Chapter 4
14I am not writing this to shame you, but to warn you as my beloved children. 15Even if you have ten thousand guardians in Christ, you do not have many fathers; for in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel. 16Therefore I urge you to imitate me. 17That is why I have sent you Timothy, my beloved and faithful child in the Lord. He will remind you of my way of life in Christ Jesus, which is exactly what I teach everywhere in every church. 18Some of you have become arrogant, as if I were not coming to you. 19But I will come to you shortly, if the Lord is willing, and then I will find out not only what these arrogant people are saying, but what power they have. 20For the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power. 21Which do you prefer? Shall I come to you with a rod, or in love and with a gentle spirit?
Chapter 5
1It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is intolerable even among pagans: A man has his father’s wife. 2And you are proud! Shouldn’t you rather have been stricken with grief and have removed from your fellowship the man who did this? 3Although I am absent from you in body, I am present with you in spirit, and I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did this, just as if I were present. 4When you are assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus and I am with you in spirit, along with the power of the Lord Jesus, 5hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved on the Day of the Lord. 6Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven works through the whole batch of dough? 7Get rid of the old leaven, that you may be a new unleavened batch, as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. 8Therefore let us keep the feast, not with the old bread, leavened with malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and of truth. 9I wrote you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people. 10I was not including the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. 11But now I am writing you not to associate with anyone who claims to be a brother but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or a verbal abuser, a drunkard or a swindler. With such a man do not even eat. 12What business of mine is it to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? 13God will judge those outside. “Expel the wicked man from among you.”