Preaching to the Outside - Purifying on the Inside

The Corinthian church was not a model church. Not by a long shot, in fact. The church was rife with problems including backbiting, envy, world-worship, idolatry - and the list goes on.

But if you had asked the Corinthians about problems they would have laughed at you. They thought they were something pretty special. So the Apostle Paul has to be pretty strong with them, including calling them on the carpet for rampant sexual immorality.

When he does this it is instructive for us as well. Listen to this:

1 Corinthians 5:9 "I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people - not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler ..."

I find this interesting because sometimes we get things turned around like the Corinthians. We judge and condemn sin outside the church but often let people treat each other horribly within the church. Now neither Paul nor I suggest that sin outside the church is okay - sin leads to death. But for those outside the church we should preach the gospel - that Jesus died for our sins to bring us back to life. Focusing so much on the sin takes the focus away from the gospel.

By the way, we focus on the "big" sins like homosexuality but notice that "greedy" is on that list. Know anyone who is greedy? The point is that to those who do not belong to Christ we tell them about Jesus. To those who know Christ we tell them that the Holy Spirit wants to renovate their lives and make them into God's image and that it is now possible thanks to their giving their lives to Jesus. If they won't listen and continue in sin then we need to move things up a notch.

Pastor Tom