1 Corinthians 5:1 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

1 CORINTHIANS CHAPTER 5 1 Corinthians 5:1,2 Paul reproveth a scandalous incest committed and protected from censure in the church at Corinth, 1 Corinthians 5:3-5 and by his authority in Christ excommunicateth the offender. 1 Corinthians 5:6-8 The necessity of purging out the old leaven. 1 Corinthians 5:9-13 Christians guilty of notorious crimes are not to be consorted with. The apostle here giveth a reason of the question which he propounded in the former chapter, whether they would be willing that, when he came to them, he should come unto them with a rod? Because such horrid wickedness was committed amongst them, as he, being an apostle to whom Christ had intrusted the government of his church, could not pass over without correction: he instanceth here in one, which he calleth fornication; by which word is often in Scripture to be understood all species of uncleanness, though, in strict speaking, we by fornication understand the uncleanness of a single person, as by adultery we understand the uncleanness of a person married, and by incest the uncleanness of a person with some near relation, as a mother, a sister: in strict speaking, the sin here reflected on was incest; but the Scripture by this word comprehends all species of unlawful mixtures. Such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles: this sin he aggravates by saying, that the Gentiles by the light of nature discerned and declined such an abomination; by whom is not to be understood the more brutish part, but the more civilized part of the heathen, such as the Romans, &c. were. That one should have his father's wife: by having his father's wife, in this place, is not to be understood, the marrying of his father's wife, his father being dead; but the using of his father's wife as his wife while his father was yet alive, (as some judicious interpreters think), because hardly any nation would have endured a son openly to have married the widow of his father. And in 2 Corinthians 7:12, there is mention made not only of one that had done, but of another that had suffered the wrong; which latter must be the father himself: so as there was both incest and whoredom in this fact.