Adam Sandler's 1995 movie, Billy Madison, pretty much echoes the church at Corinth.
I don't know if you've seen the movie.
It's nearly 20 years old.
Billy Madison is a spoiled rich kid who never grew up.
He's a 28-year-old man, behaves like a child.
His father, a fairly wealthy hotelier, loves him, but he's constantly embarrassed by his
son's antics and lifestyle choices.
It's cringeworthy, pretty much describes Billy Madison's selfish, immature behaviour and
the movie, generally.
But that's the picture of Corinth that we've been getting over the last few weeks.
Immature, you need to grow up.
It's what we saw in chapter 3.
You're babes.
You're just near, mere infants in Jesus.
Chapter 6, verse 12.
Paul quotes back to them twice.
One of their favourite sayings.
Most likely, it's a saying that was in Corinth, the city itself, that the church used themselves.
It goes, everything is permissible for me.
Literally, it is everything for me is allowable.
And the words for me are the centre of the sentence that everything else builds around.
Their attitude was fundamentally self-centred.
We saw that from chapter 3, didn't we?
Mere babies in Jesus.
Everything revolving around them.
Immaturity.
The problem with this church, though, is that they rated themselves really highly.
They actually thought themselves as spiritual giants, as wise and mature and knowledgeable
and spiritual.
And so, as we move into these middle sections of 1 Corinthians, it's easy to miss something
that is so important.
Ten times in 1 Corinthians, and only once outside of 1 Corinthians, Paul uses a very simple question.
They are all in the same grammatical form.
They all have the same tone.
The first is in chapter 5, verse 6.
The last of them in chapter 9, verse 24.
And the question is this.
Do you not know?
And it's a rebuke.
It's like, this is so basic, you should know this already.
Grow up, Corinthian church.
You should know this.
And of the ten occurrences in 1 Corinthians, seven of them are here in these two chapters.
This should be basic knowledge stuff for this church.
You see, their assessment of themselves was so off.
While they were the church in Corinth, too much of the city of Corinth was in the church.
And there are three broad issues that Paul wants them to go back to basics on and to learn
stuff on in these two chapters.
And the Christian's perspective on each of these things has to be controlled by the cross
of Christ and not by the prevailing view of the culture.
And the first issue he picks up is sin and church discipline at the beginning of chapter 5.
You see, here again, they've been controlled by their statement, everything is permissible
for me and not the cross.
Paul sees discipline here within the church as indispensable to the health of the church.
That's because he wants us to take sin seriously.
In verse 1, we can see that he's having a go at a guy who has a sexual relationship with
his stepmother, something that even their culture considered taboo.
In fact, in the Roman Empire, it was an illegal sexual activity.
It seems from verse 2, however, that the church at Corinth were proud of it.
Now, we need to understand that a little bit.
To be proud of an illegal relationship would be like a group of people boasting about their
drug lab on Facebook.
It doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
The authorities would be down on you like a ton of bricks real quick.
So it's probably better to understand it as the church being proud of who this particular
person was, proud of who he is in society.
They're proud of, remember, we've seen already, they're proud of things like status and influence
and the gifted speakers and the knowledgeable and the celebrities and the powerful and the rich.
And so they're proud of this particular individual because he encapsulates the things that they
admire.
And at the same time, they're overlooking his sin.
Focusing instead of all the good things that this person's done, the social status he has
and the prestige that he's brought to them.
Glossing over the sin because they value who he is and what he brings to them.
Instead, they should have been filled with grief.
They should have come clean.
They should have dealt with the sin transparently in an appropriate way.
Two things to bear in mind about discipline here.
First, it's not just sexual immorality that he's having a shot at because if you go down
to verse 11, he throws in a bunch of other sins there.
The greedy, the idolaters, the slanderers, the drunks, the swindlers.
So it's not just sexual immorality he's picking on.
Secondly, disciplinary action is for those inside the church, not those outside the church.
That's his point in verses 9 to the first half of verse 13.
You see, to hold the non-Christian accountable for Christian standards would be like someone
trying to hold me accountable for not adhering to the clearly defined rules of the Knitters
Guild of New South Wales.
Church discipline is for those within the church.
And yet, how often do we look down our nose in a judgmental attitude to those outside the church
and the decaying moral standards of the society in which we lig and go tut, tut, tut, tut, tut.
And at the same time, playing light and loose with our own sinful attitudes.
Now, Paul doesn't give a manual here for how we should deal with all discipline issues,
but he does give us some reasons why he says this is really important,
both for the individual who sinned and for the church body as a whole.
In the refrain in verse 13, Paul is drawing upon an Old Testament image
of the people of Israel in Deuteronomy.
While Israel was in the wilderness, those that were clean and part of the people of God
were physically located with inside the boundaries of Israel's camp.
Those who had committed a wrongdoing, a sin, or declared to be unclean were sent outside the camp,
some of them for a short period of time, some of them permanently.
And Paul uses this image here to call the church to put the offender outside the camp.
Hand him over to Satan is what he says.
Now, that sounds pretty grim, being handed over to Satan.
I won't even assume to imagine what that exactly means completely.
I fully understand that.
It seems to me that at the very least, this person needs to be handed over
and judged by the worldly authorities for his criminal activity.
Don't protect someone like this.
Hand them over and let the courts do their work on this person.
And in that situation, the person will find no mercy, no kindness, no grace.
They will be punished for it.
But what is clear is the end point that Paul wants for this person.
He wants them to be saved in the end.
He hopes they will realise their sin, repent of their attitude and their actions,
and ultimately have their salvation assured.
That's what he wants.
That's the end goal here.
And so how we deal with any sort of discipline in the church
must always be guided by the end goal.
And that is ultimately restoration.
And so that means that whatever discipline we partake in,
it will never be unloving, it will never be vindictive,
it will never be vengeful,
and it will never ultimately, God willing, from our perspective, be permanent.
God is the judge, the final judge.
The discipline is ultimately meant to be for the good of this individual here who sinned,
but also for the good of the church.
Verse 6, Paul's worried about sin working its way through the whole congregation,
like yeast works through dough.
And again, he draws on another Old Testament image, this time from Exodus chapter 12.
At the time of the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Breads,
the Israelites were supposed to get rid of all yeast that was in their house,
get rid of all yeast out of the house, because it was a sign of uncleanliness.
And if they were found to have yeast in their house,
they were cut off from Israel,
and the only way to come back to be part of the people of God
was through the blood of the Passover lamb that was sacrificed.
And it was a ceremony that they carried out year after year after year
to remind them how they were rescued from sin,
who they now are in God,
and how they were to live.
And Christians, unlike those who practice the festival of unleavened bread,
for the Christian, life is an ongoing festival of unleavened bread.
Not just a once a year thing of cleaning out the yeast,
it is an ongoing process for us.
Because Jesus fulfilled the promise of the festival,
we don't need annual sacrifices to deal with our sin,
because Jesus was sacrificed once for all.
And notice, it says there,
that because of Jesus, we are the unleavened bread.
We have been made pure through Jesus' death on the cross.
And Paul calls us here in this verse to behave as we are.
You are the unleavened bread.
So get rid of all the leaven.
Clear it out.
Those in Christ, those bought with the blood of the Passover lamb,
he says, live out who you are with sincerity and truth.
And so what he says here is, in this whole section,
is take sin seriously.
Avoid it and deal with it.
Both those things.
Deal with sin.
Don't sweep it under the carpet.
Don't call it by other names.
Don't make it less.
Don't excuse it.
Deal with it.
It is essential,
both for the person who's perpetrating and for the church.
And we need to do it gently.
We need to do it lovingly.
But we also need to do it firmly.
That's his first point.
The great irony in Corinth
is that they've actually got it doubly wrong.
They're tolerating what is clearly an illegal sexual relationship in the church.
And in chapter six,
they're taking each other to court over trivial matters.
This issue should have been dealt with the courts,
and these issues shouldn't be dealt with the courts.
They've got it doubly wrong.
And so the second issue he picks up here is handling disputes.
Again, they aren't being controlled by...
Sorry, they're being controlled by the Corinthian mandate of everything is permissible for me.
That's the attitude, rather than the cross.
Now, I guess it's not hard to imagine we live in an age of litigation,
same as it was in Corinth.
The public courts in Corinth were a spectacle.
If you were rich, you wouldn't hesitate to take even the most minor grievance to court.
And Paul here is talking about minor grievances.
The word he uses in verse one means pragmatic dispute, a small matter.
In verse two, he calls them trivial cases.
In verses three and four, he uses a word which means the small things of life.
Trivia.
Instead of sorting it out amongst each other,
verse six, he says,
one brother goes to law against another and this,
and here's the real sting,
in front of unbelievers.
Here's a church,
one person backs their car into another person's car in the car park,
and they hop out and they say,
we'll see you in court.
And they've just walked out of corporate worship,
where sitting in the front row
is a bloke
with his stepmother.
That's all right.
Paul says in verse seven,
the very fact that you have lawsuits among you means that you've been completely defeated already.
In other words,
you've absolutely failed in what you've called to be,
being called to be as the people of God.
Your relationships are all topsy-turvy.
And Paul goes on to speak here to both the person being wronged
and the person doing the wrong.
He says,
first of all,
to the one who's being wronged,
and I think these are the hardest words in this passage for us to hear.
He says in verse seven,
why not rather be wronged?
Why not rather be cheated?
Basically,
he said,
someone might have done you wrong in a business deal,
or they haven't paid back a loan,
or they're trot on your foot and not apologised.
He said,
you might be legally entitled to go to court,
you might have been aggrieved,
but surely the honour of the Lord Jesus
and his church in the eyes of the world
is far more important.
Why not say,
I'd rather be wronged and cheated a thousand times
than to see the name of Jesus disgraced
because of the activity of Christian people.
My friends,
there's no better visual aid of the innocent Christ
who died for sinners
than an innocent party who's being wronged,
letting it go gracefully.
It's at the very heart of what it means
to be different as Christians.
I heard a wonderful testimony of this recently.
A young graduate working in their first job
at a TV station
made a major blunder
that cost the network an awful lot of money.
And she feared, naturally,
that she was about to lose her job over this,
but nothing ever happened
to her great surprise.
And after some time on the grapevine
around the network,
it turns out
that her boss,
her immediate supervisor,
went to his bosses
and took the blame for it.
While she perpetrated it in this mistake,
he said he clearly didn't take enough care
in her development and overseeing her.
And don't punish her for it.
It's my responsibility.
Now, he himself didn't get the sack.
He thought he might.
But his bosses were pretty unhappy with him.
The graduate,
having found out what had happened,
went to her boss
and asked him,
why did you do that?
And it took several attempts
for her to extract the answer from him,
but this was his answer.
I'm a Christian.
I follow the Lord Jesus
who died on a cross
and absorbed all of my deep failings,
faults and sin
so that I can be forgiven.
Because of what Jesus has done for me,
I want to live a life in such a way
where I absorb more pain on people
than inflict it.
There is someone
shaped by the cross.
And that graduate said to him,
so what church do you go to?
She wanted to be part of a church
where people live like that.
Paul's next word here
is to the person doing the wrong.
Verse 8 and 9.
Instead, you yourselves cheat and do wrong
and you do this to your brothers.
Do you not know
that the wicked will not inherit
the kingdom of God?
He says,
you might make a few bucks
out of your brother's expense,
but if things don't change,
it will cost you your eternity.
There is no way
that I could smooth over that.
There's no way I could say it lesser.
Make it sound easier.
You continue this sort of behaviour
and it will cost you your eternity.
That's pretty serious.
And the exclusion list from the kingdom
doesn't stop at sexual immorality.
It's there in verse 9,
but it's...
Look at verse 10.
You've got more socially acceptable
white-collar kind of stuff.
Thieves, drunks, slanderers and swindlers.
Running people down.
Slandering their name.
In verse 11 he says,
and this is what some of you were.
He's saying here,
this is the life that you used to have.
This is the people you used to be.
But now it's different.
Verse 11.
But you were washed.
You were sanctified.
You were set apart by God
through Christ on the cross
to be different.
You were justified.
That is, you were put right.
You were made righteous by Christ on the cross
in the name of the Lord Jesus
and by the Spirit of God.
You have to be shaped by the cross.
When you start following Jesus,
the old life is meant to be left behind.
And so as a church family,
let us resolve to live
as who we are in Jesus.
Let's resolve that we won't be wronged.
Sorry, let us resolve we'd rather be wronged
than to dispute with one another.
Let's make sure as a church family
that we never let things get to the point
where the need to win
outweighs the ultimate prize itself.
The third issue that Paul picks up here
is at the end of chapter 6
and it's sex.
Again, they're being shaped by the
everything is permissible,
for me, motto and attitude of Corinth
and not the cross.
What Paul has already said
in the two previous issues
is countercultural,
designed for a life of purity,
integrity before God and before people.
And this section from Paul is revolutionary.
Christianity has given the world
a revolutionary view of sex.
In the same way that our Christian hope
and understanding of the future
radically transforms our relationships now,
as we've seen in the first two sections,
so it radically revolutionises our view of sex.
And Paul here quotes another one
of these Corinthian sayings,
another one of their mottos,
in verse 13.
Food for the body and the body for food,
but God will destroy them both.
Now, they're not just talking about food here.
Here's the logic.
Here's the logic of how they're thinking.
If your stomach is rumbling,
you eat some food.
And so, if you're feeling aroused,
you have sex.
Sex is just another bodily appetite.
The little addition at the end of this saying,
but God will destroy them both,
is a view that arises out of the Greek understanding
of the divide between the spiritual world
and the physical world.
This is Greek philosophy stuff.
They viewed the physical world as temporary
and not that important.
And what you do with your body, therefore,
doesn't matter a whole much, really.
So, it's really ultimately what you do with your soul
that matters the most.
Body not important, soul matters.
And so, for some, it led to a cheap view of sex.
For instance, at upper class banquets,
you know, dinner parties in Corinth,
instead of an after dinner mint with coffee,
you are offered after dinner sex with coffee.
Prostitutes were brought in by the host of the dinner party
as part of the entertainment.
And it was completely normal.
No one would blink an eye at it.
Mind you, the same Greek philosophical position
also led some people to conclude
that because the physical was so unimportant
and so down the line
that it was, in fact, wrong to indulge it in any way.
And so, for them,
sex, rather than being something that you indulge in,
wasn't something that was actually bad
and dirty and defiling.
And so, you don't do sex at all.
And so, you see that at the beginning of chapter 7
where it says,
it is good for a man not to touch a woman.
And Chris will deal with chapter 7 next week.
So, come back for that one.
The key to understanding Paul's revolutionary view of sex
is in verse 16.
Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute
is one with her in body?
For it is said,
the two will become one flesh.
Now, when we read that,
we automatically think that one flesh means physical union.
And if that was the case,
if it was just physical body, physical union,
then his argument would be,
don't you know that when you have physical union with someone,
you have physical union with someone?
Now, that wouldn't be worth saying.
I'm surprised they even wrote it.
So, he's not just talking about physical union here.
The term flesh, more often than not, in the Bible,
doesn't just mean physical tissue.
It means more than that,
and it certainly means more than that here.
And if it didn't,
if it was just physical tissue,
then when Paul says it would be wrong
to have sex
because it is the only sin
that would be committed against your body,
he, in fact, would be wrong at that point
if it was just physical tissue
because suicide would be sin against the body
and drug addiction would be sin against the body as well.
You see, one flesh here is more than physical tissue.
It means embodied personhood.
To becoming one flesh
is another way of saying
that personal transformation is going on in the sex act.
And that's quite astounding.
This is revolutionary.
Paul is not devaluing sex here.
He's, in fact, doing the very opposite.
He's sending it sky high.
Greek philosophy never knew of any of this sort of an idea.
The two becoming one flesh
is another way of saying
that personal transformation is going on.
He sees the sexual act
as one of self-commitment
which deeply involves the entire person.
Not just body parts.
Sex is the full giving of one's entire self to another.
It is a matter of self-giving and self-disclosure.
So God did not invent sex for self-gratification
or even for self-expression.
God didn't even make sex
as a dirty but necessary bodily function for reproduction.
He rejects, in other words, both views.
Paul says here
that sex was designed by God
as a way to do radical self-donation.
Sex is God's invented way
for us to give ourselves to someone else
so deeply
that it results
in personal transformation and completion.
To put it another way,
God says
you must never give,
you must never get physically naked
and vulnerable
with someone
without becoming vulnerable
in your entire life.
all of life.
You must not become physically vulnerable
and hold on to your independence.
You must become legally,
economically,
socially,
emotionally,
in every way
committed.
You must give up your independence.
Physical oneness
is, in fact,
to be a confirmation
of whole-of-life oneness.
And if you do that,
if whole-body giving
is done in the context
of whole-of-life giving,
it will result
in deep soul connection
and nurture
and in deep personal transformation.
Now, let me be frank here.
I've been involved
in this one flesh thing
for about 15 years
with my wife.
Let's clarify that.
And as a result,
Natalie's mind
and heart
is so present with me
that when I get into
any situation
in a split second,
I not only have
my instinctive way
to act
and to think
and to speak,
but I also know
what Natalie would say
and how she would act
and how she thinks.
Now,
don't say I'm
in all affection.
What I'm saying there is,
it's not that I've lost
who I am,
but I've been
radically supplemented.
Natalie
has been shaping me
over 15 years
and I've been shaping her
over 15 years.
We have given
each other to ourselves
in all of life.
In all of life.
And because Natalie
is someone
who loves
and knows
and serves
the Lord Jesus
and desires
to keep growing
in that,
her supplement
to me
is cross-shaped
supplement.
She's being transformed
in the image of Jesus,
I'm being transformed
in the image of Jesus,
and that supplements
each other
and shapes each other.
I think that's partly
why Paul says,
if you're a Christian,
marry a Christian
in 1 Corinthians 7.
The question is,
who's shaping you?
In our society,
it's normal to give
your body
without giving yourself.
Have sex
and to hold on
to your independence.
Keep your individual control.
And Paul says
that when you do,
you are destroying
a beautiful
person-shaping commitment.
You're destroying
deep soul nurture
and personal transformation.
I think
the total load
of emotional issues
associated with sex
in this world
would be just incalculable
because of the abuse
of this thing
that God has given
as a good gift.
When you give your body
without giving
your whole self,
you are in fact
destroying
your commitment mechanism.
The Corinthians
had not thought
through the implications
of everything
is permissible for me.
Casual sex,
as it turns out,
is not so casual.
It is,
for the Christian,
an act of desecration.
Verse 19,
do you not know
that your body
is a temple
of the Holy Spirit
who is in you,
whom you have received
from God?
You are not your own.
You were bought
at a price.
You see,
at the cross,
Jesus paid the price
for our redemption.
He paid the price
to set us free
from our slavery
to sin
and to death
and immorality.
And the Corinthians
thought this means,
whoopee,
everything is permissible
for me.
I can do whatever I like
and Jesus will just
forgive me.
And Paul corrects
that error.
You're not free.
You're not free
for yourself.
You're not free for,
you are free
purely for Christ
because you've been
bought by Christ.
And in actual fact,
the word that he says
in verse 16,
how could you unite
yourself to a prostitute,
is the exact same word
where he says
you've been united
to Christ.
How could you
possibly say
that you follow
Christ,
you're united
with Christ,
one body with him
in spirit
and then go
and take that body
and unite it
to someone
who's not in Christ.
And that's why
he says in verse 18,
flee sexual immorality.
He doesn't
want us to negotiate
with it.
He wants us to flee it.
Flee the old life.
Flee.
The word here
to flee is
porneia.
The Greek word
porneia means
any kind of sex
outside of marriage,
whether you are married
or not.
And he's saying
have nothing
to do
with sexual activity
outside the covenant
of marriage
because it's the only
sin you commit
against your body.
He's saying
and the effects
of it will be deep
and they'll be painful
and they will be
enduring.
He says
maybe you've
experienced it,
you've carried
the damage,
maybe you've been
damaged by someone else
and a passage like this
can open up
those old wounds.
I'm very mindful
of that.
But these wounds
can heal.
Remember verse 11?
That's what some
of you were
but you were washed.
That is
you might feel dirty
but you're not
in Jesus.
You've been washed clean.
You were sanctified.
That is
you've been made
a saint.
Your purity
has been restored
in Jesus
no matter what
you were.
Friends,
what we've been seeing
through this series
is that genuine maturity
is not so much
seen in what you know
but in how you
live out
what you know.
That's Christian
maturity.
and Paul
wants us to grow up.
He wants us to take
our sin seriously.
What we've seen here
is that God
will never let us
keep our relationship
with him in a box
marked Sunday
or marked
religion
or just for the soul.
He's interested
in every day of the week
and he's interested
in your whole life
and he's interested
as it turns out
in every part of your
body.
True spirituality
and maturity
is not just seen
in how fervently
we sing at church
or how eloquent
our prayers
or how big
our Christian library
is.
True maturity
is seen
in the details
of our lives
as we,
according to Romans
chapter 12,
offer our bodies
as a living sacrifice,
holy and pleasing
to God.
God.
And that means
at home,
it means at school,
uni,
it means on Facebook,
on the phone,
at the club,
in our retirement
village,
in our bedrooms.
True maturity
is seen
in a life of purity.
And that will require us
not just to avoid sin,
to flee from sexual
immorality,
but strive to honour
God in all that we do
to make sure the yeast
doesn't permeate the dough,
to cut it back.
So I think it's really good
for us right now
just to take a moment.
We're going to enter
into the Lord's Supper again,
remember Christ crucified
on the cross
as we do this
and just reaffirm
our commitment
to follow him
for the cross
to shape our lives.
His priorities
become our priorities.
So that's what this does.
It takes us back
to the cross.
It'll take us to remember
it's all that we have
in Christ
and reaffirm
our commitment
to take up our cross
and to follow him.
I was really delighted,
can I say this week,
last Sunday
Debbie stood up here
and said,
we're going to have
communion this week
and if you're out
of fellowship with someone
you need to sort it out
in the course of the week.
I was absolutely delighted
to hear at least one person
took that seriously
and went and sought out
a relationship
with another person
throughout the course
of this week.
And I want to say
well done to that.
Good on you.
May you know
complete freedom
and forgiveness
and restoration
of that relationship
as we come
and we join
in this together.
Thank you.