1 Corinthians 5:4-5

“Ye and my spirit being gathered together in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, 5. to deliver with the power of our Lord Jesus such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.”

The tribunal is formed of the Christians of Corinth assembled in Paul's spiritual presence; his competency is the name of Jesus Christ, under whose authority the sentence is given; his ability to execute is the power of Jesus Christ.

There are four ways of connecting the two subordinate clauses, in the name of...and with the power of, with the two verbs, being gathered together and delivering. The first two make the two clauses bear on the same verb, either on being gathered together (Chrysostom, Theodoret, Calvin, Rückert, Holsten), or on delivering (Mosheim, etc.). According to the last two, they are distributed between the two verbs; some ascribing the first clause, in the name of, to the last verb deliver, and the second clause, with the power of, to the first verb, being gathered together (Luther, Bengel, de Wette, Meyer, Kling, Edwards); the others making each clause bear on the verb which immediately follows it: in the name of on being gathered together, and with the power of on delivering (Beza, Olshausen, Ewald, Hofmann, Heinrici). I have no hesitation in preferring this last construction. Independently of the position of the words, which suits this meaning better than it does any of the others, the decisive reason seems to me to be the conformity of the notion of each clause with that of the verb it qualifies. Is it a judicial assembly which is in question, the important thing is its competency; and this is what is indicated by the ἐν ὀνόματι..., in the name of..., as qualifying being gathered together. Is it, on the contrary, the execution of the sentence which is in question, what is important is force, power de facto; and this is exactly what is expressed by the ἐν δυνάμει, with the power of..., as qualifying to deliver. This construction seems to me also to be confirmed by the striking parallel Matthew 18:18-20, a saying which must have been present to Paul's mind in this case: “Verily I say unto you, whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven....Again I say unto you, that whatever two or three of you shall agree to ask on the earth, it shall be done for them of My Father. For where two or three are gathered together in My name (συνηγμένοι εἰς τὸ ἐμὸν ὄνομα), there am I in the midst of them.” This promise certainly served as a ground for the actual conduct of the apostle. The moment has come for the Church to do what Jesus called binding; it has to judge. This judgment is to be pronounced by the faithful gathered together in His name, as many of them as will be found to agree in view of an interest of this kind, should there be only two or three.

The name denotes the person of the Lord in so far as it is revealed to the hearts of believers, recognised and adored by them.

Perhaps we should, with the documents, reject the word Christ, and preserve only the name Jesus, which calls up the historical personality of Him who has promised to be invisibly present at such an act. It is on this promised presence that the authority of the assembly which does it rests. The pronoun ye does not necessarily embrace the whole of the Church, for the matter in question here is not a vote by a majority of voices; it is a spiritual act in which, from the very nature of things, only the man takes part who feels impelled to it, and each in the measure in which he is capable of it. Two or three suffice for this, in case of need, Jesus Himself says; for the means of action in such discipline is agreement in prayer. How could all this apply to a decree of excommunication, pronounced after contradictory debating, and by a majority of voices, perhaps a majority of one? The things of God do not admit of being thus treated.

The most mysterious expression in this so mysterious passage is the following: καὶ τοῦ ἐμοῦ πνεύματος, and my spirit. At this assembly, which is to take place at Corinth, Paul will be present by his spirit (1 Corinthians 5:3). It would seem that what Paul here affirms of himself ought to be applied to Jesus. But it must not be forgotten that if Jesus is the Head of the Church in general, Paul is the founder and father of the Church of Corinth, and that in virtue of his personal union to Jesus, the spiritual presence of the Lord (Matthew 18:20) may become also that of His servant. In chapter xii. of the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, Paul does not himself know whether it was with or without his body that he was present at a scene in paradise.

The words σὺν τῇ δυνάμει, with power, cannot be connected with the participle συναχθέντων, being gathered together, whether we make Christ's power a sort of third member of the assembly, or whether we regard this power of Christ as sharing in the judgment in so far as it must carry it into execution. The first meaning needs no refutation; the second is an over-refinement. This regimen, on the contrary, is quite naturally connected with παραδοῦναι : “to deliver with the power of Christ Himself.” There is nothing here opposed, as Edwards thinks, to the natural meaning of σύν. Certainly this preposition does not denote the means by which (διά, ἐν); but it can perfectly denote a co-operating circumstance, as in the phrases σὺν θεῷ or σὺν θεοῖς πράττειν, to do with the help of God; comp. Heinrici, ad h. l. Human action does not become efficacious except in union with Divine power.

The repetition of the words, of our Lord Jesus (or Jesus Christ), at the end of the verse, belongs to the forms of language used by the ancients in their formulas of condemnation or consecration (devotio). The object of deliver is briefly repeated by the τὸν τοιοῦτον, such an one, a form which brings out once more the odious character of his conduct.

The obscure expression παραδοῦναι τῷ Σατανᾷ, to deliver to Satan, is found only elsewhere in 1 Timothy 1:20: “Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have delivered unto Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme.”

It has been understood in three ways. Some have found in it the idea of excommunication pure and simple (Calvin, Beza, Olshausen, Bonnet, Heinrici, etc.). Calvin thus briefly justifies this sense “As Christ reigns in the Church, so Satan outside the Church...He then, who is cast out of the Church, is thereby in a manner delivered to the power of Satan, in so far as he becomes a stranger to the kingdom of God.” But the insufficiency of this sense has been generally felt. Why use an expression so extraordinary to designate a fact so simple as that of exclusion from the Church, especially if, as those commentators hold, Paul had just designated the same act by a wholly different term (1 Corinthians 5:3)? Still, if the use of the term had a precedent in the forms of the synagogue! But Lightfoot has proved that this formula was never in use to denote Jewish excommunication. We have besides already called attention to the fact that the δύναμις, the power, of the Lord was not necessary to the execution of a sentence of excommunication. And how could this punishment have prevented Hymenaeus and Alexander from blaspheming? Is it not possible to blaspheme, and that more freely, outside than within the Church? Finally, it remains to explain the following words: for the destruction of the flesh; we do not think it is possible on this explanation to give them a natural meaning.

Moreover, from the earliest times of exegesis down to our own day, the need has been felt of adding another idea to that of excommunication, viz. bodily punishment, regarded either as the proper consequence of excommunication (Calov), or as a chastisement over and above, added to excommunication by the Apostle Paul. To the Church it belongs to exclude from its membership; to the apostle to let loose on the excommunicated one the disciplinary power of Satan to punish him in his body (so nearly Chrysostom, Theodoret, Rückert, Olshausen, Osiander, Meyer). This sense certainly is an approach to the truth; but why seek to combine the idea of excommunication with that of bodily punishment? The former is taken from 1 Corinthians 5:3, from the αἴρειν ἐκ μεσοῦ; we have seen that it is not really there. But what is graver still is, that it would follow from this explanation that the second chastisement, bodily punishment, would be inflicted on the incestuous person in consequence of the Church's neglecting to inflict on him the first. In fact, it follows from 1 Corinthians 5:3 that the apostle's intervention in this matter was rendered necessary by the lax toleration of the Christians of Corinth. In these circumstances the apostle could no doubt inflict the penalty which the Church should have pronounced, but he could not decree an aggravation of punishment; for the fault of the Church added nothing to that of the culprit. In this respect the first explanation would still be preferable to this second. The latter nevertheless contains an element of truth which we should preserve, and which will constitute the third (Lightfoot, Hofmann, Holsten): the idea of a bodily chastisement, of which Satan is to be the instrument. Such is the punishment which Paul inflicts at his own hand, and in virtue of his apostolic power, and which corresponds to the αἴρειν ἐκ μέσου, taking away from among, to the cutting off which the Church had not sought to obtain from God. Satan is often represented as having the power to inflict physical evils. It is he who is God's instrument to try Job when he was stricken with leprosy. It is he, says Jesus, who for eighteen years holds bound the poor woman who was bent double, and whom He cured on the Sabbath day (Luke 13:6). Paul himself ascribes to a messenger of Satan the thorn in the flesh, of which God makes use to keep him in humility (2 Corinthians 12:7). It is Satan who is the murderer of man in consequence of the first sin (John 8:44), and he has the dominion of death (Hebrews 2:14). It is not hard to understand how a painful, perhaps mortal, punishment of this kind might bring the blasphemy on the lips of a heretic to an end. It is obvious how it might bring back to himself and to God a man who was led away by the seduction of the senses. Suffering in the flesh is needed to check the dominion of fleshly inclinations. The only difference between this chastisement decreed by the apostle, and that which the Corinthians should have asked from above, is, that the Church would have referred the mode of execution to God, while Paul, in virtue of his spiritual position superior to that of the Church, feels at liberty to determine the means of which the Lord will make use. For “he knows the mind of the Lord” (1 Corinthians 2:16). It will perhaps be asked how Satan can lend himself to an office contrary to the interests of his own kingdom. But we know not the mysteries of that being, in which the greatest possible amount of blindness is united to the most penetrating intelligence. “Malignity,” says M. de Bonald, “sharpens the mind and kills sound sense.” Was it not the messenger of Satan whom God used to preserve Paul from pride, and who kept him in that consciousness of his weakness by means of which the Divine power could always anew manifest itself in him?

The apostle adds: εἰς ὄλεθρον τῆς σαρκός, for the destruction of the flesh. Those who apply the foregoing expression to excommunication are embarrassed by these words. Calvin takes them as a softening introduced into the punishment, a carnal condemnation importing simply a temporal and temporary condemnation, in opposition to eternal damnation. This interpretation of the genitive σαρκός is its own refutation. Others think of the ruin of the worldly affairs of the excommunicated person, in consequence of his rupture with his former customers, the other members of the Church. How is it possible to ascribe such a thought to the apostle! The only tenable explanation is that which is found already in Augustine, then in Grotius, Gerlach, Bonnet: the destruction of the flesh, in the moral sense of the word, that is to say, of the sinful tendencies, in consequence of the pain and repentance which will be produced in the man by his expulsion from the Church. But, 1. Might not this measure quite as well produce the opposite effect? Thrown back into the world, the man might easily become utterly corrupt. 2. The term ὄλεθρος, destruction, perdition, would here require to denote a beneficent work of the Holy Spirit; that is impossible; see the threatening sense in which the word is always taken in the other passages of the New Testament: 1Th 5:3 and 2 Thessalonians 1:9 (ὄλεθρος αἰφνίδιος, αἰώνιος, destruction sudden, eternal); 1 Timothy 6:9 (ὄλεθρος καὶ ἀπώλεια, destruction and perdition). Paul means here to speak of a real loss for the man, according to the uniform meaning of the word ὄλεθρος. The matter in question is the destruction of one of the elements of his being with a view to the salvation of the other, which is the more precious. When Paul wishes to express the moral idea of the destruction of sin, he uses quite other terms: to reduce to impotence, καταργεῖν (Romans 6:6); to cause to die, kill, νεκροῦν, θανατοῦν (Colossians 3:3; Romans 8:13); to crucify, σταυροῦν (Galatians 5:24); terms which have a different shade from ὄλεθρος. 3. The opposite of σάρξ, the flesh, in the following words, is πνεῦμα, the spirit. Now this second term cannot simply denote spiritual life, to which the expression being saved would not apply; it can only denote the substratum of that life, the spirit itself, as an element of human existence. Hence it follows that neither does the flesh denote fleshly life, but the flesh itself, the substratum of the natural life.

The flesh must therefore be taken in the sense of the earthly man, or, as Hofmann observes, of the outward man, in Paul's phrase (2 Corinthians 4:16: “If our outward man perish...”). It is in this sense that the word flesh itself is taken a few verses before (1 Corinthians 5:11), in the saying: “That the life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh; ” so Philippians 1:22 (τὸ ζῆν ἐν σαρκί) and Galatians 2:20 (ὃ νῦν ζῶ ἐν σαρκί). The apostle might have two reasons for using the term flesh here rather than body; in the first place, σάρξ expresses the natural life in its totality, physical and psychical; and next, the body in itself is not to be destroyed (chap. 15). It is therefore the destruction of the earthly existence of the man which Paul meant to designate by the words ὄλεθρος τῆς σαρκός; and M. Renan is not wrong in saying: “There can be no doubt of it; it is a condemnation to death that Paul pronounces.” The sudden death of Ananias and Sapphira offers an analogy to the present case, not that Paul is thinking of so sudden a visitation; the expression he uses rather indicates a slow wasting, leaving to the sinner time for repentance.

This destruction of the flesh has in view the saving of the spirit, in the day of Christ. Some versions translate: “that the soul may be saved...,” as if the soul and spirit were in Paul's eyes one and the same thing. The passage 1Th 5:23 proves the contrary. “The soul is, in man as in the lower animals, the breath of life which animates his organism; but the spirit is the sense with which the human soul is exclusively endowed to experience the contact of the Divine and apprehend it.” This higher sense in the soul once destroyed by the power of the flesh, connection is no longer possible between the soul and God. This is undoubtedly what Scripture calls the second death. As the first is the body's privation of the soul, the second is the soul's privation of the spirit. This is why the apostle wishes at any cost to save the spirit in this man, in which there resides the faculty of contact with God and of life in Him throughout eternity. It need not be said that the spirit, thus understood as an element of human life, can only discharge its part fully when it is open to the working of the Divine Spirit.

The words, in the day of the Lord Jesus, transport us to the time when Jesus glorified will appear again on the earth to take to Him His own (1 Corinthians 15:23); then will be pronounced on each Christian the sentence of his acceptance or rejection. These last words appear to me to confirm the explanation given of the phrase, destruction of the flesh. For if this denoted the destruction of the fleshly inclinations in the incestuous person, the awaking of spiritual life which would follow would not take place only at Christ's coming, it would make itself felt in him in this present life.

Rückert has very severely judged the apostle's conduct on this occasion. He is disposed, indeed, to make good as an excuse in his favour the impetuosity of his zeal, the purity of his intention, and a remnant of Judaic prejudice. But he charges him with having given way to his natural violence; with having compromised the salvation of the guilty person by depriving him, perhaps, if his sentence came to be realized, of time for repentance; and finally, with having acted imprudently towards a Church in which his credit was shaken, by putting it in circumstances to disobey him. We do not accept either these excuses or these charges for the apostle. The phrase deliver to Satan, being foreign to the formulas of the synagogue, was consequently, also, foreign to the apostle's Jewish past. The alleged violence of his temperament does not betray itself in the slightest in the severity of his conduct. The apostle here rather resembles a mother crying to God for her prodigal son and saying to Him: My God, strike him, strike him even to the death, if need be, if only he be saved! As to the Church, Paul no doubt knew better than the critic of our day how far he could and ought to go in his conduct toward it.

Another critic, Baur, has taken up and developed the observations of Rückert, confirming them by the Second Epistle. In the passage 2 Corinthians 2:5-11, he sees the proof that the apostle's injunctions had not been executed, that the sentence pronounced by him against the incestuous person had not been followed with any effect, and that the apostolical power which he claimed was consequently nothing but an illusion; that after all, in short, nothing remained to the apostle but piteously to beat a retreat, “presenting as his desire what was done without his will,” and putting on the appearance of pardoning and asking favour for the guilty one from the Corinthians, who pardoned the delinquent in spite of him.

This entire deduction assumes one thing: to wit, that the passage 2 Corinthians 2:5-11 refers to the affair of the incestuous person. But the close relation between this passage and that of 1 Corinthians 7:12 demonstrates that it is nothing of the kind, and that all that Paul writes in chap. 2 refers to an entirely different fact, to a personal insult to which he had been subjected at Corinth, and which had taken place posterior to the sending of the first letter. And supposing even that the passage of chap. 2 related to the incestuous person, what would it tell us? That the majority of the Church (οἱ πλείονες, the larger number) had entered into the apostle's views as to the punishment of the culprit; and that the latter had fallen into such a disheartened state that his danger now was of allowing himself to be driven by Satan from carnal security to despair. If such was the meaning of the passage, what would it contain that was fitted to justify the conclusions of Baur, and the awkward light in which they would place the conduct and character of the apostle?

The apostle has terminated what concerns the particular case of the incestuous person. From this point onwards the subject broadens; he shows in the general state of the Church the reason why it has so badly fulfilled its obligations in this particular case (1 Corinthians 5:6-8).