Charles Ellicott Commentary 1 Corinthians 5

It is reported commonly.—Better, There is absolutely said to be fornication among you, and such fornication as is not even among the Gentiles. All the best manuscripts omit the word “named.” The force of the statement is that the fornication was of such a kind (with a stepmother) that even the Gentile world, immoral as it was, regarded it with disgust, and how infinitely worse, then, was it to find such tolerated among Christians, whose moral standard ought to be much higher.

One should have his father’s wife.—The word “have” used here always implies actual marriage in the New Testament. It is, therefore, probable that she had been divorced from his father. The expression “his father’s wife” is the Hebrew way of saying stepmother. St. Chrysostom suggests, “He did not say his ‘stepmother,’ but ‘his father’s wife,’ to strike much more severely”; but St. Paul probably used the Hebrew phrase instead of the ordinary Greek word for “stepmother,” as it was in this phraseology that such a union was forbidden by the law of Moses (Leviticus 18:8).

And you are puffed up.—Better, And are you puffed up? etc. We have instances of similar sentences beginning with “and,”Luke 10:29.

The Apostle cannot mean that they actually gloried in this act of sin. Rather, their temper of mind was of the kind he has already described in the earlier chapters: they were puffing themselves up, one against another, in party rivalry. This was instead of being united in common grief over this shared offense, a grief which would have led them as one body to remove from their midst the person who had committed this deed.

For I verily.—The Apostle had fully made up his mind that this offender must be removed, and insists on the Corinthians doing it. So that the previous words imply they might as well have done it without waiting for his interference.

As absent in body.—Better, omit “as,” which is not in the best manuscripts.

In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ ... and my spirit.—These two verses contain the apostolic sentence on the offender, and can be read as follows: “I have already myself decided, in the name of our Lord Jesus, you being gathered together, and my spirit (as in 1 Corinthians 5:3), in the power of our Lord Jesus, to deliver such a one,” etc.

The opening words are probably the form used in all public acts of the Church as a body, and “the power of our Lord Jesus” refers to that continual presence which Christ had promised His Church, and particular power which He had delegated to the Apostles to punish (Matthew 16:19; Matthew 18:18; Matthew 18:20; Matthew 28:20).

In this sentence we recognize, not merely a formal excommunication from church-fellowship, but a more severe punishment, which could only be inflicted by apostolic authority and power.

Satan was regarded as the origin of all physical evil—therefore the afflicted woman, in Luke 13:16, is spoken of as one whom Satan hath bound these eighteen years. St. Paul’s own bodily suffering is a messenger of Satan (2 Corinthians 12:7). The blindness of Elymas (Acts 13:8), and the death of Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:5), are instances of the infliction of bodily suffering by the Apostles.

The deliverance of an offender unto Satan would therefore mean the expulsion of such a one from the Christian communion, and if that failed, the actual infliction of some bodily suffering such as would destroy the flesh (not the body, but the flesh, the source and origin of the evil). Explicit directions for the excommunication by the Church of an offender are given in 1 Corinthians 7:0, but there is no direct instruction to inflict the further punishment spoken of here.

It is, indeed, probable that the lesser punishment had the desired effect (see Note on 2 Corinthians 2:6), and we subsequently find St. Paul pleading for the loving re-admission of the offender into all the privileges of Christian communion.

That the spirit may be saved.—The object of this punishment was the destruction of the flesh, and the salvation of the man.