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Japanese Yes. Jesus ate with tax collectors and people known as sinners, and his critics named him for it: “a friend of tax collectors and sinners” (Luke 7:34). Paul told the Corinthians not to associate with immoral people, then explained that he meant fellow Christians, not outsiders, “since then you would need to go out of the world” (1 Corinthians 5:10).
The name was meant as an insult, and Jesus repeated it himself. When the Pharisees asked why he sat at table with such people, he answered like a doctor: “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick” (Luke 5:31). That answer has room for every one of us. We came to his table sick ourselves, and so we can sit down with others who are.
Did Jesus spend time with sinners?
He did, and the Gospels record the objections it caused. After Jesus called Levi, a tax collector, to follow him, “Levi made him a great feast in his house, and there was a large company of tax collectors and others reclining at table with them.” The Pharisees and their scribes asked his disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” Jesus answered, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance” (Luke 5:29–32). Matthew tells the same story and adds a line from the prophet Hosea: “Go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice’” (Matthew 9:13; Hosea 6:6).
The complaint came up more than once. Jesus himself repeated what people said about him: “The Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’” (Luke 7:34; Matthew 11:19). When tax collectors and sinners came to hear him, the Pharisees and scribes grumbled, “This man receives sinners and eats with them” (Luke 15:1–2). Jesus answered with three parables, the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost son. The first two end with the same point: there is joy in heaven “over one sinner who repents” (Luke 15:7, 10).
In Jericho he invited himself to the house of Zacchaeus, a chief tax collector: “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.” The crowd grumbled, “He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.” Zacchaeus promised to give half his goods to the poor and to repay anyone he had defrauded fourfold, and Jesus said, “Today salvation has come to this house…. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:5–10).
What does the Bible say about associating with sinners?
The clearest instruction is Paul’s, and it draws a line between people inside the church and people outside it. “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. But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler—not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside” (1 Corinthians 5:9–13).
Paul’s restriction, then, concerns someone who claims to be a believer and lives in the sins he lists, and it is a form of church discipline. He gives a similar instruction about a church member who refuses to obey his letter: “have nothing to do with him, that he may be ashamed. Do not regard him as an enemy, but warn him as a brother” (2 Thessalonians 3:14–15). For people who do not share the faith, the New Testament gives a different kind of instruction: “Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person” (Colossians 4:5–6).
Does “bad company corrupts good character” mean avoiding unbelievers?
The saying comes from 1 Corinthians 15:33, where the English Standard Version reads “Bad company ruins good morals” and the New International Version “Bad company corrupts good character.” Paul was quoting a line of Greek verse, probably from Menander’s comedy Thais. He uses it in his argument for the resurrection, against people in the Corinthian church who said “there is no resurrection of the dead” (15:12). The verse just before quotes their outlook, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die,” and the verse after says, “Wake up from your drunken stupor, as is right, and do not go on sinning. For some have no knowledge of God” (15:32–34).
The warning is about influence: who is shaping whom. Proverbs makes the same point: “Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm” (Proverbs 13:20), and “Make no friendship with a man given to anger, nor go with a wrathful man, lest you learn his ways and entangle yourself in a snare” (Proverbs 22:24–25). The first Psalm calls blessed the man “who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers” (Psalm 1:1). None of these passages forbids friendship with people outside the faith. They warn against taking a companion’s ways as one’s own.
What does “unequally yoked” mean?
“Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?” (2 Corinthians 6:14). The Greek verb pictures two animals of different kinds under one yoke, and the Greek translation of the Old Testament uses a related word in Leviticus 19:19, which forbids letting cattle “breed with a different kind.” Paul goes on to ask, “What agreement has the temple of God with idols?” (6:16), so his immediate concern is partnership with idol worship. The verse does not name marriage, friendship or business. Churches have often applied it to marriage: the Westminster Confession of 1646, for example, says that the godly should not “be unequally yoked, by marrying with such as are notoriously wicked in their life” (24.3).
What does James mean by “friendship with the world”?
“You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God” (James 4:4). James is writing to believers about quarrels that come from their own passions: “You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel” (James 4:2). In his letter “the world” is a way of life opposed to God. Religion that is “pure and undefiled,” he says earlier, is “to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world” (James 1:27). The First Letter of John uses the word the same way: “all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father” (1 John 2:16). Neither passage mentions friendships with unbelievers.
Is “in the world but not of it” in the Bible?
Not in those words. The phrase summarizes Jesus’ prayer for his disciples in John 17: “I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world…. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world” (John 17:15–18). Jesus asks that his followers remain in the world and be kept from the evil one there.
“Love the sinner, hate the sin” is not in the Bible either. It is usually traced to Augustine of Hippo, who in a letter of about 423 to a community of nuns asked them to correct one another’s faults “with due love for the persons and hatred of the sin” (Letter 211).
How churches apply Paul’s instruction
Churches apply 1 Corinthians 5 to the discipline of their own members. The strictest application is in the Anabaptist tradition. The Dordrecht Confession, adopted by Dutch Mennonite leaders in 1632 and still important to the Amish, teaches that a member expelled by the church “must … be shunned, without distinction, by all the fellow members of the church … in eating, drinking, and other similar intercourse,” citing 1 Corinthians 5:9–11 and 2 Thessalonians 3:14. The same article adds that if the expelled person is “needy, hungry, thirsty, naked, sick, or in any other distress,” the members must still help, since the aim of shunning is “not to the destruction, but to the reformation of the sinner.”
Toward outsiders, the New Testament expects believers to keep ordinary contact and to be ready to explain their faith “with gentleness and respect” (1 Peter 3:15). It also expects that former companions will notice the change: “they are surprised when you do not join them in the same flood of debauchery, and they malign you” (1 Peter 4:4). A friendship like that may cost something. Jesus paid the same price in Jericho, when the crowd grumbled that he had gone to be the guest of a sinner, and he went in anyway: “Today salvation has come to this house” (Luke 19:9).
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