1 Cor 5 - 6 - Christ and the Congregation

7/28/2019 1 Cor 5 - 6 - Christ and the Congregation

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Christ and the Congregation: 1 Corinthians 5-6Paul S. Minear

When most readers turn to these chapters, they find that the material isentirely familiar and less than alluring. For some readers familiarity has alreadybred contempt: "Everyone knows that the Bible is against fornication.," Forothers, the situations that gave rise to Paul's teachings have become so remote

as to be wholly obsolete. For still others, the apostle's tone is so puritanical as toarouse allergies. We have learned to distrust anyone who speaks about sex "inthe name of the Lord Jesus" (5:4). Although such reactions as these are whollynormal, I must urge my readers to shelve them for the time being. I amconvinced that we do not understand these two chapters well enough to trustour normal reactions to them.

ThesisThat, in fact, is my major thesis: our inability to understand these chapters.

This failure can be assessed from three anglesour misunderstanding of theapostle or of his opponents in Corinth or of the ancient congregation caught in

cross fire between the two. It may, of course, be easy to grasp the commandsthat Paul gave, but it is far from easy to grasp the reasoning that lay behindthose commands. So, too, it may be easy to know what actions his opponentswere advising, but very difficult to appreciate the persuasive reasoning that laybehind such advice. And, finally, we may perceive what the congregation wasdoing but because we have never belonged to such a congregation, we cannotknow from within the process by which it arrived at those decisions. This beingtrue, we should not rely on our earlier reactions to the two chapters.

Of course, many readers suppose that the argument of the apostle is entirely transparent. In chapter 5 he condemned the practice of incest among

believers, a practice which his adversaries had persuaded the church to condone. In chapter 6 he attacked readers who took their legal quarrels before non-Christian judges, and he insisted that the congregation was itself competent tohandle those lawsuits. Recourse to non-church courts is today universal, andcongregational mediation of legal disputes is quite defunct. No one, however,thinks of this shift as a "defeat" (6:7) for the church, much less as a repudiationof scriptural authority by churches that doctrinally affirm such authority. Mypoint is this: we think we understand Paul's commands even when we neverthink of obeying them.

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Do we in fact understand that web of thinking which produced thosecommands? For instance, as we read these two chapters they seem to us to havevery little connection, since one deals with incest and the other with lawsuits.As Paul saw things, however, those two belonged together as evidence of thefailure of the church in Corinth. His target was far larger than giving moraladvice to individual believers. The Corinthian congregation was betraying thegospel at the very point where it was most confident of obeying it. Its behaviorhad to be changed, and before that could happen its grasp of the gospel had to bechanged.

1They had been doing the wrong things for the wrong reasons, as

supplied by his opponents. Two alternatives for change were therefore open.They could alter course and do the right things for the wrong reasons, and thus

be more subtly duped by Satan; or they could do the right things for the rightreasons, though that would require a change of mind and a correspondingchange in behavior. For that option they would need a deeper grasp of the innerlogic of Paul's gospel. Paul's objective was to convey such a grasp to thecongregation as a corporate unit.2

One Prophet Versus Many

What role did Paul assume in this appeal? Near the very beginning he madehis stance clear (5:3ff.). He was acting as a prophet, present in spirit andspeaking directly at a meeting of the congregation.

8His words were to be

received as those of the Holy Spirit. He wielded the power of therisenLord both

to pronounce judgment on individual members and to dictate actions by thechurch as a whole. When the letter was read aloud, the church must issue averdict coinciding with his. That verdict would settle not only the immediatestatus of the members involved but their eternal destiny as well. Doomsdaywould ratify this verdict of the congregation!

Behind Paul's demandswe discern a very definite chain of command. Hisorders as a prophet came from the Lord Jesus, whom neither Paul nor hisreaders had ever seen in the flesh. They were relayed by the Holy Spirit, whosemovements were as elusive as wind and whose authority had also been claimedby Paul's opponents. The prophet had been commissioned to relay those orders

to this specific audience, though Paul was absent in body and the opponentswere visibly present. Those orders had required specific actions (5:5,13) whichmust be taken without delay and which would reverse decisions already madeby this congregation in line with advice from its resident prophets. Thus, thechain of command is clear: GodChristthe Spiritthe prophetthecongregationits members.4

Tb understand this text, then, we must fathom the authority exercised byeach link in this chain. Have we had sufficient firsthand contact with prophetswith their gift of the Spirit to know what was at stake? Probably not. Can wecomprehend what was entailed in the transmission of authority from the risen

Christ to selected members of his earthly body? Also doubtful. Do we perceive

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Christ and the Congregation: 1 Corinthians 5-6Review and Expositor

what was demanded of the church, acting as a court of last resort? They were to

deliver a person to Satan for the destruction of the flesh so that the spirit mightbe saved in the day of Jesus. Extremely doubtful

We must also recover the web of convictions of Paul's opponents, for he wasnot the only one who had received the prophetic gift. The Corinthian kibbutzhad become famous for the explosion of spiritual gifts there (1:7). Though Paulhad laid the foundation, the superstructure had been the work of other builders(3:1*15). Paul had written at least one earlier letter in the effort to restore orderout of confusion (5:9), but that letter seems to have compounded the confusion.Now the apostle was trying to clear up the muddle. But up to this time, thecongregation had resisted his efforts, preferring to follow its resident prophets.

They had refused to follow his earlier commands, pleading the impossibility ofthem, the world being what it is (5:10). So now he accused them of ignorance andarrogance.

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What was the line of argument of those other prophets? It is impossible tobe certain, but there are important clues. They defended the case of incest ascommendable evidence of emancipation from law: "All things are lawful" (6:12).In doing this, they probably claimed the authority of the Holy Spirit as well asthe commands of Jesus, for example, "Judge not" (Mt. 7:1). What Paul calledarrogance they called freedom in Christ. When he demanded self-discipline,they may have accused him of arrogance and legalism. Behavior which he

classified with theft and idolatry they saw as exhilarating liberation (5:11; 6:9,10). This raises for us a question. We have inherited centuries of tradition inwhich the church has been supported as a chief bulwark of conventional sexualrestraints; can we now appreciate the position of Christian prophets who arguedfor the abolition of those restraints?

The Role of the Congregation

Another aspect of the situation in Corinth is very difficult to comprehend.Paul was provoked to write these chapters by the report (5:1) that the congregation had chosen to follow the lead of other prophets. Knowing what was atstake, the church had chosen to allow the incestuous couple to remain members

in good standing. It could now adopt Paul's advice only by reversing thatdecision, but that would force it to repudiate the guidance of those reveredprophets. Have we ever been party to such a situation? If we lack such experience, can we fully grasp what was involved? Paul was, of course, concerned withthe individuals immediately involved, but he was more concerned with theguidance provided by resident prophets, and most of all with the congregationitself. In chapter 5, one verse deals with the incestuous persons ancl twelveverses deal with the culpability of the congregation, with its power to rid itselfof the "old yeast."

The same perspective is the glue that binds chapter 6 to chapter 5. Paulholds the Christian cell responsible for at least four things which it had been

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ignoring. It was duty-bound to see that no member defrauded another, toencourage defrauded members to accept loss without complaint or recourse tolegal action, to insist that claims by one member against another be adjudicatedwithin the church, and to provide wise and unprejudiced judges able to resolvethose quarrels. In this case the legal action had already been taken, and Paulhad a rebuke for the persons who had violated their duties as Christians. He wasmore alarmed, however, by the failure on the part of the congregation, whichhad ignored its own status in the new ordering of things and had forgotten thatGod had given to it the power to judge both the world and the angels (6:2, 3).Neither the congregation nor its prophets had realized that such a defense of

personal rights and properties had threatened their inheritance in God's kingdom (6:9).

IssuesIt is now time to explore in greater detail the issues that divided Paul from

his readers. For this task we have accessible only Paul's half of the conversation. It would, of course, be helpful ifa letterfromCorinth had survived, givingthe other side of the dispute. Lacking such a letter we must use Paul's rebuttalto infer his opponents' arguments, always a tricky business. First of all, let ussum up some areas where the two sides were at odds.

There had been in Corintha case of incest. Paul was opposed; the resident

prophets were not. The congregation had refused to deny the guilty member its table-

fellowship or to expel him. Local prophets recommended this refusal;Paul countermanded it.

Members of the church had taken disputes before a non-church court.Paul condemned the practice; local leaders condoned or advised it.

The congregation refused to accept responsibility for preventing or adjudicating those disputes. Local leaders probably encouraged this refusal;Paul insisted on full responsibility.

lb Paul, incest and such greed as leads to lawsuits belonged with robbery, slander, drunkenness, and idolatry; and such acts excluded onefrom inheritance in God's kingdom. His adversaries denied either thatconnection or that exclusion.

It is clear that these points at issue had become test cases: tests of the credibility of specific prophets, tests of the community's loyalty to the Holy Spirit,tests of the freedom that Christ had conveyed through rebirth. Any reversal incongregational action would appear to destroy confidence in all that. Yet Pauldemanded it.

We should notice that for Paul something other than personal stubbornnessand willful wrongdoing were present. To be sure, he held his adversaries to be

guilty* but they had also been deceived (6:9). Seven times in these two chapterswe hear the protest: "Do you not know?" More than simple ignorance is at work,

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however. They have permitted themselves to be deceived. The compound ofignorance and deception had led them to be proud where they should havemourned, to mistake lawlessness for liberty, and to view themselves as mastersrather than slaves owned by Christ. To Paul the ultimate source of such prideand deception was Satan. His objective was thus clear: as one prophet speaking in the Spirit he must correct the congregation's self-deceptions which haddeveloped through trusting the guidance of other prophets.

Common Ground

We should not overlook what these adversaries had in common. All werebelievers in Christ, and all had received either the gift of prophecy or the gift ofdiscerning prophets. Paul expressed what united them in one sentence: "Youwere washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the LordJesus and in the Spirit ofour God" (6:11). Earlier they had been firmly imbeddedin "the world," but now a deep chasm had been opened between them and thatworld, a change analogous to the origins of Israel as a nation: "Christ, ourpaschal lamb, has been sacrificed" (5:7). They had participated in a new Exodusfrom Egypt and now celebrated a perpetual Passover, a festival of total emancipationfromthe Law. They argued, and Paul agreed, that all things had becomelawful

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Much more had been changed by the sacrifice of the paschal lamb thansimply their own personal status. Christ had won a victory over Satan (6:5), overthe world (5:13), and over death (6:14). In an important sense it was in thatvictory that their own transformation had taken place.

8Paul and the Corinthi

ans agreed on the momentous character of that change but disagreed on whatpresent actions conformed to that victory. So, too, they agreed in their commonhope, looking forward to salvation in the day of the Lord (5:5), but disagreed onwhat behavior was an appropriate embodiment of that hope.

It was the extent of the common ground that made their disagreements allthe more serious and resolution all the more difficult. Each side probablybelieved its behavior to be a better index of thefreedomconferred by the Spiritthan the behavior of the other side. Confronting each other were two theologies

of liberation, both celebrating the Passover festival and both anticipatingresurrection-life in God's kingdom. Yet the two were mutually exclusive. One ofthe two factions must have been deceived, sincerely deceived, ip .claiming theauthority conveyed by the gift of prophecy.

This conflict gives the letter unusual significance. Long before the Corinthian church was founded the Spirit had been given to apostles, prophets, andteachers (12:28). Yet this letter may be our best transcript of the earliestmassive outbreak of confusion among recipients of the prophetic gift in theirwork of guiding congregations (14:3). This confusion is entirely central to theletter. The long discussion of "parties" in chapters 1-4 is a prelude to the efforts

to break the deadlock in chapters 5 and 6. So, too, the effort to distinguish

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among the various gifts in chapters 12-15 is a final appeal to the adversaries ofchapters 5 and 6. Perhaps the conflict was inevitable because of the mixture ofself-interest with devotion to Christ. Perhaps it was also insoluble becausecharismatic warrants were claimed for adverse moral decisions, so that neitherside felt that it could renege on the Spirit's leading. The more powerful the gifts,the more deeply entrenched were the opposing convictions.

PauVs Argument

Pvaul was keenly aware of the difficulty of resolving this conflict, as shownby the number and variety of appeals to his adversaries. Some appeals weremade very briefly, as if he realized that they would exert little weight. His

readers could always counter them with equally strong points. For example,Paul argued that, although all things may be lawful, not all things are "helpful"(6:12). The nature of human community, however, is such that there is nouniversal yardstick for measuring what is helpful. Equally ambivalent wasPaul's appeal to enslavement. Were they enslaved to uncontrolled passions, ashe thought, or was he enslaved to conventional moral restraints, as theythought? A similar difficulty attended the reference to unleavened bread. Bothsides agreed that the household should be rid of the old yeast and that this banshould include all "evil/'But what was evil? Boasting? Then which party wasmore guilty of boasting? On which side were sincerity and truth to be found? A

person who is fully convinced of his or her own sincerity can be fully deceived.How convincingly can one participant in a deadlock accuse the other of stubbornness and pride? Tb the pot the kettle is always black.

Paul gave more time in shaping an argument around the question of whatconstitutes "the world." Where lie the boundaries between the world and God'skingdom? In this context, the world was not seen as the physical universe or asthe human race as a whole but as the habitat of greed, stealing, idolatry, andfornication. Paul addressed readers who had migrated from one territory toanother; their migration had qualified them to act as judges of their formerhome and judges as well of those invisible powers (the angels) that rule over thatworld of greed. Readers who were deceived into supposing that they coulddemonstrate God's will by flaunting their own selfishness have reestablishedresidence in the world. Prophets who have defended incest or lawsuits as proofof liberation have in fact proved the opposite. Whenever one Christian defraudsanother, or claims compensation from another, the congregation as a whole hasbeen defeated in its warfare (6:7); a segment of God's kingdom has been recovered by Satan. Because such a return indicated obedience to the Satan who haddeceived them, the congregation must declare the truth by reversing its decision.

This extensive argument rests on three pivotal questions. First, what kindof liberation from the world had happened at that moment when the paschal

lamb had been sacrificed? Second, what had actually happened to the Corin-

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thian church in its migration from world to kingdom? Christ's sacrifice and theirconversion represented a double event in the past which the church had misinterpreted.

9Prophet was divided from prophet by divergent attitudes to that

event. Because the conflict centered in attitudes toward the body, the thirdpivotal question is: what changes had been produced in the body of Christiansby Christ's death and by their sanctification? Did the body now belong to Christor to the world? The answer to that question formed the climactic stage inPaul's argument.

Christ and the BodyCan we recover the answer Paul's opponents gave to that question? Not

with assurance, but with a modest degree of confidence. They believed that noessential change had been produced in the body by the death of Christ or bytheir own conversion. Their bodies remained as transient as the flesh, and theiruse by Christians a matter of indifference. This position may be inferred in partfrom the statement which was probably a quotation from one of their axioms:"Food is for the belly and belly for foodand God will destroy both belly andfood" (6:13). This axiom probably supported their acceptance of incest: "Sex isfor the genitals and the genitals for sexand God will destroy both genitals andsex." Probably a similar rationalization was used to justify lawsuits.

Paul took great pains to refute this view of the body and its relation to the

world and to Christ. He first shifted the basis of discussion from flesh to body.Where his readers had identified the two, Paul separated them. The flesh maynot have been decisively changed by the double event, but the body had been sochanged.

10Paul described that change in at least six ways.

1. They have been bought and have ceased to belong to themselves (6:20).When Christ died a transfer of ownership had taken place; the Corinthians hadbecome his property, his slaves. They had surrendered the right to governthemselves and had come under new management (Gal. 2:19,20; Phil. 1:21-23).To the extent that self and body were inseparable, to that extent their body hadmoved from the world to the kingdom. When they denied this transfer, the flesh

became again the property of Satan, part and parcel of the world.2. The body has become a temple of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit which they

have from God dwells among them and in them. Elsewhere Paul spoke of thebodies of individual believers as such a temple (2 Cor. 6:16. As this verse mayhave been part of the earlier, letter, 1 Cor. 5:9, this text is highly relevant). Healso spoke of the whole church as temple (1 Cor. 3:16,17; Eph. 2:21). Both ideasare probably present in our text. Each congregation, as well as each believer,must view the body as this temple and act accordingly. The gift of the Spirit(which had caused great confusion in Corinth) had made the body different asthe residence for a different inhabitant. To treat the body otherwise is a massive

deception.3. Whoever is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him. In that statement


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we should focus on two accents: one spirit excludes two; and the verb joined isthe same verb Paul used of union with a prostitute. This gives to the sin offornication (porneia) the double meaning that is often found in the Bible. It isboth a sexual act that flouts the marriage bond between two human spouses andalso any act by which a person denies his or her covenant with God and servestwo masters. To be joined to the risen Lord is to be married to that spouse. Anyaction that signifies union with some other spouse becomes a prime instance offornication. Yet so strong is the bond to the risen Lord that even when the fleshis delivered to Satan (5:5), the spirit will be saved in the day of Jesus.

4. Their bodies are now members of Christ's body. Because Christ was inheaven and they were on earth, their union with Christ spanned the distancebetween invisible and visible realities. As members of his body, their bodieswere visible signs of his presence and evidence of his power. The imagery isalmost grotesque: they are arms, legs, and feet, moving in response to hiscommands (Rom. 12:15; 1 Cor. 10:17; 12:13, 27; Eph. 1:23; 4:4; 5:30; CoL 1:20).The Corinthians, however, have been deceived into supposing that their bodieshad remained their own, subject only to their desires. Accordingly, their behavior had illustrated such ignorance as to elicit Paul's most explosive epithet, veryweakly translated "Never"(Afegenoito).

5. Paul's convictions were fused in the staccato aphorism, "the body forthe Lord and the Lord for the body." Here the Greek has no verb and nopreposition, but only the dative case. The English preposition for is probablytoo narrow and too weak to carry all therichmeanings of the dative case. Whatdid Paul mean by saying "the Lord for the body"? Did he, as the followingsentence suggests, think of the resurrection of their bodies as the intended goalofJesus' work and of God's power? Did he, as the previous sentence suggests,wish to separate the body which would soon be raised from the belly whichwould soon be destroyed? Did he wish to present an antithetical formula to theearlier formula so dear to his antagonists: food/belly, belly/food? Did he wish torebuke those who, in excitement over charismatic gifts, interpreted the spirit

(not the body) as the sole object of redemption? Did he want to recall specificstories about Jesus, whose ministry in the body included a ministry to and forthe body and whose death demonstrated those prepositionsto, in, forwithclimactic force? All these nuances may have been present. Clearly, Paul intended to stress the mutual interdependence of the body and the Lord and tostress how different this relationship was from the one described by the formulaused to justify incest.

The other half of the aphorism, "the body for the Lord," also marked theboundary between Paul's thinking and that of his prophetic opponents. It wasaxiomatic to Paul that because the Lord had died for the body, the same body

was destined for the Lord. How could a person serve such a master and share inhis dying except by using a body that lives and dies for the Lord? The dativecase indicates a permanent relationship to this Lord a bond that excludes the


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Christ and the Congregation: 1 Corinthians &6Review and Expositor

alternative, "the body for fornication." Tb Paul a person's body is inseparablefrom one's will, one's vocation, one's very self. The body is what a person is; itreveals the purpose for which one lives and dies, or better, reveals the otherperson to whom one both dies and lives (Rom. 14:7-9).

6. All five of these convictions focus on the assurance that in the death ofJesus and in a person's baptism, the body has undergone a decisive change. Achange in lords has effected a change in bodies. That change is presupposed inPaul's final command: "Glorify God in your body." Action by the body giveswitness to its purchase by Christ, to the gift of the Holy Spirit, t the power ofGod. It is because the body has been changed that a Christian who fornicatessins against his or her own body (6:18). It is because its body has been changedthat a congregation sins when it arrogantly defends incest or fails to applystandards of justice congruent with life in God's kingdom. The gospel establishes an ultimate standard: one no longer asks whether a given action attests tohuman rights or freedoms; one asks whether it glorifies God. As the glory ofGod has been manifested on the cross and at the moment of rebirth, so the sameglory must be manifested in the body that God has made the temple of the HolySpirit. Glorifying God covered all actions by which the human communityadored and revered its God. Yet even more than this was included in Paul'scommand. Wherever God's kingdom and its power take up their residence,there the glory of God Himself is present. In this case, the glory of God resides

in the body that glorifies Him.11

Let me summarize. It is quite easy for us to comprehenda religious community whose existence is regulated by its law, whose life is ordered by theobservance of that law, and whose leaders stress the need for greater obedience.We know all too much about such a community, for we have lived in one all ourlives. It is more difficult to imagine a church, like that in Corinth, whichfollowed the leadership of prophets for whom all things had become lawfulWhat would it be like to live in a congregation that prided itself on the practiceof incest and on indifference to the practice of fraud among its members-all inthe name of having been liberated by Christ? Paul's letter confronts us with still

another option or, should I say, with a divine revelation and a kind of liberationthat is virtually incomprehensible. In this community every member is a personwhose body has been radically and permanently changed by the miracle of GoodFriday and Easter and by dying and rising with Christ. Tb this community allthings are lawful because its body has become the body of the risen Christ andthe temple of the Holy Spirit. Some three and one-half centuries ago, JohnDonne became aware of the radical character of that change.

O Holy Ghost, whose temple IAm, but of mud walls, and condensed dust,

And being sacrilegiously

Half wasted with youth's fires, of pride and lust,Must with new storms be weatherbeat;349


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Double in my heart thy flame,Which let devout sad tears intend; and let

(Though this glass lanthorn, flesh, do suffer maim)Fire, sacrifice, priest, altar be the same.

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1In these chapters Paul used the plural pronoun you, for he was addressing the church as a unit,

capable of acting as a unit. That accent is often lost in English where the same pronoun can besingular as well as plural

2In 5:5,13, Paul demanded action by the congregation as a single unit. This clearly implies that

they had already taken wrong action by a corporate decision; it also implies action taken during a

meeting for worship where prophets were present.aFor a profile of early Christian prophets, see David HiH, New Testament Prophecy (Atlanta:

John Knox Press, 1979), pp. 2-9,111-118.4

There is a similar chain in the book of Revelation. Cf. Paul S. Minear, I Saw a New Earth(Washington: Corpus Books, 1968), pp. 3-5.

5John C. Hurd, Jr., The Origin of First Corinthians (London: SPCK, 1965), pp. 95-209.

6These arguments are summarized in ibid., pp. 207-09.

7Ibid., pp. 68,153.

8For a similar expression of the conviction that the crucifixion of Christ had changed the

relationship ofthe believer to him or herselfand to the world, cf. Gal. 6:14; also Paul S.Minear, "TheCrucified World: The Enigma of GaL 6:14." Theologia Crucis-Signum Crucis, Erich Dinkier Festschrift (Tubingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1979), pp. 395-408.

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Christian prophets had the duty of disclosing the hidden connections between current moraldilemmas faced by the church and what God had done in the humiliation and exaltation of Christ. Cf.Paul S. Minear, New Testament Apocalyptic (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1981), pp. 31, 45ff., 6lf.

10In 1 Cor. 15, Paul also distinguishes between the flesh and blood that cannot inherit the

kingdom (v. 50) and the kind of body that shares in the transformation when the mortal puts onimmortality.

11The correlation between body and glory is very important to PauL In 2 Cor. 4:7ff., he speaks of

the body as manifesting both the death and the life of Jesus. In Phil. 3:21, he speaks of Jesus aschanging the body ofour humilation into the body of his glory. That change is not postponed to somefuture date but is even now progressing, from "one degree of glory to another" (2 Cor. 3:18).

lt JohnDonne: The Complete English Poems, ed. A. J. Smith (New York: Penguin Books, 1971),p. 318.


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Documents

1 Cor 5 - 6 - Christ and the Congregation