A Little Leaven, 1 Corinthians 5
Updated: Aug 25
A Little Leaven
John Beeson
1 Corinthians 5
As a pastor, you get to participate in things of life in people's families. Oftentimes you get to
participate or be there shortly after birth. You're at weddings, you're at funerals, baptisms,
dedications, these events of life. And one thing that might surprise you that we get to
participate in fairly often is painting. The number of times you're with a small group of
people, whether at a school or a gap house or in some situation with need, that we're
painting is pretty frequent.
And I'm not sure Christians are very good at painting is one of my conclusions. So in broad.
In broad spectrum, like, 70% of painting is prep work. It's the taping, it's the plastic. It's
getting ready.
And I don't just grab that statistic off the top of my head. The two largest painting
organizations in the country have 70% of painting is prep work. And that's the part we kind
of skip over a lot of times. And so you're in a church environment, helping out, and you're
painting, and there's plastic that goes down, but it's not taped or done carefully. It's just
kind of plopped on the ground.
And the paint's on the ground. You're going to it with rollers, and inevitably there's a puddle
that leaks out at some point. And for a while you dance around it and do pretty good. But
eventually the. There is a foot that goes in the paint, and then it goes on the plastic.
So now there's more paint on the plastic to step on. It gets on the carpet, it goes off, it's a
mess. And the reason I bring that up. Cause that's really where we're going. In today's
passage, Paul is speaking to the church in Corinth.
And early on, he just says, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What are
you doing? Don't you understand that this is a mess? It's a mess, and it needs to be
cleaned up. So we're walking through a series on First Corinthians, and if you've been here
with us the last couple of weeks, we were in chapter one and then chapter two, three
weeks so far, and there's 17 weeks in the series.
We're going to jump into chapter five today, and you can say, well, where did three and four
go? So we're skipping over three and four simply because the. The principles in three and
four revolve around leadership, things of I follow Paul, I follow Paulos, I follow Peter. We
covered that a little bit in Chapter one. And we want to save some weeks to spend more
time specifically on the Holy Spirit as we go through this letter.
And so we're jumping into chapter five. And in the very first verse, in bold letters, we're going
to see Paul address sin. And he's just going to say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
What are you doing? This isn't something to treat lightly.
This isn't something to track around. Do you understand the damage of what's happening
here? This is a mess, and it needs to be cleaned up. One of the promises we made at the
top of this series is that the more we press into 1 Corinthians, the more we'll see ourselves
in. In the Corinthian Church.
There's just so many echoes of our own experience in this church. And that's the case in
three and four as we. Chapters three and four as we already dealt with in Chapter one, a
divisive spirit of people following different people on different platforms and that wreaking
division within the church. And then in chapter five, we're gonna see the church dealing
with rampant sexual sin in its midst. And this kind of, I'll keep my nose out of your business
if you keep your nose out of my business mentality that's in the church.
So let's pick up first Corinthians 5, and let's step into the text. Paul says this. It is actually
reported that there is sexual immorality among you and of a kind that is not tolerated even
among pagans. For a man has his father's wife. Whoa, there we go.
There's a juicy headline for you. All right, so Paul has heard word that within the church at
Corinth, there is a man who's having sexual relations. Ongoing sexual relations with his
dad's wife. Now, it could be his mom, but it would be unusual that he wouldn't just say, with
his mom. So it's likely his stepmom that this relationship is going on with.
Now, there's all sorts of questions that we would love to ask. Aren't there, is the dad dead?
Like, what's. Like what's happening? Like, what caused this to happen?
There's all sorts of questions we can't answer about the situation other than a man has
ongoing sexual relationships with likely his stepmom. Now, you could say, how do I know
it's ongoing? Well, it's that little word. A man has his father's wife not had, has. In an
ongoing sense, there's sexual sin.
The church in Corinth and the Church is turning a blind eye to it, not doing anything. They
could say, well, what's the big deal about that? Well, there's a few things that are happening
here. One is, what's the. What's the world's biggest critique of the church?
We're hypocrites. And Paul's like, the world knows this is wrong and you're not dealing with
it, and that's a big deal. There's other issues, of course, relational issues, issues in which
the church just has a posture that's lackadaisical towards sin. Now, here's the wild thing.
Corinth was a pretty perverse place with sexual immorality pretty rampant in that culture.
And Paul says, even the culture gets that. This is messed up. You better deal with it. We
have a similar type culture, don't we? Like, on the one hand, there's a sense in which kind of
live and let live, everything goes in our culture.
So sexually, to an extent, there are little moments that happen in our culture where all of a
sudden you realize, oh, there is a little bit of a moral compass still left there. So about a
month ago, there was this event that kind of hit the social media waves of our culture. It's a
Coldplay concert. At the Coldplay concert, you have two individuals, the CEO and a top
level executive at the company flaunting this affair in public, both married to other people
at the Coldplay concert, together having an affair. You'd think, well, they don't care.
And yet in the middle of that concert, the kiss cam comes out. You've probably been to an
event with a kiss cam, right? So it's scanning the crowd. It settles on a couple and they're
supposed to kiss. Well, it settles on them with their faces splashed up, and all of a sudden,
horror comes over both their faces and they literally duck off the screen.
There's this residue within all of us that recognizes there is something that sex is that's
beyond just my own gratification.
And it's resonating in the Corinthian context, and it resonates in our context. And Paul says,
there's a mess and you guys have to clean it up because it's affecting your witness, it's
affecting your life, it's affecting your community. You need to clean up the mess. You're
supposed to be salt, you're supposed to be light. The world knows this is wrong and you're
not doing anything about it.
The sin is shocking in verse one, but the exclamation point of the passage comes in verse
two, with what's even more shocking to Paul, and that's the church's reaction, Verse two,
and you are arrogant, exclamation point.
Ought you not rather to mourn, Let him who has done this be removed from among you.
There's lots of reactions that individuals or groups can have to sin. Being in a camp, you can
get holier than thou, start condemning and judging and look down and kind of puff out your
chest in your own self righteousness and look down at that person because they're sinning
over there. We all know that's hypocrisy and it has a stench to it. But that's not what's going
on here in Corinth in our day.
And in Corinth there's kind of this do not judge principle. I won't stick my nose in your
business. You don't stick your nose in my business. Let's not judge. In fact, let's just rest on
the grace of God.
We're all here because of forgiveness. We're all here because of his mercy. We're all here
because of his grace. Let's just rest in the grace of God. And Paul says, the moment grace
becomes an excuse for sin, you're confessing that you don't understand what grace is all
about.
Because the forgiveness of God not only washes away the spiritual consequences of our
sin and takes sin off externally, the forgiveness of God, the grace of God also is planted
inside and rejuvenates us and purifies us and gives us by supernatural power the ability to
fight against sin and live increasingly victorious lives.
You could go back to Jesus statement, do not judge. Jesus did say that. Jesus teaching on
the Sermon on the Mount, do not judge or you too will be judged. In the same way you judge
others, you will be judged and with the measure you used, it will be measured to you. You
can say, well, Jesus says, don't judge.
But if you listen in that passage, clearly Jesus isn't saying, don't judge in any way, shape or
form. I say that because 14 verses later in the same sermon, Jesus says, watch out for false
prophets, for they come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they're ferocious wolves.
By their fruit you will recognize them. Jesus is saying, don't judge with a capital J. Don't
judge in an eternal sense.
Don't judge. Judge in a condemning sense. But he actually is teaching how to judge
appropriately. Take the log out of your own eye, then you'll see clearly to take the speck out
of your brother's eye. And Paul is looking at this church and they're boasting in an
arrogance of grace, I'll mind my business if you mind your business.
And Paul says, wouldn't it have been more appropriate if you had wept and wailed that
there's sin in the camp? There is a mess here and it's a damaging mess. And it has to be
dealt with. Our posture as Christians, as if you're a follower of Jesus Christ towards sin
ought to be mourning. Our hearts ought to break for our own sin first and then for the sin of
the body of Jesus Christ.
Paul continues, he says this in verse 3. For though absent in body, he's writing from afar, I
am present in spirit. And as if present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who
did such a thing. Paul's like, I don't have any confusion. I'm offering judgment from afar.
It's that clear to me. So why are you struggling, judging? Now, there's a way in which we can
read the Bible, read this and be like, well, wait a second. It seems like there's like a Jesus
Christ version of grace toward the sin and a pole version of judgmentalism, like, how do we
rectify these? Greg's already begun that.
Actually in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus talks about this tension.
He continues, and Greg actually even mentioned kind of where he goes in the Sermon on
the Mount over in chapter seven, where he holds this tension that we take all sin seriously,
our own sin first, but that also means we take the sin of brothers and sisters and Jesus
around us seriously. He says this, Jesus, Matthew 7:3. Why do you see the speck that's in
your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that's in your own eye? Or how can you say to
your brother, let me take the speck out of your eye when there's a log in your own eye, you
hypocrite. First take the log out of your own eye and then you will see clearly to take the
speck out of your brother's eye.
Jesus says, take all sin seriously. Begin with your own heart. Begin with your own self
examination. Recognize that there is sin within you, within your heart that you need to
repent of. But that then doesn't excuse you from stepping into community, into relationship
with those who claim the name of Jesus, who say, I'm a follower of Jesus, and stepping in
and saying, whoa, what's going on, brother?
What's going on, sister? And calling that person out in faith. There's an invitation here. Paul
continues, over in verse four, back in first Corinthians, when you are assembled in the
name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to
deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh so that his spirit may be saved in
the day the Lord. Now that's, that's heavy.
Deliver him up to Satan. Whoa. Now recognize here we're talking about somebody within
this church who A, says they're a Christian, B, is refusing any repentance, C, is now making
others stumble and is affecting the church. So there's a series of gravity, a depth of the
gravity of the sin of this man. But Paul is saying, stop coddling his sin.
Release him and allow his sin to have the effect on his life that Lord willing, will drive him
back to me. Did you catch the end of that? Don't miss the end of that. It's easy to hear the
hand him over to Satan part, but don't miss what is the heart of that so that his spirit may
be saved in the day of the Lord. His heart is for the salvation of this brother.
I do this because I love you. It's not a first response to his sin. It's a last resort response to
his sin. The church is called to discipline individually and corporately. Walking with Jesus
Christ demands of us repentance and growing in sanctification.
Like we get this in other areas of life, don't we? Like my, like nightly ice cream habit. Ice
cream habit is at direct odds with my desire to be fit and healthy. Right? Like we get it right?
Like my desire to be fit and healthy has to be coupled with my eating habits, my exercise
habits. The same thing is true in the walk of the Christian. We receive Christ, he rescues us
from our sin. But then we have to walk in the steps of Christ as he shapes us in his likeness.
It's church discipline.
It's being shaped in the likeness and the disciplines of Jesus Christ. There's a recent study
that was pretty alarming. It's done by Lifeway. They asked pastors, hey pastors, when was
the in the last year. Has your church exercised church discipline on anyone in your midst?
Meaning have you come alongside a brother or sister in faith and corrected them,
called them back to living in line with the gospel in their lives? Only 16% of pastors said
their churches had done that in the last year. 16%. They then asked, has your church ever,
to your knowledge, practiced church discipline in the body? And only 46% said they had.
So good news. 54% of churches have perfectly sinless Christians within them. I need to
find that church. That's pretty awesome. No, what it actually speaks to is our
misunderstanding of the gospel, that the gospel is the free gift of Jesus Christ that then
calls us to walk in accordance with him, in faith, growing in repentance, growing in
awareness of my own sin.
You look at Paul's own life and be like, Paul, buddy, are you walking in that manner? Are you
owning your own stuff? Flip over to first Timothy, where Paul says, I am the chief of sinners,
I'm the foremost of sinners. Paul owns his own sin, but then walks out the faith of Jesus
Christ alongside his brothers and sisters in faith, saying, let us grow in likeness with Jesus.
Let us walk out the work of Jesus Christ in our life.
The Christian life is a life of looking more and more like Jesus Christ. Our witness is at
stake. Our souls are at stake. We just don't like the word discipline. It's a harsh word.
In new life, it's possible to get a call from an elder just checking in, wanting to do lunch and
see how you're doing. That elder's not going to say, hey, I want to get together for church
discipline.
We just don't like the word. But occasionally I have to look at Deborah and say, okay, don't
even buy ice cream. If it's here, I'll eat it.
Discipline is a loving thing that brings to us something that is better now. The extreme of
handing someone over to Satan, of having someone pushed outside the church until they
repent. The extreme in the New Testament happens twice in Paul's life. So all of his ministry
happened twice. It's an extreme.
But on a normal basis, we're called to sharpen each other and be accountable to each
other. The passage goes on, and Paul goes right back to that air of boasting, of boasting in
the grace of God. Verse 6, you boasting is not good. Do you not know that? A little leaven
leavens the whole lump?
Your boasting isn't good. Don't you know? A little leaven, it affects the whole loaf. A little
paint on the ground, it ends up spreading around. This is a mess.
Now, any Jewish person who would have heard this or someone familiar with the Old
Testament would hear this analogy, this picture of a little leaven affecting the whole loaf
and immediately think of Passover. So for Passover, in a Jewish home, you go through
sometimes a month before, if not weeks and days before, to clean out the leaven from your
house. You actually take A feather, you know, and go through your cupboards and clean out
the leaven, because it's a symbol of offering a holy life to God in worship, of cleaning out
the sin and doing our part. And that's exactly where Paul's going when he brings up this
leaven analogy. He continues it in verse seven.
Cleanse out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump as you really are unleavened. For
Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore, let us therefore celebrate the
festival not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened
bread of sincerity and truth. In other words, Jesus is our Passover lamb, not just once for a
holiday. He is our Passover lamb, continually, perpetually.
So let us as Christians then live perpetually, removing leaven from our midst. One of my
best friends, I could tell something was up in life. I didn't know what it was. I could just tell
they weren't doing good, and he wasn't doing good, and I didn't know. The backstory that I
was unaware of is that his wife started to have a glass of wine in the evenings to relax.
And, you know, I'm not going to have a glass of wine, but wine's, like, more popular today
than it used to be. It's like a trendy thing. And so she was drinking wine to relax, and life is
stressful, and she wanted to relax more, so she started drinking more, and she was drinking
more in the evenings and then slipping into the day and slipped right into alcoholism. And
their marriage and family were tanking. For me, it's just a conversation.
Say, hey, I don't know what's going on? Are you doing all right? Like, where are you guys at?
Then it all comes out, and in a loving way, trying to help, I don't mind saying, and
celebrating. She's been sober for, like, six, seven years now.
And God is doing a good thing. It's a good thing. So this week, the executive leadership
team, we get together on Tuesday morning. So the executive leadership team here at New
Life is five of us. And really the task is to help John and I lead better, more wisely, cover
blind spots.
And so we get together once a week, at least. And at that meeting, we. We normally start
with some kind of piercing question in life. And the question this week just happened to me.
John wrote the question.
The question happened to be, what are some of my blind spots in my leadership? Now, the
trick of a question like that is you can't answer it for yourself because you don't know blind
spots by the fact that they're blind. So the way the answering this question went is you were
on the hot seat and everybody else told you what your blind spots were. It was super fun.
And so we went around and people are essentially just pointing out your sins. Oh yeah, I
see you do this and you don't notice this and you've got just a little problem in this area of
your life. Everybody knows it except for you. And it's true. This is part of what it is to be a
church.
Not to judge with a capital J, not to walk around as fruit inspectors, not self righteous and
pious and condemning, but with acknowledgement that we all deal with sin, we all have sin
residing inside of us and we need each other's help to come alongside each other. Just say,
I've noticed your fuse is a little short lately. Are you doing okay? I just heard you talking to
your spouse in ways that felt a little disrespectful. Are you doing okay?
I saw you get so angry. Are you doing okay? Paul is saying, sin is a mess. And in the church
that's called to be salt and light to the world, it's not to be treated lightly. And the church
has to, has to come alongside each other lovingly, humbly, gently getting the leaven out of
the loaf.
Paul's not going to provide some bumpers to this. He's going to explain, hey, this is not just
in your relationship with anybody. In fact, if there's people in your life, there are people in
your life who don't claim the name of Jesus. Like this isn't to be applied to them. You don't
expect someone who hasn't put their faith and trust in Jesus Christ to look like Jesus.
You just don't. Paul continues in verse nine, he says this, I wrote to you in my letter not to
associate with sexually immoral people. Not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this
world or the greedy and the swindlers or idolaters. Since then you would need to go out of
the world. Like that is the world.
Paul says, don't expect those who don't claim the name of Jesus, who are neighbors, who
are family members, who are co work, don't go pounding them with those expectations. He
continues in verse 11. But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears
the name brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler,
drunkard or swindler, not even to eat with such A one for what have I to do with judging
outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those
outside.
Purge the evil person from among you. There's a type of Christian who claims the name of
Jesus but says, don't you dare judge me. You can't judge me. That person, Paul says, that's
a person that you need to respond to. If there's a growing callousness, rejection of the
claims of Jesus Christ on their life, you need to something.
You need to pursue them. You don't start with the hammer, right? Like, part of the beauty of
church discipline is that, like, church discipline doesn't push somebody out of
communion. If there's repentance in their life, if there's an acknowledgement and a
humbleness, then there's a warmth and an embrace and an encouragement and a support
of that person. And that's all of us.
It's all of us. But if there is a person who says, you have no access here. Stay out of my
business, then you have to. You have to respond strongly. Eventually.
Paul says, because they are affecting the witness of Jesus Christ, they are tainting the light
of the gospel in your community. So respond, Respond. It begins with our own hearts,
doesn't it? Where are our hearts in this? It takes humility and courage to ask these
questions, doesn't it?
So this summer, we were with our daughter, and she's a senior in college right now. And
angel and I were with her. We had this. So many sweet conversations. One of those
conversations was that she was reflecting on some blind spot, some sin that God had
revealed to her.
And now she looked back, she's like, oh, my goodness. Like, God had done this amazing
work in her life, and now she sees them. And then in this place of vulnerability and humility
and courage, she says, what am I not seeing now? Mom and dad? Help me see that.
That. That is a question Christians ask each other. Humility, raising our hand and saying,
help me see what I can't see. I want to repent. I want to look more like Jesus.
I don't want to taint the gospel. I want to be in step with the spirit of God in my life. So help
me to see myself so that I can repent and follow Jesus in every way. It's so easy sometimes
to start thinking sin is that group over there and that group over there and those people in
culture and that group over there. And we point the fingers elsewhere.
Paul says, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, no, no, no, no, no. We start here. We start here. At
home. It's our own behavior that needs to be solved, needs to be laid.
And now he's going to raise the stakes in his whole argument by kind of peeling back the
veil and allowing us to gaze into eternity for just a moment. We're going to sneak into
chapter six for three verses. Says one of you has a grievance against another. Does he dare
go to law before the unrighteous instead of the saints? Or do you not know that the saints
will judge the world?
And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases? Do you not
know that we are to judge angels? How much more than matters pertaining to this life. And
you might listen to that. What?
We judge angels. We think of angels like angels are. And we're just doofuses down here on
this earth. Like, what, What? What?
What's this? And Paul's reminding us. No, no, no, no, no, no. They're not redeemed in the
same way you are. You are created in the image of God and you have the spirit of God
residing inside of you, making you new from the inside out, with a regenerate heart and a
regenerate mind.
He says, one day, one day in glory, you will be lifted up above.
So get used to the practice in a healthy way with humility and gentleness to come alongside
brothers and sisters and try to live more God honoring lives, offering to God the most
fundamental worship we can, which is obedience. More important than the songs we sing,
more important than the words we say is obedience. Obedience. So what do we do with
this? There's a lot here.
It's a heavy passage, really. How do we apply it? Three practical takeaways. The first one is
purify your own life. Everything in this passage comes back to Jesus teaching, take the log
out of your own eye.
Before you try and take the speck of a brother or sister's eye, you take the log out of your
own eye. You stand before Jesus and see the darkness of your own selfishness. You're
awfully gentle approaching someone else because you know you come from a flawed
place yourself. This. This starts with.
With me. It starts with saying, God, I am. I want to have a more God glorifying life. Search
me and show me. Reveal to me the things that are between you and I.
Show me the selfishness of my thoughts. Show me the selfishness of my heart. Purify me,
God. That's step one, Purify your own life. Step two, live accountable with others.
Live accountable lives. In other words, this is more than any of us can do. We need to sit on
that hot seat and say, all right, help me out here. We need brothers and sisters who will
come into our lives and say, hey, are you doing okay? Like, even the way you told that story,
it just sounded prideful.
Are you doing okay? We need to live in an environment with groups of people that can
speak into our lives. And sometimes, sometimes people just push everybody at arm's
length. It's one of the reasons, over and over and over, you'll hear us talk about community
beyond a Sunday morning worship service. We like Sunday morning worship services.
Like we're pastors. We like that. But sitting in rows, looking at that handsome bald head in
front of you takes more. Last Wednesday, we had a rooted kickoff, a time to go, because
rooted is the mechanism we use to launch small groups. And so we encourage people to
be a part of that.
If you didn't make it last Wednesday, don't worry about it. You can stop by the first step
table and ask some questions. There are numerous groups ongoing and just launching that
would take new people. And eventually we have to be in community, where there's at least
a few people around us who are speaking into our lives. And it ought to be like a weekly
thing.
It's not just the extreme. It's the weekly purifying, sanctifying process of, how are you doing?
And sharing and praying for one another. Purify your own life and live accountable with
others. It's really easy, right, 2025, to have a whole life of faux relationships, relationships
this deep.
We're not really giving ourselves to others and not allowing others to give themselves to us.
Live intentionally, press in, take the risk of stepping into a group, stepping into community,
and finally, then. Then help take the speck out of your brother or sister's eyes. Help them
with their sin. Step in with love and with courage. It's a loving thing to call another one who's
struggling with something into faith, to come alongside them, to put an arm around them
and say, I love you too much to let this blind spot continue in your life.
We do so not out of a sense of judgmentalism, but a sense of love and of care and
compassion. This is what we do because the Gospel witness depends on it. The world is
watching, and the world is hypersensitive to the hypocrisy of the Christian community. And
Jesus said, I have made you to be salt and light, so clean up the mess through the power of
the spirit of God in your own hearts. And then do so in your community, that my light may
shine in your neighborhood, in your home, in your workplaces, in your schools.
For my name, let's pray. Lord, we are so grateful. God, we ask you that you would grant us
courage and wisdom to press into each other's life with questions that push past the
surface, that we would be those who set the culture with our own transparency and
ownership of our own sin.
I'm the chief of sinners.
We are the foremost of sinners. And we desperately need the gospel, Jesus. So move in our
lives and change us. Change us by the spirit of God working in us that the world may see
the purity, the love, the grace of our Savior, Jesus. It's in his name we pray.
Amen. Amen. Let's respond by standing and singing together.