Have you ever felt confident in your sin? I guess more after the act than before. I think all of us figure out a way to justify it prior to. If you haven’t, this thought may not be for you.

In 1 Corinthians 5, Paul is calling some folks out for sexual immorality. And he adds an exclamation point to his outrage when accounting for the “arrogance” in their sin. He asks, “Ought you not rather to mourn?”

The American culture is one of fierce individuality. We pride ourselves and revel in it. So, it’s not hard to imagine it’s overflow into the contemporary Church. Unfortunately, this taints our view of scripture in the Church; specifically in the “freedom in Christ” department. Any honest believer understands restrictions in behavior are a part of the deal. Not as much to keep us from fun but mostly to keep us from heartache. A loving God puts policy in place to protect His own.

Paul goes on to prescribe a response to this arrogance. He recaps that he’d asked the church at Corinth not to associate with anyone involved in a compromised lifestyle. He revises his statement and says to not associate with anyone calling themselves a “brother”. He realizes we wouldn’t be able to fulfill our purpose here on this earth if we weren’t allowed to associate with anyone distanced from God due to sin.

I’m going to go out on a limb and call a spade a spade. We’ve reached a state of arrogance in the Church in our justification of sin in specific areas. If culture is driving an agenda hard enough, believers feel pressure to try and contort the truth of the Word to fit it’s agenda. It’s the definition of arrogance and was the first sin on record. Adam thought he knew better than God as well when he was convinced to take the apple.

We all long to preserve relationship. It’s this good intention that drives us many times to compromise what we know to be true in order to eliminate contention in our lives. However, I fear we may have reached the point (like the church in Corinth) where many may be “purged”.