Grave reason there was, why the apostle should speak of such an alternative as “a rod.” For the assembly at Corinth had at present no happy name, if common rumor were true.
“Universal report is of fornication among you, and such fornication as [is] not even among the Gentiles, that one should have his father's wife. And ye are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he who hath done this deed might be taken out of the midst of you.” (Vers. 1, 2.) It was distressing enough that so monstrous an evil should have found an entrance in. the assembly of God. But what grieved the apostle most—as well it might—was the tolerance of the offender in their midst. The assembly cannot hinder a Christian from falling into the worst scandal, but it is bound to deal with evil as identified with Christ before God and man. Here below this is the reason of its being. It is the temple of God, “as he had urged in chapter 3 for a warning against trashy and corrupting theories; but if that holy habitation of God through the Spirit be inconsistent with false teaching, certainly and yet more manifestly with immorality.. Now there was in their midst grossness beyond the heathen—a brother, so-called, living with his step-mother!
Granted that the Corinthian assembly was young in the knowledge of the Lord, and few, if any, men spiritual experience were among them. Gifts they had abundantly; but elders are nowhere hinted at, as indeed we know they were not, and could not be, in an infantine state of things. And divine wisdom, I doubt not, selected this state rather than one more mature and fully furnished, in order the better to provide for the exigencies of a day like ours.
But surely the youngest saints ought at least to have been appalled at such sin where God's Spirit dwelt. They might have had no special teaching on discipline, nor previous cases of evil, while the apostle was with them. But why did they not mourn that he who had wrought such evil in the assembly might be taken away? Humiliation and prayer are the resource, of those who feel a wrong, and know not yet the remedy: and the Lord would have acted for them, or given them to act for Him. Instead of this they were “puffed up” a grievous aggravation of the mischief. I will not go so far as to assume that the offender was one of those, of whom they were proud, and who helped the carnal multitude to carp at the apostle; but it seems plain enough that the self-exalting doctrine and the bad morality went together in his mind. Had they allowed into their hearts the germ of that unholy idea, so rife in modern and even evangelical circles, that the evil of another is not to be judged, but each is solely to judge himself? It is to the destruction of God's glory in the church. For what can more directly strike at all common union in good, all corporate responsibility in evil? Where such thoughts are suffered, it is plain that the presence of the Holy Ghost is either ignored or forgotten; for no believer will deliberately say that He can be a partner of iniquity, and this He must be if evil is known and unjudged where He dwells.
Seriously, as one familiar with the presence of God, and not like those whose self-esteem or vanity led them to evil in the assembly, does the apostle speak. It was that power of God in which he would have acted if present. “For I, absent in body, but present in spirit, have already judged as present, in the name of our Lord Jesus [Christ], ye and my spirit being gathered together with the power of our Lord Jesus [Christ], [concerning] him that so wrought this—to deliver such an one to Satan for destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.” (Ver. 8-5.)
It thoroughly fell within the province of the apostle to help the church at such an emergency, as indeed it was his joy at all times. For an apostle regulated and governed, and in this differed from such as were prophets without being apostles. But here was the assembly at Corinth, his own children in the faith, ensnared into the grossest dishonor on the Lord's name, and withal puffed up, instead of mourning in order that the offender might be removed out of their midst. He proceeds, therefore, to pronounce the only judgment open to such a case. “For I, absent in body, but present in spirit, have already judged as present [concerning] him that so wrought this.” The best authorities thus give the sense. “As” comes in to modify the second present, not the first, which is sufficiently qualified by “in spirit,” contrasted with “absent in body.” In the second case the very reverse is intended, and “as” is indispensable (for he means as if actually there), whereas in the first it would be improper. He then shows the authority and manner for dealing with the person: “in the name of our Lord Jesus (ye being gathered, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus), to deliver such an one to Satan for destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.”
This has been confounded, especially since Calvin's time, with excommunication. But delivering to Satan is power here associated with the assembly, as the conferring of a gift is in 1 Tim. 4:1414Neglect not the gift that is in thee, which was given thee by prophecy, with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery. (1 Timothy 4:14) with imposition of the hands of the elderhood. In both cases the result hinges on apostolic power. But the absence of this in no way enfeebles the duty of putting away the guilty professor, as is carefully laid down in verse 18.
Our Lord, indeed, had Himself set forth the principle in Matt. 18, and provided for its maintenance in the worst of times. He had put the assembly, as the last resort, even for a case which began with an individual trespass; for I do not doubt, spite of the omission of εἰς σέ, “against thee,” in versa 15 (according to the Sinai and Vatican manuscripts, supported by three cursives, &c.), that they are genuine, resting as they do on most ample ancient authority, and falling in exactly with the context, which is embarrassed by the omission—an omission easily accounted for by the similarity of their sound in a Greek's mouth to the last two syllables of the preceding word. If the matter, then, were told to the assembly, and the offender should not heed it, “let him be to thee as the heathen and the tax-gatherer.” But the Lord gives what is general and abiding: “Verily, I say to you, whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever ye shall loose on the earth shall be loosed in heaven.” This goes beyond the enforcement or removal of a sentence on evil to the more general authority of the assembly as acting for Christ. Next, He shows the efficacy of its united prayer, even if but two agreed in asking: “Again, I say to you, that if two of you agree on the earth about whatever they may ask, it shall come to them from my Father that is in the heavens;” and this on a ground which takes in not merely a meeting for judicial decision or prayer, but every assembly of the church as such: “for where two or three are gathered together to my name, there am I in the midst of them.” For the authority of the assembly or the validity of its action in these matters of practice and conduct depends, not in any way on its numbers or the weight of the persons composing it, but on Christ, who guarantees His presence where but two or three are gathered together to His name.
This is clearly urged by the apostle in verse 4. If Satan had sought to alienate the Corinthians from Paul, he at least joins himself in spirit with them, as gathered together with the power of our Lord Jesus, in His name to deliver the incestuous Corinthian to Satan. If flesh had been indulged shamelessly, flesh must be galled and broken to pieces under the adversary's hand, but for good in the end at any rate” that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.” In fact, as the second epistle shows, the discipline was blessed to him in this world also; but the end specified cannot fail for all born of God, whatever may be the hindrances here, or the particular shape of God's dealing with the soul. For there is a sin to death, and in this case to make request of God would be an error. In the present instance it was not so, awful as the sin was: and the man not only did not fall asleep, but was brought to the deepest abasement and grief, and the apostle called on the saints to forgive, as doubtless they did.