Immorality tolerated in the church
1It is common talk that there is sexual immorality among you, and immorality of a kind not found even among the Gentiles: a man living with his father’s wife. 2And you are puffed up! Should you not rather have gone into mourning, so that the man who has done this would be removed from among you? 3For my part, absent in body but present in spirit, I have already passed judgment on the man who did this, as though I were present. 4When you are assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus, and my spirit is with you, with the power of our Lord Jesus, 5hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord. 6Your boasting does you no credit. Do you not know that a little yeast works through the whole batch of dough? 7Clean out the old yeast, so that you may be a fresh batch, unleavened as you really are. For the Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. 8So let us keep the feast, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
Whom the letter meant
9In my letter I wrote to you not to associate with the sexually immoral. 10I did not mean the immoral of this world in general, or the greedy and the swindlers, or idolaters; to do that you would have to leave the world. 11What I wrote was this: do not associate with anyone who goes by the name of brother and is sexually immoral, greedy, an idolater, abusive, a drunkard, a swindler. Do not so much as eat with such a person. 12What business is it of mine to judge outsiders? Is it not those inside that you are to judge? 13God will judge the outsiders. “Drive out the wicked man from among you.”
