What does 1 Corinthians 5:6 mean?
One of the men in the church at Corinth has been having a sexual affair with his father's wife (1 Corinthians 5:1). Though apparently everyone in the church knows this, they have not addressed the man's sin. They have allowed him to continue to come to the meetings and participate in the life of the church.The church has been instructed to remove the man from among them and to turn him over to Satan in the name of Christ (1 Corinthians 5:5). There are many purposes behind this excommunication. First and foremost is that the man might be convicted and come to repentance for his sin (1 Corinthians 10:12; Galatians 6:1). But it's also necessary to protect the spiritual health of the other believers (Galatians 2:4) and to prevent slander from the unbelieving world (2 Peter 2:2).
Paul has also identified the cause of the Corinthians' indifference to this man's sin. They are arrogant (1 Corinthians 5:2), which is why they are boasting about how well they're doing. Instead of mourning about the presence of heinous sin in their own congregation, they focused only on their own success as people and as a church.
Paul now writes that this boasting is not good. It is causing them to ignore a sin that could end up infecting all of them. He reminds them that a little leaven leavens the entire lump of dough.
Leaven was used in making bread. A bit of risen, aged dough from the previous batch would be stored away as the starting point for the next batch of dough. Working this tiny piece into a new batch introduced leavening agents which would spread to every piece of the new material. If the leaven was bad, the bacteria in it would quickly spread to the rest of the dough, making the bread worthless.
Paul's readers would have understood this process and his meaning. Sin of this nature, left unaddressed in the church community, would eventually spread and corrupt everyone. This was why Paul told them to remove the man from among them. Leaving open, unrepentant sin unaddressed would be like carelessly throwing rotten leavening agents into a new bowl of dough.
First Corinthians 5:1–8 contains Paul's primary example of how the Corinthian's pride and self-sufficiency is hurting their community. He has just asked if they would prefer he come in gentleness, or ''with a rod,'' symbolic of harsh judgment. Here, Paul details a grievous sin: the believers in Corinth have failed to rebuke a member who is committing incest with his father's wife. They must remove him from the church and turn him over to Satan in hopes of his ultimate salvation. This is also crucial for the health of the church—just as tiny bits of leaven eventually spread to an entire batch of dough, sin left unconfronted can poison an entire church.
Paul confronts the church in Corinth for failing to respond to a self-identified believer having a sexual affair with his father's wife. He insists they must remove the man from their community—to refuse his participation in the church—referred to here as delivering him to Satan. As the Jewish people would do during Passover, they must remove the leaven of this man and his sin from among them, to prevent it from spreading to the entire church. Christian congregations should not associate with those who claim to be believers, yet flaunt their sin.
