Lawsuits among Believers
1 If any of you has a dispute against another, how dare you take it to court n before the unrighteous, and not before the saints? 2 Or don’t you know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is judged by you, are you unworthy to judge the trivial cases? 3 Don’t you know that we will judge angels—how much more matters of this life? 4 So if you have such matters, do you appoint as your judges those who have no standing o in the church? 5 I say this to your shame! p Can it be that there is not one wise person among you who is able to arbitrate between fellow believers? q 6 Instead, brother goes to court against brother, and that before unbelievers! r
7 As it is, to have legal disputes against one another is already a defeat for you. s Why not rather be wronged? t Why not rather be cheated? u 8 Instead, you yourselves do wrong and cheat—and you do this to brothers and sisters! 9 Don’t you know that the unrighteous v will not inherit God’s kingdom? w Do not be deceived: No sexually immoral people, idolaters, x adulterers, y or males who have sex with males, ,z 10 no thieves, a greedy b people, drunkards, verbally abusive people, c or swindlers d will inherit God’s kingdom. 11 And some of you used to be like this. e But you were washed, you were sanctified, f you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
Glorifying God in Body and Spirit
12 “Everything is permissible g for me,” but not everything is beneficial. “Everything is permissible for me,” but I will not be mastered by anything. 13 “Food h is for the stomach and the stomach for food,” and God will do away with both of them. However, the body is not for sexual immorality i but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. 14 God raised up the Lord and will also raise us up by his power. j 15 Don’t you know that your bodies are a part of Christ’s body? k So should I take a part of Christ’s body and make it part of a prostitute? Absolutely not! 16 Don’t you know that anyone joined to a prostitute is one body with her? For Scripture says, The two will become one flesh. ,l 17 But anyone joined m to the Lord is one spirit n with him.
18 Flee o sexual immorality! Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the person who is sexually immoral p sins against his own body. 19 Don’t you know that your body is a temple q of the Holy Spirit r who is in you, s whom you have from God? You are not your own, 20 for you were bought t at a price. So glorify God with your body.
6:1–7. When one seeks to bring judgment against a Christian brother or sister, however, the secular law court is hardly the appropriate setting (6:6). The place for such disputes, if they arise at all (6:7), should be “before the saints” (6:1). Indeed, as before, the Corinthians have acted exactly contrary to what is true. The saints will judge the world and even the angels who have fallen (see also Mt 19:28; 25:41; 2 Pt 2:4; Rv 20:4). Therefore, in light of their role in these ultimate judgments, they are certainly qualified to judge trivial cases that concern “matters of this life” (6:2–3) without recourse to secular courts. That is exactly what Paul calls on them to do in the next two verses, though his advice is full of irony.
6:8–11. Some of the Corinthians appear to have forgotten that to engage in sin routinely is to place themselves back among the wicked, who will not inherit the kingdom of God. Paul urges them not to deceive themselves in this way. Neither those who are habitually sexually immoral (as Paul’s list makes clear, the general term includes behavior other than that which has provoked judgment [5:1–13]) nor thieves (once more the list expands beyond the specific behavior condemned in 6:8) will inherit the kingdom of God (6:9–10). Therefore, such behaviors, despite their routine place in the pasts of some, must be left behind through the constant remembrance that the believers have been cleansed from sin’s stain and set apart from its power so that they may live in relationship with the God who has justified them in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit (6:11).
6:12–13. Paul goes on to deal with the rationalizations that have led some of the Corinthians to standards of their own: “Everything is permissible for me” (6:12). Some at Corinth have concluded that their Christian faith (6:11) gives them freedom to set their own standards. Paul warns them of two dangers: that they may fall into conduct that is “beneficial” neither to themselves nor to others, and that they may become “mastered” again, this time by the very patterns of behavior that marked freedom for them initially. A more specific instance of the same kind of rationalization has produced among the Corinthians the saying “Food is for the stomach and the stomach for food” (6:13). Paul reminds them that the freedom to eat whatever one desires is inconsequential in light of the coming destruction and transformation of our bodies, and therefore it is not a freedom one should cling to or defend at all costs.
6:14–20. A final rationalization, unrepeated by Paul, probably underlies the words that follow these and returns again to the subject of sexual morality. For some of the Corinthians, it followed from their freedom to eat that they were also free to indulge their sexual appetites in prostitution (6:15–16). For Paul, however, this action and the logical analogy that lies behind it are fundamentally wrong, because they involve the believer’s body as a physical, psychological, and spiritual whole in an action that unites the Christian (whose body in this sense belongs to the Lord [6:14] and, as such, is already “one spirit” with Christ [6:15, 17; cf. 12:27]) with the active presence and enslaving power of immorality.