1 Corinthians 5:12-13

For what have I to do to Judge them also that are without?

Without and within

I. Those without.

1. Have no share in Church privileges.

2. Are exempt from Church jurisdiction.

3. Are liable to the judgment of God.

II. Those within.

1. May be unworthy of fellowship.

2. Are subject to discipline.

3. Must be excluded when their wickedness is proven. (J. Lyth, D. D.)

The judgment of God and the judgment of the Church

1. The one is limited, the other universal.

2. The one is partial, the other absolute.

3. The one is disciplinary, the other infallible.

4. The one is provisional, the other will be final.

5. The effects of the one are temporary, of the other eternal. (J. Lyth, D. D.)

Limitations of apostolic discipline

1. Even in that age of Divine intuitions and preternatural visitations Paul limits the subjects of expulsion from the Christian society to gross and definite vices. No encouragement is given to pry into the secret state of the heart and conscience, or to denounce mere errors of opinion or judgment.

2. Even when insisting most strongly on entire separation from heathen vices, he still allows unrestricted social intercourse with the heathen. He forbears to push his principle to an utopian extravagance: he acknowledges the impracticability of entire separation as a decisive reason against it, and regards the ultimate solution of the problem as belonging not to man, but to God.

3. Whilst strongly condemning the Christian quarrels as in themselves unchristian (chap 6.) he yet does not leave them without a remedy, and so drive them to the objectionable course of going before heathen judges. He recognises the fact, and appeals to their own self- respect to induce them to appoint judges of their own, thus giving the first apostolic sanction to Christian courts of law; in other words, departing from the highest ideal of a Christian Church in order to secure the purity of its actual condition.

4. He lays down the general truth that between all other outward acts and the sin of sensuality there is an essential difference; that the liberty which Christianity concedes to the former, it altogether withholds from the latter; that those sins are utterly inconsistent not merely with any particular relation existing between Christianity and heathenism, but with the very idea of Christianity itself. (Dean Stanley.)