Bible Strands
1 Corinthians 5:1
It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is intolerable even among pagans: A man has his father’s wife.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — Paul writes to the Corinthian church about a specific case he has heard secondhand: a man cohabiting with his father's wife. The report has reached him, and his response is immediate condemnation.
The words — τοιαύτη (toiautē), "such," is a demonstrative that points to a category so extreme it needs its own label; Paul isn't just naming the sin but isolating it as a kind even Gentile society recognizes as beyond the line.
The thread — Porneia appears in Revelation 21:8 as a mark of exclusion from the New Jerusalem and in Colossians 3:5 as something to be put to death in the believer, framing it as a boundary condition of the community rather than a private failing.
Why it lands — The verse exposes a community that has normalized what it should have expelled, and it asks the reader to name what their own circle is tolerating under the cover of pride.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Greek words
King James Version
It is reported commonly that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father’s wife.
Cross-references
- Revelation 21:8 But to the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and sexually immoral and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their place will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur. This is the second death.”
- Revelation 2:21 Even though I have given her time to repent of her immorality, she is unwilling.
- Colossians 3:5 Put to death, therefore, the components of your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed, which is idolatry.
- Leviticus 18:8 You must not have sexual relations with your father’s wife; it would dishonor your father.
- Ephesians 5:3 But among you, as is proper among the saints, there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed.
- Acts 15:29 You must abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals, and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things. Farewell.
- 1 Corinthians 6:18 Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a man can commit is outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body.
- Galatians 5:19 The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity, and debauchery;
- Acts 15:20 Instead, we should write and tell them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals, and from blood.
- 1 Corinthians 5:11 But now I am writing you not to associate with anyone who claims to be a brother but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or a verbal abuser, a drunkard or a swindler. With such a man do not even eat.