I have two goals in this post. First, I want to address the issue of how to read Scripture so as to be in a proper posture to reflect on what is read. Second, I want to show you how this works through looking at 1 Corinthians 5. Both these goals emerge out of two concerns that I have about how we too often read and reflect on Scripture. One, we come to the reading of the Bible with a lack of clarity about the kind of book we are reading. The Truth of Scripture is not discerned by reason alone but by reason inflamed by the Holy Spirit. The Bible is the Book of God. We have no hope of hearing or understanding what it is teaching us apart from being directed in our reading and reflections on what we read by the Holy Spirit. Two, I am afraid that we come sometimes to passages about which we conclude that we already know what the passage says and what the passage means. It is not that passages have increasingly new meanings. Each passage of Scripture has one primary and priority meaning that is given by God. But we who read who are in the process of growing in likeness to Christ have to grow as well in our ability to see more clearly and more fully what is in each passage. This begins by our full recognition of the kind of material we are reading when we read the Bible.
This brings me to my first issue. I have been enjoying a “quiet time” at the beginning of each day for well over forty years. I have had as the foundation of that quiet time an annual “read through the Bible” plan that I have now completed for at least thirty of those years. But what often began to happen to me some years back is that my “quiet time” could become just a part of my routine. The too often repeated result is that I was reading the assigned passages for the day in order to complete a task. I could not tell you by ten o’clock that morning what I had read at six o’clock that morning. So, I started to spend time in prayer before my Bible reading and then to remind myself before reading: this book is God’s Word. It is breathed out by God. He is the author of every word. He has graciously given this book to me in which He speaks His truth to me. Open my eyes to see it, my ears to hear it, my mind to comprehend it, my heart to receive it and my life to obey it. I have approached my “quiet time” Bible reading like this for years now. It has made a difference.
This brings me to my second issue. One of the daily readings a few weeks back was 1 Corinthians 5, It is a short chapter. The issue in the chapter is painfully plain. A man in the church is living with as in cohabiting sexually with his step-mother. Both remain active in the church. Both are living lives that clearly violate non-negotiable biblical standards. The church is silent. No discipline is taking place. And Paul writes that they must be removed from the church so as to protect the purity of the people of God in the church. They must be excluded and they must be called to repentance. And it was while I was reading this chapter for only God knows how many times that it hit me. God spoke into my heart through HIs Word.
One of my greatest concerns as a Christian and as a pastor is the unbelievable number of people to whom I speak and whom I know who sincerely profess to be Christians who are not actively involved in a local church. Many of these in my local situation left church during COVID and have not returned, and they are among a huge number who do not intend to return. Their words, “I am a Christian and do not think I have to be in church to be a Christian; it is all about who I am and how I live.” You as a reader have no idea how much I would love for that half-truth to be full, Biblical truth. Does the Bible actually teach that to be a child of God is to be an active participant in the family of God? And as I read this chapter, I was struck as if by lightning by a simple truth that is in this passage.
Here it is. The greatest punishment that the Elders of a church can bring to a true believer living in the worst kind of sin is to exclude them from the church when she gathers for the worship of God. And believe me, in my book, it does not get more gross than a man cohabiting in sin with his stepmother. But if this man and his stepmother are true believers and obviously she was not, this man will repent and will desire to be brought back into the family of God. Nothing could be more devastating to a true follower of Jesus than to be removed from the church. And this man apparently showed his colors as a committed follower of Jesus who had fallen to sin by repenting and seeking a return to the church (2 Corinthians 2:5-11).
I have read this chapter many times. I have preached through this book more than once. I had never seen this truth. It has always been there. But my great God knew that I was struggling with this issue, staying awake at night, grieving over people I love who have left the church but still sincerely believe that they are believers. And they are true believers if on the Lord’s Day they feel deep and unresolvable guilt and pain over being absent from the body. But they are not at all if they can go on week after week, month after month without repentance. What I saw was that the worst thing a church can say to a true child of God is, “keep on sinning the way you are sinning and you will be excluded from the church.” How this person responds reveals whether he loves his sin more than he does his savior; whether he would rather pursue his purpose in life rather than join the people of God on the Lord’s Day to pursue God in passionate worship of His Name. It is still true that a person who professes to know Jesus who will not come to church on the Lord’s Day will most likely not be in heaven on the day after they die. Think about it.