“But if a man willfully attacks another to kill him by cunning, you shall take him from my altar, that he may die.” Exodus 21.14

The Apostle Paul understood that the Church is not the State. Contrary to the situation that existed in ancient Israel, the rulers of the Body of Christ are guardians of the souls of God’s people. They do not have the authority Old Testament rulers had to judge the lives of those in their care, that is, with respect to the matter of capital punishment. A civil authority exists and, as we have seen, is the agent of God for exercising His purposes against evil. The civil magistrate bears the sword of vengeance; the rulers of the Church bear the sword of the Spirit.

Paul must have sought the Lord about this situation. Knowing as he did the civil statutes of the Law, and understanding the “separation of powers” that had been instituted with the advent of the Kingdom of God, Paul, led by the Spirit, made an interpretation based on the Old Testament Law but specifically adapted to the situation of the Church in Corinth. He surely knew Exodus 21.14, in which being condemned to death began with banishment from the altar of the Lord.

At the altar of the Lord worshipers brought their sacrifices and then joined the priests, Levites, and the Lord Himself in a meal prepared by the spiritual leaders of the community. To be banned from the altar was to have the means of forgiveness closed and the privilege of fellowship with God and His people revoked. In ancient Israel, when there was no place for guilty sinners to go, this was a sentence of death, and appears to have accompanied the death penalty as a kind of first step in the process.

Paul instructed the elders at Corinth to remove from their midst the man who had committed the sin of adultery against his father, the Lord, and the community of faith. He was to be put out of the congregation, separated from the community and Source of life, and no one in the congregation was to have any fellowship with him whatsoever (1 Cor. 5.9-11). They were to turn him out and turn him over to the devil, “for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus” (1 Cor. 5.5).

This is as far as the spiritual leaders of the churches in Corinth could go; it was as close to a sentence of death as could be envisioned for a crime deserving the death penalty.

But the young man’s punishment did not necessarily end here.

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