Responding to Sin in the Church, Part 2

By Robb Brunansky

Published July 29, 2026

In the beginning two verses of 1 Corinthians 5, Paul explains how the church should discipline a sinning member by first focusing on the congregation’s response to sin in its midst.

When we find unrepentant sin in the church, how should it affect us? How should we think about sin in the church that persists and is not repented of?

As we saw in the previous post, Paul opens the passage by making this critical point: unrepentant sin in the church should provoke sorrow in the hearts of God’s people. When there is a brother or sister in the church, who, when confronted with their sin, refuses to forsake it, our hearts should break that such a blemish would find its way into the holy people of God.

This point is unfolded by showing us three things. The first is a shocking report (verse 1).

Paul has finished dealing with disunity in the church in the first part of the letter, and now he comes to the matter of discipline by focusing on a second report he has received. The report is that there is sexual immorality in the Corinthian church.

Unfortunately, the fact that there was sexual immorality in the church was not the shocking part, then or today. We know this issue has always been a problem in the church. Just recently, we have witnessed the tragedy of three well-known pastors stepping down from ministry due to sexual immorality. If pastors are disqualified due to sexual immorality, then people in the church are active in this sin as well. Whether it is single people engaging in sexual relationships outside of marriage, married people committing adultery, people engaging in homosexual activities, or addiction to pornography – it’s no surprise that sexual immorality is a real problem in the church.

However, as the verse continues, we see this report was not simply any type of sexual immorality; it was a shocking kind. A man in the church was having an ongoing sexually immoral relationship with his stepmom. This relationship was highly perverse and unlawful to everyone in that society – not just to Christians. The Greeks and Romans were fairly open to sexually immoral behavior, including adultery and prostitution; but even this act crossed their boundaries. Most shockingly, this sin was taking place in the church, among the people God had called to be holy.

So, how, then, did the Corinthians respond to this shocking sin that was reported to Paul? That leads us to our second point, which is a sinful response (verse 2a).

Despite knowing about this sin in their midst, the Corinthians’ response was arrogant. Some have speculated the reason they were arrogant was because this man was a wealthy patron of the church. Another possibility is that Paul was citing their overall disposition as a church. The latter option makes most sense because we have seen that the Corinthians thought they were spiritual, lived like rich rulers, and treated the church like it belonged to them – not to Christ. So, when this dreadful, shocking sin took place right in their midst, they did nothing about it because it didn’t really concern them and their status in the culture.

If the Corinthians were truly walking in obedience to the Lord, this sin in their midst should have humbled them. When someone is in the church sleeping with his stepmom, it might be time to step back and reassess where our congregation is in our spiritual growth and discernment. Rather than being arrogant, it might be a moment for some humility.

Instead, the result of their arrogant response was apathy about sin. The Corinthians did nothing about this sinful man in their church. It was as if they didn’t care at all that he was there among them, making a mockery of Christ and His people.

It seems Paul was more shocked by their apathetic arrogance than he was by the sin itself. Sin is going to happen in the church; that’s not surprising. What is surprising and disheartening is when the church is apathetic about its own holiness, becoming so puffed up that it disregards God’s standard for His people.

That leads to our third point, as Paul shows the Corinthians the appropriate response to unrepentant sin (verse 2b).

The proper response to sin that breaks out in the church is not arrogance but deep sorrow. It’s critical to note, too, that this sorrow is not perfunctory or superficial. It is sincere to the core of who we are in Christ.

When we think about this type of mourning, then, the source of these emotions is two-fold. We mourn because of the person who has sinned. We grieve for them because we know their sin is both devastating to themselves and dishonoring to the Lord. Our hearts break when a member of the church falls into unrepentant sin because we know the pain that sin brings upon them and those in their family and friends.

Even more importantly, though, we mourn because such sin has violated the holiness of God’s people. Scripture is crystal clear that God’s desire for His people is holiness. Christians are to reflect to the world the holiness of the Lord, and we are to be a light for Him that shines in darkness. It should grieve our hearts when that light is darkened by sin in our midst! How it should cause us sorrow when we realize God’s glory has been maligned through the actions of someone in the church! How we should mourn because someone in our assembly became an occasion for the Lord’s enemies to blaspheme His excellent name! Our zeal for holiness in the church must be so strong that, when we find unrepentant sin flaunting itself amid the body, our hearts should absolutely break because of how much God desires us to be a holy people.

This proper response to sin must result in the removal of the unrepentant offender. While arrogance results in apathy, sorrow results in separation. This biblical response is the new covenant equivalent of someone being cut off from God’s people. The church is not to discipline people like Israel did under the Mosaic covenant, but it now exercises discipline by removing the wicked, unrepentant person from its midst.

If we do not understand the response to sin in the church, we cannot exercise church discipline in a godly manner. Biblical church discipline can never flow from hearts that are hard, arrogant, personally offended, or self-seeking and self-centered. Rather, believers must have hearts that are broken over sin in the church. We must be people who love holiness in the church so much that we mourn when we see God’s people defiled by unrepentant sin. Only when our hearts are right, so that we mourn the sin that defiles Christ’s church, are we able to move on to the process of discipline, where someone is removed from the church.

Understand that it’s possible to do all the externals right in church discipline with the wrong heart. We can deal with sin in the church the right way from a wrong heart, which does not please the Lord nor accomplish what He designs this discipline to accomplish. May we be a humble people who mourn over sin and are zealous for the purity of Christ’s church.