Don’t Let Your People Live in Sin
6 Your proud talk is not good. You know the saying, “Just a little yeast makes the whole batch of dough rise.” 7 Take out all the old yeast, so that you will be a new batch of dough. You really are bread without yeast—Passover bread.[b] Yes, Christ our Passover Lamb[c] has already been killed. 8 So let us eat our Passover meal, but not with the bread that has the old yeast, the yeast of sin and wrongdoing. But let us eat the bread that has no yeast. This is the bread of goodness and truth.
9 I wrote to you in my letter that you should not associate with people who sin sexually. 10 But I did not mean the people of this world. You would have to leave the world to get away from all the people who sin sexually, or who are greedy and cheat each other, or who worship idols. 11 I meant you must not associate with people who claim to be believers but continue to live in sin. Don’t even eat with a brother or sister who sins sexually, is greedy, worships idols, abuses others with insults, gets drunk, or cheats people.
12-13 It is not my business to judge those who are not part of the group of believers. God will judge them, but you must judge those who are part of your group. The Scriptures say, “Make the evil person leave your group.”[d]
Footnotes
- 1 Corinthians 5:5 sinful self Or “body.” Literally, “flesh.”
- 1 Corinthians 5:7 Passover bread The special bread without yeast that the Jews ate at their Passover meal. Paul means that believers are free from sin, just as the Passover bread was free from yeast.
- 1 Corinthians 5:7 Passover Lamb Jesus was a sacrifice for his people, like a lamb killed for the Jewish Passover Feast.
- 1 Corinthians 5:12
Quote from Deut. 22:21, 24.