Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble, and I'm your host for the Bible Recap.

Today, Paul continues his letter to the church he started at Corinth. You may notice that

every time he rebukes them for something or addresses a problem they have, he presents the

gospel in response to it. One of the themes that shows up frequently is that those who follow Christ should view every aspect of their lives through the lens of the gospel and live it out empowered by the work of the Spirit. This is not what the Corinthians are doing. They're not only living lives of sexual debauchery, but they're praising it. They do things not even the pagans do, and they try to use God's grace as an excuse for why it's okay. It's an abuse of grace. We're free in Christ, they say. But freedom in Christ isn't freedom to sin. Freedom in Christ is freedom from sin. It means we're no longer enslaved to sin, and we actually have the power of the Spirit

to help us obey God. Any version of God's grace that treats sin as no big deal is a crude

misrepresentation. Grace is an agent of change. It's God's favor on us to help us walk

according to His ways. It redirects us, away from the works of the flesh and toward the fruit of the

spirit. On the other hand, anything that lets us continue in sin unchecked and carefree

isn't grace, it's passive wrath. The church at Corinth doesn't get this at all. One problem with sexual

sin is that it dishonors people by disassociating their body from their soul,

using them for our own pleasure. In short, it's not loving, it's selfish. He addresses this topic

again in chapter 6 with even heavier words. He says, if you're a believer, you have the spirit

of God living inside you. And when you force the spirit of God into sexual situations he doesn't want to be in,

well, there's a word for that. So Paul says to flee sexual immorality, to run. But in Corinth,

no one is doing anything about it. The people are on a trajectory of sin, and the church is like,

praise God, look at how much grace he has for us. Paul calls their wickedness

and the refusal to deal with it arrogant. He tells the church how to respond to those in the church

who walk in active rebellion against God's call for sexual integrity. Not those who struggle to do it,

but those who refuse. There's a big difference. Rebellion and repentance move in opposite directions.

Rebellion moves from God and repentance moves toward God. And when it comes to sin, there's no such

thing as standing still. Paul tells the people in the church how to respond. They're supposed to

judge those inside the church. On the surface, this may seem contradictory to other things he said.

...