Dual PanelSexual immorality
1I ACTUALLY hear reports of sexual immorality among you, immorality such as even pagans do not tolerate: the union of a man with his stepmother.
2And you are proud of yourselves! You ought to have gone into mourning; anyone who behaves like that should be turned out of your community.
3For my part, though I am absent in body, I am present in spirit, and have already reached my judgement on the man who did this thing, as if I were indeed present:
4when you are all assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus, and I am with you in spirit, through the power of our Lord Jesus you are
5to consign this man to Satan for the destruction of his body, so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord.
6Your self-satisfaction ill becomes you. Have you never heard the saying, “A little leaven leavens all the dough”?
7Get rid of the old leaven and then you will be a new batch of unleavened dough. Indeed you already are, because Christ our Passover lamb has been sacrificed.
8So we who observe the festival must not use the old leaven, the leaven of depravity and wickedness, but only the unleavened bread which is sincerity and truth.
9In my letter I wrote that you must have nothing to do with those who are sexually immoral.
10I was not, of course, referring to people in general who are immoral or extortioners or swindlers or idolaters; to avoid them you would have to withdraw from society altogether.
11I meant that you must have nothing to do with any so-called Christian who leads an immoral life, or is extortionate, idolatrous, a slanderer, a drunkard, or a swindler; with anyone like that you should not even eat.
12What business of mine is it to judge outsiders? God is their judge. But within the fellowship, you are the judges: “Root out the wrongdoer from your community.”
13(5:12)