Purity

1 Corinthians 5-6

            Paul’s main topic in these two chapters seems to be the kind of purity that ought to mark God’s renewed people. He is shocked that immorality of a sort that even Gentiles cringe from is being tolerated in their midst. Not just shocked—he’s offended and tells them to cast the sinner out. Note that his intent is that the ‘flesh’ should be destroyed, that is, that the sinner might not be driven by the powers of the fallen world anymore. Instead, Paul wants the ‘spirit’ to live. This does not mean a disembodied life in heaven; it means that the man might repent and be empowered by the Spirit.

            Paul adds several clarifications. First, that tolerance of sin simply is not good; sin, like mold, spreads. He powerfully uses the image of yeast ‘infecting’ a whole loaf, shifts gears to remind the Corinthians that they are a loaf made without yeast, and ties the whole thing off with reference to Christ, our Passover Lamb, making a neat circle back to unleavened bread. A second clarification is that there is a sense in which judgment belongs to believers, especially with those who claim to be believers. This leads to a digression about lawsuits and the ways that Christians resolve their conflicts.

            Finally, he moves back to sexual immorality and demolishes even the modern sexual revolution. The arguments that sex is just biology, that it makes us happy so it must be ok in many forms, that it just doesn’t matter—all of these Paul dismisses: it does matter because it unites the bodies of the lovers. Paul describes this in the terms that Genesis uses for marriage. C.S. Lewis once described divorce as more similar to losing a limb than to breaking up a business partnership. It seems that Paul is suggesting that promiscuous sex is almost like promiscuous marriage and the switch to new partners is similar to promiscuous divorce.

            So, the purity and monogamy of God’s renewed people matter and they matter on levels that we should think about more deeply.