is directly addressed. Paul’s own revulsion toward the matter underlies the whole and surfaces often; but the argument is addressed almost entirely to the church and its arrogance. What is at stake is not simply a low view of sin; rather, it is the church itself: Will they follow Paul’s gospel with its ethical implications? or will they continue in their present “spirituality,” a spirituality that tolerates such sin and thereby destroys God’s temple in Corinth (3:16–17)? Thus Paul uses this concrete example both to reassert his authority and to speak to the larger issue of sexual immorality. What we may learn about “church discipline” will be noted at the end of the section.

Finally, it should be noted that, in keeping with the discipline of NT studies at large, some recent studies have concentrated on the sociological dimension of this passage. These are especially helpful for our understanding of the larger worldview in which this particular sin could have emerged, although they deal less with Paul’s own urgencies in this matter.

1It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that even pagans do not tolerate: A man is sleeping with his father’s wife. 2And you are proud! Shouldn’t you rather have gone into mourning and have put out of your fellowship the man who has been doing this? 3For my part, even though I am not physically present, I am with you in spirit. As one who is present with you in this way, I have already passed judgment in the name of the Lord Jesus on the one who has been doing this. 4So when you are assembled and I am with you in spirit, and the power of our Lord Jesus is present, 5hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit might be saved on the day of the Lord.

This opening paragraph follows hard on the heels of the conclusion (4:14–21) of the first issue addressed, where Paul had urged the Corinthians to “imitate” him and follow “his way,” and where he had threatened those who were “puffed up” (KJV) against him because he had not returned. Although he cannot now come in person, he has learned of some behavior in the church that calls for his presence; so he lets this letter function in his place. He is present all right—in Spirit—and they need to pay attention to his judgments. The paragraph is a bold expression of his apostolic authority in the church, calling them to conform to his ways. At the end he will remind them that he had already previously addressed this matter (vv. 9–11).

Paul begins by expressing dismay at the church and its relaxed attitude toward a “brother” who is living in incest. Rather than being “proud,” they should have experienced the deep mourning of the penitent. Since they had done nothing at all, Paul makes the considerable point that even though he is not present, he has nonetheless exercised his proper authority: he has pronounced judgment on the man. What the church is now to do, in the context of the gathered community where both he and the Lord Jesus are present by the Spirit, is to carry out the verdict that he has pronounced.

1 The two sides to the problem are expressed in the opening set of sentences (vv. 1–2). The first sentence (v. 1) indicates the nature of the deed itself; what follows (v. 2) takes up the greater issue, the church’s response—or lack thereof—to this sin in their midst. Paul begins on a note of horror: “It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you.” On the basis of the opening adverb and the verb, some have argued that Paul intends “it is universally reported,” and that the horror rests in how widely this thing is known. But Paul’s use of this adverb later in the letter (6:7 and 15:29) indicates that it moves closer to the idea of “altogether,” hence “actually.” The horror lies not just in the fact that there is sexual immorality among them, but that they are taking no action. All of this has been “reported” to him. “In case any are wondering whether I might need to come with rod in hand” (preceding sentence [4:21]), Paul is announcing, “Listen to what else has been reported to me about you.”

The report was “that there is sexual immorality among you.” The word porneia (“sexual immorality”) in the Greek world simply meant “prostitution,” in the sense of going to the prostitutes and paying for sexual pleasure. The Greeks were generally ambivalent on that matter, depending in part on whether one went openly to the brothels or was more discreet and simply had a paramour. The word, however, had been picked up in Hellenistic Judaism, always pejoratively, to cover every expression of extramarital sexual sin and aberration, including homosexual activity. It could also refer to any of these sins specifically, as it does here. In the NT the word is thus used to refer to that particular blight on Greco-Roman culture, which was almost universally countenanced, except among the Stoics. That is why porneia appears so often as the first item in the NT vice lists, not because Christians were sexually “hung up,” nor because they considered this the primary sin, the “scarlet letter,” as it were. Rather, it is the result of its prevalence in the culture, and the difficulty the early church experienced with Gentile converts breaking with their former ways, which they had not necessarily heretofore considered immoral.

But in this instance the problem is not just porneia in general. Paul seems to have had trouble with that previously in Corinth and addressed it in an earlier letter (v. 9). What exercises him in this instance is that the form of porneia they are tolerating is of a kind that was not tolerated “even among pagans,” people whose moral standards were not otherwise high in the biblical sense: namely (lit.) “a man has his father’s wife,” which the NIV has rendered correctly (in a contemporary idiom), “A man is sleeping with his father’s wife.” The problem is incest, a man taking a wife of his father other than his own mother and “having” her sexually in an ongoing relationship. This is made clear from two points of usage: (1) The language “father’s wife” is taken directly from the LXX of Lev. 18:7–8, where this specific sin is forbidden; and (2) the verb “to have,” when used in sexual or marital contexts, is a euphemism for an ongoing sexual relationship, not just a passing fancy or a “one-night stand.” By “having” her, Paul means that the brother is, exactly as the NIV has put it into contemporary English, “sleeping with” her (= is in an ongoing sexual relationship with her). What cannot be known is what had happened to the father, whether there had been divorce or death. In either case what is forbidden by all ancients, both Jewish and pagan, is the cohabiting of father and son with the same woman. The fact that the woman herself is not mentioned, especially since women are more often condemned for sexual sins than men (cf. John 8:1–11), provides the rather certain indication that only the man was a member of the Christian community. Given the full mutuality of men and women in the marital issues addressed later in this letter (chap. 7), it is nearly impossible that she could have been a member of the community and not (in v. 5) have been brought under the same judgment as her lover.

For the later reader the more perplexing question is the one that cannot finally be answered: How could a member of the believing community in Corinth have done such a thing in the first place? Although from this distance one cannot tell whether the man himself and the church considered the relationship innocent or not, it is equally true that Paul perceived it as heinous. This, plus the clear sexual overtones in the idiom “to have a woman,” rules out Hurd’s own suggestion that this may have been a “spiritual marriage.” Most likely the man’s action is related to the arrogance of the whole community noted in what follows immediately.

2 If for us the problem is how a man could have done such a thing, the greater problem for Paul was the fact that, with this sin in their midst, the Corinthian believers are “proud” and “boasting” (v. 6). These two words appeared together in the preceding argument (esp. 4:6–7) to describe their current attitude toward Paul, apparently based on their giftedness (4:7), hence reflecting their new “spirituality.” As noted earlier (in 1:29–31), their present stance on wisdom and Spirit had led to self-sufficiency rather than total dependence on Christ. What is not clear from this distance is the precise nuance of Paul’s exclamation, “And you are proud!” Is this simply referring back to what had been said earlier, expressing a kind of contempt over their being puffed up while such grievous sin exists in their midst, as in “And in spite of this incest in your midst, you continue to hold your heads high toward me as you have been doing? What right do you have to be proud with this kind of thing going on and no one doing anything about it?”

Or is this a direct attack on their pride as it is more closely related to the sin itself? Given their theological stance articulated a bit later (6:12–13) and their sense of superiority to Paul, and therefore to Paul’s ethical instructions given in his previous letter, it is just possible, nay probable it would seem, that this sin in their midst is something over which many have taken a certain amount of pride: “In Christ, through whom we have received the Spirit who has lifted us above the merely earthly, ‘all things are lawful.’ How can what Paul calls porneia be of any consequence to the truly spiritual person?” One cannot be sure of such a reconstruction, of course, but it does fit their attitude as a whole, and it would particularly do so if the man were carrying on the relationship “in the name of the Lord Jesus,” although this seems less likely (see vv. 3–4).

Whatever the actual relationship of their pride to the incest, it has blinded them both to the fallen brother’s true condition and to their own. Rather than their demonstrating pride, Paul chides, “Shouldn’t you rather have gone into mourning and put out of your fellowship the man who did this?” The verb rendered “gone into mourning” probably refers to the kind of deep anguish of soul frequently related to true repentance, which the righteous experience because of their own sins and the sins of others. “Mourning” is the proper response to such sin in their midst, not pride; and true mourning of this kind would have as its concomitant result that the man “who has been doing this” would have been “put out of your fellowship.”

There are always some who see this action as harsh and unloving; but such criticism comes from those who do not appreciate the biblical view of God’s holiness, and the deep revulsion to sin that that holiness entails. When Isaiah sees the exalted Lord, and hears the trisagion “Holy, holy, holy” (Isa. 6), he bows in deep personal and national repentance; and in such moments the removal of sin is the natural consequence. Thus Paul is not here dealing with “church discipline” as such; rather, out of his Jewish heritage he is expressing what should be the normal consequences of their being the people of God, who are called to be God’s holy people (1:2). It is this lack both of a sense of sin, and therefore of any ethical consequences to their life in the Spirit, that marks the Corinthian brand of “spirituality” as radically different from that which flows out of the gospel of Christ crucified. And it is precisely this failure to recognize the depth of their corporate sinfulness due to their arrogance that causes Paul to take such strong action as is described in the next sentences (vv. 3–5).

3–4 With an emphatic “I for my part,” which stands in contrast to “and you are puffed up,” Paul begins a sentence whose overall point is clear enough, but whose syntax is particularly complex, and whose concluding action (5a) and ultimate purpose (5b) are shrouded in mystery. In contrast to the Corinthians, who because they are “puffed up” have done nothing, not even mourned the man’s sin, Paul takes decisive action. But the action cannot be his alone. It must be effected in the context of the gathered assembly, where both he and the power of Christ are present by the Spirit. In such a gathering the church is to put the man back out into the sphere of Satan for some form of “destruction” that has his salvation as its ultimate goal. All of that seems easy enough; but the details form one of the more difficult cruxes in this letter.

Paul begins by noting that even though he is not “physically present,” he is present “in spirit.” On the basis of the obvious contrast of “body” and “spirit,” plus Paul’s use of similar language in a (much) later letter (Col. 2:5), this could possibly be similar to our own use of this idiom, whereby we mean something like “you are in my thoughts.” Here, however, Paul intends something more: in a way that is not altogether clear to us he understood himself actually to be present “in spirit/Spirit” in the gathered community. This is confirmed first by the phrase in the next clause, usually translated “just as if I were present,” which in light of how the next sentence (v. 4) begins must mean “as actually present.” That is, he is not allowing that because he is not physically present he is not truly present and therefore he must act as though he were. Rather, he is emphasizing the fact that he is indeed present by way of the Spirit, and that is why he can act as he does.

The phrase “and my spirit” in the second sentence (v. 4), with its emphatic use of “my” and the fact that it serves with “you” as the compound subject of the verb “when assembled,” is what finally makes this clear. What exactly he understood this to mean is more difficult to pin down, but it is undoubtedly related to his understanding of life in the Spirit. In God’s new era the believer has “received the Spirit of God” (2:12–13), has “become one spirit with the Lord” (6:17), so that one is now a “temple of the Holy Spirit, which [referring to the Spirit] one has from God” (6:19). Related to this kind of “receiving/having/being joined to the Spirit” language, Paul further speaks of “my spirit” in ways that seem ambiguous. Sometimes he simply means his own person with no reference to the Spirit of God (e.g., 2 Cor. 2:13); but when much later he says “my spirit prays” (14:14–15), he quite clearly intends that his own spirit prays as the indwelling Holy Spirit gives the utterance. In that case, then, one might legitimately translate, “my S/spirit prays.” Something very much like that seems to be intended here. Thus, in saying “when you and my S/spirit are assembled together, along with the power of the Lord Jesus,” Paul does not mean that in some vague way they are to think about him as though he were actually among them, but is not really so. Rather, when the Corinthians are assembled, the Spirit is understood to be present among them (see on 3:16); and for Paul that means that he, too, is present among them by that same Spirit. If all of that is not easy for us to grasp, we must nonetheless not try to make Paul think or talk like us. The point, of course, is that, through this letter as it is read aloud among them, he is thus communicating his own prophetic word to them, as that should be heard in a tangible way through the reading of the letter in the gathered assembly, as the Spirit communicates his prophetic-apostolic ministry in their midst (cf. 2 Cor. 10:10–11).

Thus this present assertion of his actual presence by the Spirit probably harks back to the “arrogance” of those who say that he is not returning (4:18). “To the contrary,” Paul says, “I am present among you in Spirit, whereby I speak this prophetic word of judgment in your midst,” which he presupposes will occur as the letter is read aloud to them. Thus he has “already passed judgment on the one who did this,” that this man is to be handed over to Satan (v. 5). But the action is not to be Paul’s alone; nor is it to be understood as some sort of ecclesiastical tribunal. Rather, it is to be a community action, carried out in the context of the Spirit, where “you and my S/spirit are assembled together, along with the power of the Lord Jesus.” As noted earlier (2:4–5; 4:19–20), the term “power” in a context like this is a reference to the Spirit, who is dynamically present among them when they are assembled together. In such a context Paul’s word of prophetic judgment is to be heard and acted upon. The whole community must carry out the action because the “leaven” has affected them as a community; and as a community of the Spirit (3:16) they must act in accordance with the Spirit’s direction that has now been given them through this prophetic announcement from Paul.

But there remains a further difficulty, one that rather substantially affects the meaning of the sentence, namely, how we are to understand the phrase “in the name of our Lord Jesus,” which stands at the beginning of v. 4 in the published Greek text. Historically it has been viewed as qualifying one of the three verb forms in Paul’s considerably convoluted sentences that cover all of our vv. 3–5: either (1) “When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus” (original NIV, JB, NEB); or (2) “I have already pronounced judgment in the name of our Lord Jesus” (NIV, NRSV, GNB, NAB, Moffatt, Montgomery); or (3) “. . . on the one who perpetrated this deed in the name of our Lord Jesus.” Option 1 has much to commend it. It corresponds to the teaching of Jesus recorded in Matthew’s gospel (18:20), which became the early church’s normal understanding of their gatherings, that Christ himself was present in the midst of two or more “gathered in his name.” In this case it would further emphasize the nature of the assembled gathering, as being in the presence of God. On the other hand, this makes the phrase seem redundant to the next one, “with the power of the Lord Jesus,” as well as overloads the verb “assembled.” What is mostly against it, however, is the word order. Not only does this phrase elsewhere in Paul follow its verb, but also where this kind of prepositional phrase precedes its verb, it is demonstrably emphatic (cf. 1:21), which does not seem to be the case here.

Limited to the remaing set of options, it is less easy to decide between them. Option 3 had in its favor that it immediately follows this verb form and is therefore the more natural reading. In fact, it is fair to say that this would have been the normal understanding were it not for the difficulty instinctively felt with someone’s doing such a thing “in the name of the Lord Jesus.” Since Murphy-O’Connor has shown how easily those who considered themselves “spiritual” might have been able to say this about such behavior, that objection is less formidable than it once might have seemed. There are, however, still problems with this option. First, there is the difficulty of Paul’s using the actual wording “in the name of the Lord Jesus,” which would be even greater if the reading “our” is in fact authentic. In that case he would more likely have used an “in Christ” formula of some kind. More difficult still is its role in the sentence; it seems an overstatement on Paul’s part to have added this considerable phrase in the midst of a sentence whose primary concern is not the basis on which the incestuous man is acting, but the authority on which Paul himself is acting while present with them in S/spirit.

As long as these are the three options available, the most likely view (and that adopted in the first edition of this commentary) is that although option 3 is possible, option 2 would be more likely what Paul was intending. Part of the problem, after all, is a crisis of authority in the church. Paul is hereby speaking a prophetic judgment on the perpetrator of this deed; but his authority is not his own. Rather, as in his most recent (preserved) letter (2 Thess. 3:6), he speaks “by the authority of our Lord Jesus” (Moffatt). The fact that the phrase is somewhat removed from its verb is not as significant as some would make out; its distance is simply the result of the direct object being somewhat wordy. Those who see this as a kind of “curse” formula are probably more enamored with ancient parallels than such a phrase actually warrants. To do something in someone’s name is to act with that person’s authority, which is precisely the point of Paul’s concern here.

More recently, however, it has been argued that each of these probably offers a much too constricting approach to Paul’s sentence, so that in the end the best answer lies with seeing the phrase basically as modifying the entire sentence, a view that goes back to Luther and Bengel and that is very much in keeping with the conclusion offered in the first edition of this commentary. Thus the sentence (through v. 4) says: “As for my part, even though not physically present, I am present with you in S/spirit, and as such I have already, by the authority of our Lord Jesus, pronounced sentence on the man who has perpetrated this deed; therefore, when you and my S/spirit are assembled together along with the power of the Lord Jesus, you are to carry out the verdict of turning him over to Satan.” But what exactly were the Corinthian believers themselves to do in this setting? That is given in the concluding clause (v. 5), which spells out the action to be taken.

5 These words thus bring us to the statement of the actual judgment, both its nature and its intended result. In the context of “the power of our Lord Jesus” the community is to “hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the ‘flesh’ so that his ‘spirit’ may be saved on the day of the Lord.” Apart from the similar usage in a much later letter (1 Tim. 1:20), the language “to hand over to Satan” is not found elsewhere as an act of expulsion from a religious community. There are some remote parallels in the magical papyri, but these are personal execrations spoken directly to the god of the underworld. It may be that Paul was influenced by the LXX of Job 2:6 (“Behold, I [Yahweh] hand him over to you [Satan]”). But whatever the source of the language, the similar usage in 1 Timothy suggests that for Paul this was quasi-technical language for some kind of expulsion from the Christian community, probably from the gatherings of the assembly for worship, including the meals and supper in honor of the Lord (see on v. 11). Thus we are not dealing with an “execration formula,” nor is it probable that Paul intends the language to be taken literally, in the sense of personally handing the man to Satan to “go to work on him,” as it were. More likely, the language means to turn him back out into Satan’s sphere. This does not mean that Satan would not directly attack him in some way, but that is incidental to the language, not its primary intent. In contrast to the gathered community of believers who experience the Spirit and power of the Lord Jesus in edifying gifts and loving concern for one another, this man is to be put back out into the world, where Satan and his “principalities and powers” still hold sway over people’s lives to destroy them. By this action the church was to clean out the old leaven that it might become a new loaf without leaven (vv. 6–8).

But what Paul actually expected to happen to the man himself is more difficult to determine. The problem is twofold: (1) What does “flesh” mean in the phrase “for the destruction of the flesh”? and (2) what is the nature of the contrast between “flesh” and “spirit”? Unfortunately, in this case no solution is free from difficulties.

First, a grammatical note. It is common to see the prepositional phrase “for the destruction of the flesh” as expressing purpose, followed by a final purpose clause, “in order that the spirit might be saved.” As a matter of grammar, however, the expressed purpose of the action is the final matter only—his salvation—since that clause alone qualifies the verb “to hand over.” The preposition eis (“for”) sometimes expresses purpose, but it may also express anticipated result, which seems far more likely here. What the grammar suggests, then, is that the “destruction of his flesh” is the anticipated result of the man’s being put back out into Satan’s domain, while the express purpose of the action is his redemption.

But what did Paul actually expect as the result of his being returned to the sphere of Satan’s power “for the destruction of the flesh”? Until recent years most scholars understood this phrase to refer at least to physical suffering, and most likely to death itself. This indeed is the most natural understanding of the word “destruction.” Physical suffering from the hand of Satan, but for God’s ultimate purposes, is found in the Book of Job (esp. 2:4–10) and in Paul’s own “thorn in the flesh,” carried out by a messenger of Satan (2 Cor. 12:7). That the “destruction” could entail death might be further supported by the incident of Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1–10). Indeed, the combination of suffering and death is found later in 1 Corinthians itself, where the sickness and death of some are viewed as consequences of “unworthy” participation at the Lord’s Table (11:30–32).

Despite this evidence, however, and the large number of scholars who take this view, the idea that Paul expected the man’s death seems too difficult to maintain—and not simply because “the punishment does not fit the crime.” There are several problems. First, related to the grammatical note, the emphasis in Paul’s own sentence, and therefore presumably his intent, lies not on “the destruction of the flesh,” but on the final purpose clause, “that the spirit might be saved on the day of the Lord.” The former phrase, therefore, must be seen as part of the remedial process; otherwise one’s interpretation seems doomed to fail. It is especially difficult to see how an expected result of death can be understood as remedial.

Second, apart from a literal sense of “handing over to Satan,” the word “destruction” is the only thing that supports such a view; but there are several reasons for wondering whether the language can be pressed here, since this interpretation seems to run counter to Paul’s own theology in so many ways. For example, nowhere else does Paul express death in terms of “destruction of the flesh.” If the phrase were by itself, without the following purpose clause, a case for death could clearly be made; but the phrase is not by itself. Here it stands in contrast to the saving of “the spirit”; and it is simply foreign to Paul’s usage for the “flesh/spirit” contrast to refer to the body as doomed to destruction but the “spirit” (inner, real person?) as destined for salvation. Such a view stands in contradiction to Paul’s express doctrine of the resurrection of the body and in fact would fit nicely into the Corinthians’ own view (see on 6:12–14). This has been regularly recognized as the great difficulty with this view, so much so that some have tried to find a different meaning for “spirit” so as to make it compatible with “destruction of the flesh” in the sense of death. In the final analysis Pauline usage is far more significant for interpretation than the word “destruction,” which is capable of a metaphorical sense.

Third, the relationship with a pronouncement of another kind that appears later on in the letter (11:30–32) is not as comparable as some would wish to believe. There Paul is making a judgment after the fact, as it were—indeed, after two facts. They are destroying the table; and some of them are sickly, or have even died. Paul, by inspiration of the Spirit, prophetically tells them that these two “facts” are related in a consequential way. But that is a far cry from “excommunicating” for the very purpose that the man might suffer physically unto death.

Fourth, the further instruction that follows a bit later (v. 11), that they are not to associate with this man, not even to eat with him, seems clearly to imply that no immediate death is in purview.

Finally, it is out of character with Paul’s theology as we meet it elsewhere that one who sins within the Christian community should be so punished in the present age that he lies beyond the redemptive, restorative love of that community. Paul in fact is found on the other side of things. To these same Corinthians who have been too harsh on a brother who needed correction (2 Cor. 2:5–11), he argues that “punishment by the majority is sufficient” and that they should now restore him. Despite a long history of interpretation that has believed otherwise, this is probably not the same man as in our present passage. Nevertheless it reveals how Paul thinks the community should treat offenders, who in previous cases had to experience some form of “punishment” (cf. 2 Thess. 3:14–15, and later in Gal. 6:1).

With some degree of confidence, therefore, we may put aside the idea that Paul intended that the man should die. The possibility that some form of remedial suffering was in view is not thereby ruled out, although such a view presses the noun “destruction” beyond its ordinary limits. What this means, then, is that we have here the first instance of what later would become a typically Pauline contrast between “flesh” and “spirit,” and thus not yet “typically” expressed. What Paul was desiring by having this man put outside the believing community was the destruction of what was “carnal” in him, so that he might be “saved” eschatologically. In this case, as most often in Paul, “flesh” and “spirit” designate “the whole person as viewed from different angles. ‘Spirit’ means the whole person as oriented towards God; ‘flesh’ means the whole person as oriented away from God.” The “destruction” of one’s sinful nature would thus belong to the same kind of imagery as in “crucifying” it (Gal. 5:24; cf. Rom. 7:5–6).

The intent of this action, therefore, is the man’s salvation. He is not being “turned over to Satan for destruction,” an idea that is quite foreign both to Paul and the rest of the NT, but is being excluded from the Christian community with their life in the Spirit. The inevitable consequence is that he is back out in Satan’s domain, where, Paul hopes, his “flesh” may be destroyed so that he may be saved on the day of the Lord. By this latter term Paul does not intend that he must wait until the final Day to be saved. Rather, this is one of Paul’s ordinary ways of expressing salvation. Salvation is primarily an eschatological reality, experienced in the present to be sure, but to be realized fully at the Day of the Lord (on this term see on 3:15 and 4:5).

What Paul does not tell us is how he perceived this “destruction” of his flesh to take place. In fact, this is the most frequent objection to this view: Satan would then be envisioned as working against his own interests. But that objection is equally true for the other views, since whatever the activity is, it is ultimately against Satan’s own interests, given that the aim is the man’s eschatological salvation. Perhaps we have been too quick to assume that Paul looked on Satan and his hosts as directly involved in the “destruction.” More likely, whatever kind of buffeting from satanic forces this man may experience “out there,” the actual separation from the fellowship of the people of God, God’s “Spirit people,” who are living out the life of the future while they await the consummation, would in itself lead to his putting aside his sins so that he might once more join the community. The text itself does not say this, but the rest of Pauline theology certainly supports such a view.

How, then, does all this function as God’s Word for us? First, the very complexities of the passage, which has just enough ambiguity throughout to keep one from being certain on key issues, should make us properly hesitant about remaking the text into some kind of canon law. This is an ad hoc case of church discipline, similar in kind to that suggested for the idlers/busybodies in an earlier letter (2 Thess. 3:6–15).

But that does not mean that it does not speak to our situation. Indeed, quite the opposite. In a day when the church often tolerates every kind of sin (“because we who are sinners must not be judgmental”), the need for discipline within the context of the Spirit’s power is perhaps greater than ever. But lest one too quickly start a process of excommunication that finally eliminates us all, a few observations about the text in general are in order.

First, in this text church discipline is not the affair of one or a few. Even though Paul as an apostle pronounced the sentence prophetically, the sin itself was known by all and had contaminated the whole; so the action was to be the affair of all, not just of a select few who function as church leaders.

Second, the ultimate reason for such discipline is remedial, not judgmental. For such to take place, one needs an especially loving, redemptive community, where the power of the Lord Jesus is a regular part of corporate life.

Third, according to the rest of the passage, the problem was truly affecting the life of the whole community. Probably discipline of this kind should be reserved for such “contaminating” sins.

Finally, the great problem with such discipline in most Christian communities in the Western world is that one can simply go down the street to another church. Not only does that say something about the fragmented condition of the church at large, but it also says something about those who would quickly welcome one who is under discipline in another community.

Perhaps it should be added that if one were to be so disciplined in our day, too often the person could “take it or leave it” as far as the church is concerned—and that probably says more about the condition of the church itself than about the person who is dissociated. Maybe the most significant thing we can learn from such a text is how far many of us are removed from a view of the church in which the dynamic of the Spirit was so real that exclusion could be a genuinely redemptive process.

6Your boasting is not good. Don’t you know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough? 7Get rid of the old yeast, so that you may be a new unleavened batch—as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. 8Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old bread leavened with malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

With this striking set of images, Paul now gives the theological basis for the action called for in the opening salvo (vv. 1–5). He begins with the basic problem—their boasting, which is totally out of place in light of the Corinthian believers’ present less than healthy condition. What they fail to realize is how this man’s sin had infected the whole community, which as a community must be God’s temple in Corinth. Paul’s metaphor, however, is not illness, but a proverbial saying about “leaven” (v. 6), which in turn calls forth related imagery from the Feast of Unleavened Bread and the Passover (v. 7). They are to get rid of the “old leaven,” the incestuous man, so that they might become what they really are, a “new batch of dough.” With a shift of metaphors he then reminds them of what made them unleavened bread: the sacrifice of God’s Paschal Lamb. In the concluding application (v. 8) he applies the festal metaphor once more to their present situation, but broadens it to include their attitudes and behavior in general, which have been the greater issue right along. Although the metaphors get slightly mixed (the church alternately is the purified house, the new batch of dough, and the celebrants of the Feast), Paul’s point is clear. They must remove the incestuous man for their own sake, so that as a believing community they may truly be the new, and thus holy, people of God in Corinth.

This passage serves as a splendid illustration of Pauline parenesis. In his use of the leaven imagery, Paul states the imperative in a way that seems to belie his theology. So he immediately corrects the false impression by making the event of the Crucified One the grounds for ethical behavior. The imperative that follows (v. 7) therefore functions as a compendium of Paul’s gospel in metaphor. The death of Christ makes them new; yet they must get rid of the old in order to be new, precisely because in Christ they already are new! Thus no “do in order to be,” but “do because you are.”

6 In the preceding long sentence Paul reasserted his apostolic authority by placing himself in their midst in S/spirit and pronouncing his verdict on the incestuous man, which the community, gathered in the presence of the Lord, was to carry out. Although the stated aim of that action was this man’s redemption, Paul’s greater concern right along lies with the community itself. He now returns to that concern by picking up the theme of their boasting with which he began (v. 2). This “boasting” of theirs “is not good,” which of course is true in itself, especially when it is predicated on self-confidence, as theirs was, and not on the Lord (cf. 1:29–31). But the present concern centers not on their boasting in general; rather, it focuses on their boasting as it relates to this sin in their midst (cf. v. 2). That is, “A church exposed to corruption would do well to sing in a lower key.”

By means of the rhetorical device “Don’t you know that?” (see on 3:16)—which of course they do know—Paul attempts to show them the absurdity of their headiness when they are in such imminent danger of being “spoiled” by fermentation. What they should know in this case comes in the form of a proverb: “A little yeast [leaven] leavens the whole batch of dough” (cf. Gal. 5:9). Although there is no other evidence for it in antiquity, the saying is probably a piece of Jewish folk wisdom, similar to our “A bad apple spoils the whole barrel.” As noted above, what is in view is not actually “yeast,” which was not plentiful in antiquity, and which in any case is fresh and wholesome. “Leaven” was not so. It consisted of keeping back a “little” portion of last week’s dough, allowing it to ferment, then adding it to this week’s dough, which in turn was thoroughly fermented to give it lightness (= sourdough bread). Although the OT does not actually say so, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, as well as being a religious celebration, was probably a health provision. Most likely, because of the fermentation process, which week after week increased the dangers of contamination, the Israelites were commanded once a year to purge their homes of all leaven (Exod. 12:14–20). During the Feast they would bake only unleavened bread, from which dough they would then start up the process again after the Feast. Thus in the NT a good thing like leaven became a symbol of the process by which an evil spreads insidiously in a community until the whole has been infected by it (cf. Mark 8:15). So it was in Corinth. Their major problem lay with their not taking this matter seriously, neither the evil itself nor their danger of being thoroughly contaminated by it.

7 The preceding mention of “leaven” naturally suggests imagery from Paul’s own history as a law-abiding Jew, namely the two religious rituals of Passover. He begins with a direct allusion to the ceremonial removal of all leaven from their homes (Exod. 12:15), which in turn prompts an allusion to the most important event of all, the sacrifice of the Paschal Lamb (Exod. 12:6).

Thus he shifts from the “small” leaven and “whole” batch (of dough) in the proverb to “old” leaven and “new” batch (of dough) from the Feast of Unleavened Bread. The imagery is expressed as an imperative, similar to that which had long been a part of his Jewish experience: “Get rid of the old leaven.” In this context, of course, this refers to the removal of the incestuous man (v. 5); but as the concluding sentence (v. 8) in the present paragraph indicates, the very use of such imagery has the possibility of broader application. The purpose of this removal of the “leaven” reflects the process of starting over with a new batch of unleavened dough, and is applied directly to the corporate life of the community: “that you may be a new unleavened batch.” Paul’s intent is for them to be done with the “leaven” of such sin in their midst, and thus to get on with being God’s “holy people” in Corinth (1:2).

In so applying the imagery, however, Paul expresses himself in a way that is foreign to his own theology; so he immediately qualifies it with “even as you really are.” As always in Paul, the imperative, even though it must be obeyed, cannot be turned into a piece of legal material, obedience to which brings favor with God. Right at the point where the imperative sounds as if it comes first (“Get rid of the old so that you may be new”), he reminds them that what they must become is what they already are by the grace of God. “Become what you are” is the basic nature of Paul’s parenesis. He is simply too steeped in the religious heritage of the OT to allow a divorce of ethics from the gift of God’s favor. But he has been too badly burned by his former pharisaism to allow that ethics leads to that gift of favor. The indicative always comes first: “You are a new loaf (God’s people) by sheer grace and mercy.” But without the imperative the former has failed to be the power of God unto salvation. Hence, “Now become what you are, God’s ‘new loaf’ in Corinth.” The application to our own lives and church, of course, is universal.

Still keeping the imagery of Passover, but shifting over to the second ritual, Paul proceeds to explain how they became God’s “new loaf” in Corinth: “for indeed our Passover Lamb has been sacrificed, even Christ.” Although this is the only occurrence of this imagery in Paul, that only shows how limited our availability to him is on the basis of his few letters. He clearly assumes that his Gentile readers will understand this thoroughly Jewish imagery. As in John’s gospel, this is a direct application of the death of Christ to the slaughter of the Paschal lambs on the first day of Unleavened Bread. The slaying of the lamb is what led to the Jews’ being “unleavened.” So too with us, Paul says. Our Lamb has been sacrificed; through his death we have received forgiveness from the past and freedom for new life in Christ. This emphasis on the sacrifice of Christ as the basis of their transfer from the old to the new is the point Paul will elaborate on next, in the final application of the metaphor.

8 With yet another strongly inferential “so then” (see on 3:7), Paul brings this part of the argument to its logical conclusion. They are to remove the incestuous man, which is like cleansing the house of leaven, in order that they might become what they are, God’s “new loaf” in Corinth. What makes them God’s new people is the sacrifice of “our Passover Lamb, Christ himself.” Still keeping the imagery of the Feast (“let us keep the Festival”), Paul broadens the application of the death of Christ to Christian life as a whole.

But what is the Christian equivalent to the Jewish celebration? In its first instance it reflects the prolonged seven-day festival, during which the Jews were forbidden to eat anything leavened. In the same way, on the basis of the crucifixion of Christ, God’s people are to keep an ongoing feast of the celebration of God’s forgiveness by holy living. This is further confirmed by the specific, purely ethical application of the imagery in the rest of the sentence. Most likely Paul’s own intent, therefore, was simply, by way of imperative, to extend the metaphor to its broadest possible implications. It is just possible, however, that this further reference to celebrating the Feast also includes an allusion to their sitting at the Table of the Lord. There is no way to know for sure, although an allusion to the table in the context of expelling a brother would certainly be fitting, especially in light of the concluding command (v. 11) that they are not even to eat with him.

In any case, Paul’s immediate concern is not with the table as such, but with their overall behavior. They are to celebrate their new life in Christ minus the “old leaven,” a command that ties the present broader imperative to the earlier specific one. This at least includes an elimination of the kinds of sexual immorality represented by the excluded man. But now the “leaven” of the “old bread” is further qualified in terms of “malice and wickedness.” These two words are synonyms, which gather under their umbrella every form of iniquity. The death of Christ has freed us from sin; thus we are to live as those who have been set free.

The “unleavened” expression of their new existence is described in terms of “sincerity and truth.” These two words do not generalize Christian behavior in quite the same fashion as do the two negatives. In fact they move toward the motivation of behavior rather than its actual outworking. Both words imply behavior that is fully authentic, without sham or deceit, that can stand the full test of the light of day. Perhaps by these words Paul was reflecting on their attitudes toward his own conduct, that he was one thing with Jews and another with Gentiles. Thus he would be calling them to behavior that is the opposite of what they have accused him of; by implication he is suggesting that their boasting is covering up behavior that is completely sham, without either purity of motive or a basis in the truth of the gospel.

This final application of the metaphor, therefore, is a further reflection on the call to holiness with which the letter began (1:2). The present sin is not their only one; and the death of Christ should have made a difference in their lives. They are to become what they are, God’s holy temple in Corinth (3:16–17), God’s alternative to the “malice and wickedness” that surround them. They must celebrate their Christian expression of the Feast by becoming the people of God, which they are in fact by grace.

In an age in which ethics is too often modified to fit one’s present cultural existence—in North America greed, e.g., is easily subsumed under Christian patriotism—these words need once more to be heard distinctly in the church. Christ has died for us not simply to give us passage to heaven but to re-create us in his own image, so that both individually and corporately we may express the character of God by the way we live in a world whose behavior is “polished nice” but which lacks the purity and truth of the gospel. It is extremely unfortunate when God’s own people, as in this case, look more like their surroundings than they do their Lord himself.

9I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people—10not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. 11But now I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer, a drunkard or swindler. Do not even eat with such people.

12What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? 13God will judge those outside. “Expel the wicked person from among you.”

Deut. 13:5; 17:7; 19:19; 21:21; 22:21, 24; 24:7

At first glance this paragraph seems to move in a new direction, clearing up the Corinthians’ misunderstanding of a former letter. But not so. Paul is resolving an issue from a former letter, to be sure, but one that is integrally related to the present concern. That he is still dealing with their “boasting” in the context of the incestuous man is indicated by several items: (1) The matter of associating with one who is sexually immoral is the point both of their “misunderstanding” of the previous letter and of their present “boasting” with a well-known pornos (“sexually immoral person”) in their midst. (2) The clarification in the middle of the paragraph (v. 11) intends to forbid any kind of association with a man who calls himself a brother but who is a pornos, which is precisely what the immediately preceding argument (vv. 1–8) was all about. (3) The paragraph, and therefore the whole section, concludes with a citation of Deut. 17:7, which explicitly repeats the several injunctions that preceded (vv. 2, 5, and 7).

This suggests, then, that the rather abrupt introduction of the former letter is part of the present argument. Their arrogance and boasting are probably related in part either to their disregard or to their deliberate misrepresentation of Paul’s former instructions. Indeed, such an interpretation helps to clarify most of the material in the argument as a whole: e.g., why the church’s boasting, rather than the sinner himself, is the primary concern; why Paul reasserts his apostolic authority in dealing with this particular issue; and why the clarification of the former letter is brought in right at this point.

This next step in the argument is basically in three parts. First, the former letter had forbidden “association with sexually immoral people.” Thus Paul begins (vv. 9–10) by explaining what he did not mean by that, namely dissociation from people in the world who were sexually immoral, because that would mean leaving the world altogether. Second (v. 11), he specifies what he did mean, which is precisely what they are now disregarding, namely that they are to dissociate from a brother who lives as though he were still in the world. Third, in a quatrain of short sentences dominated by the verb “judge” (vv. 12–13), he gives the reasons for the first two points. Christians take the world as they find it (v. 12a); God will finally judge those on the outside (v. 13a). But inside is a different matter. Here there is to be the kind of “judgment” argued for throughout this passage (v. 12b), which then concludes with the imperative to put the incestuous man outside (v. 13b). These last four sentences also serve as the lead-in to the section on “judging” that follows.

9–10 The abrupt way this paragraph is introduced would seem to justify the suggested reconstruction. Its content indicates that Paul is still dealing with the church’s failure to have done something about the incestuous man. This sentence tells us that that failure is related to their misunderstanding of a former letter: “I wrote you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people.” At first blush this sounds a bit harsh, and one might well understand why the Corinthians had trouble with it. The key, however, lies in the verb “to associate with” and Paul’s previous use of it in 2 Thess. 3:14 with regard to the idlers/busybodies. The verb literally means to “mix up together”; in the context of social intercourse it means to “mingle with,” or “associate with” in a close way. In 2 Thessalonians this prohibition occurred only as a last resort; that is, if the idlers/busybodies did not give heed to what was now a second warning (cf. 1 Thess. 4:11–12; 5:14), they were to be shunned in terms of close fellowship in the believing community. But even so, he added that they are not to be treated as enemies, but as family (brothers and sisters). Most likely that is what Paul had intended in his former letter to Corinth, a letter written not too long after 2 Thessalonians.

Since that is almost certainly what Paul intended, how did their misunderstanding arise, one wonders, and especially a misunderstanding which implied that he was talking about not associating “with the people of this world”? The best answer lies with the “some who are arrogant” (4:18). Most likely by the time Paul’s letter had reached the church, these people were already at work in the community, urging that Paul’s was not the only legitimate, or even the best, understanding of the gospel. Perhaps they seized on the ambiguity of wording in his letter in order to discredit him. In any case, one can surmise that there was a bit of ridicule in their stance: “How can he possibly mean that we are not to associate with the sexually immoral? Does that mean we can no longer go even to the marketplace? How can one live in Corinth and not rub shoulders with some who are like this?” Paul allows here that if he had meant that, then they are right, one would indeed “have to leave this world.” But as he goes on to elaborate (v. 11), and as they surely must have known, he did not mean that. He meant exactly the opposite; they are not to continue the kinds of associations about which they are now boasting.

In any case, he is ready to clarify by informing them what he did not intend: “not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral.” By “not at all,” he could mean what the NIV suggests—that there has been an absolute misunderstanding on their part—or more likely that in a qualified way he did not “in general” intend what they have taken it to mean. There are, to be sure, associations with the world that Paul will disallow (e.g. 10:14–22); but his first concern has been with the Christian fellowship as such. Indeed, from Paul’s point of view, the only way they can be a viable alternative to the world is for them to be in the world, but not of it (cf. John 17:15–16). To be that alternative, however, they must discipline those wishing to belong to the fellowship but who at the same time insist on continuing their former pagan practices. And with that, and in order to press home his present concern, Paul presents them with an expanded list of sinful practices that lie outside the purview of legitimate activities for followers of the Crucified One, for people who are now filled with the Spirit. The list itself is the first of two in this letter (see 6:10–11 below), and of several in his later letters.

The content of that former letter can only be surmised. The way Paul mentions the next three items (greedy, swindlers, idolators), plus the evidence from the rest of the present letter, suggests that it included at least these items. For example, the argument regarding “idol food” (chaps. 8–10) indicates that the previous letter had already dealt with the special problem of “idolatry” addressed there, namely the insistence on the right of believers to continue to attend meals at the pagan temples.

Perhaps the more surprising items for later readers are “the greedy and swindlers,” surprising because for many North American believers such sins seem less egregious than sexual immorality or idolatry, and certainly less culpable of exclusion from the Christian community. But the ancient world, both pagan and Judeo-Christian, had a special loathing for avarice that hundreds of years of legitimized greed in our culture have mitigated. “Greed,” usually translated “covetousness” and called “idolatry” in a later letter (Col. 3:5), means not just to desire what is not one’s own, but often carries the sense of carrying through on the desire to the point of defrauding or taking advantage of someone else. Thus one way in which avarice expresses itself is through robbery or swindling. Since “the greedy and swindlers” here are joined by an “and,” suggesting that in this instance they reflect a single difficulty, Paul is almost certainly at this point anticipating the problem he will address next (6:1–11) and thus is already serving warning on the one who caused the legal action to become necessary in the first place. What is less clear is how this may already have been addressed in the first letter. It should be noted that all three of these sins—sexual immorality, idolatry, and greed—were particularly prevalent in the Corinth of the mid-fifties A.D.

11 So that there will be no further possibility of misunderstanding, Paul proceeds to outline his former position in explicit terms. “But now I am writing to insist that you must not associate with any who consider themselves to be part of the family—a brother or sister—but who continue to behave in the ways spoken of in the former letter.” Paul is not advocating that only the sinless can be members of the Christian community; rather, he is concerned about those who persist in the very activities from which they have been freed through the sacrifice of the Paschal Lamb (v. 7). Followers of the crucified Messiah (1:18) belong to the new era; their lives have been invaded by the Holy Spirit. They are therefore to “celebrate the Feast,” that is, to live out on a continuing basis the ethics of the new people of God. They are to look like their Lord in their behavior, for which purpose the example of the apostle has been given to them (4:16–17). Because in Christ all things are new by the Spirit (2 Cor. 5:14–17), those who belong to Christ must put off their former way of life (Col. 3:5–11). Those who persist in that former way of life, not meaning those who simply struggle with former sins, essentially do not belong to this new community. By their own actions they have opted out; the community must distance itself from such people for its own sake. This is not the rigorism of a Tertullian; it is a reflection of the essential nature of the community of the Spirit, which is to be different from the world in which it lives.

To the four sins already mentioned (v. 10), two more are now added, and “the greedy” and “swindlers” are separated. This is the first of the so-called vice lists in the Pauline letters. Such lists were a common feature of Hellenistic Judaism, and they will regularly recur in Paul’s letters in a variety of contexts. Although the preceding list of four items (v. 10) seems especially related to Paul’s relationship to the Corinthians, there is no evidence that the additional items here or in the next list (6:9–10) are so to be understood. What is noteworthy again is how characteristic of Corinth the present list is.

The word “slanderer” covers all forms of verbal abuse—to malign, revile, slander—and reflects the kind of coarse talk often associated with the rabble. The more difficult word for us is “drunkards,” especially in cultures where there is extensive alcoholism. Here is a situation where the church should be a place of healing, not of rejection. Ancients seldom reflect on those whom we would call alcoholic. By and large, we are dealing with “wine cultures,” in which the abstainer is the rare person, and is seldom admired for such. In fact the pagan world in general had very little to say in a negative way about drunkenness, except as it led to other vices—violence, public scolding of servants, unseemly sexuality. Even in Judaism what is said against drunkenness assumes the regular use of wine with meals and is generally more concerned with other behavior to which drunkenness itself leads. What is in view here is almost certainly that kind of person who is regularly given to drunkenness and the various forms of carousing with which it is associated.

The intent of the final prohibition, “Do not even eat with such people,” is not certain. At the very least it means that the incestuous man is to be excluded from Christian fellowship meals, including the Lord’s Table (see on 11:17–34). As in Jude 12, such a person would be “a blemish on their love-feasts.” The question is whether eating meals in more private circumstances is also in view. It is arguable that limiting it to the Lord’s Table would make the “not even” unnecessary; that is, one may assume that he would not partake of the table; they are “not even” to carry on ordinary social intercourse with him. However, Paul’s concern throughout does not seem to be that the church as individual members dissociate from the incestuous man, but that he be excluded from the community as it gathers for worship and instruction. Although this cannot be finally resolved, the similar text about dissociation in his earlier letter (2 Thess. 3:15) implies that private fellowship may not have been included in the ban.

12–13 The argument is basically over. With these short sentences, Paul concludes both the present paragraph and the entire section. The theme of “judging” dominates, in the same sense that the verb was used of Paul’s action at the beginning (v. 3). On the one hand, this is what the church must be about in the case of the incestuous man; on the other hand, they may not be about the kind of litigious “judging” that is about to be addressed in 6:1–11. The quatrain of sentences is given in nicely balanced pairs, with an AB/AB structure. First (v. 12) there are two rhetorical questions about those whom the church does not and does “judge,” and these questions are given their appropriate responses in the two statements that follow (v. 13).

The first question picks up the earlier motif of their “misunderstanding” the former letter (vv. 9–10). “What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church?” The “mine” in this sentence is the unemphatic “me” and implies that Paul is not dealing with himself personally, but with himself as he represents the Christian community. Neither he nor they are to pass sentence on the people of the world in their present existence. The reason for that is simple: “God will judge those outside”; and God’s judgment is still future, a judgment in which the church will also participate (6:2). But for now, the church takes the world as they find it. As God’s temple in the “world,” they are to offer a striking alternative to the world, and in that sense the church must always be “judging” the world. But it is not ours to bring sentence against those who belong to another worldview, to another age altogether. The time for that judgment is coming.

Exactly the opposite, however, must prevail within the Christian community itself. “Are you not to judge those inside?” This, of course, is what the entire passage has been arguing, in the actual sentence that appears at the beginning (vv. 3–5), as well as in the analogy that followed (vv. 6–7) and in the present clarification of the former letter (v. 11). Therefore, the final word is expressed in language borrowed from the Septuagint of Deuteronomy (17:7): “Expel the wicked person from among you.” Since there is no citation formula in this case, one cannot be sure either of Paul’s intent (was he concluding his own judgments by citing Scripture?) or whether the Corinthians would/could have recognized it as such. In any case, whether recognized by them or not, he uses biblical language as his concluding word, and very likely intended it to be heard as such. Thus the section concludes the way it began. The believing community must act responsibly, and boasting is not responsible. For their own sake, as well as for his, they are to put the incestuous man outside, meaning at the least to exclude him from their community meals.

This passage presents more than its share of difficulties for believers in the twenty-first century: How does one reconcile these last words (vv. 12–13) with the teaching of Jesus (Matt. 7:1–5)? or with Paul earlier in this letter (4:3)? And how does one reconcile it with what follows immediately (6:2)? Let us begin by noting what seems unmistakable: Paul is not a separatist, at least not in the ordinary ascetic sense of that word, which is one of the hallmarks of sectarian groups. The Pauline principle is simple: Free association outside the church, precisely because God, not the church, judges those on the outside; but strict discipline within the church, because in its free association with the world it may not take on the character of the world in which it freely lives.

It does not take too much observation to note that all too often the opposites have tended to prevail in the church. On the one hand are those who advocate the strictest separation from the world, but who allow many of the sins Paul condemns (vv. 10–11) to thrive in their midst (e.g., greed, slander). On the other hand are some who adopt the Corinthian attitude almost totally, usually on the basis that “all are sinners, after all.” Thus they live in the world as those who would also be of the world, so that the distinctions between those “inside” and those “outside” are razor-thin, if they exist at all. In such cases the church ends up judging neither those inside nor those outside. The key to reformation still lies with the work of the Spirit, and with our heeding the indicative-imperative relationship expressed in the preceding paragraph (v. 7).

Finally, Paul is not dealing with the kind of “judging” disallowed by Jesus, where the person with a beam in their own eye condemns the one with merely a mote. Jesus was dealing with personal criticism of one’s brother or sister, which is always disallowed, even by Paul (cf. 4:3). This is dealing with persistent wrongdoing of a kind wherein someone wants to have it both ways, to belong to the Christian community without leaving one’s former behavior behind. Such persistence demands discipline for the sake of both the person involved and the community.

The apparent contradiction with 6:2 is resolved eschatologically. We do not pass sentence on the world, because that is God’s prerogative alone. But when God does pass sentence, those who belong to God, God’s redeemed people, are going to be involved in the process.

Paul concludes the previous argument by insisting that the church is not to judge those “outside” but must judge those “inside.” That had to do first of all with the expulsion of the incestuous man; but it also has to do with another kind of “judgment” that must take place within the Christian community, namely in matters of everyday life where one member has a grievance against another. He now turns to such a matter, one apparently reported to him. The Corinthian believers seem to have everything in reverse order. If God’s people do not “judge” those outside (5:12), neither do they go outside with inside affairs!

In this case the problem seems basically easy to reconstruct. Apparently one brother (Man A) had in some way defrauded another (Man B). To redress his grievances Man B took Man A before the civil magistrates at the bēma (“judgment seat”), which was located out in the open in the heart of the marketplace (cf. Acts 18:12–17). Such an event as this is thus a defeat for the church in every way (v. 7), for the community as a whole as well as for the two brothers involved.

The whole scene fills Paul with indignation, so much so that there is scarcely any argument at all. Indeed, the whole passage is punctuated by a series of “Do you not know?” questions that indicate something as to the high level of pure frustration with them he is experiencing over this matter in particular. Thus he alternates between statements of horror (vv. 1 and 6), rhetorical questions (vv. 2–4, 5b–6, 7b), sarcasm (v. 5), and finally threat (vv. 8–11). As in the preceding matter, the heavier artillery is aimed at the community itself for allowing such a thing to happen at all. They are addressed in a series of rhetorical questions (vv. 2–6) that include the most biting sarcasm in the letter (v. 5). Finally (v. 7b), he briefly addresses Man B with rhetorical questions, challenging him with the ethics of Christ. At the end (vv. 8–10) he finally warns both Man A and the church as a whole that those who act as he has are in grave danger of forfeiting their inheritance of the kingdom. But as usual for Paul, the threat is followed by a word of assurance (v. 11), which at the same time also functions as an invitation to repentance.

Although the passage bristles with Paul’s apostolic authority, it seems to be less a reassertion of that authority than was true of what immediately preceded (5:1–13). Here the aggravation comes from two factors: (1) that the Corinthian believers have so little self-understanding as to who they are in Christ (vv. 2–4), and (2) that this action so totally destroys the community before the world (v. 6). As always in Paul, but with clear and forceful articulation here, the eschatological framework of his thinking and of the church’s existence is the presupposition of the whole.

Finally, the question of the sociological dimension of the problem needs to be noted, even if conclusive answers cannot be given. While nothing in the immediate context indicates the nature of the problem, the apparently heavy emphasis on thievery (greed, cheating) in the following paragraphs (vv. 7 and 10) suggests that it is related to material possessions. If so, then very likely the two men are among the few in the congregation who have property. That also suggests that they very likely were leaders in the community, which would exacerbate the problem all the more. How this might be further related to the quarrels addressed at the beginning (chaps. 1–4) and to the anti-Paul sentiment on the part of so many is moot, but the possibility of such appears to be a live option. Beyond these observations almost everything else is speculative, as full of interest as some of this might be. For example, if one were to make the sociological dimension to be superior, as some have argued, then one could make a great deal of sense of the relational factors involved, which will be noted in due course. Nonetheless, it does not seem to be the commentator’s prerogative to take sides on such issues where certainty still lies beyond us, but merely to point out how these various options might play out among the believers in Corinth.

1If any of you has a dispute with another, do you dare to take it before the ungodly for judgment instead of before the Lord’s people? 2Or do you not know that the Lord’s people will judge the world? And if you are to judge the world, are you not competent to judge trivial cases? 3Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more the things of this life! 4Therefore, if you have disputes about such matters, do you ask for a ruling from those whose way of life is scorned in the church? 5I say this to shame you. Is it possible that there is nobody among you wise enough to judge a dispute between believers? 6But instead, one brother takes another to court—and this in front of unbelievers!

This opening paragraph is as sharp as it is abrupt. As with the preceding matter (cf. 5:1–8), it begins as though it were a word to the offender, but instead it becomes a word to the church as a whole. It is clear that for Paul the failure of the two men is primarily a failure of the entire believing community, a failure to live and behave as the eschatological people of God in their ultrapagan city. The “argument” comes basically in the form of a series of rhetorical questions, whose structure seems best understood as follows:

Q[uestion] 1 (v. 1): presents the basic ingredients of the problem

Q2-1 and Q2-2 (v. 2): A set of questions that minimizes lawsuits in the present age in light of eschatological realities

Q3-1 and Q3-2 (vv. 3–4): A set of questions that minimizes pagan courts in the light of further eschatological realities

Indicative 1 (v. 5a): “I say this to shame you”

Q4-1 and Q4-2 (vv. 5b–6): A set of questions designed to shame the Corinthian believers by sarcasm (the second question also recalls v. 1, with special emphasis on their doing this before pagans)

Crucial to the whole argument is Paul’s view of the church as an eschatological community, whose existence as God’s future people absolutely determines their life in the present age (see on 4:1–5). In light of these eschatological realities, matters of everyday life may be assessed as somewhat trivial, and the pagan courts that concern themselves with such trivialities are themselves trivialized. Such people have no standing at all with “the Lord’s people.” The absurdity of the Corinthian position is that God’s newly formed people will someday judge the very world before whom they are now appearing and asking for a judgment. Not only does such an action give the lie to who they are as the people of God, but it is done in the presence of unbelievers, the very people for whom the church is to exist as God’s alternative. Given Paul’s own thoroughly eschatological view of present existence, it is little wonder that this series of questions tends to emphasize the absurdity of the situation.

1 The opening salvo of Question 1 reveals both the nature of the problem and the depth of Paul’s feelings toward it. He is simply horrified by what he has heard. This is indicated by the very way the question is asked (esp. the presence of the verb first, which is difficult to put into good English): “Dare anyone, having a case against another, take it for judgment before the ungodly and not before the Lord’s people?” The gall of such a man!

Part of the difficulty for contemporary readers is that what he has done seems less of an affront to most North American (and European) Christians. The phrase translated “has a dispute” is a technical term for a lawsuit, or legal action; and the verb krinō (“judge”) in the middle voice can carry the sense of “going to law,” or “bringing something for judgment,” as it does here. Thus we are dealing with a recurring phenomenon in human society, namely that someone who has been wronged seeks adjudication in the courts. The problem for Paul in this case is that it was brought “before the ungodly instead of before the Lord’s people.” The reason for the depth of Paul’s horror is brought out in the ensuing sets of questions.

The action for which Paul argues, that such matters be brought before “the Lord’s people,” reflects the apostle’s Jewish heritage, but his reasons will be new. By his referring to such adjudicants as “the ungodly” (adikoi, lit. “unjust”), one cannot be sure whether or not Paul intended by this to demean the Roman courts—to which he himself had recourse more than once—as if they were corrupt. The substitution of “unbelievers” in the identical phrase at the end of this opening barrage (v. 6) suggests that this is its basic intent here as well. Moreover, Paul regularly uses adikoi to refer to those who break God’s laws, and therefore it comes to mean something close to “ungodly,” or “unrighteous” (NRSV). In this instance the choice of words is predicated on the special eschatological realities to which he is about to appeal. They are the “unrighteous,” who in contrast to “the Lord’s people” will not inherit the kingdom of God (v. 9). Indeed, they will themselves be judged by “the Lord’s people” at the great eschatological judgment (v. 3). For Paul the absurdity of this matter lies right at this point: “Here are those who will not inherit the kingdom, whom God is going to judge through God’s own people, and you are allowing matters needing ‘judgment’ to be brought before them!”

2 Although the opening question was directed toward the plaintiff (Man B), the rest of the paragraph is addressed to the whole community for its own failure in allowing this to have happened in the first place. Paul begins (vv. 2–4) with two sets of questions, both introduced by the rhetorical formula “Do you not know that?” (see on 3:16), and both giving the new, theological grounds for not going before the ungodly: not because Christians are exclusive (cf. 5:9–10), but because they are an eschatological people, who will themselves be involved in God’s final judgments on the world. Thus we have another wordplay on “judging” (cf. 4:3–5, 7). Formerly they were “judging” (“investigating”) Paul, which was disallowed in light of God’s final “judgment.” Here they are “judging” in the courts (vv. 1, 6), which is disallowed because of the participation of the Lord’s people in the final “judging” of the world. Whether the Corinthians would have previously known the specifics of these presuppositions is a moot point. In either case, the presuppositions speak of a reality larger than their details, for which the Corinthians may be held accountable. Here is a clear illustration of the “already but not yet” framework of Pauline theology. The future realities, which for Paul are as certain as the present itself, condition everything the church is and does in the present.

The first eschatological presupposition (Q2–1) most likely picks up a motif from Jewish apocalyptic eschatology: “the Lord’s people will judge the world.” The motif begins with the LXX of Dan. 7:22, “. . . judgment was given to ‘the saints’ of the Most High.” It was thereafter picked up in a whole variety of texts, including Qumran. Paul does not explain what this now means in the Christian context, nor does anyone else in the NT; rather, it is something assumed to have carried over and is here simply asserted as the presupposition of the second question in the set (Q2–2). In some ways it sounds contradictory to what has just preceded (5:12a). The difference lies in perspective. In the former sentence Paul was speaking of present judgments on the people who make up the world, which were none of his business. Here he is speaking of the final judgment on “the world” as a whole, the entire anti-God system of things that will come under God’s judgment, in which God’s people are in some way to be involved.

Given this eschatological reality, Paul makes his first point: the triviality of lawsuits in the present age. The “Lord’s people” are now identified as “you,” God’s people in Corinth. The apodosis of this sentence reads literally, “Are you unworthy of the most insignificant tribunals?” This means either (1) “Are you unfit to form even the most insignificant courts?” or (2) “Are you not competent to judge trivial cases?” The problem lies with the word kritērion, which properly means a court of justice; but there is sufficient evidence that it also denotes the legal action itself, which seems preferable here. In the first instance the emphasis is on the community’s failure to function as the proper “tribunal” for such “judgments.” In the second the emphasis lies on the “trifling nature” (NEB) of the present lawsuit. This latter seems better to fit Paul’s point in the eschatological presupposition, which is not that of trying to shame the community into handling such matters in the present in light of the future, but of trying to shame them for having lawsuits at all. Such matters are “trivial”; they add up to zero in light of the coming eschatological judgment. People who do such are simply after the wrong things; they altogether miss the meaning of their present existence as the people of God, people who live in the present by the values of the future.

3–4 The next question (Q3–1) asserts the second eschatological presupposition: “Do you not know that we will judge angels?” This probably reflects an apocalyptic motif regarding the judgment of fallen angels, and it thereby intensifies the point of what was just said (v. 2). So inclusive will be our participation in God’s eschatological judgment that not only the world but even the angels will be judged by the newly formed eschatological people of God.

All are basically agreed on the punctuation to this point, but with the next phrase, “not to mention everyday affairs,” interpreters begin to differ. The NIV and most English translations separate it from the preceding question and make it an exclamation: “How much more the things of this life!” Grammatically, however, it most likely belongs to the question itself: “Do you not know that we will judge angels, not to mention everyday affairs?” The reason for translators’ breaking it from the question seems clear enough: Paul has begun to move from eschatological judgments to temporal ones and thus to the case at hand, all in the same sentence. His point is: “In the eschaton we will sit in on ultimate judgments—even on angels—which of course means that I need not even mention the fact that we should also be able to handle ‘mere matters of business.’ ” The latter term (NIV “the things of this life”) is not ordinarily pejorative. What gives it such a sense here is not that one should not engage in everyday affairs, but that these matters should not hold a place of such significance in the lives of those who belong to a different age that they lead to (result in/end up in) lawsuits among believers!

In the next question (Q3-2, [v. 4]) two words from the previous clauses (“cases,” v. 2; “matters of this life,” v. 3) are joined as adjective and noun: “Therefore, if you have disputes about such matters. . . .” But the rest of the sentence presents considerable difficulties: first, whether it is a question or an imperative; second, the meaning of the verb; and third, who is intended by the designation “those of little account” (lit. “those who are despised”): believers or the pagan judges. There are two basic solutions:

(1) The original NIV had followed a long interpretive tradition by making the clause an ironic imperative. In such a case the verb would have to take the meaning “appoint judges” (thus “ask for a ruling”) and the object would refer to insiders, “those of little account” within the church itself. However, this interpretation faces the nearly insuperable twin difficulties (a) of having an imperative appear as the final word in a sentence, a grammatical oddity in almost any language, but especially so in an instance where irony is the intent, and (b) of Paul’s using such pejorative language—even in irony—to speak of fellow believers (see below).

(2) The alternative, also adopted by a long line of scholars and translations (including the present NIV), is to see the sentence as a question and the object as outsiders, “those whose way of life is scorned in the church” (cf. NEB, “outsiders, men who count for nothing in our community”). The structure of the whole paragraph, and especially of the two eschatological arguments, seems to favor this point of view. The two sets of questions are thus basically balanced pairs:

Q2-1—Do you not know that (A)?

Q2-2—If (A) is true, then why (B)?

Q3-1—Do you not know that (C), not to mention (D)?

Q3-2—If (D) does happen, then why (E)?

In the final question there has been a shift in the protasis from the eschatological supposition to what is actually happening in Corinth; but the predicate that makes the action in (E) absurd is still the eschatological reason given in (C). This makes excellent sense of the structure of the argument, and it explains the reasons for the slight shifts between the two sets of questions.

But this view is not without difficulties. The first concerns the verb, which ordinarily means “to appoint judges.” The objection is that believers “had no voice in the appointment of judges.” But this problem is minimal, since there is sufficient evidence that the verb also means “to sit for a judgment, or make a ruling.” The latter seems to be the intent here; Paul is scarcely concerned in the midst of this kind of rhetoric to establish rules for Christian jurisprudence.

The more difficult item is the object, “those held in disdain” (“whose way of life is scorned in the church,” NIV); but this is true for either interpretation. In fact, as noted before, it is difficult to imagine Paul, even in irony, so referring to fellow believers—especially in light of his plain statements later on (12:21–25), where he attempts to disabuse the Corinthians of viewing the body of Christ in such a way. Furthermore, the frequent attempt to soften this to “those who have no standing in the church” simply has no lexical basis. In the view adopted here, Paul would not mean that Christians despise the pagan judges—that, too, is a totally un-Pauline view—but that they are those people whose values and judgments the church has rejected by its adoption of totally different standards. To go to pagan courts is to ask those who have absolutely “no standing within the church” (GNB, NAB) to make a ruling among God’s people, which has been determined by eschatological verities through Christ.

If this is the correct understanding, then with this set of questions Paul is trivializing the pagan courts in the same way that he had trivialized the affair itself (v. 2): “In light of our existence in Christ and our participation in the eschatological judgments, how can one care about such trifling matters in the first place, and in any case how can one bring them before those who have no standing in the church and therefore will not have a share in those judgments?”

5 With the first indicative in the paragraph, “I say this to shame you” (cf. 15:34), Paul punctuates the point of the first two sets of questions. Earlier (4:14) he had maintained that his object was not to shame them, but to warn them. Here the object is shame, pure and simple. His point, of course, is that the matter itself shames them; and in light of their eschatological existence their failure to have acted shames them. In case they have not understood that, he now says it outright.

But the word of shame also points forward to the next question (Q4–1). In a church full of pride and arrogance, where “wisdom,” suggesting superior spirituality, was something of a watchword, “is it so with you that there is nobody among you who is sophos (“wise”), so that they might render a decision between the brothers?” This is biting sarcasm, which scarcely needs further comment. As with so much that has been said up to this point, Paul is trying to help the Corinthians see their true condition over against their perceived one. A trial between two brothers before pagan courts is no “innocent” matter; it reveals how lacking in truly Christian wisdom they are, and therefore how poorly they understand their true place in Christ, not to mention that they themselves are disciples of one who was condemned by the authorities, a “crucified Messiah” (1:18).

6 Not only so, but all of this happens out in the open at the bēma, so that (lit.) “brother with brother is being judged, and this before unbelievers.” It is not certain whether this sentence is designed to be an exclamation (as in the NIV) or a question (NRSV, NEB, NAB). The meaning is the same in either case. What favors a question is the conjunction “but,” which would function as the second part of a “not . . . but” formula, which is so frequent in Paul’s style. On the other hand, in English Paul’s own point is perhaps made a bit stronger by way of an exclamation.

As at the outset (v. 1) the prepositional phrase “in front of unbelievers” involves bringing such matters before the civil magistrates in Corinth. But here the emphasis lies with the fact that the church is thereby airing its dirty linen in the public forum. This concern is not often expressed in Paul (cf. 10:32; 1 Thess. 4:11–12), although it becomes a major factor in the ethical imperatives in the Pastoral Epistles (cf. 1 Tim. 6:2; Tit. 2:8, 10; 3:1). As with so many items in this letter, the earlier imagery of the church as God’s temple in Corinth (3:16–17) dominates his perspective, even if it is not always expressed. The tragic thing for Paul is that members of the believing community, God’s only alternative to pagan Corinth, are doing this in the open court, just as though there were no real difference between the people of God and unbelievers. Later readers should have small wonder that Paul is more than a little miffed, and if they do not have such wonder, it says more about their understanding of themselves and of the church than they themselves are able to recognize.

This is obviously still a very difficult word for believers in English-speaking North America. Not only do most of us not generally think and live within the NT’s eschatological categories, but our values tend to place such a high priority on property that a number of hermeneutical ploys have been established to get around the plain sense of the text. There are simply too many of us with vested interests in the present age for us to have any desire to hear it applied to the contemporary church. This is even more so when the rhetorical questions that follow (v. 7) are also kept in view. So much is this true that some (e.g., Mare) spend most of their time trying to justify actions that are openly contrary to what the text says. But a few hermeneutical remarks should be made.

First, the two great urgencies for Paul are the church’s self-understanding as God’s eschatological people and its witness before the world. The difficulties with our “hearing” this text are related primarily to our general lack of such a biblical self-understanding, especially in terms of the essential eschatological framework of our existence as the people of the future who are to be totally conditioned by that future as we live in the present. Therefore, our priorities tend to be warped toward the values of this age rather than of the age to come. Here we have great need of deep reformation. Most legal actions on the part of Christians are predicated on “rights” and “the pursuit of property” in the present age. Until our thinking is genuinely overhauled on these matters, our approach to the text will be supine neglect, circuitous exegesis, or canon law (the latter is not wrong; rather, it allows people to relegate the text to church jurisprudence and thereby dismiss its implications for our self-understanding).

Second, in terms of specifics, it needs to be noted that the text is dealing with a matter between two believers as they take it before the public courts for settlement. On this matter Paul’s responses in the next paragraph are particularly relevant. What the text does not deal with is a Christian’s response to pagans who defraud them. But even here there are Christian ways of responding, of which public litigation would hopefully be the last resort. In light of our eschatological outlook, one should always be prepared to ask why one would do so. If it is out of concern for the one who defrauded and for all others who might be so taken in, then one’s action might seem fully justified. But if it is for the sake of one’s own possessions alone, then the question that surely needs to be asked would be about proper motives and priorities.

Finally, one should be alert to the significance of how Paul concludes the present argument—with another, in this case considerably expanded, “sin list” (cf. 5:11 above), which covers enough ground to make one think Paul is holding this up as a kind of mirror in which they are to see themselves, as to whether they need a divine makeover or not.

7The very fact that you have lawsuits among you means you have been completely defeated already. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated? 8Instead, you yourselves cheat and do wrong, and you do this to your brothers and sisters. 9Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men 10nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. 11And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

men who have sex with men translates two Greek words that refer to the passive and active participants in homosexual acts

Paul now turns his attention directly to the two men involved in the litigation, speaking to them in such a way that the entire community is also addressed. The actions of both men are a total defeat, shaming both the church and themselves (v. 7a). Far better, Paul argues by way of rhetoric, for the man who initiated the proceedings to conform to the nonretaliation ethic of the Christian faith (v. 7b). Using the same verb from the preceding sentence, but now in the active, he next shames the defendant (v. 8), who did the cheating in the first place. Paul then proceeds to warn him (and the church) that those who do such things are in danger of forfeiting their inheritance (vv. 9–10). But as before (5:7), the imperative, though it comes first in the argument, must, as always in Paul, be understood as following the indicative, which in this case comes finally at the very end (v. 11) in the form of an affirmation of their conversion.

Although the deeds of the two men are primarily in view, the entire passage is written in the second person plural, thus broadening the perspective to include the entire believing community, especially so in the final question (v. 9) and its follow-up explanation (vv. 10–11). The connection of this final material with the accusation (v. 8) is made with both the conjunction “or” (“or do you not know?”) and the word “wicked” (the same word as “ungodly” in v. 1), which is the noun of the preceding verb “do wrong” (vv. 7–8). This broadening of the perspective in these final verses has the effect of moving the text away from the individuals who have sinned to the larger problems that afflict them all, to which Paul will speak once again in what follows immediately (vv. 12–20).

7 From the preceding word of shame on the whole community (vv. 5–6), who have disregarded their own position in Christ by allowing such a thing to happen before nonbelievers, Paul turns now to shame the two litigants themselves. This opening sentence is something of a broadside against both of them. The emphasis in the Greek text, which is nearly impossible to put into good English, is on the utter defeat that this action represents: “Already (i.e., whatever the result of the lawsuit) it is altogether a defeat to you, that you have lawsuits with one another.” Paul’s point is directed especially at Man B (the plaintiff): “Whether you win or lose, the action itself is already a loss. For even if you win, you lose by not being able to endure injury, and the church loses by your action before the public tribunal.” From this he will proceed to the rhetorical questions, which imply that by enduring “loss” the plaintiff would have truly “won.” At the same time the sentence anticipates the words to Man A (the defendant) that follow (vv. 8–10): “By your wrongdoing which precipitated the lawsuit, you, too, have suffered defeat; for even if you have gained some temporal advantage, you stand in greater danger of losing your eternal inheritance.” Thus, even before a verdict is reached in the court, the action itself is an utter defeat for all parties.

Since this is so, he asks the plaintiff rhetorically, “Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated?” Why not, indeed! For one living in the old age, where selfishness in all of its sordid as well as domesticated forms still rules, one can give a score of reasons why not; but they all begin with the word “but” (as in, “But you don’t know what he did to me”) and are motivated by some form of self-protection or self-gain. This is another sure instance of the influence of the teaching of Jesus on Paul (cf. 4:16–17). Paul regularly enjoins that one not return evil for evil (1 Thess. 5:15; Rom. 12:17), a direct reflection of the teaching and example of Jesus (see on 4:12–13). By “overcoming” evil with good, even if it meant personal loss, this brother not only could have staved off real defeat, but could have experienced the greater “gain” of Christian ethics: by enduring undeserved injury he enters into the real meaning of the cross (cf. 1 Pet. 2:19–21).

The two verbs help us only a little to discover the nature of the wrongdoing. The first one, “be wronged,” is the verb for the noun translated “ungodly” at the outset (v. 1; and “wicked” in v. 9). It covers the whole range of activity that injures or does injustice to another person. What was first applied to outsiders has now been brought to bear on their own behavior. The second verb, “be cheated,” tends to narrow the perspective to “robbing, cheating, defrauding” someone out of what is rightfully theirs (cf. 7:5). This word in particular suggests that some kind of property or business dealing is the problem. It also gives substance to the words “the greedy and swindlers” in the vice list that concluded the preceding rhetoric (5:10–11), and will soon be repeated here (v. 10).

8 Without breaking stride, and using the strong adversative, Paul turns next to speak a word of shame to the one who did the defrauding in the first place. The repetition of the two verbs from the preceding rhetoric (v. 7), now changed from the middle/passive to the active, implies that the one whose defrauding of a brother precipitated all this in the first place is primarily in view. Nonetheless the emphatic “you” (plural) that begins the sentence suggests that Paul is now broadening the perspective to speak once more to the church as a whole: “But even you, though all of you should know better and not be like them, are just like the pagans who surround you. You have greed and fraud (not to mention sexual immorality and idolatry) going on in your own midst, and that with fellow believers (brothers or sisters).” The implication of the warning that follows is that such behavior is not only shameful but simply cannot be tolerated in the believing community.

9–10 With these sentences Paul ties together a number of items from both the preceding argument (5:1–13) and the immediately preceding rhetoric (6:1–8). The first sentence flows directly out of the immediately preceding volley (vv. 7–8) with another rhetorical “Or do you not know that?” (cf. vv. 2 and 4 above). Likewise, with the word adikoi (“wrongdoers”) Paul ties these words of warning to the “wrongdoing” that has preceded, and at the same time ties both to the question with which this all began (v. 1). In so doing he specifies the “sins” in personal terms, thus naming those who commit such sins, as over against listing the sins as such. The “wrongdoers” mentioned at the beginning (v. 1) are those in the world who are going to be judged by the Lord’s people (v. 2), a judgment now expressed in terms of their not inheriting the kingdom. Here is a piece of eschatological teaching about which one can be sure the Corinthians had previously been informed: “The ‘wrongdoer’ will not inherit the kingdom of God.” This of course refers to the eschatological consummation of the kingdom that is “not yet,” just as the same phrase earlier (4:20) referred to the kingdom as it is “already” being realized in the present age. The failure of the wicked to “inherit the kingdom of God” is the other side of their being judged (v. 2); this is what that judgment leads to.

Paul’s point in all this is to warn “the Lord’s people,” not only the man who has wronged his brother but the whole community, that if they persist in the same evils as “the wrongdoers,” they are in the same danger of not inheriting the kingdom. Some theologies have great difficulty with such warnings, implying that they are essentially hypothetical, since God’s children cannot be “disinherited.” But such a theology fails to take seriously the genuine tension of texts like this one. The warning is real; the wicked will not inherit the kingdom. That first of all applies to those outside the community of faith. Paul’s concern is that the Corinthians must “stop deceiving themselves” or “allowing themselves to be deceived.” By persisting in the same behavior as those already destined for judgment they are placing themselves in the very real danger of that same judgment. If it were not so, then the warning is no warning at all. Paul’s own response to such, of course, comes next (v. 11), in which he invites them to change their behavior by reminding them that they do indeed belong to God through the gracious work of Christ and the Spirit.

The warning character of this passage is supported by yet another tie to what has gone before: the fact that Paul defines “the ungodly” in terms of the six sins from the preceding list (5:10–11)—to which he now adds four more. The list here begins with two from before, “the sexually immoral” and “idolaters,” which in turn reflect the problems addressed in what has immediately preceded (5:1–13) and will soon follow (sexual immorality; 6:12–20), and that which will be taken up next (idolatry; 8:1–11:1). These are followed by the four new items, three of which are sexual (“adulterers, men who have sex with men” [two words in the Greek text referring to the active and passive partners in such a relationship]) and therefore tie in with the material that has immediately preceded (chap. 5). The other, “thieves,” belongs to the matters of the present section (although it ordinarily refers to actual robbery rather than to the kind of underhanded stealing suggested by our word “defraud”).

The word “adulterers” means precisely that (married persons having sexual relations—of any kind—outside marriage) and needs no further comment. The next two words, however, translated “male prostitutes” and “homosexual offenders” in the original NIV, require considerable comment, as reflected in the long note in the present NIV. The first word, malakoi, has the basic meaning of “soft”; but it also became a pejorative epithet for men who were “soft” or “effeminate,” most likely referring to the younger, “passive” partner in a pederastic relationship—the most common form of homosexuality in the Greco-Roman world. In many instances young men sold themselves as “mistresses” for the sexual pleasure of men older than themselves. The problem is that there was a technical word for such men, and malakos is seldom, if ever, so used. Since it is not the ordinary word for such homosexual behavior, one cannot be sure what it means in a list like this, where there is no further context to help. What is certain is that it refers to behavior of some kind, not simply to an attitude or characteristic.

What makes “male prostitute” (in the sense of “effeminate call-boy”) the best guess is that it is immediately followed by a word that almost certainly refers to male homosexuality, especially to the active partner. This word (arsenokoitai), however, is likewise difficult, in that this is its first appearance in preserved literature, and subsequent authors are reluctant to use it, especially when describing homosexual activity. The word is a compound of “male” and “intercourse.” There is no question as to the meaning of the koitai part of the word; it is vulgar slang for “intercourse” (which probably accounts for its seldom being found in the literature). What is not certain is whether “male” is subject (= “males who have intercourse”; thus a word for male prostitutes of all kinds) or object (= “intercourse with males”; therefore male homosexual). In light of these ambiguities, Boswell had argued that neither word can with certainty be made to denote homosexuality. His argument, however, seemed to be a case of “divide and conquer.” What may be true of the words individually is one thing. But here they are not individual; they appear side by side in a vice list that is heavily weighted toward sexual sins. Although one cannot be certain, and even though it is quite impolitic to suggest as much in our contemporary culture, it is very likely that the original NIV had moved in a generally right direction by rendering the two words “male prostitute” and “homosexual offender,” with the proviso that “male prostitute” most likely denoted a consenting homosexual youth. For Paul’s attitude toward homosexual practice in general, one need refer only to his own Jewish background with its abhorrence of such, plus his description of such activity in a later letter (Rom. 1:26–27).

After these additional four items, Paul concludes with an additional five from the prior lists (5:10 and 11, q.v.). Again he repeats: Those who do such things, meaning those who persist in such sins, will not inherit the kingdom. The implication of the warning to believers themselves seems patent. But as always in Paul, warning or imperative is not the last—nor the first—word. What he says here must be kept in tension with what is said next by way of conclusion.

11 Paul can hardly bring himself to conclude on the preceding note of warning (vv. 8–10), especially since it might leave the impression that the Corinthians were actually still among “the wicked.” Thus he brings this whole matter to a conclusion by reaffirming: “And that is [= these things are] what some of you were.” This sentence, therefore, functions in a way similar to the indicative in a preceding moment (5:7, “Christ our Passover Lamb has been sacrificed”). In the same way the imperative in that passage was intended to be taken seriously, so too with the warning in this one. But the predicate in each case is God’s prior action in Christ Jesus. The foregoing list is what the wicked are like still, and because of that they will not inherit God’s kingdom. Those who persist in the same activities are in similar danger. “But that is what some of you were. Now in Christ Jesus you are something different, so live like it. Accordingly, stop defrauding, living in sexual sin, etc., because you are no longer among those who do.”

Thus Paul signs off with the soteriological basis for this premise: “But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” As such it is also one of the more important theological statements in the epistle. Paul’s concern is singular: “Your own conversion, effected by God through the work of Christ and the Spirit, is what has removed you from being among the wicked, who will not inherit the kingdom of God.” By implication there is an inherent imperative: “Therefore, live out this new life in Christ and stop being like the wicked,” a rather typical expression of Paul’s basic stance regarding the relationship of ethics to grace, which, roughly put, is an imperative for them to “become what you are by grace.” One should perhaps also note that, in this second occurrence of the term in this letter (see on 4:20 above), Paul here emphasizes the “not yet” aspect of the kingdom that was assumed to be clearly “present” in its first occurrence.

The structure of the sentence seems certain. It begins with three verbs, each introduced with the strong adversative “but,” which gives additional force to the “once you were, but now you are not” emphasis of the sentence. As before (1:30), the three verbs are primarily metaphors of salvation, each expressing a special facet of their conversion in light of the preceding sentences: they had been “washed” from the filth of their former lifestyles expressed in the preceding list; they had been “sanctified,” set apart by God for holy, godly living that stands in stark contrast to their former wickedness; though formerly “unjust,” they had been justified, so that now being right with God they may inherit the kingdom that before they could not. Each of the verbs is thus chosen for contextual, not dogmatic, reasons; and their sequence is theologically irrelevant. “Washed” probably comes first because it most naturally follows the “filth” of the vice catalogue. Finally, since the three verbs refer to the same reality, and since each of them has “God” as the implied subject, the two prepositional phrases are to be understood as modifying all three verbs. Paul’s understanding of the living God as Triune found in these sentences is therefore difficult to escape, even if the explication of that reality does not appear until later. Indeed, along with the implicit theology found in John’s gospel, passages like this one are the “stuff” out of which the later articulations are made. For Paul, God has effected salvation “in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit.”

It is possible, but not as certain as many interpreters imply, that the verb “you were washed” is also an allusion to baptism—similar to the possible secondary reference to the Lord’s Table in the earlier imperative “let us celebrate the Feast” (5:8). Paul does not in fact say “you were baptized,” which he was perfectly capable of doing if baptism were his concern. This verb is not used elsewhere in the NT to denote baptism (it is joined to baptism in Acts 22:16, but is not the actual verb for baptism itself). The argument most frequently used in favor of a reference to baptism, besides the connotation in the verb “washed” itself, is the association with the first prepositional phrase, “in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.” But this is to read Paul through the eyes of Luke. There are in fact two matters of usage that suggest otherwise: (1) The use of en with “baptism” does not correspond to Paul’s usage elsewhere. Indeed in the NT en with “baptize” refers to the element into which one has been baptized (cf. 12:13); with the verb “baptize” Paul uses the preposition eis: one is “baptized into the name” (cf. 1:13–15) or “into Christ” (Gal. 3:28). (2) The two prepositions and three verbs all go together; and there is no parallel in Paul’s usage to the assertion that one is “baptized in the name of Christ and in the Spirit of our God,” or that one is sanctified or justified at baptism. This is not to say that for Paul the verb may not have carried with it an indirect allusion to baptism; but it is to say that Paul is not here concerned with the Christian initiatory rite, but with the spiritual transformation made possible through Christ and effected by the Spirit. The three metaphors emphasize the aspects of Christian conversion found in the theological terms “regeneration, sanctification, and justification”; and for Paul these are the work of the Spirit in the believer’s life, not the result of baptism. Here also is another of the latent (presupposed) functional “Trinitarian” moments in Paul, made the more so in this instance by the simply assumed way all of this is expressed. They have entered “God’s kingdom” through the cleansing and regenerating work of both Christ and the Spirit.

The precise nuance of the two prepositional phrases is not certain. But since they together modify the three verbs, it seems most likely that they are both to be understood in an instrumental sense (cf. GNB, NEB). The reference to “the name” of Christ, especially the full titular use of the name (“the Lord Jesus Christ”), as before (1:10 and 5:4; cf. 2 Thess. 3:6) probably refers to the authority of Christ on behalf of the believer, especially in terms of his saving work; and the reference to the Spirit reflects Paul’s understanding of the Spirit as the means whereby God in the new age effects the work of Christ in the believer’s life. Together, then, the two prepositions refer to what has been done for God’s people in Christ, which has been effected in them by the Spirit.

Once more, therefore, as earlier (5:6–8), Paul is urging the Corinthians to become what they are; and he predicates that imperative on the prior work of Christ. In this case, however, the imperative is only implied; and the emphasis on the work of Christ is less on the objective reality of his sacrifice as on their own experience of that reality by means of the Spirit. They are to be and behave differently from the wicked, because God in mercy has already removed the stains of their past sins, has already begun the work of ethical transformation, and has already given them forgiveness and right standing with God. Although this refers primarily to the issues of incest (5:1–13) and litigation (6:1–11), it obviously functions as the basis for all the imperatives in this letter, including the one that immediately follows.

Although this entire passage is singularly addressed to the problem of two brothers appearing before the civil magistrates in Corinth, the net result for us is a marvelous blend of Pauline theology and ethics getting their workout in the marketplace, as experienced faith. Theology for Paul is not an abstraction, but the application of the gospel to life in the real world. As such this text serves as a model for working through the “tension” between the indicative and the imperative in the life of the believer. God’s people really are expected to obey the opening rhetorical questions (v. 7); and they really must take seriously the following warnings (vv. 8–10). But these are both predicated on the prior work of Christ and the application of that work to our lives by the Spirit.

For Paul there is to be the closest possible relationship between the experience of grace and one’s behavior that evidences that experience of grace. Paul himself is as concerned as anyone that the latter (right behavior) should not be perceived as coming first or as leading to the former (the experience of grace). But those who concern themselves with grace without equal concern for behavior have missed Paul’s own theological urgencies by several furlongs. It is precisely for these reasons that the warning texts in Paul must be taken with real seriousness. Security in Christ there is, to be sure, but it is a false security that would justify sinners who have never taken seriously “but such were some of you.” That is to whitewash the sinner without regeneration or transformation; Paul simply would not understand such theology.

What is most often missing in such theologies is the central ingredient in Paul, the transforming work of the Spirit. And in his case that is not simply to be understood as theological jargon. It is rather predicated on the Spirit’s coming into the world, signifying the turning of the ages, so that the realities of the future are already at work in power in the present age. The Corinthian problem was not with their experience of the Spirit, but with their misunderstanding of what it meant to be Spirit people. Our problems are usually of another kind. The Spirit belongs to the creed and to our theology but is all too often left there, so that the Spirit’s genuinely transforming and empowering work is often left until the Eschaton, rather than experienced in the process of arriving there.

12“I have the right to do anything,” you say—but not everything is beneficial. “I have the right to do anything”—but I will not be mastered by anything. 13You say, “Food for the stomach and the stomach for food, and God will destroy them both.” The body, however, is not meant for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. 14By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also. 15Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never! 16Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.” 17But whoever is united with the Lord is one with him in spirit.

18Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body. 19Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; 20you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.

Gen. 2:24

Or in the Spirit

How this section relates to what immediately precedes is not at all certain. Sexual immorality was also at the head of the preceding vice list (vv. 9–10), which included adultery as well. Apparently such matters are still in the forefront. Following his insistence (chap. 5) that the Corinthian believers remove the incestuous man—a case in which they had failed to “judge” properly, Paul turned his attention to another instance of their failure to “judge” properly—the case of two brothers going to the pagan courts for “judgment” (6:1–11). But he is not through with matters of sexual immorality; just as suddenly he returns to that question, although now the issue is quite different.

Two words dominate the present argument: porneia (“sexual immorality”) and sōma (“body”); and two clauses specifically indicate that the problem involves the two together: “the body is not meant for sexual immorality” (v. 13c); “whoever engages in sexual immorality sins against their own body” (v. 18c). But Paul’s concern is not with porneia in general. At the conclusion of the first paragraph (vv. 15–17) he argues that one may not “take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute,” implying that this is the specific expression of porneia with which Paul is here dealing. Apparently some men within the Christian community were going to prostitutes and arguing for the right to do so. Being people of the Spirit, they imply, has moved them to a higher plane, the realm of spirit, where they are unaffected by behavior that has merely to do with the body. So Paul proceeds from the prior concluding affirmation (v. 11) to a frontal attack on this theological justification of theirs.

As before, the gospel itself is at stake, not simply the resolution of an ethical question. The Corinthian pneumatics’ understanding of being people of the Spirit has allowed them a false view both of freedom (“everything is permissible”) and of the body (“God will destroy it”), from which basis they have argued that going to prostitutes is permissible because the body doesn’t matter. Paul’s response to this is in three parts: (1) He begins (vv. 12–14) by arguing directly against their false premises, first (v. 12) against their distortion of Christian freedom, and then (vv. 13–14) against their misunderstanding of the nature of the body. At the conclusion of the second rebuttal (v. 13), he makes the basic assertion that controls most of the rest of the argument: “The body is for the Lord, and the Lord for the body,” which is demonstrated by the resurrection—both Christ’s and ours (v. 14). (2) He then (vv. 15–17) builds on this theological base and argues against prostitution. They have completely missed the nature both of sexual intercourse (“the two become one flesh”) and of Christian conversion (“one is joined to the Lord so as to become one with him in S/spirit”), and that these two “unions” are mutually exclusive. (3) Finally (vv. 18–20), in case they have not yet quite heard it, he expressly forbids sexual immorality (v. 18a), but again on a theological basis—that such sin is against their own bodies (v. 18c), which in fact are no longer their own but belong to God through “divine purchase” (vv. 19–20).

Whereas much of the literature on this passage has focused on some of the specifics regarding Paul’s views of sexual irregularity, what all too often unfortunately gets lost in the barrage of words is the primary theological affirmation of the passage, that the human body is a good thing, and that the believer’s body is also to be understood as a temple—the other significant place besides the gathered assembly (3:16–17) where the Holy Spirit has chosen to dwell. It is the almost blatant ignoring of this very important point that should cause one to feel somewhat ill at ease when reading much of the scholarly literature on this passage over the past quarter of a century.

The net result is one of the more important theological passages in the NT about the human body. It should forever lay to rest the implicit dualism of so much that has been passed off as Christian, where the body is rejected, subdued, or indulged because it is of no significance for—or is even a hindrance to—“real salvation,” which has to do with the “soul.” At the same time in the current self-centeredness of so much of Western culture, Paul’s emphasis could stand to get a radical new hearing: that our individual bodies do not belong to us alone in a selfish, self-centered way; rather they belong to Christ, purchased by him through redemption and now indwelt by the Spirit so as to be God’s own sanctuary. Thus Paul here individualizes the metaphor used earlier regarding the church (3:16–17). There, the body of believers gathered in Christ’s name was seen as God’s temple, God’s dwelling place by the Spirit. Here, Paul reenvisions that reality for individual believers. Perhaps this overwhelming failure on the part of the scholarly community to come to terms with Paul’s own theological concerns at this point should lead us to repentance.

12 As in the preceding two sections, Paul comes out swinging. In contrast to those sections, however, he does not begin by attacking their illicit behavior directly; rather, he confronts the theology on which that behavior is predicated. The clause “everything is permissible for me” is almost certainly a Corinthian theological slogan. This is confirmed by the way Paul cites it again later (10:23); in both cases he qualifies it so sharply as to negate it—at least as a theological absolute. The source of the slogan is debatable. Possibly the Corinthians had turned a Pauline position into a slogan for their own purposes. If so, their error would lie in making absolute what for Paul would always have been qualified by his “in Christ” perspective. For him it is only as one is in Christ that “everything is permitted me,” and in any case that would have to do with adiaphora (the nonessentials: food, drink, days, circumcision, etc.), not with Christian ethics (how believers relate to others in the world) as such.

With this slogan we encounter for the first time in this letter another of its crucial terms, exestin/exousia/exousiazō (basically = “right to determine,” hence “authority”). Along with its companions (“wisdom,” “knowledge,” “spiritual”), this is an area of tension between the Corinthians and Paul. Later (8:9) he speaks bitingly of “this exousia of yours,” which some were using to abuse others in the matter of going to the pagan temples; and the entire argument that follows that (9:3–18) is over his own exousia to act in ways that had displeased them. What we have here, then, is a crisis of “authority” of another kind—over their “freedom to act as they pleased” without restraint. For Paul that is not freedom at all, but a form of bondage worse than before.

With the first qualifier Paul turns exousia on its head. Freedom is not to be for self but for others. The real question is not whether an action is “lawful” or “right” or even “all right,” but whether it is good, whether it benefits. In light of the full context of this section that could perhaps mean, “to one’s own benefit.” Elsewhere in this letter, however, this word denotes benefiting someone else (it is parallel with “build up” in 10:23; cf. 10:33). Probably that is what lies behind the qualification here as well. Truly Christian conduct is not predicated on whether I have the right to do something, i.e., whether it is to my own benefit or not, but whether my conduct is good, meaning ultimately helpful to those around me.

The second qualifier constitutes a wordplay on exousia— nearly impossible to carry over into English—that gets at the heart of the present matter. They are saying, “I have exousia (freedom to act) with regard to all things”; Paul qualifies, “Yes, but I will not be mastered by anything (or anybody).” At this distance one cannot be sure what Paul intends by this. Does he mean that one should not prate about “freedom” with regard to sexual sin when in fact a person is enslaved to the very thing that one is arguing to be under their own authority? In such a case, the sinner is merely self-deceived. Perhaps the “thing” Paul will not be enslaved to is exousia itself. There is a kind of self-deception that inflated spirituality promotes, which suggests to oneself that one is acting with freedom and authority, but which in fact is an enslavement of the worst kind—to the very freedom someone thinks they have. An especially attractive option, however, which ties this qualification specifically to the problem as it appears a bit later (vv. 15–16), is to understand the verb in light of its next use (7:4), its only other appearance in Paul. As the married partner “has authority over” the other’s body, so this might refer to coming under the “power” of the prostitute. That is, by being joined to her in porneia the believer constitutes someone else, outside of Christ, as the unlawful lord over one’s own body. In any case, their first slogan is simply not true—at least not as an absolute.

13–14 What comes next marks an abrupt change of direction. Paul, who has been talking about Christian freedom, suddenly shifts to the stomach and food, then moves to a theological statement about the body, followed by an affirmation of Christ’s and our resurrection. At first read, none of this seems to follow. Despite appearances, however, this is a very tight argument against the Corinthians’ position about the human body, which they appear to have brought in alongside their stance on freedom. At issue ultimately is how the Corinthians were to understand the second clause in the first sentence (v. 13a, “and God will destroy them both”). Along with other English versions (NRSV, NEB, NAB), the original NIV had taken that to be Paul’s own response to the Corinthians’ “food for the stomach and the stomach for food.” But by regarding the whole clause to have originated from Corinth, the present NIV almost certainly has moved in the right direction. That is, a part of the Corinthians’ current program was to argue that all bodily functions are generally equal, and basically irrelevant for the life of the future, so “what’s the problem?” Why not “sex for the body and the body for sex,” since both sex and the body are unrelated to the life of the future. In the end God will destroy them both.

The power of Paul’s response thus lies not with his negating their principle as such, but with his disallowing where they were prepared to go with it. In their view, as with the stomach, so the body is irrelevant in the coming kingdom of God. But not so Paul. The key for understanding lies with an analysis of the structure. Except for the crucial words of contrast in the application (v. 13, “not for sexual immorality but”), the sentences form a perfect parallelism (with chiasm in the first member of each):

Proposition I (the Corinthian position [apparently]):

1. Food

for the stomach

A B

and the stomach

for food

B A

de (“and”)

2. God will destroy

both

the one (stomach)

B

and

the other (food)

A

de (“But” = the same will not hold true for the body)

Proposition II (Paul’s counterattack):

1.The body is

[not

for sexual immorality,

but]

for the Lord

A B

and the Lord for the body

B A

de (“and”)

2. God

both has raised the Lord

B

and will raise us by his power

(referring to both)

A

Such striking parallelism indicates that the structure itself is purposeful, which in turn offers clues to many of the difficulties. First, the three de’s, which have given so much trouble to translators, are readily explained. The de between the two propositions can only be adversative. Moreover, the clearly consecutive de between the two parts of Paul’s response (v. 14) determines that its less clear earlier parallel (v. 13b) is also consecutive.

Second, the two propositions are in obvious contrast to each other. Both this arrangement and the rest of the argument make it plain that Paul’s concern is altogether with the second one. The matter of food therefore is no issue here at all; rather, it is intended only to set up the issue of the body and sexual immorality. This suggests that, as in the opening barrage (v. 12), Proposition I is best understood as a Corinthian slogan, which apparently they have carried over to the body and sexual relations with prostitutes.

In contrast to the opening salvo (v. 12), however, where the apostle refuses to agree with their slogan in its absolute form, here he is in fact in essential agreement. Both food and the stomach belong to the present age, and “God will do away with them both in the end” (NAB). What Paul will not let the Corinthians do is take that slogan, which has to do with the irrelevance of food restrictions, and apply it to illicit sexual relations. Paul’s construction of the otherwise balanced sentence in part 1 of Proposition II, following hard on the heels of I as it does, implies that their reasoning went like this: “Since everything is permitted, and since food is for the stomach and the stomach for food (after all, God will destroy them both in the end), and since all bodily appetites are pretty much alike, that means that the body is for sex and sex for the body—because God will destroy them both in the end as well.” But their conclusions are dead wrong—on both counts: The body is not for porneia but for the Lord; and it is not destined for destruction but for resurrection, the proof of which is Christ’s resurrection.

Paul thus counters their argument with his own theological construct, formulated after the manner of theirs: “The body is for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.” The rest of the argument will work out what this means. “The body is for the Lord” in the sense to be explained shortly (v. 14) and later (vv. 19–20). The work of redemption includes the whole person, which in the Jewish view of things includes the body. If the stomach is irrelevant for future existence, the body itself is not. Through Christ’s own resurrection it has been stamped as belonging to eternity; it is destined for resurrection. Thus the body is also “for the Lord” in the present.

The second part, the rhetorical flourish “and the Lord for the body,” is not so easy. This obviously cannot mean in the same complementary way that food and the stomach are meant for each other. The statement itself was purposely created out of their slogan; it was therefore never intended to be pressed in detail. This is not to say that it is not true, but that it is not precise. Whatever else, it is not so much a statement about the Lord as it is a further statement about the body. Probably it means that the body belongs to the Lord because in his death and resurrection he has given himself for the body as part of that redemptive work—they are, after all, destined for resurrection!

Thus the concluding affirmation of the resurrection (v. 14) corresponds to the preceding qualification (v. 13b) and serves as the theological basis for “the body is for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.” As such it anticipates the more detailed argument at the end of the letter (chap. 15), where some are denying a future resurrection of believers (15:12). As in that argument, our resurrection is predicated on the resurrection of Christ: “God both raised the Lord, and he will raise us.” Both are effected “by [God’s] power” (cf. Rom. 1:4). This affirmation stands in bold contrast to the Corinthian view of spirituality, which apparently looked for a “spiritual” salvation that would finally be divested of the body. Lying behind this form of spirituality is a Greek view of the world that placed little or no value on the material order. Out of such a view developed the idea of the “immortality of the soul,” that is, that the spirit is somehow immortal, but the body, along with the rest of the material order, is destined for destruction. This is a totally pagan view; the Christian creed says rather: “I believe . . . in the resurrection of the body.” In stark contrast to the Greek view, the OT declares that at creation God looked on the universe that he had made and pronounced it good. The final consummation looks for a new heaven and a new earth; and in that new order the body is raised so that God’s people will experience the final wholeness that God intended.

15 In the rest of this paragraph (vv. 15–17) Paul explains his reformulation of their slogan “the body is not for porneia but for the Lord,” by applying it directly to their going to the prostitutes. The argument is in two parts, both introduced by the formula “Do you not know that?” (see on 3:16). The first assertion (v. 15), based on the preceding declaration (v. 14), is that the bodies of believers are “members” of the “body” of the Lord and therefore cannot be joined to a prostitute, to become “members” of her body. The rhetoric that follows (vv. 16–17) further explains the present set of questions, asserting on the basis of the divine affirmation in the creation narrative (Gen. 2:24) that in sexual intercourse two bodies become one, which is how a man becomes a “member” of her body. This in turn is contrasted to the union with Christ’s “body,” now expressed in terms of the Spirit. The result is another chiasm:

A Their bodies are members of Christ’s body;

B therefore, they may not be members of a prostitute’s.

B′ Joined to a prostitute, they become one body with her;

A′ joined to Christ, they become one S/spirit with him.

The argument is tight: Both are “bodily” relationships that imply a form of “union,” the one with Christ through his resurrection; the other with the prostitute through intercourse. Paul’s point, of course, is that the two are mutually exclusive; therefore they must “flee from sexual immorality” (v. 18).

The present assertion (v. 15) flows directly out of the preceding theological formulation (v. 14). Paul argues that their bodies (i.e., the bodies of all believers individually) “are members of Christ himself”; therefore the Corinthian believers may not take away from Christ what is united to him and “make them members of a prostitute.” The word “members” is a term for the parts of the body, thus suggesting in a metaphorical way that the believer is an integral part of the “body” of Christ. This usage, however, moves in a completely different direction from that which will appear much later (12:12–26), where the “body” refers to the church, and the concern is with the relationship of the “members” to one another. Here the concern is with one’s relationship to the Lord himself. The body of the believer is for the Lord because through Christ’s resurrection God has set in motion the reality of our own resurrection. This means that the believer’s physical body is to be understood as “joined” to Christ’s own “body” that was raised from the dead.

Paul’s thinking here is fluid, but it is not strained. His concern throughout has the double foci of their view of the body and of porneia. He is arguing that the physical body counts; it is for the Lord. The resurrection has absolutely determined that. He is also aware that the seventh commandment has never been abrogated, that sexual immorality is absolutely wrong. Since sexual immorality involves bodily union, Paul gets at the prohibition of the one (sexual immorality) through metaphorical implications from the other (the “parts” of the body). Thus, joined to Christ himself through the resurrection, it is unthinkable (“God forbid!” KJV; NIV, “Never!”) that one should “take away” a part of the body of Christ and make it a part of the body of a prostitute.

16–17 With a repetition of the formula “Do you not know that?” Paul proceeds to explain what has just been asserted (v. 15), starting with the sexual union of a man with a prostitute. Since it is unthinkable that one should take away the “limbs” of Christ and make them “limbs” of a prostitute’s body, what could have prompted the latter idea in the first place? The answer has to do with the biblical view of sexual intercourse: “He who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body.” How so? “Because it is said, ‘The two will become one flesh.’ ” While the union of man and wife as “one flesh” implies far more than merely physical union, Paul’s concern here is strictly with the physical aspects of the union. To have sexual intercourse with a prostitute involves an illicit sexual joining of one’s body to that of another (literally). It is not the sexual union itself that is incompatible with union with Christ; it is such a union with a prostitute. This constitutes bodily union with a person who is not herself a member of Christ, whose own body therefore is not destined for resurrection.

In a parallel sentence, with “Lord” substituted for “prostitute” and “spirit” for “body,” the illicit union is now contrasted to the believer’s union with Christ: “But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit.” In light of the coming conclusion (vv. 19–20), Paul is almost certainly referring to the work of the Spirit, whereby through the “one Spirit” the believer’s “spirit” has been joined indissolubly with Christ. The believer is united to the Lord and thereby has become one S/spirit with him (see on 5:3–4). This does not mean that Paul is now abandoning his concern over the body; what follows (vv. 18–20) makes it clear that he is not. As above (v. 13c) this is another instance where the language has been dictated by its parallel. Since the union to which this is in contrast was constituted through sexual intercourse, he could scarcely describe it in terms of becoming “one body” with the Lord. Even though the concern is still with the physical body of the believer that belongs to the Lord on the basis of his resurrection, the union in this case is of a different kind; the way to express that union is in terms of the Spirit.

Thus Paul’s point is singular. It does not have to do with the union of whole persons in sexual relations—which is true in marriage but irrelevant here; nor does it have to do with the “mystical” union of the believer to Christ, and through Christ to his body the church—which is also irrelevant here. Paul’s point is that the physical union of a believer with a prostitute is not possible because the believer’s body already belongs to the Lord, through whose resurrection one’s body has become a “member” of Christ by his Spirit.

18 Up to this point Paul has been arguing against the pneumatics’ invalid theological slogans. Inherent in that argument was the prohibition now explicitly stated: “Flee from porneia.” An identical prohibition of idolatry will appear again a bit later (10:14). The express statement made earlier (5:9–11) implies that both of these are matters to which Paul had previously spoken; the present argument and that soon to follow (chaps. 8–10) suggest that some of the Corinthians have taken exception to his former rulings. In both cases he replies first to their theological stance; but also in both cases there can be no wavering on the behavior itself. They must absolutely “flee from sexual immorality.”

But prohibition is never Paul’s final word. So he offers one further theological reason, closely related to what has already been said. “The body is for the Lord,” he had postulated; now he argues that sexual immorality in particular is a sin against one’s own body, which is “for the Lord” because it is also a “temple of the Spirit.” All of that can be easily discerned; however, the argument is introduced by a notorious crux that is not at all easy.

With a double asyndeton Paul says (lit.): “Flee from sexual immorality. Every sin, whatever it is a man commits, is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body.” Paul’s concern is with the final clause, that in sexual immorality a man sins against his own body—which turns out to be his own but not his own. But what did he intend by the preceding clause which set that up? The problems are two: (1) The phrase “every sin, whatever it is that a man commits” is especially strong. Taken at face value it would seem to include even sexual immorality, which makes the next clause difficult. Moreover, the statement has long exercised Christians, who see other sins as also “against one’s body.” (2) That leads one to ask what “outside the body” means, especially since the next clause specifically singles out sexual immorality as being against one’s own body.

Although Allo had suggested that as many as 20 or 30 solutions have been offered, the viable options may be narrowed to two. The first is to see the first clause as a Corinthian slogan, which Paul then qualifies in the second clause, as earlier (vv. 12–13). This would go something like: “All sin, whatever it is that a man commits, is outside the body,” you say (or, you say?). “To the contrary, there is one sin in particular that is against one’s own physical body, namely sexual immorality.” There are several things in favor of this option: (1) Paul has already argued with positions of theirs in the present context; (2) it has formal similarity with the preceding paragraph (vv. 13–17), where he cites their slogan, then qualifies it and elaborates on the qualification theologically (vv. 13ab/13c–14/15–17 and 18b/18c/19–20); (3) it preserves the unqualified sense of “all sin”; (4) it corresponds to the generic use of anthrōpos (“man”) in the slogan that comes next (7:1; cf. 7:26); and (5) it gets Paul off the hook for having made what appears to be a less than precise theological dictum. On this view the sentence would mean: “The body has nothing to do with sin.” This is an attractive option, and may well be right. Nonetheless (a) it is an abrupt word to follow the prohibition, (b) there are no immediate internal clues to suggest it, and (c) the emphasis on “his own body” does not seem to respond to their slogan as such, which emphasizes the noncorporeal nature of all sin.

The second option is to see it as a Pauline construct, formulated in the larger context of the whole passage (vv. 13–20) and especially as a means of setting up by way of contrast the real concern, that “he who sins sexually sins against his own body.” In this view the de (“but”) is exceptive, qualifying “every sin” to mean “every other sin” except the one spoken of in this clause. Paul’s urgency, however, is not with “other sins”; rather, he is arguing that “every other sin is apart from the body” in the sense that no other sin is directed specifically toward one’s own body in the way that sexual immorality is. How so? The answer lies with what has already been said (vv. 15–17) in light of what he will say about “one’s own body” a bit later (7:4). His concern is not with what affects and does not affect the body per se, but with the special character of sexual immorality and how that sin is directed especially against the body as “for the Lord.” In fornicating with a prostitute a man removes his body (which is a temple of the Spirit, purchased by God and destined for resurrection) from union with Christ and makes it a member of her body, thereby putting it under her “mastery” (v. 12b; cf. 7:4). Every other sin is apart from (i.e., not “in”) the body in this singular sense.

That this moves in the direction of Paul’s intent seems verified by the concluding argument that follows (vv. 19–20), which flows directly out of this one. Even though the body is “one’s own,” it more properly belongs to God, since it is a temple of the Spirit and has been purchased through redemption. Thus the unique nature of sexual sin is not so much that one sins against one’s own self but that one sins against one’s own body, as viewed in terms of its place in redemptive history.

19–20 With yet another “Or do you not know that?” Paul gives theological justification for the preceding prohibition (v. 18a) and its theological explanation (v. 18bc). At the same time the content of this question serves to reinforce and elaborate the theology of the body expressed in the preceding paragraph (vv. 13–17). With the use of two images (temple and purchase of slaves = the Spirit and the cross) he reasserts that the body in its present existence belongs to God. Thus the body is also included in the full redemptive work of Christ—crucifixion, resurrection, and the present work of the Spirit. All of which leads to the final inferential imperative: They must therefore glorify God in their bodies, which of course in this context means no sexual immorality.

The tie to what has immediately preceded is achieved with the conjunction “or” (again omitted from the NIV as implied by context). “Whoever sins sexually sins against their own body,” he has just affirmed, by which he means one’s own body as it is “for the Lord.” “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God, and that you are not your own?” As in this rendering, the final clause should be included in the question. The two parts complement each other. The body is the present habitation of God’s Spirit, which means by implication that one belongs to the God whose Spirit dwells within. At the same time the second part results in a shift of metaphors, so that God’s proper ownership of the body is affirmed in terms of God’s people being “bought at a price.” The emphasis, therefore, is especially on the body as “for the Lord” in the sense of its being God’s rightful possession, which is evidenced both through the indwelling Spirit and the redemptive work of Christ. This, of course, stands in stark contrast to the pneumatics’ view that the body is destined for destruction and therefore has no present or eternal significance.

In referring to the body as the temple of the Spirit, Paul has taken the imagery that properly belongs to the church as a whole (cf. 3:16; 2 Cor. 6:16; Eph. 2:21–22) and in this single instance applied it to the individual believer. On the imagery itself, see the earlier discussion (3:16). The use of the possessives reflects something of the difference. The church through the Spirit is God’s temple in Corinth, in contrast to all the pagan temples and shrines. Through the phenomenon of the indwelling Spirit, Paul now images the body as the Spirit’s temple, emphasizing that it is the “place” of the Spirit’s dwelling in the individual believers’ lives. In the same way that the temple in Jerusalem “housed” the presence of the living God, so the Spirit of God is “housed” in the believer’s body. This is imagery pure and simple, in which the significance of the body for the present is being affirmed. It is thus not intended to be a statement of Christian anthropology, as though the body were the mere external casing of the spirit or Spirit; but neither is it intended to make too much of the body, so that “body beautiful” is somehow translated into a Christian value per se. The body simply is, thus is an essential part of the created order; and therefore in keeping with everything else in Paul, as gift the body is neither to be adored nor abused, but it is to be honored as part of God’s good creation.

In the present case the Spirit’s indwelling is the presupposition of the imagery, reinforced here by the two modifiers, “who is in you” and “whom you have received from God.” What Paul seems to be doing is taking over their own theological starting point, namely that they are “spiritual” because they have the Spirit, and, probably to their dismay, is redirecting it to include the sanctity of the body. The reality of the indwelling Spirit is now turned against them. They thought the presence of the Spirit meant a negation of the body; Paul argues the exact opposite: The presence of the Spirit in their present bodily existence is God’s affirmation of the body.

Paul moves easily from the fact that the Spirit is “from God” to his final point: Do you not know that the presence of God’s Spirit in you means that “you are not you own,” that is, that your bodies are not your own to do with as you wish in the matter of sexuality? This is the final punctuation of the original affirmation that the “body is for the Lord.” As evidence for this final assertion, Paul shifts metaphors once more, this time to the slave market, imagery to which he will later return in the concrete situation of the slave (7:22). That passage makes it clear that the imagery here is that of slavery; the verb “bought” with its accompanying genitive of quantity, “at a price,” places it squarely in the slave market. In contrast to the use of this metaphor elsewhere in the NT, where redemption for freedom is in view (e.g., Gal. 3:13; 4:5; Rev. 5:9; 14:3), this passage images their new position as “slaves” of God, bought with a price to do his will. Although some have argued otherwise, the related usage in Galatians and especially the liturgical passage in the Apocalypse (Rev. 5:9) indicate that Paul has the cross in view, whereby at the “cost” of his life (“by your blood,” Rev. 5:9) Christ purchased us for God. His point here is that even the body is included in that purchase. Thus at the end of the argument he joins the cross to the resurrection, along with the present gift of the Spirit, as evidence that the “body is for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.”

The final imperative flows directly out of the argument from the two preceding images. The body is the shrine of the indwelling Spirit and is therefore not one’s own but God’s, who purchased it through the work of the cross. “Therefore honor God with your bodies.” At the same time, it serves to bring the entire argument to its conclusion. This is the positive side of the preceding imperative: “Flee from sexual immorality” (v. 18a). Because the body is God’s, one must not use it in illicit intercourse; instead, one must make it a chaste temple whereby to honor God.

The later addition of “and in your spirit, which are God’s” may have been the result of early Christian liturgy. Unfortunately, it also became Scripture to generations of Christians and had the net result of deflecting Paul’s own point toward the position of the Corinthian pneumatics(!). Not that the addition is untrue; rather, it completely misses the concern of the present argument, which stands over against the Corinthian view that the body counts for nothing and therefore it does not matter what one does with it. To the contrary, Paul argues throughout, the body is included in the redemptive work of God and therefore may not be involved in sexual immorality; rather they must continually “honor God with [their] bodies.”

Two points from this passage need to be emphasized in the contemporary church. First, in most Western cultures, where sexual mores have blatantly moved toward pagan standards, the doctrine of the sanctity of the body needs to be heard anew within the church. Sexual immorality is still sin, even though it has been justified under every conceivable rationalization. Those who take Scripture seriously are not prudes or legalists at this point; rather, they recognize that God has purchased us for higher things. Our bodies belong to God through the redemption of the cross; and they are destined for resurrection. Part of the reason why Christians flee sexual immorality is that their bodies are for the Lord, who is to be honored in the deeds of the body as well as in all other behavior and attitudes.

Second, this passage needs to be heard again and again over against every encroachment of Hellenistic dualism that would negate the body in favor of the soul. God made us whole people; and in Christ he has redeemed us wholly. In the Christian view there is no dichotomy between body and spirit that either indulges the body because it is irrelevant or punishes it so as to purify the spirit. This pagan view of physical existence finds its way into Christian theology in a number of subtle ways, including the penchant on the part of some to “save souls” while caring little for people’s material needs. The Christian creed, based on NT revelation, is not the immortality of the soul, but the resurrection of the body. That creed does not lead to crass materialism; rather, it affirms a holistic view of redemption that is predicated in part on the doctrine of creation—both the physical and spiritual orders are good because God created them—and in part on the doctrine of redemption, including the consummation—the whole fallen order, including the body, has been redeemed in Christ and awaits its final redemption.

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