“5 It is reported commonly that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father’s wife.² And ye are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he that hath done this deed might be taken away from among you.³ For I verily, as absent in body, but present in spirit, have judged already, as though I were present, concerning him that hath so done this deed,⁴ In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ,⁵ To deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. ⁶ Your glorying is not good. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump?⁷ Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us: ⁸ Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. ⁹ I wrote unto you in an epistle not to company with fornicators:¹⁰ Yet not altogether with the fornicators of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or with idolaters; for then must ye needs go out of the world. ¹¹ But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolator, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an one no not to eat. ¹² For what have I to do to judge them also that are without? do not ye judge them that are within?”

Yet another layer of revelation on this one for me today.  I had been struggling with the part of this verse that says we shouldn’t even eat with people who are involved in sexual sin.   This is expressed very strongly.   I realized something today.   Something that I caught but didn’t realize the significance of.  This verse doesn’t say the leaven might spread, it says that it will.   Scripturally, I will pick up some of that yeast, it would be impossible not too.   What we tend to bank on is that we are somehow morally grounded enough to resist this, a completely impossible task as it would contradict the Word of God.   How I have been deceived.   Thinking back on highschool and university, I did bank on my own moral foundations being strong.  I can clearly see in the detioration of my moral standard.

Proverbs 22:5  (NLT) “Corrupt people walk a thorny, treacherous road;     whoever values life will avoid it.”