Fornication in 1 Corinthians 5

A few thoughts about what was going on in 1 Corinthians 5. As we all know Paul acknowledges the report that one of the Christians in the church at Corinth committed fornication with his father’s wife.

The text does not identify her as his mother but she may well have been. She may have been identified as “wife” to further illustrate that the guilty party had “uncovered his father’s nakedness which is expressly prohibited in the Law (Leviticus 18:7).

The father could have been either alive or deceased. Even deceased his son would “uncover his nakedness” by having sex with his widow.

The woman was certainly not a Christian. If she were she would have received the same admonishment that her Christian lover received. She was probably not a Jew either. She was probably a polytheistic pagan and she may have been a current or former prostitute.

Twice in 1 Corinthians Paul uses the phrase “All things are lawful for me… “ to introduce a conclusion. In 10:23 he draws some conclusions about eating meats sacrificed to idols.

Likewise in 6:12 he is drawing a conclusion about the subject of fornication that was introduced in chapter 5. In this conclusion he states that Christians should not be joined sexually to a prostitute. I think this has reference to the father’s wife that the Christian had sex with.

There was a temple in Corinth to the false Goddess Aphrodite and history records that there were male and female prostitutes available to the devotees of Aphrodite. It’s possible that the father’s wife was engaged in this activity.

Certainly some of these Christians came out of paganism and still may have felt the “hook” of not only the Priestesses of Prostitution but also the eating of meats sacrificed to idols.

Sometimes it takes time to fully eliminate deeply engrained sin in our lives. Fortunately according to 2 Corinthians 2:7 Paul’s admonishment worked and the guilty young Christian man repented of his heinous sin.