“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11)
The Basket Case Chronicles #42
“It is reported commonly that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as it not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father’s wife. And ye are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he that hath done this deed might be taken away from among you” (1 Cor. 5:1-2).
Paul now begins to discuss particular problems that he had heard were afflicting the church at Corinth. This particular outrage—a man in a sexual relationship with his stepmother—had two sides to the problem. The first was that it had happened at all. The second was the attitude that the Corinthians had toward it. They somehow thought it was a badge of their insight—they were puffed up over this. If they had really been wise, they would have mourned, and they would have copied the Gentiles in their rejection of the perversion. Paul is saying, “Why can’t you be more like the non-Christians here?”
The man who had done this thing needed to be removed from the Church. The fact that he had not been removed means that the Corinthians had mistaken the nature of grace. Grace does not allow us to live at a lower level than the pagans—“Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven,” as our bumper stickers have it. Grace lifts us up, but abuses of grace plunge us deeper than even the heathen will go. Common grace does not do what uncommon grace does, what special grace does, but it does far more than twisted grace. So the answer to twisted grace is church discipline, a practice that helps Christians learn how to be more hard-headed. Like the Gentiles.