📖WEB · 1 Corinthians 5:10
What does 1 Corinthians 5:10 mean?
"yet not at all meaning with the sexual sinners of this world, or with the covetous and extortionists, or with idolaters; for then you would have to leave the world."
— 1 Corinthians 5:10 (World English Bible)
Surrounding context
Purge out the old yeast, that you may be a new lump, even as you are unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed in our place.
Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old yeast, neither with the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
I wrote to you in my letter to have no company with sexual sinners;
yet not at all meaning with the sexual sinners of this world, or with the covetous and extortionists, or with idolaters; for then you would have to leave the world.
But as it is, I wrote to you not to associate with anyone who is called a brother who is a sexual sinner, or covetous, or an idolater, or a slanderer, or a drunkard, or an extortionist. Don’t even eat with such a person.
For what do I have to do with also judging those who are outside? Don’t you judge those who are within?
But those who are outside, God judges. “Put away the wicked man from among yourselves.”
Explanation
This verse comes from a section of Paul's letter where he is correcting a misunderstanding. He tells the Corinthians that in an earlier letter he had instructed them not to associate with "sexually immoral people." Some in the church apparently took this to mean they should have no contact at all with immoral people outside the church—unbelievers in the surrounding pagan society. Paul clarifies that this was never his intent. He was not talking about the sexually immoral, greedy, dishonest, or idol-worshiping people of the world in general, because avoiding all such people would be impossible—it would require withdrawing from society altogether, since sin of every kind is woven throughout the fabric of the world outside the church.
The letter was written by the apostle Paul to the church in Corinth, a city notorious in the ancient world for sexual immorality and idol wor
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