PRAY: Father, as I listen for your direction today, please show me your will that I may make it my own. Let my thoughts be your thoughts.

READ: 1 Corinthians 5:9–11

MEDITATE:
The world must be able to distinguish between lives dedicated to Christ, bonded together in fellowship to fulfill God’s purposes on the earth, and lives dedicated to themselves and to the satisfaction of their appetites. An incontrovertible crisis exists when the world looks at the church and can no longer tell the difference between the way it (the world) lives and the way the church lives. Our calling as followers of Christ is to ensure that the church lives and breathes in the kingdom of God rather than in the kingdom of Satan. The church must not be an exemplary reflection of the best things of this world; rather, she must be an earthly manifestation of the kingdom of God, literally heaven on earth.

When Paul implores the Corinthians not to associate with immoral people who profess to follow Christ, he is leading them in the principle that the church is to be immersed in the world while not being incorporated by it. We must worship the person of Christ while committing ourselves also to the life of Christ; one cannot be held without the other and remain godly.

Questions and Application:

1. What does this passage say?
2. What does this passage mean?
3. We, like Adam as the centurion of the garden in Genesis 2:15, are not simply to take care of the lives God places before us; we are to protect and preserve them as watchmen. How can our corporate response to the crisis in the church protect and preserve the lives of those within while accurately representing the kingdom of God to the world?

PRAY: Father, let me love your people as you do so that I might live to preserve and protect them as you would.