1 Corinthians 5:6-13 - Homiletics

The true Church a feast.

"Your glorying is not good," etc. There are numerous Churches, but only one true Church, viz. that community of men who possess the Spirit and exemplify the character of Jesus Christ. These verses lead us to look upon the true Church—

I. In its INTERNAL ENJOYMENTS . It is called here a "feast." Truly the association of such Christly spirited men is a "feast" of the sublimest kind, a feast to each and all. A "feast:"

1. Because it contains the choicest elements for spiritual nourishment. The quickening, elevating, and suggestive ideas current in such fellowship, current, not only in language, but in looks, and bearing, and acts, and spirit, constitute the soul banquet, a "feast of fat things," etc.

2. Because it contains the choicest elements for spiritual gratification. A feast implies not merely nourishment, but pleasure and delight. What is a higher delight than the loving intercourse of kindred souls, free interchange of the most lofty thoughts and purest sympathies, loving souls flowing and reflowing into each other? The true Church is not a moody, melancholy assemblage, speaking in sepulchral tones, and singing doleful dirges; it is the brightest and most jubilant fellowship on earth. "These words have I spoken unto you, that your joy may be full; Rejoice,... and again I say, rejoice."

II. In its EXTERNAL RELATION TO THE UNGODLY .

1. There is a connection with ungodly men that it must avoid. They must not be admitted to its "feasts." "Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us." As the Jews put away leaven at the celebration of the Passover, so all corrupt men must be excluded from the Church feasts. Christ is its Passover, its Feast. It is suggested that the presence of corrupt men at the feast would be contagious. It would be likely to act as "leaven" through the community. As leaven kneaded into a lump of dough spreads from particle to particle, ferments in its process, spreads through the whole, and assimilates all to its own character, so a bad man's spirit may work through the community of the good. Therefore, because it is so contagious and pernicious, exclude it. "Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth." No Church that has such leaven in it, whatever its intellectual, social, or spiritual advantages, has any reason for exultation. "Your glorying is not good," says Paul: "know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump?' Be grave, be serious, look well to the moral character of your members.

2. There is a connection with ungodly men that it cannot avoid. "I wrote unto you in an Epistle not to company with fornicators: yet not altogether with the fornicators of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or with idolaters; for then must ye needs go out of the world." You cannot avoid contact and some kind of intercourse with the ungodly men outside. You cannot attend to the temporal affairs of your life without them. Nor can you discharge your spiritual obligations without going amongst them. As a Christian you are bound to go amongst them, to correct their mistakes, to enlighten their darkness, to reprove their wrongs, and to endeavour to "turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God." Over such you have no legal control, you can exercise no jurisdiction; they are without. You have no power to exclude them from your neighbourhood or your country; they are to be left alone in that respect. "Them that are without God judgeth." But if you find such characters inside the Church, you are to deal with them. "But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such a one no not to eat." Observe here: