1 Corinthians 5:1-8
New Testament for Everyone
Scandal and judgment
5 Everybody’s talking about the sex scandal that’s going on in your community, not least because it’s a kind of immorality that even the pagans don’t practice! Well I never—a man taking his father’s wife! 2 And you’re puffed up! Why aren’t you in mourning? Why aren’t you getting rid of the person who’s done such a thing?
3 Let me tell you what I’ve already done. I may be away from you physically, but I’m present in the spirit; and I’ve already passed judgment, as though I was there with you, on the person who has behaved in this way. 4 When you are assembled together in the name of our Lord Jesus, and my spirit is there too with the power of our Lord Jesus, 5 you must hand over such a person to the satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord Jesus.
Get rid of the “leaven”!
6 Your boasting is no good. Don’t you know that a little leaven works its way through the whole lump of dough? 7 Cleanse out the old leaven, so that you can be a new lump, the leaven-free lump you really are. It’s Passover-time, you see, and our Passover lamb—the Messiah, I mean—has already been sacrificed! 8 What we now have to do is to keep the festival properly: none of the leaven of the old life, and none of the leaven of depravity and wickedness, either. What we need is leaven-free bread, and that means sincerity and truth.
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