I’m sorry, but if that doesn’t bless you, your blesser is broke. Marvelous singing this morning, wonderful selection of hymns. It’s already been a blessing to be together. Take your Bibles, if you will, please, and turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 5. Finally, after a long hiatus, we are back to our expositions through Paul’s first letter to the church at Corinth.
I’d like to say that I have been just wonderfully blessed by Eddie’s Sunday School lessons in the Psalms. It’s just been a wonderful study for us. All the years that he’s put in to study the Psalms and to share that with us has been great. And one thing in particular I thought of in reference to this this morning is last week when he spoke to us on the Wisdom Psalms; I thought it was encouraging to be reminded that these hortatory sections of Scripture, the passages like we are turning to now in 1 Corinthians that deal with various issues of Christian living, sometimes rebuke, always instruction concerning how the Christian life ought to be lived—this is something like wisdom literature as well in that sense. And this is a part of our worship: to turn to the Word of God and be instructed by him and to learn from him how we can live in a way that is pleasing to him. And we should always look at that as part of our worship.
And we turn to that now in 1 Corinthians. As you know, this is Paul’s troubleshooter letter where he writes to a troubled church and he deals with one issue after another. He takes up what was troubling the church there. And it’s a good thing for us that he did because it provides for us something of a manual and of instruction for church life. And that’s where we enter into more of that now into chapter 5 of 1 Corinthians. Today, the study we could entitle, “How to Handle a Scandal.” How to handle a scandal or what to do with sin in the congregation.
1 Corinthians, chapter 5, beginning with verse 1:
“It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you and of a kind that does not occur even among the pagans, a man has his father’s wife. And you are proud. Shouldn’t you rather have been filled with grief and have put out of your fellowship the man who did this? Even though I am not physically present, I am with you in spirit, and I have already passed judgment on the one who has done this, just as if I were present. When you are assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus, and I am with you in spirit, and the power of our Lord Jesus is present, hand this man over to Satan so that the sinful nature may be destroyed and his spirit saved in the day of the Lord. Your boasting is not good. Don’t you know a little yeast works through the whole batch of dough? Get rid of the old yeast that you may be a new batch without yeast, as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore, let us keep the festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with bread without yeast, the bread of sincerity and truth. I have written you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people, not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers and idolaters. In that case, you would have to leave this world. Now I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who calls himself a brother, but is sexually immoral, or greedy, or an idolater, or a slanderer, or a drunkard, or a swindler. With such a man, do not even eat. What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. Expel that wicked man from among you.”
Let’s look to the Lord in prayer. Our Father, You have seen how much we need exhortations from You, guidance, how to live in a way that is pleasing to You. You have seen that our hearts are such that we will become indifferent to sin. And so we thank you for this portion of your word and we pray that you will use it by the power of your spirit working in us to shape us more in a way that is like our Lord Jesus. We pray in his name. Amen.
The city of Corinth was one of the major metropolitan areas of the ancient world. It was a huge, bustling seaport; a huge city with everything available that was available anywhere in the world. There was something of the ancient shopping mall of the ancient world there, the famous Agora that I’m sure many of you have heard of. It was something like an outdoor shopping mall, and anything that was available virtually anywhere in the world was available there in Corinth, this huge metropolitan seaport city—something, I suppose, like a Los Angeles or something like that.
Like most big cities, it was notorious also not for its greatness in size, but also for its vice and for its wickedness. In fact, there was a euphemism that was from the day: a “Corinthian girl.” A Corinthian girl is just a word for a prostitute. There was in the temples there in Corinth, part of the ritual in worship was ritual prostitution. This was the kind of city Corinth was.
First Corinthians was written, of course, with all of that in the background and in view. And as is inevitable in any church in any society, something of the society inevitably is going to make some impact on the church through at least some of the members and some of those on the inside of the church. And Paul writes this letter, of course, simply to deal with all sorts of problems that are in the church at Corinth. As I said, it’s something of his troubleshooter letter where he writes to take up one problem after another and one issue after another that had arisen in the life of the congregation there.
And in this context here, you remember, the Apostle Paul is finishing up his discussion of the problem of disunity in the church. They were squabbling among themselves, dividing up into factions in the church over things that really ultimately did not matter. “I am of Paul. I am of Apollos. I am of Cephas. I am of Christ.” Dividing up the body of Christ into various segments in the church warring against one another. And Paul, you remember, toward the end of chapter 4, as we saw last time beginning with verse 8, scolds the people at Corinth for their arrogance, their pride. Some kind of spiritual pride had come into the congregation. And they’re evidently saying things like, “We’re kings in Christ,” implying something like, “We’ve arrived, we’ve made it, look at us.” And you’ll see where something of that comes in now in chapter 5 as well. There were people who were very concerned about their knowledge of doctrine evidently, but that knowledge evidently had only served to puff them up and it had left them in ways that, in practical and ethical ways, denied what they claimed to believe.
Well, now in chapter 5, he comes to deal with the next problem at the church, and that is immorality on the part of someone within the congregation. And this immorality, obviously, of the society had begun to show itself in the church, only this one was, in a sense, even worse. Even the pagans don’t like to talk about this, Paul says. It’s inevitable that the sensualism that is just so dominant in a society like that—like in our society where sensualism is just so much a part of the society—it’s inevitable that at some point it’s going to show up in the church. And here Paul is dealing with that.
And what’s interesting here is that his primary issue that he deals with here is not really the immorality per se. He’ll deal with that more in the next chapter with a broader subject of fornication. But here the pointed issue is not just simply the immorality of the person in question. What he takes up here is the response of the congregation in reference to the one in the congregation who is immoral. And Paul is disgusted here, not just with the immorality itself. He’s upset with the congregation for not responding to that immorality in the right way. And most of his instruction, virtually all of his instruction here, has to do not with the immoral man himself, but with the congregation and how they are to respond to him who has sinned in this way.
So let’s look at this, work our way through the passage quickly.
First of All, the Problem
Well, obviously, first of all, there is a sinful church member. Verse 1: “It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you and of a kind that does not occur even among the pagans. A man has his father’s wife.” Now exactly how the Apostle Paul had heard about this we don’t know for certain. We know that in chapter 1 he tells us that he heard about the problem of divisions through the household of Chloe. Some messengers have been sent from some people in the congregation, evidently some wealthier members that had some servants that could be sent off on an errand like this. It just might be that he heard this from them as well. But Paul has heard enough. He’s heard enough to deal with it and to draw his conclusions. They’ve reported it to him, and now he comes with his answer to it.
And he describes the sin, first of all, as immorality or fornication. Specifically, this man has his father’s wife. Now, we don’t know the details of that either. It’s likely that this was not the man’s mother. It is likely that his mother is gone, divorced or passed away, and his father has remarried. Perhaps he’d remarried someone younger. We don’t know any of the details. But this was something that was prohibited, not only in Mosaic law, but in Roman law. This was something that was viewed as disgusting. And so Paul writes, “This is the kind of thing that you don’t even talk about this out in the world.” And here you have someone in your congregation who has his father’s wife. And the indication here is that this is not just a once-and-done thing. The indication is, by the tense of the verb and whatnot going on here, that this is a permanent situation.
Now, one question that comes up here in discussion of this chapter, it seems most all the time, is: was this man, after all, a believer? He was in the congregation. Was he a genuine believer? And the short answer to that is we don’t know. Chapter 5, verse 1, he says he’s one from among you. Chapter 5, verse 5, sure raises some doubt, doesn’t it? “Hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the sinful nature… that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.” Now, whether this means restoration or conversion proper, we’re not told. But there’s certainly a degree of doubt that’s raised about it, isn’t it? We get to verse 11; there’s another doubt that is given to us. He is a so-called brother, we might translate it—push it a little bit—a professed brother. Well, again, there’s some doubt that’s raised, and we’re not told exactly, but the assumption here is that Christians don’t behave this way. And so long as a man behaves this way, he’s raising all kinds of doubts, and we have no reason to assume that this man is a believer.
So here we have someone in the congregation who’s professing to be a Christian, and he’s living in continuous immorality. He might be a libertine that we’ll deal with in chapter 6: “All things are lawful for me.” Evidently, my position in Christ has left me in such a way that these kinds of external matters just don’t matter. Maybe it’s that kind of thinking that’s going on in this man or something else. But whatever the excuse or the justification that was given for it, he was one who had forgotten the demands of the gospel and that salvation entails salvation from sin.
Now Paul admits in verse 1 that these things are embarrassing to discuss. But because it’s entered the church, it has to be discussed, and he says it must be dealt with. And this is the real problem then that Paul addresses through the rest of the chapter. Verse 2: “You are proud. Shouldn’t you rather have been filled with grief and put out of your fellowship the man who did this?”
Chapter 4, Paul has, as I said, mentioned their arrogance and their pride, and here he plays on it again. There’s evidently concern over correctness of doctrine in various kinds of ways, but there’s not that corresponding concern over correctness of life. Gospel truth in terms of doctrine, but not gospel living that corresponds to it. And so among all of their profession of faith, there is this one who’s claiming to be a Christian, and yet he’s living in a way that is immoral, and the congregation now responds to it in a way that—what? They’re proud. You’re not dealing with it. Oh, it’s okay. Maybe this is, again, some of the libertine attitudes of chapter 6 that we find here as well. But for whatever excuse, the congregation had not dealt with this problem in one of its members.
And Paul simply comes after them and says, “You’re proud, you’re arrogant. Should not this have been an occasion for mourning?” If you are anywhere near the arrived Christian that you think you are, wouldn’t your response have been, as one, the whole congregation, rise up in an act of mourning that this kind of thing could go on on the part of someone among us? And not only did it happen among one of us, it ought to bring mourning that you have not responded to it. Here immorality has come into the congregation and you act like it doesn’t matter.
And Paul gives us something of what a righteous response of a congregation ought to be to this kind of sin creeping into the congregation on the part of one of its members. This ought to be an occasion of grief—that sin has entered your midst with this man and it has gone unjudged. If you were really the kinds of Christian that you think and profess to be, you would have dealt with it.
But Paul’s rebuke of the church doesn’t stop there. He says in verse 2, “Put out of your fellowship—should you not have grieved, and put out of your fellowship the man who did this?” The idea again is that you should have gone into mourning, and by not taking the necessary action against this man, you’ve behaved in a way that yourself deserves repentance over. You’ve not dealt with it.
Now granted, it’s impossible that—as I said earlier, living in a society that’s so dominated by sensualism—it’s impossible in this world that that’s not going to show itself somehow in the life of the congregation. But the difference between us and the world is when it happens here, it ought to be at least horrifying. The problem is we live in a culture that’s so dominated by sensuality. And if we’re not careful, it becomes normal. And we can become desensitized to it. And then suddenly it creeps into the church and our response is, “Well, it happens all the time.” And gross sin becomes normalized because we have been desensitized to it by such an overexposure to it. And we’ve got to be careful. Just because we see it more and more in our society does not mean that it becomes more and more tolerable in the church. What it means when it becomes more and more tolerable in the society is that we must become more and more diligent in watching against it in our own minds, lest we become desensitized to it and these things become normal.
Sin is still sin. And this in the congregation is still a blot on the name of Christ. And so we can tell, Paul says, a great deal about the spiritual health of a congregation by how it responds to sin, a scandalous sin like this on the part of one of its members. Yes, we are kings, and yes, we do reign with Christ. But that reign has not yet fully come, and we have to live in this present evil age. And living in this present evil age, our minds are continually dumped into with all of the sensualism of this world. And we have to be careful to fight against it. And we cannot face immorality on the part of the congregation like evidently they were, excusing it and saying, “Well, it’s normal.” So here they were, a church preaching a gospel of rescue from sin, and yet one of its members involved in some scandalous sin. What a contradiction it is.
Number Two, the Prescription for the Problem
What action is required? Look at verses 3 through 5:
“Even though I’m not physically present, I’m with you in spirit, and I have already passed judgment on the one who did this, just as if I were present. When you are assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus and I’m with you in spirit and the power of our Lord Jesus is present, hand this man over to Satan so that his sinful nature may be destroyed and his spirit saved on the day of the Lord.”
Now, the meaning of “deliver over to Satan” is somewhat debated, but it’s rather clear, at least in a general way, and that is that you’ve put him over into Satan’s territory. Reject him as no longer one of your own. Put him out. Make him feel that he’s no longer part of the family of Christ, and put him out into Satan’s domain. Cut him off from Christian fellowship. Force him to live into the world that he’s chosen, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. At least in general terms, this is clear as well. It at least means that in the end, this will have worked toward his repentance so that he is finally saved—that in the end, your action against him has moved him to repentance and that he’ll be saved.
But “put him over, deliver him over to Satan”—that is sort of defined for us throughout the chapter. If you look at a few of the verses here, I think you’ll see clearly the implications of it. In verse 2, it’s “put him out of your fellowship.” Verse 5, “hand him over to Satan.” Verse 7, “get rid of the old yeast”—get rid of him. Verse 9, “do not associate with him.” Verse 11, “with such a man do not even eat.” And verse 13, “expel the wicked man from among you.”
Well, there’s the idea. Here’s this man who is in the congregation professing to be a believer, and he’s behaving in an immoral way. Paul says, “Come together as a congregation, and in the name of the Lord, put him out. Expel him. Cut him off from the fellowship of the church. Make him feel the sting of his sin.” Don’t allow him the comfort of feeling that he can behave like that and feel as though he’s part of the church of Jesus Christ. Make him feel that he has chosen the world. He must go out and stay there alone. He cannot enjoy the comforts of Christian fellowship.
The point, then, is to put him out into Satan’s domain and cut him off, not only from Christian fellowship per se, but from the comfort of feeling as though he is a Christian, and expose him to the emptiness of the world that he has chosen. Call a meeting at the assembly, and in the name of Christ, put him out. And why? The end of verse 5: “so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.”
Does this sound like harsh treatment? Put him out? Cut him off? Don’t even eat with him? Put him out of fellowship? Does that sound harsh? Paul has a very gracious intent, doesn’t he? His point here is that by cutting him off, it is just the last leverage we have. By cutting him off, perhaps, perhaps, we can pressure him. By feeling the absence of the Christian fellowship, we can pressure him to repentance. We don’t do a favor to any man or woman who has chosen an immoral lifestyle to allow them to feel that they’re still one of the church. We don’t do them any favor to let them feel that they’re part of the fellowship. This, in this sense, is an exclusive group. And sinners though we all are, we’ve come to understand the implications of the gospel, and that is it demands holy living. And so he says, “Put him out and cut him off and make him feel the sting of disfellowship.”
In one sense, this is no different from what I’ve seen some Christian parents pray with regard to their children who have strayed: “Lord, do what you have to do. Do what you have to do if by that you can get his attention and bring him back to Christ.” Is that unloving? Well, no, this is Paul’s values here. And we must apply, he says, whatever leverage we have to bring this professing Christian back to fellowship. All right, this is our responsibility to the unrepentant sinner in the congregation. For his own sake, for the sake of his own eternal soul, put him out.
Number Three, the Principles Involved
Paul explains his reasoning here. Verse 6, he speaks of the pervasive influence of sin: “Your boasting is not good. Don’t you know that a little yeast works through the whole lump or the whole batch of dough?”
I’ve never baked a loaf of bread in my life, but I have watched it. My wife has made bread for years. And I do my part; I eat it. And once in a while, I’ve watched her do it. I don’t know a lot about it. I don’t even know all the ingredients. But I do know that proportionate to the size of the loaf when it is done, the amount of yeast that she puts in is really a very small thing. It’s just a little. And Paul’s simply here playing on that. A little yeast fills the whole lump. It’s the old “one rotten apple in the barrel” kind of thing. A whole barrel of apples—you put one rotten one in it with all the good apples, and all the good apples don’t make the rotten one good. It’s the rotten one that spreads to the good apples.
And that’s simply all Paul is saying. There’s a pervasive influence of sin. And for the sake of the congregation, for the sake of our own purity, we must put him out. What would it tell on us in time if we permitted this kind of behavior in the congregation? What would it tell on us as a congregation if this kind of behavior didn’t matter on the part of its members? Well, you know what would happen. It would spread. “If he can behave like that and still be one of us, well, then it doesn’t matter if I do this.” And Paul is simply then speaking of the pervasive influence of sin. And in terms of the life of the congregation itself, he says you simply have to be rid of him.
Next, he doesn’t deal simply and very long at all with the pervasive influence of sin, but he goes on in verses 7 through 8 to deal with the entailments of salvation or the nature and responsibilities of salvation. Verses 7 and 8:
“Get rid of the old yeast that you may be a new batch without yeast as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore, let us keep the festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with bread without yeast, the bread of sincerity and truth.”
Now, Paul here is simply referring to the Jewish celebration of the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread that followed. On the eve of the Passover, the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the Jewish people would remove all leaven or yeast from their homes. And they would bake a new loaf of bread without leaven, unleavened bread, kneaded with pure water, and have a new lump of dough, and from that make the other loaves of bread that would be used during the festival.
Now, often in the Scriptures, leaven is associated with sin. It’s something of a picture of sin, very often in the Scriptures. And the idolatry of Egypt—this is what the Israelites left behind them in Egypt. You remember, they’re cleaning the house of all leaven. They made unleavened bread for the feast of Passover. And the next day they left. And they left Egypt with the leaven behind them. And so it becomes something of a picture of what is left behind. The people of God go on with God and leave behind them Egypt. And they leave the enslavery of Egypt behind them. And Paul is playing on that imagery here in reference to the church. Just as they left Egypt and left the leaven behind them, so we have come to Christ, and in coming to Christ as the new people of God, we have left sin behind us as well. And that must be evident, not only in an individual experience, but in the life of the corporate congregation as well.
And then he gives his explanation for it. He says at the end of verse 7, “For Christ, our Passover Lamb, has been sacrificed for us.” Paul’s playing up the imagery further. Look back to the exodus from Egypt. You remember the Passover lamb was slain and the blood was smeared on the doorposts of the house. And those that were in the house under the blood, as it were, were protected from the judgment that came over Egypt that night. And Paul is simply saying all of that looked forward to a greater deliverance that has come in Christ. And our Passover lamb has been sacrificed for us. We are under His blood, as it were, and we have gone to Him and we must leave that old life of slavery and sin—Egypt, as it were—behind us and go on to live with Him in the ways that He demands.
And it’s interesting the way he words it in verse 7 as well: “Get rid of the old yeast that you may be a new batch without yeast as you really are.” Isn’t that interesting? This is exactly the way the Apostle Paul approaches ethics all through his epistles. He bases his commands on the realities that we enjoy in Christ. So, for example, have you been risen with Christ? Yes, you have been risen with Christ. Well, therefore, be more heavenly minded. Set your affections on things above if you’re risen with Christ. Or, for example, must we work out our own salvation? Yes, we must work out our own salvation. Why? Well, because the reality is God is at work in you, both to will and to do of His good pleasure. Must we live a new life? Yes, we must. Why? Because the old man has been crucified with Christ.
We must be what we are. We have been made certain things in Christ. And all through Paul’s letters, he commands us then to behave in accordance with the realities that have been established in Christ. And here is the same. Christ, our Passover Lamb, has been sacrificed for us. We have been made a new people because of Christ. And we have been saved from sin. A new loaf of bread, as it were. And so the old leaven must be put out. And again, not only in terms of the individual experience, but in terms of the corporate life of the congregation as well, put it out and be done with it. Our responsibility rests on what Christ has done for us, and because of what we’ve experienced in Him, the purity—the purification, if you will—that has been accomplished by Him for us must be evident in our lives.
And so he says in verses 7 and 8: “Christ, our Passover has been sacrificed for us. Therefore, let us keep the festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with bread without yeast, the bread of sincerity and truth.” With the Passover lamb slain, let us then purge out the old leaven. Enjoy the festive celebration of the Passover in Christ, and that entails holy living.
So again, all of this imagery is designed simply to emphasize the point that in Christ there are certain obligations with regard to sin, and the sin must be put out, both on the individual level and the corporate level as well.
Then back to the issues at hand, Paul applies in verses 9 and following, gives some applications to their circumstances. First of all, he clarifies in verses 9 through 11 the proper objects of this discipline in the church:
“I’ve written in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people, not at all meaning people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers and or idolaters. In that case, you’d have to leave this world. But now I’m writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who calls himself a brother, but is sexually immoral, or greedy, or an idolater, or a slanderer, or a drunkard, or a swindler. With such a man, do not even eat.”
So all of this talk about separation from the immoral, he wants, first of all, to clarify. It hardly requires us to disassociate from everyone who is immoral. If that were the case, you’d have to be a hermit, a monk, or something. And in fact, our Lord, you remember, was criticized on this score. He ate with publicans and sinners. And I’m very sure there’s something about that from that that we can learn about our own evangelistic efforts in associating with those on the outside.
But the whole matter changes when that person professes to be a believer. When he professes to belong to Christ, Paul says the whole situation changes. Now you’re taking on something. When you make that profession, “I belong to Christ,” you’re saying that the Passover has been sacrificed for me. I have been purged from my sin. And Paul says that has some entailments. We must live accordingly. In the life of the congregation as a whole, we must live accordingly as well. And we just cannot allow…
And so if someone comes into our congregation professing to be one of Christ’s, and he lives in this scandalous way—and Paul here is not talking about someone who has a slip of the tongue and misspeaks or a sin of the moment; he’s speaking of one who is living in a scandalous way. If that’s the case, he says, “Put him out. Disassociate. Disfellowship with him.” And again, it’s for one who is a so-called brother. And I’m not sure this should be restricted to just our own local congregation; I don’t see that anywhere here at all. If there is someone who professes to be a believer in Christ and takes on a scandalous lifestyle like this, they should not receive anything from us that encourages them in the notion that they belong to Christ. I’m not saying we should shun them. I’m not saying that as some groups have taught, you should spit on the sidewalk if they walk by. But I am saying that there should not be the blessing and the comfort of Christian fellowship. And Paul says, “Don’t even eat with them.”
I think we’ve probably all seen in some instances where a person was living a scandalous life, had to be disfellowshipped from the church. And what do they do? They run to the next church down the road. And they’re glad to take them in, looking more for money and numbers than they are for the approval of Christ. Well, we know that the person in question is not fooling themselves and they’re not fooling us. But what that says about the congregation is an awful thing. But here’s the apostle’s instruction then: don’t let them feel the comfort of belonging to Christ or the fellowship of Christ.
All right, a couple of things then in conclusion. Some applications for us.
Some Applications for Us
Number one, this certainly, certainly gives us some warning, doesn’t it? Of our own personal experience and attitude towards sin. We must be careful not to become like this man himself or that congregation in becoming so accustomed to sin that it no longer shocks us—so accustomed to the sensuality of our day that it’s not grievous when it comes into the congregation.
Corporately as well, as a congregation, we should learn from this to see ourselves as a people who have been made pure by the blood of Christ. And that purity that has been established before God must be evident in the way that we live and the way that we conduct our affairs as a congregation.
And I’ve often thought on this passage too, one other application I think is just so helpful for us. The point here is that we want to restore the man to fellowship with Christ. His behavior gives every indication that he does not belong to Christ. And we certainly have no room to assume that he does. But at the same time, this man wants the fellowship of the congregation. He’s been coming. He’s been attending. He’s been part of the life of the church. And Paul’s reasoning here seems to be something like: as you disfellowship him from yourselves, you’re making him feel the pressure of being on the outside. And doesn’t that in turn say something about the quality of fellowship that we ought to cultivate here in the congregation?
There ought to be something about our fellowship here, the quality of our fellowship, that it serves as a deterrent to sin. Wouldn’t it be awful if someone says, “Oh, that’s okay, I never had much fellowship with them anyway. I’ll go somewhere else”? But there ought to be something about the quality of fellowship—the love between one another here ought to be such that it serves as a deterrent to this life of sin.
Well, here’s the apostle’s instruction on how to handle a scandal. He writes to the church at Corinth, which was a troubled congregation, which for our sakes was in some ways good, because here the apostle gives us instruction as to how to live in a way that is pleasing to Christ.
Let’s bow for prayer. Our Father, we’re grateful for your goodness to us in giving us Christ. We ask, Lord, that you will forgive us for those many times when we fail to live up to the ideal that has been accomplished for us and in us by our Lord Jesus. We live in such an increasingly sinful society, and our minds are so bombarded by it constantly. Lord, we tend to become desensitized. Give us a sensitivity to sin. Help us to see its ugliness from your standpoint. Help us to see what this cost to our Savior, and give us a glimpse of the glory and the beauty of living righteously for our wonderful Lord. We pray in His name. Amen.