Chapter II

INCEST, LITIGATION, EXPEDIENCY, AND CHASTITY.

1 [5:1]IT is commonly reported that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not among the gentiles, that a man should have his father's wife. [5:2]And you are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he who has done this deed should be removed from among you. [5:3]For I indeed as absent in body, but present in spirit, have already judged as present him that has so done this, [5:4]in the name of our Lord Jesus you being assembled together and my spirit with the power of our Lord Jesus [5:5]to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. [5:6]Your rejoicing is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole mass? [5:7]Remove the old leaven, that you may be a new mass, as you are unleavened; for Christ our passover was also sacrificed for us. [5:8] Let us therefore keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with a leaven of vice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

2 [5:9]I wrote to you in the epistle not to associate with fornicators; [5:10] not altogether the fornicators of this world, or the covetous and rapacious, or idolaters, since then you would have to go out of the world. [5:11]But now I have written to you not to associate, if any one called a brother is a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or rapacious, even to eat with such a one. [5:12]For what business have I to judge those without? Do you not judge those within? [5:13]but those without, God judges. Remove therefore the evil man from among you.

3 [6:1]Dare any of you having a business with another be judged by the wicked, and not by the saints? [6:2]Do you not know that the saints shall judge the world? And if the world is judged by you, are you unworthy of the lowest courts? [6:3]Know you not that we shall judge angels? Much more then things pertaining to this life? [6:4]If then you have courts for the business of this life, do you constitute them of the most abject in the church? [6:5]I speak to your shame. Is there not now a wise man among you? not one who can judge between his brothers? [6:6]But brother goes to law with brother, and that before unbelievers. [6:7]Now therefore there is a great fault among you, that you go to law one with another. Why not rather suffer injustice? why not rather be defrauded? [6:8]But you injure and defraud, and that your brothers. [6:9]Know you not that the unjust shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor the effeminate, nor sodomites, [6:10]nor thieves, nor covetous persons, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor the rapacious, shall inherit the kingdom of God. [6:11]And such were some of you; but you are washed, you are sanctified, but you are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.

4 [6:12]All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient; all things are lawful, but I will not be brought under the power of any. [6:13]Food for the stomach, and the stomach for food; but God will destroy both it and them. And the body is not for fornication but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body; [6:14]and God both raised the Lord, and will raise us up by his power. [6:15]Know you not that your bodies are Christ's members? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them a harlot's members? by no means. [6:16]Know you not that he who is joined to a harlot is one body [with her]? For the two, says he, shall be one flesh. [6:17]But he that is joined to the Lord is one spirit [with him]. [6:18]Avoid fornication. Every crime that a man commits is out of his body; but he that commits fornication sins in his body. [6:19]Know you not that your bodies are a temple of the Holy Spirit in you which you have from God, and you are not your own? [6:20]For you are bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.