Church Exile, Sexual Ethics, & the Expectations We Put on Other People
I’m back. 😂
I know it has been a long time. Life has been lifing. Work, school, teaching dance, family stuff, health stuff… it has just felt outside of my capacity for a while. So I’m not going to make any promises about how often these videos will happen, but I got home, this popped into my head, and I felt the desire to do it.
And honestly, I’m trusting that for whatever reason, God put it on my heart to sit down and do this today.
As always, I started with prayer and then read the entire chapter before getting into the parts that specifically relate to sex, relationships, intimacy, and how we understand Christian ethics.
This time, we’re in 1 Corinthians 5.
And… whew.
I did not know this was going to be the chapter I was reading today. 😂
Watch the full 1 Corinthians 5 video on YouTube
1 Corinthians 5: A Chapter About Excommunication?
The chapter opens with a pretty shocking situation.
Paul says there is sexual immorality happening within the Corinthian church “of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans”—a man is having a sexual relationship with his father’s wife.
Paul’s response is… intense.
He tells the church that the man should be removed from among them and eventually says:
“What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church?”
And then:
“Purge the evil person from among you.”
So my first takeaway was basically:
Oh. This is a chapter about church exile.
And that immediately hit something personal for me.
I have experienced being pushed out of church myself, including in connection with my work as a somatic intimacy coach. I’ve also seen excommunication happen within my extended family through Jehovah’s Witnesses.
And I have always struggled with the concept.
Because my immediate reaction is:
If someone is struggling, don't they need community MORE?
Why would removing someone from community help them?
That was one of the first questions that came up for me as I read this chapter.
Why Would Jesus Ever Want Someone Exiled?
One of the things that has always confused me is that I don't remember Jesus going around telling people who came to him that they weren't allowed to be around him anymore.
If anything, Jesus seemed remarkably willing to be around people who were considered outsiders.
Tax collectors.
Gentiles.
People who were considered sinners.
People who religious society had already decided were not worthy.
So I asked:
Did Jesus ever actually teach people to remove someone from the community?
And interestingly, there is something in Matthew 18 that many Christians understand as the foundation for church discipline.
The process is essentially:
Talk to the person privately.
If they won't listen, bring another person or two into the conversation.
If they still won't listen, bring it before the church.
If they still refuse to listen, treat them as a Gentile and a tax collector.
That last part is usually interpreted as some form of excommunication.
And I immediately remembered thinking, when I was removed from church:
Wait. Aren't there supposed to be steps?
Because if there is a process for confronting someone, shouldn't we actually follow the process?
But there was another part of this that really stood out to me.
Jesus spent a lot of time with Gentiles and tax collectors.
So what does it actually mean to “treat them as a Gentile and a tax collector”?
Does that mean:
Shun them?
Or does it mean:
They are no longer part of the covenant community, but they are still someone you love?
That second interpretation makes so much more sense to me.
Because cutting someone off completely from relationship and communication feels cruel.
And if we're talking about a God who wants to be in relationship with every person, I have a hard time seeing total relational disconnection as the ultimate goal.
Communities Need Boundaries AND Nobody Is Beyond Love
This was probably one of the most important tensions that came up for me.
I actually do believe communities need boundaries.
I don't think “love everyone” means “there are no standards.”
But I also don't believe that having boundaries means someone becomes unworthy of relationship, love, or redemption.
And I think Jesus somehow held both of those things at the same time.
Boundaries can exist without hatred.
Accountability can exist without dehumanization.
Confrontation can exist with the goal of reconciliation rather than exclusion for exclusion's sake.
That feels really important to me.
Especially because 1 Corinthians 5 has been used in so many different ways throughout Christian history.
And that brings us to the really complicated part.
So What Is 1 Corinthians 5 Actually Saying?
There are several major ways Christians and scholars interpret this chapter.
1. The traditional church-discipline interpretation
The traditional reading is pretty straightforward.
Paul is confronting a man who is openly having sex with his father's wife, and the Corinthian church isn't just tolerating it—they're apparently boasting about their tolerance.
Under this interpretation, Paul is calling for excommunication.
But the purpose isn't supposed to be punishment for punishment's sake.
It's supposed to be repentance and restoration.
Interestingly, some interpreters connect this situation with 2 Corinthians, where Paul later talks about restoring someone who has repented.
So the idea isn't necessarily:
“Get this person out and keep them out.”
It's more:
“Something is seriously wrong here, and the community needs to respond.”
Okay.
That I can understand a little more.
2. The public scandal interpretation
Another interpretation focuses on how extreme and public this situation apparently was.
Paul specifically says that this behavior isn't even tolerated among pagans.
So maybe this isn't Paul creating a blanket rule for every possible sexual disagreement.
Maybe he's responding to a very specific situation that was publicly scandalous and affecting the entire community.
And this is where I got stuck.
Because I kept thinking:
Okay, but HOW is this harming the entire community?
If I'm using my modern framework, I'm immediately asking:
Is there coercion?
Is there abuse?
Is there a power imbalance?
Is someone being harmed?
Are these consenting adults?
What's actually happening?
And the Bible doesn't give us those details.
So I was sitting there thinking:
I feel like I'm missing something.
My Modern Moral Framework vs. Paul's
This is where things got really interesting for me.
Because my instinct is to evaluate an ethical situation through questions like:
Does this cause harm?
Is there consent?
Is there coercion?
Is someone being exploited?
Those questions matter a lot to me.
But ancient Jewish and early Christian communities were often asking somewhat different questions.
They may have been thinking:
Does this violate God's created order?
Does this dishonor the family?
Does this violate covenant boundaries?
Does this bring shame upon the community?
Does this resemble surrounding pagan practices?
What happens if this behavior becomes normalized?
And suddenly I realized that we might not even be starting from the same definition of what makes something morally wrong.
That's huge.
Because if morality is primarily about preventing harm, you may arrive at one set of conclusions.
If morality is primarily about living according to God's divinely ordered design, you may arrive at another.
And a lot of Christian disagreements about sex seem to come from people using those two different frameworks without realizing it.
But What Was Actually Harmful About the Relationship?
This was probably my biggest question throughout the chapter.
The man is described as having his father's wife. Most scholars believe this was likely his stepmother rather than his biological mother.
And from my modern perspective, I can certainly say:
That's weird.
😂
But weird isn't necessarily the same thing as harmful.
So what did Paul perceive as the harm?
There are several possibilities.
Harm to the father
If the father was still alive, the relationship could have been seen as profoundly dishonoring to him.
And that actually helped something click for me.
Because family honor was incredibly important in the ancient world.
So if this man was sleeping with his father's wife while his father was still alive?
Yeah.
That's some scandal.
That's disrespectful.
I can understand that.
Harm to the community's witness
Another possibility is that Paul was concerned about what this communicated about the church itself.
If the church publicly celebrated or tolerated behavior that even the surrounding culture considered completely inappropriate, what would outsiders think?
Maybe the concern wasn't only:
“What is this individual doing?”
but also:
“What kind of community are we becoming?”
Harm through normalization
And then there's Paul's metaphor of yeast.
A little leaven leavens the whole lump.
His concern seems to be that individual behavior can influence an entire community.
If the church decides that nothing is off limits, what happens to the community's identity?
That brings us back to something I have been thinking about throughout this entire series:
Sexual behavior is believed to shape the soul, character, and relationship to God.
That idea is still really profound to me.
And I don't think I've fully processed it yet.
Why Does Sex Get Treated So Differently?
One thing I kept noticing throughout this chapter is how many groups of people have historically been treated as if their sexual or relational behavior makes them uniquely unworthy of community.
People who have sex outside marriage.
Queer people.
Divorced people.
People in unconventional relationships.
And I struggle with that.
Because there seems to be this strange wall that gets put up around anything involving sex.
There can be empathy for addiction.
There can be compassion for someone struggling with alcohol.
There can be community around someone dealing with all kinds of destructive behaviors.
But when the issue involves sex?
Suddenly there can be this enormous amount of shame, secrecy, and exclusion.
I don't fully understand why.
And I'm still trying to figure that out.
What Does “Don't Judge Those Outside the Church” Mean?
One of the verses that really stood out to me was 1 Corinthians 5:12:
“What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church?”
I've heard this verse used in so many different ways.
Sometimes I've heard it as:
“If you're not a Christian, I don't get to impose Christian values on you.”
And honestly, that makes sense to me.
If someone doesn't share my faith, why would I expect them to live according to the values that I have chosen for myself?
But I've also heard this verse used as justification for intensely policing people inside the church.
And that's where I start getting uncomfortable.
Because I think there's a difference between:
“These are the values I choose to live by.”
and
“Everyone else needs to live by my values.”
Those aren't the same thing.
My Expectations Are Not Everyone Else's Expectations
This actually became the biggest personal takeaway for me from this chapter.
I have expectations for myself.
I have values.
I have things I believe are right for me.
I have things I don't want to do.
I have ways I want to behave.
But those are my expectations.
And I don't automatically have the right to put those expectations onto someone else.
This is especially important in relationships.
Because I can so easily think:
“Well, I would do it this way.”
And then somehow turn that into:
“Therefore, they should do it this way.”
But they're not me.
They're them.
I have all of my years of experience being me.
They have all of their years of experience being them.
Two people can look at the exact same situation and interpret it completely differently because of everything they've experienced before.
And I think that's something I need to keep practicing:
understanding someone's perspective without automatically making it my own.
That doesn't mean I have to agree.
It doesn't mean I can't have boundaries.
It doesn't mean I can't decide something isn't right for me.
But maybe I can stop assuming that my personal expectations are universal laws.
Is Paul Concerned About Harm—or About God's Design?
This might actually be the biggest question I walked away with.
Because I don't think I can fully answer it.
Was Paul primarily concerned that this relationship was harmful?
Or was he concerned that it violated a divinely ordered structure?
Those are very different ethical frameworks.
And honestly, that question seems to sit underneath so many of the debates I've been having throughout this Sex Scripture Series.
Divorce.
Sex before marriage.
Homosexuality.
Gender.
Authority.
Relationships.
What makes something sinful?
Is it the harm it causes?
Is it disobedience to God's design?
Is it both?
And if it's both, how do we know which things fall into which category?
I don't have a neat answer.
And I don't think this chapter gave me one.
My Biggest Takeaway
I went into 1 Corinthians 5 thinking I was probably going to learn something about sexual morality.
Instead, I ended up thinking a lot about my expectations of other people.
And that honestly feels really alive in me right now.
There's a part of me that feels like this is something I need to keep wrestling with.
Not in a “I need to figure out the right answer immediately” kind of way.
More like:
This is a space I want to grow into.
I want to become better at recognizing when I'm placing my expectations onto someone else.
Because I can have expectations for:
what I do,
what I say,
how I behave,
how I dress,
who I love,
what I believe,
what I don't believe…
But I don't have the ability to fully understand another human being.
Ever.
Unless I somehow get Aro's powers from Twilight and can read everyone's thoughts. 😂
And I don't think that's happening.
So maybe part of loving people is recognizing that I will never have the full picture of why someone is the way they are or why they made the choices they made.
I can ask questions.
I can be curious.
I can have boundaries.
I can disagree.
But I don't have to turn my expectations into universal rules.
That's my big takeaway from 1 Corinthians 5.
A Prayer for Discernment
As I ended the video, I prayed about this idea of expectations.
About knowing the difference between something I can ask for and something I am unfairly expecting.
About communicating what I need instead of assuming someone should already know.
And about recognizing when I'm trying to make someone else live according to rules that I have chosen for myself.
I'm still asking God to show me what is true.
Because there are so many ways these passages have been used to oppress people, shame people, exclude people, and make arguments for one side or another.
And I'm not interested in simply finding a verse that confirms what I already believe.
I'm trying to understand.
I'm trying to listen.
I'm trying to stay curious.
And I'm trying to trust that God isn't threatened by my questions.
So, as always, I'm leaving this one open.
What did 1 Corinthians 5 bring up for you?
How do you understand the idea of church discipline?
Where do you think the line is between accountability and exclusion?
And maybe most importantly:
How do you recognize when you're holding someone else to an expectation that was really only meant for you?
I'm still sitting with that one.