Ciampa and Rosner state that
“destruction of the flesh” means the loss and removal of the person’s sinful
nature (208; citing Rom 8:13 and Gal 5:24 as parallels). This is a possible
interpretation, but another one is that it simply means that once out of the
church’s community, the man is more vulnerable to losing his life. If his body
is destroyed, Paul envisions that it will lead to a repentance resulting in the
salvation of his spirit. This is analogous to the relationship between
suffering in the flesh and the salvation of the spirit that is implied in 1 Cor
11:30 or between physical suffering (“messenger of Satan”) and spiritual growth
in 2 Cor 12:7–10. Forkman notes a verbal parallel between 5:5a and LXX Job 2:6
in God’s words to the satan there—ἰδοὺ παραδίδωμί σοι αὐτόν. The curses
also that Job experiences are all reflected in Deuteronomy 28:13, 31–32, 35,
again showing that the satan in Job is the Lord’s agent. Forkman thinks that
the “Satan” here in 1 Cor 5:5 also, as in 2 Cor 12:7, is someone God is using
for God’s own purposes, not exactly the archenemy of God (1972: 143–144; cf. 1
Peter 5:8). But there are no verbal signals of whom Paul would mean by some
other enemy besides Satan, and in light of Rom 16:20, 2 Cor 2:11 and the
dualism of 1 Cor 11:21, it is most probable that the enemy in view here in 5:5
is Satan as traditionally understood.
There are no personal pronouns
modifying flesh and s/Spirit in 5:5, so it is not clear that Paul is referring
simply to the sinner’s own flesh and spirit. But given the fact that “flesh”
almost certainly refers to the sinning church member, it is likely that
“spirit” in the next clause refers to this same member’s spirit. Also, Paul
does not seem to have a bipartite (soul-body) or tripartite (soul-spirit-body)
anthropology; he retains a Jewish, holistic anthropology (15:44–46). These
considerations count against the simple reading that Paul is anticipating the
man’s physical death so that the man’s spirit will be saved (Waters 2015:
245–246). The only places in the Pauline corpus where “flesh” and “spirit”
indicate two parts of one person are 2 Cor 7:1 and Col 2:5, and both these
places may not have been written by Paul. Paul uses the “body” and “spirit”
contrast in 5:3; this is more typical of his anthropology. The juxtaposition of
“flesh” and “spirit” in Paul is normally a comparison between the weak, sin-vulnerable
human and the divine spirit that God provides, as in Rom 8:4–6 (Forkman 1972:
145).
What is the destruction of the
flesh supposed to accomplish? Forkman finds Essene and rabbinic parallels that
viewed someone’s death as expiation for their sins, an idea Forkman also sees
in 11:30–32, in regard to those who receive Jesus in the Eucharist without
considering the body (1972: 145). According to this approach Paul expects the
incestuous, expelled church member to die, and that death to be effective in
satisfying divine justice. The one lacuna in this reconstruction is that no
mention is made of the church member’s repentance. It is possible that Paul is
simply passing over, with his summary statement, an expected repentance that
the expelled man will reach before or at death (Forkman 1972: 146). (Mark
Reasoner, 1 Corinthians [Brill Exegetical Commentary Series 3; Leiden:
Brill, 2025], 220-22)
