Devotional 5 November 2025

November 05, 2025 • Steve Torres

1 Corinthians 5:5.jpg

“It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans, for a man has his father’s wife. And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you. For though absent in body, I am present in spirit; and as if present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing. When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.” (1 Corinthians 5:1–5, ESV)

The Corinthian church prided itself on spiritual gifts and knowledge, but Paul exposes how such pride had blinded them to the seriousness of sin. A man in their congregation was living in open rebellion (committing an act even unbelievers would condemn) yet rather than grieving, they boasted. Paul’s rebuke cuts to the heart of their delusion: true spirituality is not measured by freedom or tolerance, but by holiness.

The church’s call to holiness is not optional. When sin is tolerated among believers, it spreads like yeast through dough (1 Cor 5:6; Gal 5:9). The Corinthians’ arrogance had led them to confuse mercy with indifference, grace with permissiveness. But God’s grace is never a license to sin (Rom 6:1–2); it is power to walk in obedience. The church that refuses to confront sin ceases to reflect Christ’s holiness and begins to reflect the world’s corruption (Eph 5:3–11).

Paul commands the church to remove the unrepentant man, not out of vengeance, but in hope that such discipline will awaken repentance. To “deliver him to Satan” (v. 5) is to place him outside the fellowship and protection of the church, that his fleshly pride might be destroyed and his soul restored. This echoes the Lord’s own pattern: “Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline” (Rev 3:19). True love does not enable destruction; it calls sin what it is, and points sinners back to Christ.

Holiness, then, is not isolation from sinners, but separation from sin. It is the mark of a people who belong to God (1 Pet 1:15–16). The church’s purity is not maintained by self-righteousness, but by reverence for the presence of Christ within His people (1 Cor 3:16–17). To tolerate open rebellion is to invite decay; to practice loving discipline is to preserve the life of the body. For a church that bears the name of Christ, holiness is not cruelty: it is mercy.