A Little Bit of Leaven

There are many churches today touting their "Third Way", their non-judgmental, tolerant way of embracing sinners "like Jesus did". By this they mean they don't mention the sin problems these people have. "It's not our place," they might say, but more often they're suggesting, "It may not even be sin." So when pollsters look at, say, divorce rates or "shacking up" -- sorry, "cohabitation" -- and find that the numbers among "Christians" and the secular aren't too different, we don't need to look very far as to why that is. No one is saying anything about it. Indeed, they're patting themselves on the back about that very thing.

Paul wrote to these churches. In his first epistle to the church at Corinth, Paul writes that he is horrified about the blatant sin going on in their midst (1 Cor 5). Now, to be fair, we're not clear on all the details of that sin. He says simply "someone has his father's wife' (1 Cor 5:1). It's interesting, for instance, that he does not say that the guy is sleeping with his own mother. He also does not say if she was still married to his father. All we know is that the man in question is a member in good standing of the congregation at Corinth and he has a woman identified as "his father's wife." Likely his step-mother. Likely his father divorced her. Certainly the church wasn't up in arms over it. Oh, no. "You have become arrogant and have not mourned" (1 Cor 5:2). This was a 21st century church. It welcomed sinners, embracing them with their sin, non-judgmental, tolerant. Nice church. Except Paul wasn't impressed.

Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough? Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened (1 Cor 5:6-7)

Paul's remedy was not "Let's have a love feast and tell everyone how open we are." It was "deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus" (1 Cor 5:5). Paul was not non-judgmental or tolerant. He was outraged at the sin they were willing to accept.

"Yeah, you conservative Christians ... so judgmental. So hateful."

This is the suggestion when someone (you know, like me) calls for a solid stand on sin. And for some it may be hateful. For Paul it is not. When Paul writes his follow-up in his second epistle, he makes this clear. "I wrote to you with many tears; not so that you would be made sorrowful, but that you might know the love which I have especially for you" (2 Cor 2:4). Nor did he want his readers to be confused themselves. "I urge you to reaffirm your love for him" (2 Cor 2:8). Paul's response to the sin in the church was not judgment and intolerance. It was love that required corrective action.

Peter writes of "righteous Lot, oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men" (2 Peter 2:7). (I like the King James version -- "vexed".) Well, Paul was vexed, too. Sin in the camp needed to be handled quickly and decisively "so that no advantage would be taken of us by Satan, for we are not ignorant of his schemes" (2 Cor 2:11).

There are sins that require this kind of response. They are sins among so-called brethren (1 Cor 5:11). In fact, there's a list there made up of sexual immorality, covetousness, idolatry, reviling, drunkenness, or a swindling. So when churches today proudly embrace the sexually immoral -- those engaging in sexual relations outside of marriage (including homosexual relations ... at all) -- and call themselves "more Christ-like", they do so in violation of Scripture, Paul, even Jesus (who told the woman caught in adultery, "Go and sin no more."). They demonstrate a dangerous ignorance of the schemes of Satan and assist him in carrying them out. They introduce "a little leaven" that, as we can clearly see today, is making a mess of the whole lump. It's not a good thing.