THE APOSTLE OF THE RECONCILIATION

`Wherefore I beseech you, be ye followers (become imitators) of me!' (4:16).

The apostle's faith is a triumph and a challenge. So small is man's day, so great is God's, so little is man's

estimate, so superior is Christ's, the light affliction is but for a moment, and works out a far more exceeding and

eternal weight of glory, while we look not at things that are seen. He could call them in their `fulness' to follow him

in his poverty, from their reigning as kings to standing with himself in the arena, exposed and condemned. Their

estimate of greatness was nothing worth. He envied not the ease and security of those who were leading the

Corinthians on into the morass of contentions and divisions. Let him that glorieth glory in the Lord, all else is

nothing, and less than nothing, and over and above it all is the consciousness, `ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's'

Chapters 5 to 8 of this epistle deal with some signal departure from the position which all believers have `in

Christ'. It will be observed that before the apostle speaks to the Corinthians concerning the sinfulness of `divisions',

before he treats them as `babes' or says they `walk as men', he addresses them as `the church of God ... sanctified in

Christ, called saints'.

The epistle does not deal with the one foundation which had been laid, but with the faulty building which was

being erected upon it. While each believer at Corinth was a saint, his walk and witness might be anything but

saintly. So when we turn to chapter 5, the apostle speaks of a sin which was notorious, reported commonly and not

merely by the household of Chloe. A sin so gross and so vile that the very heathen around them repudiated it,

steeped as they were to the lips in abominations.

`And ye are puffed up'. - Six times does the apostle use this term, the very opposite to lowliness and meekness.

In 2 Corinthians 12:20 it occurs again in a very similar context. The apostle has now to do that which must have

cost him many tears and anxious hours:

`For I verily, as absent in body, but present in spirit, have already judged, as though I were present, him that hath

so done this deed. In the name of our Lord Jesus, when ye are gathered together, and my spirit, with the power

of our Lord Jesus, to deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved

in the day of the Lord' (5:3-5 Author's translation).

While details differ, we are back again, in principle, to chapter 3, where the believer may suffer loss, yet he

himself be saved, so as by fire. When Job was delivered to Satan, he immediately suffered loss after loss, till

nothing save his very life was left. The apostle Paul had the power to deliver a believer over to Satan similarly. The

primary result would be bodily disease, and in case of rebellious impenitence, possibly death. Sickness and death

are alluded to in 1 Corinthians 11:30-32 in connection with abuses to do with the Lord's table. This delivery was not

unto condemnation, but `that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord'. It is parallel with 1 Timothy 1:20,

where Hymenaeus and Alexander are delivered to Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme.

`Your glorying is not good'. - To kauchema means not your `glorying', but the subject of your glorying. `Not

good' is expressed in the figure meiosis, and means that it was emphatically evil. Farrar renders the sentence, `The

subject of your self-glorification is hideous'. How will the apostle seek to bring these wanderers back to the purity

of Christ. Will he take them to Sinai or to Calvary? He takes them once more to the cross of Christ. `Purge out

therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, even as ye are unleavened'. In Christ they were saints, they

were unleavened, but their lives did not express this truth. `For even Christ our passover hath been sacrificed'. The

leaven is typical of `malice and wickedness'. The sin condoned was already working in the assembly. Just as leaven

`puffed up' the dough, so this leaven of wickedness was leavening the whole lump.

There is a marked difference in the Scriptures as to the attitude of one believer to another and of the believer's

attitude to the outside world. 1 Corinthians 5:9 has been taken to refer to a letter written some time previously, but

which has not come down to us. Of course it is absurd to think that the only letters Paul wrote to the churches are

the ones that form part of the New Testament, but we do not believe that any part of `Scripture' has been lost. We

do not believe, however, that there is any necessity to imagine that the apostle refers to a previous letter. `I wrote' in

5:9 is egrapsa, `I have written' in verse 11 is the same. `In an epistle' is not exact; `In the epistle' is what is written.