1Cor 5 | EE | STEP | We have heard very bad news about what is happening in your group. One of you is having sex with someone who is not his own wife. We have heard that he is having sex with his own father’s wife! Even people who do not know God do not do things as bad as this!

1 Corinthians 5

Send the bad person away from you

1 We have heard very bad news about what is happening in your group. One of you is having sex with someone who is not his own wife. We have heard that he is having sex with his own father’s wife! Even people who do not know God do not do things as bad as this! 2 But, you still think that you are important and good! Instead, you ought to be very ashamed and sad. You must put this man, who has done this bad thing, outside your meetings. You should not let him continue to belong to your group.

3 Even if I am far away from you, my spirit is present with you. It is quite the same as when I am with you. So, I have decided already about the man who has done this very bad thing. I have decided what you should do to this bad man. 4 When you meet together with the authority of the Lord Jesus, my spirit is with you. The power of our Lord Jesus is with you too. 5 When you meet like this, you must give this man to Satan. And Satan will destroy the man’s body. So then God can save the man’s spirit on the day when the Lord Jesus returns.

6 You should not think that you yourselves are so good and so important. You have no reason to think that. You should know about what yeast does in bread. A small amount of yeast makes the whole lot of dough become bigger. 7 This yeast in the dough is like one person among you who does wrong things. You must remove this old yeast from among you. Then you will be like new dough, with no yeast in it. You are like that really, because Christ died on our behalf. He is our lamb for the Passover meal. And that Passover is ready now, because he died. 8 So, we can have our Passover, but not with the old yeast. We must remove everything that is bad or wrong. Instead, we must be good and honest and true, so that we are like new bread, without any yeast. ^{▼▼5:8 Israel’s people ate a lamb and flat bread without any yeast in it for the Passover meal. The Passover festival was very special for Israel’s people. They had to remember when God saved them from Egypt. So they ate a special meal every year. See Exodus 12.}

9 I wrote a letter to you. In that letter, I told you that you must not be friends with bad people. You must stay away from people who have sex with anyone other than their own wife or husband. I told you that. 10 But I did not mean people who do not know God. I did not mean that you must stay away from all those people. Some of those people often have sex with people who are not their own wife or husband. Some of them want more things than they need. Some of them take things that belong to other people. And some of them worship false gods. To stay away from all those people, you would have to leave this world.

11 What I meant was this: You should not be friends with any bad person among your group. That person may say that they are Christ’s. But if they have sex with people other than their own wife or husband, do not be friends with them. Some people want a lot more things than they need. Do not be friends with those people. If they worship false gods, do not be friends with them. If they say wrong things about other people, do not be friends with them. If they get drunk, do not be friends with them. If they take other people’s things, do not be friends with them. Do not even eat a meal with anyone who does things like that. 12 It is not right for me to decide about the people outside, the people who do not believe Christ. But you should decide about the people inside, the people who meet together with you as Christians. It is right for you to decide whether they are right or wrong. 13 But God will decide about the people outside, who are not Christians. As the Bible says:

‘You must send that bad person away from among yourselves.’