Chapter 7, Law in the New Testament, Whole Bible Christianity
If the Law had been ‘fulfilled,’ (twisted to mean ‘eliminated’) then the following is a very curious thing for Paul to say.
1It is actually reported that there is immorality among you, and immorality of such a kind as does not exist even among the Gentiles, that someone has his father’s wife. 2You have become arrogant and have not mourned instead, so that the one who had done this deed would be removed from your midst. (1 Corinthians 5:1-2 NASB95)
Why would he care about a man who marries his stepmother? Wouldn’t all marriages be okay? According to the modern church, isn’t everything and everyone clean? Why would Paul appeal to the Law at all (Leviticus 18:8; Deuteronomy 22:30 and 27:30)? Why also would Paul appeal to the fact that this is something even Gentiles didn’t do?
There might be a thin argument here for the fictitious ‘moral law.’ Except how do we pick and choose what is ‘moral’ and what isn’t when God speaks? Isn’t everything He says by definition ‘moral?’ Could it be that the congregation had changed the law to say that ‘everything was clean?’ Were they perhaps practicing their ‘freedom in Christ?’
Paul doesn’t make up any new commandment here. He certainly doesn’t cherry-pick nor does he apply only the law he chooses. Not only does he say that the Corinthians should be following this Law, he implies it is a natural fact everyone (even the non-believing Gentiles) knows. In other words, God’s people should at least have the sense God gave a pagan. He also gives the punishment for the sin outlined in Torah (“remove the evil from your midst”). Later, it looks like they were “obedient in all things”(2 Corinthians 2:5-11).