Opening Prayer
O God, let us be vessels of gold and silver in Your house. Amen.
Text: First Corinthians 5:9-13
I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people. Yet I certainly did not mean with the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother, who is a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner – not even to eat with such a person. For what have I to do with judging those also who are outside? Do you not judge those who are inside? But those who are outside God judges. Therefore “put away from yourselves that wicked person.”
Devotion
When our vocation causes us to associate with ungodly people, we should not avoid such association, though it is unpleasant for us. At the same time we ought not unnecessarily rush in among wolves. Christians have absolutely no spiritual fellowship with the ungodly. Their hearts do not belong together and they should not cultivate association with one another. If anyone is a drunkard or fornicator, covetous or idolater, reviler or extortioner, and Christians keep fraternity with such a person, then the Body of Christ is defiled, the Church’s holy name is tarnished, and the Lord Himself is dishonored. A little leaven leavens the whole lump. One bad spot corrupts like leprosy. We should not judge, that is: 1) We should not take it upon ourselves to determine how many of the church’s members are true believers, but in charity we think as well as possible of all, though many of them may exhibit various traits that we do not like. 2) We should hope that the ungodly also may repent and realize that they may well come to stand ahead of us in glory. Judging we should not do, and yet we should judge those in the church who give offense by their ungodly life. We should discipline them and exclude them from communion with us at the Lord’s Table in order to help the straying and the ungodly onto the right path. We know that the unrighteous shall not inherit God’s kingdom, and we should let them know it and feel it so that they can repent.
By God’s help we will practice discipline both to keep the Church pure and to save the ungodly. Love requires it. The decline of church discipline, as well as sectarianism and separatism, come from a lack of love. The church – note it well – the church assembly, the congregation, sins against the Lord and against souls when it does not judge those who are in it and cast out the wicked.
Closing Prayer
God, grant us the Spirit of love, power, and wisdom. Amen.
Hymn
Here pride shall ever grow,
Hate, envy, base and low,
Adult’ry, murder, lying,
God’s honor thus defying;
Around us sinners devious
A wicked grove most grievous.
And then comes Judgment Day
When we receive our pay;
The wheat God gathers safely;
The tares He casts off quickly
Into the fire that’s endless,
In hell’s infernal darkness.
O God, preserve Your Word
From Satan’s lying horde,
Who e’er Your truth dishonor
And rob You of Your honor!
Your Word its fruit is sending
Until the world is ending!
Kingo: O Gud, hvor jammerlig L 229:7-9 tr. DeGarmeaux;
tune: Auf meinen lieben Gott (ELH 467); alternate hymn: We are called by one vocation ELH 421