Kingdom Living

1 Corinthians 5

    9 I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people— 10 not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would 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 if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler—not even to eat with such a one. 12 For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? 13 God judges [2] those outside. “Purge the evil person from among you.”

I found it interesting a few days ago when I read this scripture because it’s completely contrary to my experience with the Church. In my experience, although we understand that we’re all sinners, it’s sort of okay for those of us within the Church because we’ve said the magic prayer and have been forgiven. At that point it was our job to keep our distance from those outside. If we could get them inside the Church to minister to them, then great. If we could get them to say the magic prayer and conform to the “lifestyle” we lived, then we had succeeded. Brothers and sisters within the Church were hardly ever held accountable to the Church. Jesus had saved them, and that was enough.

Paul echoes the words of Jesus [John 17:15-18] in verse 10. Just as Jesus, Paul understood that Christians were supposed to be in the world. We are sent into the world. We are meant to be in the lives of those who don’t know Jesus. We are to love them. Once we learn that it is the Holy Spirit who convicts, we won’t have to try so hard to get people to follow all of our rules. We can love them and share the true gospel with them and let the Holy Spirit do the work that He does. Instead we think, “If so and so would just stop watching porn or drinking beer or smoking or committing sin x, y, or z, then they would be alright.”  The truth is that unless God covers them in HIS grace they will never be okay. Salvation doesn’t come by the law. It comes by a sovereign God. 

What I’m not saying here is that we should validate sin in any way. God takes offense to all sin. We must understand though that it is not the duty of the Church to condemn, but to love. We are commissioned to preach the gospel and make disciples. God will call to salvation those whom he chooses. If we can get a grip on just how disconnected WE are from our creator because of our fallen nature, we will be able to look at those who don’t know Christ with sadness. We’ll be broken that they’re so far from the intent that God had for his creation. We’ll understand that we’re no better than the rapist, the criminal, the murderer, etc. Everything within us will want to preach the gospel that they might know how good God is. In the book, All of Grace, Spurgeon says, “Jesus did not come into the world expecting to find goodness and righteousness, but to bestow them upon those who do not have them. He comes not because we are just, but to make us so.”  We are ALL unjust, and the only way to become justified is through Christ. If only we could find ourselves in that “ALL” boat, we could love those outside the Church in the way Christ has called us.