Sermon: “DISCIPLINE”

Text: 1 Corinthians 5: 9-13

9 I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral persons— 10 not at all meaning the immoral of this world, or the greedy and robbers, or idolaters, since you would then need to go out of the world. 11 But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother or sister who is sexually immoral or greedy, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or robber. Do not even eat with such a one. 12 For what have I to do with judging those outside? Is it not those who are inside that you are to judge? 13 God will judge those outside. “Drive out the wicked person from among you.”

CORRECTIONS

In the first eight verses of chapter five, which precede today’s text, Paul the very Jewish, former Pharisee is outraged to hear that a man of the Corinthian church has taken up with his step-mother. Yeah.  The funnier thing is that the Christians at Corinth didn’t even raise an eyebrow over it. They shrugged it off and said something like the ancient equivalent of:  

—“Well, to each his own!” 

—“The heart wants what the heart wants—what’re ya gonna do?” 

—“Hey, who are we to judge? It’s all about grace anyway, isn’t it?” 

If this voice rings familiar, it’s because today, California is not different from Corinth.  We, like Corinth, allow an incredibly broad spectrum of personal tastes, affinities, and practices—all in the name of personal liberty—and we seem less quick to judge than we are to not judge others. “After all,” we may think, “who am I to judge?” 

We live in an era of unprecedented authority crises. Who gets to correct whom? Increasingly it seems each one in America has come to believe in his or her heart: “I correct you; you do not correct me.”  Corinth, like California, was remarkably diverse. There were people from all over the world living there, people of many races, backgrounds, and religions—mostly pagan. Corinth was sexually permissive, and the majority of their shrines and temples did double duty as bordellos. Therefore, those Corinthians who had become Christians—and had never been Jewish—imported their wayward moral compasses with them and shrugged at practices that Christians like Paul would have found outrageous—even intolerable. 

Part of Paul’s purpose in writing this letter was to correct the Corinthians for their overly permissive outlook regarding human sexuality. “Why didn’t you rebuke this guy?” says Paul (I paraphrase), “Why did you simply allow it and look the other way?” How do you think the Corinthian Christians might have responded? When Paul dresses them down for not correcting what definitely ought to have been corrected, what might they have replied? 

“Well, gee, Paul—we didn’t know—we really didn’t think it was such a big deal.”  Exactly what many Californians would say today, is my guess. 

NETFLIX, ETC.

For example, you’ve probably heard the latest scuffle about Netflix and the movie, “Cuties,” in which pre-teen girls are portrayed as sexualized adults. As soon as we read about it, we dropped Netflix.  To make it worse, Netflix—in the face of public outrage and criticism—doubled down in defense of the film. Artistic license—and the preposterous justification that the movie was essentially critical of child exploitation.  What a crock. That’s like having an exposé of the evils of pornography in a long movie showing lots and lots of porn. The correct word for it is sophistry—which just means that there are some ideas so stupid—so utterly bird-brained—that only cultural sophisticates would believe them. 

I remember an old Monty Python sketch. In it, a reporter is interviewing a British intellectual about the psychology of a serial killer. The sophisticate, showing great understanding of the cruel criminal, comments off-handedly, saying, “All things considered, a murder is nothing but an extroverted suicide.” Almost as though that makes it all okay. On Monty Python it’s funny and meant to be funny, but when you hear that same kind of justifying rationale—in all seriousness—coming from Stanford, the Los Angeles Times, and the California State Legislature, it’s definitely not funny. It’s even dangerous, because these sources are well-empowered and they take themselves so seriously. They want you and me to take them seriously as well, rather than simply acknowledge ridiculous as ridiculous. 

But Paul’s concern is not correcting the world, but rather the church. The church must be able to correct itself. 

9 I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral persons— 10 not at all meaning the immoral of this world, or the greedy and robbers, or idolaters, since you would then need to go out of the world. 11 But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother or sister who is sexually immoral or greedy, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or robber. Do not even eat with such a one. 12 For what have I to do with judging those outside? Is it not those who are inside that you are to judge? 13 God will judge those outside.

It should be no surprise to us that the world is full of sinful behavior, and we can’t escape mixing with sinful people with sinful opinions, lifestyles, and attitudes unless we—as Paul says—go out of the world. “God will judge those outside,” says Paul. 

GRIEVING & CELEBRATING

The response of Christians to evil—either in the world or in the church—tends toward one of two poles: grieving or celebrating. Paul criticizes the church at Corinth for having celebrated something that should have been grieved. Rather than serve good conscience, the people served the easier path of just making no judgments whatsoever. Paul sets them—and us— straight by saying that there are things that should be grieved instead of being celebrated. 

Can you think of some things that Californians celebrate that should probably be grieved instead? Go ahead, I’ll wait. Doesn’t take long, does it? But before we launch a tirade against the evils of California, let’s remember that Paul says our judgment rightly focuses on the church itself and not on the larger world around us. The Body of Christ is meant to be self-critical, not just critical in general. 

The same way a healthy individual deals with the log in her own eye before seeking to pull specks from the eyes of others, so the Church must tend to its own alignment—or lack of alignment—with the will and Word of God. But to avoid all judgment completely amounts to a kind of negligence. We avoid the business of rebuking others in general because. . .it’s not very nice, and we want to be nice people, right? 

I think the Corinthians were probably very nice in that sense. They didn’t want to get up into anyone else’s face and tell them that they need to shape up. In their remarkably diverse cultural environment, they had to get along, co-exist, live and let live or else they would all divide and fall apart, right? But that’s exactly what was happening to the Church in Corinth. Being nice did not serve their unity, but rather their division. Avoiding their differences let to justifying or rationalizing very ungodly behaviors and lifestyles. 

DIVISION & MARKS 

Paul says don’t be partnered up with those who identify as Christians but who rationalize sinful behavior. Keep your distance from them and disassociate yourselves from them.  But wait—isn’t division the chief problem in Corinth? Haven’t we said that solving division is Paul’s first concern in writing them?  How does dissociating from some serve unity? Isn’t this counter-intuitive? Doesn’t Jesus say, “let the wheat and weeds grow together” and “don’t try to pull out the weeds because you’ll pull up too much of the wheat with them?”  Isn’t that what the Corinthian Christians were doing—just letting the wheat and weeds grow up together? Let God sort them out? 

Here’s my take on it: when Jesus says “don’t judge” and “don’t try to do the weeding,” he is talking about making worldly assessments about others’ place with God. We are not to say who is authentically called or not called. We are not to condemn anyone with God’s own condemnation. The wheat and weeds judgments are ultimate, final judgments. Paul is telling the Corinthians that the Church must do regularly gardening or else you will have only weeds and no fruit.  

God calls the Church to self-discipline, which is not the same thing as judging souls. 

In the midst of the Reformation arguments, with condemnations flying back and forth between Rome and the rest of Europe, John Calvin sought to define what characterizes “the true Church.”  Not “the right denomination,” but the character and nature of Christ’s true body.  He landed on three points: 

     ⁃ 1. Preaching of the Word.

⁃ 2.  Administration of the Sacraments.

⁃ 3. Church Discipline.

REPENTANCE

The church that doesn’t practice discipline is not part of the Body of Christ. The unwillingness to correct or be corrected excludes one from the true church. The true Church practices self-discipline. The other word we use for this is repentance. Healthy Christians repent—they acknowledge their own sin and turn away from it. With no moral code whatsoever—or one so totally accommodating that anything and everything becomes allowable—there is no repentance. There is no turning because there is no “correct” to turn to. If all things are equal and everything allowable, then there is no standard toward which people may align themselves. 

And this is California. For every plumb line we would hold to measure the straight from the crooked, there come throngs of objections to the plumb line itself.  “Who are you to say what’s straight or crooked?” “You think the plumb line is straight, but it’s not actually straight, as science will show.” Or “We prefer the crazy straw plumb line, because we like it better, and who are you to tell us otherwise.”  

Paul says let God judge them and all of that, but as for the Church, we have one plumb line, who is Christ the Lord, and we have his Word to guide us, direct us, to align us, and correct us.  And our role is to call all to repentance even as we repent ourselves, seeking to align ourselves and out life together after the model and image of our Lord and Savior Jesus. †

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Questions:

1. 1.  What are some parallels you can identify between Corinth and California? 
2. 2.  How can the exclusion of some serve to maintain church unity? Why is this needed?
3. 3.  What are some things that are celebrated that should rightfully be grieved? 
4. 4.  What is meant by “judging inside” and “judging outside”? 
5. 5.  How severe should our dissociation from immoral Christians be? 
6. 6.  Why are we so hesitant to practice church discipline here in our time?
7. 7.  What are John Calvin’s “3 Marks of the True Church”? 
8. 
   
   • 1. ____________________________________ of the Word.
   • 2.  Administration of the _____________________________________.
   • 3. Church __________________________________________.
9. 8.  Why is “being nice” never the highest moral code? 
10. 9.  What are some dangers of practicing church discipline? 
11. 10. What are some dangers of not practicing church discipline?