1 Corinthians 5:10 - Exposition

Yet not altogether. The words correct a false inference, and mean, "I did not intend absolutely to prohibit all communication with Gentiles guilty of this sin under all circumstances." Of this world. Those outside the pale of the Christian Church. Or with the covetous. St. Paul often uses the Greek word in immediate connection with sins of impurity ( 1 Corinthians 6:10 ; 2 Corinthians 9:5 ; Ephesians 5:3 ; Colossians 3:3 ), and, though it does not exclude the connotation of greed and avarice ( 2 Corinthians 9:7 ; 1 Thessalonians 2:5 ), it seems to have been used euphemistically of the deadliest form of heathen sensuality. The principle of selfishness may work equally in greed and in lust. Extortioners . The word may also mean "ravishers," but there is no reason to abandon the sense of "rapacious." Idolaters . This is the earliest instance of the use of this word, which does not occur in the LXX . No Christian could still be an open "idolater." So, unless we suppose that the expression has slipped in involuntarily, we must here give the word a metaphorical sense, as in Colossians 3:5 . We must else be driven to suppose that there were some half and half Christians, like Constantine, who "feared the Lord, and served their own gods". For then must ye needs go out of the world; for in that case (as they had perhaps implied in their letter of questions to St. Paul) ye would have been morally bound to leave the world altogether and seek a new one. The Greek particle ara perhaps refers to the astonishment caused by their misapprehension of St. Paul's rule. The clause throws painful light on the condition of the heathen world. If all communication with "fornicators'' was to be forbidden, the sin was so universal, especially at Corinth, that all intercourse with Gentiles would have be. come impossible. Even some who professed to be stern moralists among the heathen, like Cato and Cicero, looked on the sin as being, at the worst, quite venial, and even, under certain circumstances, commendable.