Get Rid of the Old Yeast: Responding to Clergy Sexual Misconduct

Part 4: Cheap Grace is Infectious

We return to our consideration of clergy sexual misconduct. In what follows, we’ll look at how what Bonhoeffer calls “cheap grace” harms not only the individual but also the community and even the credibility of the Gospel. To offer fallen clergy forgiveness without repentance and, yes, church discipline, reveals that the church has been corrupted from within. Such internal corruption holds the Gospel up to ridicule and undermines the salvation of believers, including the fallne clergyman.

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St. Paul writes to those troublesome Corinthians (1 Corinthian 5:1-6, NKJV).

It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and such sexual immorality as is not even named among the Gentiles—that a man has his father’s wife! And you are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he who has done this deed might be taken away from among you. For I indeed, as absent in body but present in spirit, have already judged (as though I were present) him who has so done this deed. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when you are gathered together, along with my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. 

The first thing I would point out is that sexual immorality among the faithful isn’t new. Christians have been falling into sexual sins since the beginning of the Church. What’s interesting, however, is not that Christians are fallen but how Paul responds to immortality.

Unlike what we do today, the apostle DOESN’T blame the culture. If anything, and will come back to this a bit later, he holds the culture up as a kind of standard against which the church in Corinthian is found wanting: “There is sexual immorality among you, and such sexual immorality as is not even named among the Gentiles.”

Also important for our concerns here, is how Apostle deals with unrepentant immorality within the church. He doesn’t with false compassion or tolerance but therapeutically to the unrepentant brother (“deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus”). He then goes on to chastise the community for not expelling the man: “you are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he who has done this deed might be taken away from among you.”

St. Paul concludes that whether we call it “liberty in Christ,” “forgiveness,” or “tolerance” the Corinthians have behaved shamefully in not expelling the man that unless he stop misbehaving, repentants of his sin, and make amends. Or, as Paul tells them, “Your glorying is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?”

Why is Paul so harsh with the Corinthians?

We get a hint from Origen of Alexandria (c. 185–c. 253) who writes

Immoral unbelievers cannot harm the church, but immoral believers corrupt it from within, which is why they must be avoided and expelled.

A century or so later, St. John Chrysostom commenting in the same passage from 1 Corinthians from which we draw the title of our talk. In his usually pointed way, he says,

Paul does not allow the Corinthians to wait for him to come but passes sentence from afar. He did this so as not to give the Corinthians any leeway for making excuses. They were to act immediately and in the very precise manner described.

The reason, he says, for Paul’s harsh word here is because “the Corinthians [themselves] are to blame” since

… by taking pride in this man they have hindered him from repenting. Here he indicates that the problem is one for the whole church, not just for an individual. This is why he uses the symbol of the leaven, which, although a small thing in itself, transforms the whole lump into its own nature. This man will do the same thing if he is allowed to go unpunished.

And, lest we think Paul is only speaking about a specific sin, Chrysostom goes on to say that

Paul is not referring to this man only but to others as well. The old leaven is not just fornication but sin of every kind, which must be rooted out if the lump is to be pure.

Unyielding as he is in holding the whole community responsible, Chrysostom is more demanding still with the leaders of the church in Corinth. He accuses them of being derelict in their obligations.

The old leaven refers among other things to the priests who allow an enormous amount of the old leaven to remain within the church, namely, the covetous, the extortioners and those guilty of doing anything that would keep them out of the kingdom of heaven.

None of what we read in the church fathers, I want to emphasize, pertains to how we are to treat the non-believer. Paul’s words here are about the internal discipline of the church and NOT the church’s witness to the surrounding culture. 

The observation of an anonymous 4th-century author is clear on this point

A bishop cannot do anything about unbelievers. But a brother who is caught doing such things he can bar not only from the sacraments but also from common intercourse with his fellows, so that when he is avoided he may feel ashamed and repent.

Likewise, Chrysostom says, we should not take any of this to mean that Paul did “not care about those who were outside the church. … But it was not until after they had received the gospel and he had made them subject to the teaching of Christ that he laid down requirements for them. As long as they despised Christ, it was pointless to speak to them about his commandments.”

The takeaway is this: St. Paul is ONLY concerned here with the salvation of the believer who falls into deadly sin. For this reason, he chastises harshly the church’s indifference because it not only corrupts the church from within, but it harms not only the whole assembly and leaves the fallen brother in his sins. 

The greatest tragedy here is that our indifference reveals that corruption has already taken hold of the community; we are indifferent because we are unrepentant. This is why, Chrysostom says, “Paul uses an expression taken from the Old Testament.” In doing so, 

…he is hinting that the Corinthians will be great gainers in being freed from a kind of plague and partly to show that this kind of thing is no novelty but goes right back to the beginning. Even Moses the lawgiver thought that people like this should be cut off, but he did it with greater severity than is shown here. Moses would have had the man stoned, but Paul thinks only of trying to lead him to repentance.

Cheap grace is not only deadly to the individual believer; it corrupts the Church and leaves the world unredeemed. But, you might ask, how are we to respond to a culture drenched in sexual immorality? If “cheap grace” fails, what is the “costly grace”?

The “costly grace” we seek—and which the wide-ranging failure of Christians to discipline appropriately fallen clergy reveals we need—is the virtue of chastity.