Sin in the church

“Your boasting is not good. Don’t you know that a little yeast works through the whole batch of dough?” 1 Corinthians 5:6
The church at Corinth had a number of problems which Paul addresses in his epistles to them. One of the major ones was their open tolerance of sin. Paul highlights one sin in particular, calling it “a kind that does not occur even among pagans” (1 Cor. 5:1) – a certain man in the fellowship had married his stepmother. And the church, instead of condemning this act, embraced it.
We see similar things going on in various churches today. Homosexuality is celebrated, people seeking counselling are encouraged to divorce their spouse, and nothing is said that these things are wrong.
Paul calls them to account: “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?” (1 Cor. 5:2). The church was proud that they were so tolerant. But sin is like yeast: if you let a little bit in, it will spread and permeate through everything. If we tolerate sin in our life, or in the church, it will infect everything and everyone. We all have certain temptations. And we know that as long as we give in to those temptations, the more we feed them, the stronger they will become. You can’t appease sin by feeding it once in a while. That is never going to make it go away. You need to starve it, and cut it off at the source, and set your heart and mind on following Christ and living in a way that is pleasing to God. Similarly in the church. If our fellowship is infected with some sin that is not being dealt with, or worse, celebrated, it will only weaken the whole body. Sin in the church needs to be dealt with in a Biblical and loving way. Yes, we all struggle with sin. But as long as we are struggling, it shows that we are resisting it. If we give in to it, then the battle has been lost.