1 Corinthians 5:11

Sonia Balcer--
I Corinthians 5:11

Lynchburg SoulForce and Exgays

Sonia's intro to Bridges Across

Sonia writes about change

Sonia's letter to The Advocate

On Eating with Sinners
- or with followers who do certain sins?

Sonia Balcer writes:
Those of us who are conservative Christian actually find this issue rather complicated, as well as troubling. On the one hand, the passage in question, 1 Corinthians 5:11, is not suggesting that one cannot eat with "sinners" -- it specifically states that this only applies to people who claim to be followers of Christ but yet who consistently engage in serious moral transgressions:

But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an one no not to eat.

The complexity is in where to draw the line, for all Christians are very imperfect, and fail continually to live up to the moral standards, even (depending upon one's understanding of things like covetousness, idolatry and extortion) those standards implied by the above verse.

But an important clue as to what is being mandated can be found at the very beginning of the chapter, where it says,

It is reported commonly that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father's wife.

In other words it's saying that there was immorality (incest) among these Christians which exceeded even the immorality of the supposedly sinful Gentile society around them. Apparently, these were not people who were genuinely struggling and failing, but ones who willfully and nonchalantly continued in extreme sexual practices which the community as a whole would agree were very wrong. Yet for some reason they failed to respond in any discernible fashion.

I get the sense that the writer is saying that this is not an option; that they cannot ignore such problems in their midst, but they must take a stand to confront those individuals and what their actions imply about where they are at in relation to God. To do anything less would be a sin of omission. It says that being a part of a community which claims to follow Christ implies some impact to how one lives and not merely of the words they speak.

Two other passages reinforce this idea. One is 1John 4:20

If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?

and James 1:27

Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.