1 Corinthians 5:9 - Exposition

In an Epistle; rather, in the Epistle; in some former letter to the Church, which is no longer extant. The attempt to get rid of so plain a statement, in the supposed interests of some superstitious notion that every line which an apostle wrote to a Church must necessarily have been inspired and infallible, is at once unscriptural and grossly superstitious. The notion that "the Epistle" intended is this Epistle is an absurdity invented in the interests of the same fiction. The only hypothesis which could give the least plausibility to such a view is that which makes this paragraph a postscript or marginal addition after the letter was finished; but there is little or nothing in favour of such a view. Not to company with. The Greek word is rather stronger: not to be mingled up among . The spirit of the injunction is repeated in Ephesians 5:11 , "Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them."