Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - When Influence and Power Distort Morality | New Testament | 1 Corinthians 5

Episode Date: June 13, 2023

Whose authority do you live under? In today's episode, Tanya examines what Paul has to say in 1 Corinthians 5 and discovers how bringing your life under God's authority can create a deeper connection with him. Find out how the gospel can shape your life. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Join the TMBT community in reading the entire New Testament in one year. Get your FREE reading plan here. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter@TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: 1 Corinthians 5

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Tanya Wilmeth. Imagine there's someone within your faith community doing something incredibly egregious. This person is someone that has influence and power. What do you do? Well, not only has your congregation not doing your seeing anything to contradict the person's lifestyle, but instead they're celebrating it.

They're kind of uplifting this person as a symbol. that your church is powerful or that your church is special. Now imagine that this is happening because no one in your church really even knows or cares anymore that it's immoral because the lens you're operating from has gotten so out of focus because your view of what it looks like to follow Jesus has been distorted. This is where we pick up with Paul in the Corinthians in chapter 5 of the first letter. Pastor Paul writes this. It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you.

you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans, for a man has his father's wife, and you are arrogant, ought you not rather to mourn? Let him, who has done this, be removed from you. So it comes to Paul's attention that in this church that he's taught how to follow Jesus, there's a man having an incestuous sexual relationship with his stepmother. And either the church doesn't know that it's wrong, the church doesn't care that it's wrong, or the church is so completely distorted that they don't even realize that they shouldn't celebrate anymore that what's happening is not moral behavior. Paul says, your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven levens the whole lump? This is like a warning saying, if you don't do something

about this, this is going to infect your whole congregation. So the Corinthians have been proud of what's happening or ignorant of what is happening. But Paul is saying, hey, wake up. There are some factors at work here. You have a distorted view of what I'm preaching about freedom in Christ. You have a distorted view of the human body and sexuality, and you have a distorted view of power. See, in many communities, powerful people get a free pass. And in this culture, sexual promiscuity got a free pass. The Athenian comic playwright Aristophanes coined a phrase. The word was Corinthiazo or Corinthianize. It was just a slang way of saying to fornicate. And that's how common sexual promiscuity was. So with all of these factors at work, some of these things must have

been practically untouchable, or at least that's how the church was operating. Now, the very cool thing about Paul the theologian is that he's not afraid to tell the truth, and he's always thinking about the bigger picture. That's why this letter to the Corinthians was incredibly relevant for them and why the way we look at it today is incredibly relevant for us. There's a bigger story Paul uncovered here about why we do the things we do and who we love most. He wants us to realize that when we take our eyes off Jesus, our view becomes distorted. So Paul was writing to clear things up. There are two order reversals that Paul wants to clear up.

The first is the ease with which this church is judging behavior for those outside. while being reluctant to address things on the inside. And the second is the way the church is doing God's commands as an option, not as the appropriate and obedient response to what God has done for them. Paul goes back to Deuteronomy 177. To remind the Corinthians, it's for God to judge the inappropriate conduct of those outside the church. And it is very much for the church to address it when it happens within.

but we tend to get this out of order because judgment on the outside and acceptance within are both easier paths than really dealing with issues, especially hard issues, especially issues happening within us. But there's a third option that Paul presents, and that's integrity. We are called to bring all of our lives, even those things would be easier to judge or accept than deal with under God's authority. Paul writes, for Christ our Passover lamb has been sacrificed.

Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. Bringing our lives under God's authority is the way we celebrate the Passover lamb, what Jesus has done for us. It's not an option to be debated

within our cultural context. It's the only right response to what was done for us long ago. Paul takes the Corinthians back to the first Passover, just before the people of Egypt cross the Red Sea, and he calls them to be Passover people, people who know they need God to rescue them.

Did you know that God didn't even give the Israelites the Ten Commandments to follow until after he brought them through the Red Sea? the way he told them to live was in response to his saving grace. So we bring our whole lives and our whole bodies under his authority because we are Passover people. If your body is going to be redeemed in the future, then what you do with it today matters. This is the big picture Paul is talking about.

He's not just zooming in on this sleeping with your stepmom thing because he wants to talk about something like that. He wants to talk about how everything sex included is God-given and good and should be enjoyed in a way that honors God's authority because we are Passover people. Paul began this section of his letter to deal with something specific happening within the church. But instead of spending a lot of time talking about that one man or that one relationship, he zooms out to look at everyone's hearts and why this is happening. When we zoom out and invite the gospel to be the lens we use to examine our own hearts, what do we see? Where have we accepted standards and behaviors that are less than what Jesus gave us by his example and by his teaching?

Where are we more judgmental about what others are doing than honest about what we are doing? Why do we love approval more than honesty? We can ask God to help us grasp his redemptive love enough that we see our physical bodies as his temple. We can ask him to help us know his power so deeply that we don't feel dependent on the approval of others. We can ask him to help us experience his mercy so fully that we don't fall for judgment. Lord, infuse our daily lives with truth and accountability so that when we see sin, we are confident in you and only in you. Amen. Before you forget, sign up for the brand new TMBT newsletter.

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