1 Corinthians 5:13

1 Corinthians 5:13. Where-as them that are without God judgeth that is His sole prerogative, and to Him ye may well leave it.

Put away the wicked man from among yourselves. The marked abruptness with which the subject is thus dismissed well conveys the repulsiveness of the subject to the apostle's feelings.

Note. (1) The grace of the Gospel, though it renews the whole character, neither eradicates constitutional tendencies nor interferes with their natural working. It subdues and regulates the passions; but where the members of a church have been drawn out of a community steeped in vice, and themselves habituated, up to the time of their conversion, to the sight and practice of it, they may be expected after the first warmth of their new life has begun to cool to have many a sore struggle with reactionary tendencies. Plague spots will then appear; and at times the whole renovation effected by the Gospel may seem ready, like a passing wave, to be swept away. In such circumstances, should self-complacency be indulged, and open iniquity quietly tolerated in the community, sharp dealing becomes indispensable to recovery, and will, as in the present case, be so ratified in heaven as to prove successful.

(2) What a view of the world's morality is suggested by the statement that to get quite away from even its grosser forms one “must needs go out of the world”! And though this stamps condemnation on all cloistral seclusion as an attempt to escape from the evils incident to contact with the unholy it no less condemns the tainting of church fellowship which follows the tolerance of open sin, and voluntary association with it, on the part of Christians.