1 Corinthians 5:11, Can't eat with my wife?
A reader wonders about 1 Corinthians 5:11. Karl Barth said one should study with the Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other. No bad idea (though it has limits). Im sure he would have agreed that the Bible should be studied with a healthy dose of sanctified common sense. ("Sanctified" common sense is common sense used for holy purposes.) If we dont trust ourselves to have some common sense—limited though it might be—then we ought to leave the Bible alone, it'll only confuse us. Such common sense must be applied in understanding the following passage.
In 1 Corinthians 5:11 Paul tells believers "not even to eat" with someone that claims to be a brother/sister and yet is known to be immoral or a swindler or an idolater. (The list isnt exhaustive—only exemplary.) The passage isnt talking about a repentant person who struggles against moral weakness and is duly sorrowful when he/she loses in a moral struggle. The passage has a bold sinner in mind, a sinner that wants the fellowship of the community of Christ but has no heart for the Christ who is the community's Lord.
Paul says the believers are not to have company with or to engage in "table fellowship" with a person like that. He wasnt talking about eating in the same restaurant or building; he was talking about choosing to eat with them and express social approval. Believers were to distance themselves from the impenitent one that called him/herself a Christian. The transgressor was to be convicted and society was to know that the transgressor did not represent the followers of Christ.
There was nothing wrong with a Christian eating with non-Christians, people who made no profession of faith in Jesus Christ (see 1 Corinthians 10:27 and compare 5:9-10). There was something very wrong in giving the known transgressor (that insisted that he/she was a Christian despite flagrant and chosen ungodliness) the impression that all was well with him/her. And there was something very wrong in expressing approval on the known libertine (by happy social fellowship) before a watching non-Christian society.
I've known groups that forbade wives and children and parents to eat with the other members of the family if they didnt come to Christ. I've known cases where wives/mothers made meals for the family, put them on the table for the others and went and ate alone. This is not what Paul had in mind. These men and women felt free to eat in the presence of their neighbours and fellow-workers who were non-Christians but wouldn't eat with their families.
The instruction in 1 Corinthians 5 is very specific and is not to be generalised and made to seem stupid and ineffectual. The relationships in families don't vanish because of 1 Corinthians 5:11. It is to be taken for granted that mutual love and the responses that go with that should continue. Imagine lovingly practicing 1 Corinthians 7:3-4 while refusing to eat. No, the 5:11 text does not over-ride the other standing and usually private responses of love within a family/parents/children.
No doubt if a family member freely chose decadence but wanted to be recognised still as a Christian there'd be family conferences but the public wouldn't expect (nor should we) the Christian to violate profoundly important relationship responses in her/his home in order to fulfil 1 Corinthians 5:11.
Compare also 2 John where professed believers who deny fundamental gospel truth are not to be welcomed. Strangers are to be welcomed, unbelievers are to be welcomed but professing believers to teach heresy were not to be welcomed. Such passages must not be taken beyond their obvious intention. See again, 1 Corinthians 5:9-10.
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.