WHY EXCOMMUNICATION? WHAT ABOUT ME?

 I got caught up in a detailed interpretive exercise this morning regarding Paul’s instructions in 1Cor 5 to expel a wicked person (v 13) -- a text which supposedly begins the practice of excommunication (wrong).  The person is to be “handed over [expelled] to satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus” (v 5) with neither “flesh” or “spirit” attached to a pronoun, which many translators throw in (e.g. “his flesh” and “his spirit”).  Interpreting this text is a knotty problem.  I think the best interpretive translation is “for the destruction of wickedness, that the spirit [of God within the church] might be preserved”  My argument is quite wordy (below), so I’ll make the point of application upfront even though it will not be popular: 

The church is to discern/judge (v. 12) those who are living in “the flesh” and to remove them from the church, because letting such a person remain taints the whole church.  [Note: the word for judging (krino) has a wide range of meanings from “discerning” to “condemning” which must be weighed according to context.]  Whew!  How could Paul say such a thing?  Well, Jesus actually gave some of the steps involved in Matt 18:15-17, so this is serious.  But this is where the text addresses me personally. The first question I face, before discerning the state of others, is: “What corrupting influence do I bring into the Body of Christ, if I am not purging myself of iniquity?”  (See how the “purging/getting rid of” is used figuratively in 5:7 and used literally of a person in 2Tim 2:21.)
Lord, purge me of my corrupting influences for the sake of your Church.  Amen.

Exegesis: Neither Paul here, nor Jesus in Matt 18 are originating the practice of excommunication.  Paul is thinking in terms of the OT practice of the “karet” (cut off) penalty in which a person was removed from Israel because of their corrupting influence.

[Note: The term for expelling in v 13, ἐξαίρω (remove) is not used in the LXX (Greek translation of the Hebrew OT.  The main term there is ἐξολεθρεύω for the Hebrew niphal verbal form of כרת , but it only occurs once in NT (Act 3:23) where it means destroyed.]

A person was to be "cut off" in order to keep the community pure, which is Paul's point in v 7.  About half of the karet offenses are sexual and the other half ritual, such as an infraction regarding the Passover meal by eating leavened bread (Exod 12:15).  In the context of 1Cor 5, Paul's thought moves from the person's sexual infraction (5:1-4) to the leavening effect of yeast on corrupting the whole loaf and the need to purge the place of yeast (vv 6-8), including a reference to Christ as the Passover Lamb (v 7), to the need for believers not to associate with sexually immoral people, but to judge those within the church and to expel the wicked (vv 9-13).  So, it is clear to me that Paul is thinking of the OT karet penalty, which means that his focus is on the church community more than on the person.  It is possible that the first part of v5 could be taken two ways: 1) handing over the person to satan for the destruction of “flesh” could refer to how sin destroys (e.g. same word in 1Tim 6:9), or 2) getting rid of the person’s presence destroys the corrupting influence of “flesh” (iniquity) from the church.  In either case, since the purpose of the karet penalty is to preserve the holiness of the church, that would lead to the interpretation that the church is getting rid of "the flesh" so that the spirit of of God within the church might be preserved.

[Note: The NET recognizes this interpretation and translation as a possible option: “(4) More recently some have argued that neither the "flesh" nor the "spirit" belong to the offender, but to the church collectively; thus it is the "fleshly works" of the congregation which are being destroyed by the removal of the offender (cf. 5:13) so that the "spirit," the corporate life of the church lived in union with God through the Holy Spirit, may be preserved (cf. 5:7–8). See, e.g., B. Campbell, "Flesh and Spirit in 1 Cor 5:5: An Exercise in Rhetorical Criticism of the NT," JETS 36 (1993): 331-42. The alternate translation "for the destruction of your fleshly works, so that your spirit may be saved" reflects this latter view.”
I downloaded and skimmed this article.  Although I think the author is on track, he does not seem to know about the karet penalty behind Paul’s instructions.]