Out of the World
1 Corinthians 5:9-10 - “I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people, not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world.”
Around A.D. 249, a brutal epidemic began sweeping through the Roman Empire. We call it the Plague of Cyprian now, and ancient reports claimed that, at its peak, it killed thousands a day in Rome. The fear it stirred up did something ugly to ordinary people. Dionysius, the bishop of Alexandria, described what he saw among his pagan neighbors: at the first sign of sickness, many pushed the infected away, fled even from their own loved ones, and threw the half-dead into the streets to keep from catching it. It was every man for himself.
And in the middle of all that running away, one group of people moved in the opposite direction.
The Christians stayed. Believers remained to nurse the sick, friend and neighbor alike, often catching the disease and dying themselves. Dionysius wrote that they showed “unbounded love and loyalty,” took charge of the sick, attended to their needs, carried the dead, and buried those others had abandoned.
Centuries later, sociologist Rodney Stark argued that this kind of care helped change the course of Christian history. Simple things — food, water, warmth, presence, burial, touch — may have dramatically improved survival in a world with little medical treatment. And the watching world didn’t forget it. People noticed who showed up when it cost everything to show up.
This is exactly the kind of church Paul is after. He had told the Corinthians not to keep company with the sexually immoral, and they had heard it as an order to seal themselves off from anyone in the world who sins. So Paul writes back to set them straight. He never meant the immoral of this world, he says, the greedy and the swindlers and the idolaters, since to avoid all of them you would have to leave the planet. That was never the assignment.
But we get this backward, too. Something in us would love for holiness to mean retreat, a clean little circle of people just like us, the doors shut against a messy world. It feels safer and it feels more spiritual. But the believers Paul is describing, and the Christians who walked into those plague houses, understood the calling differently. They were set apart in order to be sent, made holy in order to go. Salt does no good sealed in the box. It has to get down into the meat.
This is the heart of a Winsome Witness: someone who moves toward people the way Jesus did, the friend of tax collectors and sinners, who touched the untouchable and ate with the ones everyone else avoided. The world around us is a mission field, packed with people Christ loves and gave His life for. And the watching world still notices the same thing it noticed in 249: who shows up, and who runs. A church that lives, loves, and gives like Jesus is a church that keeps showing up.
Today: Do one concrete thing to move toward someone outside the faith, with no strings attached. Maybe it’s the neighbor you nod at but never talk to, the coworker whose life looks nothing like yours, the person everyone quietly avoids. Then do one small, real thing for them.
Prayer: “Father, thank You for walking straight into my mess, sitting with me in it, and loving me all the way home. Make us a church like that is unafraid of the world’s brokenness because we’ve been loved by you in our own brokenness. Send us toward the very people others walk away from, and let them catch the scent of Jesus on us. Amen.”
-PK