Lesson for May 22, 2022
The Book of I Corinthians
Chapter 6:1-20
Verses 1-8
“Does any one of you, when he has a case against his neighbor, dare to go to law before the unrighteous and not before the saints? Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? If the world is judged by you, are you not competent to constitute the smallest law courts? Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more matters of this life? So, if you have law courts dealing with matters of this life, do you appoint them as judges who are of no account in the church? I say this to your shame. Is it so, that there is not among you one wise man who will be able to decide between his brethren, but brother goes to law with brother, and that before unbelievers? Actually, then, it is already a defeat for you, that you have lawsuits with one another. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be defrauded? On the contrary, you yourselves wrong and defraud. You do this even to yourbrethren.”
Does any one of you, when he has a case against his neighbor, dare to go to law before the unrighteous and not before the saints? Paul now addressed an issue that was causing problems among some believers in Corinth. They were taking one another to court to settle issues that should have been resolved among themselves as Christians. Paul made the argument to these believers that they should not be taking matters that could be solved within the church outside the church to the local courts. Paul seems to be surprised by these believers’ inability to handle their own problems with one another.
Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? If the world is judged by you, are you not competent to constitute the smallest law courts? Paul was saying that since believers will someday be judges in the “biggest courtroom” the world will ever know during the Millennium, are believers unworthy to judge in the smallest kind of court? To judge means to set up a standard or a criterion by which to try a case. These differences involved spiritual factors and were not connected with civil law. All believers are not qualified to judge such cases. One who is qualified to judge should have a spiritual gift which involves spiritual authority, be spiritually mature, be filled with the Holy Spirt and be impartial.
Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more matters of this life? If believers will “judge” angels, they should be able to “judge” other believers, if they have the authority to do so. In this case, “judging” once again means to decide or settle authoritatively, or to assess and reach a conclusion regarding two believers.
So, if you have law courts dealing with matters of this life, do you appoint them as judges who are of no account in the church? I say this to your shame. There may be times when two believers in a local church have a controversy, and the worst thing they could do is go to a court over it. While the judge may understand thoroughly the laws of the land and be a good judge, any principle that involves spiritual matters is out of his realm to judge. There are exceptions to this principle when civil law must be involved with settling a dispute like an auto accident, a criminal act, or the legal issues with divorce. The only persons who are qualified to judge a difference between two believers in a local church are those who have a spiritual gift which involves the use of authority, and they must “judge” impartially. There were Corinthians going to civil courts for settlement of grievances and relying on a human solution instead of going to their local church to resolve the matter in a spiritual way.
Is it so, that there is not among you one wise man who will be able to decide between his brethren, but brother goes to law with brother, and that before unbelievers? A wise man is a believer who has a maximum amount of doctrine and can apply it to a situation. You must not only know doctrine but be able to apply it. Obviously, they could not find the right person in the church to judge a case, if they had even brought it before the church.
Actually, then, it is already a defeat for you, that you have lawsuits with one another. The pattern that we have is two believers in an altercation going into a civil court and they should not be doing so. There is a principle behind this. Believers should not “wash their dirty linen” before unbelievers. When this occurs, the church has defeated itself because it is the responsibility of the church to present a proper testimony to the unbelieving world.
Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be defrauded? Paul was saying that it would be better in these cases to just take the loss (property, money, etc.) than to bring this before a civil court and air it before the entire city. In other words, either settle between the two believers privately or drop it. Then put it in the hands of the Lord and apply Colossians 3:13, “forgive as Christ forgave.” Do not retaliate. When a person has wronged you, put it in the Lord’s hands and completely leave it there. The word defrauded in this verse means to be robbed of what is justly yours. The principle is, leave the discipline in the hands of the Lord.
On the contrary, you yourselves wrong and defraud. You do this even to your brethren. You do wrong by going to a court of law with a believer who has defrauded you. So, the principle is to never react to a believer who wrongs you by wronging him. Remember in the plan of God, a right thing must always be done in a right way or it’s wrong.
Verses 9-11
“Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.”
Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?
Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. An unbeliever is not qualified to judge a case of believer versus believer. The word unrighteous refers to people who do not possess the righteousness of God (unbelievers) and so will not inherit the kingdom of God. Those who inherit the kingdom of God will be doing some judging themselves in the future. This list of sins is Paul’s way of pointing out the evil deeds and areas of weakness of certain unbelievers practicing paganism. Remember, Paul is writing to believers who had been pagans themselves just a few years earlier. This list is to remind them that these were sins some of them committed as unbelieving pagans but should no longer be doing them as believers. Apparently, some of them were still practicing these sinful things.
Let’s not forget that there are believers who do all of these things, and it doesn’t mean that they have lost their salvation because they commit these sins. We must remember that the Bible is to be interpreted in the time in which it was written, and must always be integrated with the context when interpreting a passage. We are not talking about certain kinds of sins that disqualify you from Heaven. There is no sin that disqualifies you from Heaven, only rejection of Christ does that.
Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.” When these believers believed in Christ, they were cleansed from sin, they were set apart to God, and they were declared righteous. We have three changes at the point of salvation which potentially qualify believers to judge cases in the future in their resurrection bodies: 1) Washed is the reality of being cleansed; 2) sanctified refers to positional sanctification because of our union with Christ through the baptism of the Holy Spirit; 3) justified means to be declared righteous, which means that the righteousness of Christ is credited to our account at the moment of salvation. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ means Christ and the Holy Spirit provide this potential through His work on the Cross and the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
Verses 12-20
“All things are lawful for me, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be mastered by anything. Food is for the stomach and the stomach is for food, but God will do away with both of them. Yet the body is not for immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body. Now God has not only raised the Lord but will also raise us up through His power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take away the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? May it never be! Or do you not know that the one who joins himself to a prostitute is one body with her? For He says, “The two shall become one flesh.” But the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him. Flee immorality. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price: therefore, glorify God in your body.”
Our new position in Christ, plus the fact that we are eternally secure, does not give us a license to commit sin. We have a position in Christ which can never be changed. We have eternal security, and we cannot lose our salvation. However, these two doctrines do not give us the right to violate the moral laws of God. Morality is very much a part of spirituality. When a believer is engaging in an immoral act, they are out of fellowship with God and subject to divine discipline.
There are four spiritual laws of Christian behavior that apply to all believers:
1) the Law of Liberty – believers have the right to do certain things which will not cause them to sin nor enter into carnality. (I Corinthians 8:4, 9) However, believers should be careful when they are around people who might be influenced negatively by something that is normally meaningless to the believer.
2) the Law of Love – believers should avoid any activity that would offend other believers and become a distraction to their spiritual growth thereby causing them to stumble spiritually. (I Corinthians 8:13)
3) the Law of Expediency – in the interest of sharing the Gospel, a believer should refrain from doing certain things so that an unbeliever is not prevented from seeing the true issue in salvation which is to believe in Christ. In self-righteous arrogance, an unbeliever often superimposes his own erroneous ideas of Christianity or religious taboos on a believer and expects them to comply with those ideas even if they are not forbidden by Scripture. (I Corinthians 9:18)
4) the Law of Supreme Sacrifice – this is the highest spiritual law of Christian behavior because it sometimes requires a believer to sacrifice legitimate activities of life in order to serve God in a certain culture or special circumstance, such as a foreign missionary. (I Corinthians 9:1-15)
What Paul was saying was that many things which are harmless and permissible, he had set aside under these Laws. In order to have an effective witness for Jesus Christ, there are many things Paul had a right to do because they were perfectly harmless, but he did not do them so that he could reach unbelievers.
Food is for the stomach and the stomach is for food, but God will do away with both of them. Yet the body is not for immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body. Now God has not only raised the Lord but will also raise us up through His power. There are three areas addressed here which are related to the human body: eating certain foods, immorality, and resurrection. Eating food is the way by which the body produces energy. But there are certain conditions under which certain kinds of foods should not be consumed, like meat sacrificed to idols as in I Corinthians 8:1-13 and 10:23-33. However, Paul was saying that food and the stomach are temporal.
The body is not for immorality. Greek worship was centered in eating and immoral activity inside of a pagan temple. Their distortions ignored certain divine prohibitions of gluttony and immorality. The fact that the body is not for immorality, placed a prohibition on any further visits by these believers to the pagan temples for any purpose. I Thessalonians 4:3 “For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you should abstain from sexual immorality.”
But for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body. Our bodies have a purpose in life as believers. Romans 12:1-2 tells us to present our bodies as living sacrifices to God. God provides all that we need for our bodies to function by giving us logistical grace blessings, such as food, shelter, and clothing.
Now God has not only raised the Lord but will also raise us up through His power. These Corinthian believers will have a future resurrection body. Every believer will receive a glorified resurrection body. We will be raised by the same power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead. Believers who are in Heaven before the Rapture receive an interim body while awaiting their glorified body. We know this from the story of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16.
Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take away the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? May it never be! Or do you not know that the one who joins himself to a prostitute is one body with her? When these believers were going to the pagan temples to “worship,” they were engaging in all types of immoral acts and Paul was pointing out that when they did this, they were literally taking Christ with them. The Greek philosophy was “eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” So, they didn’t care about what they did to their bodies. This should not be so for believers!
For He says, “The two shall become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). Pagan religion has always been one of Satan’s “ace trumps.” Paul was saying that you couldn’t be in union with Christ, practice pagan religion and be a testimony for Christ. The question Paul was posing was, do you want to be “one” with the devil, experientially, while you are “one” with Christ, positionally?
But the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him. The contrast is between ‘one flesh’ in verse 16 and ‘one spirit’ in verse 17. When they were in union with Christ, it was a spiritual union. In cohabitation with a pagan, their bodies were in union with a pagan’s body, therefore it was a physical union. So, in verse 16 we have physical union, in verse 17 we have spiritual union, and these are contrary to one another.
Flee immorality. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body. The Greek word for flee is “pheugo,” which means to flee from, flee away or become a fugitive. When it comes to temptation regarding immorality, we are to run the other way. Other overt sins like lying, cheating, or slandering do not make a believer “one” with someone physically, the way sexual immorality does. Paul addressed this with Timothy in II Timothy 2:22, “Flee also youthful lusts; but pursue righteousness, faith, love, peace with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.”
Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? Our body has a purpose on earth as the temple of the Holy Spirit. When visiting a pagan temple these believers were taking the temple of the Holy Spirit with them to participate in immoral “religious” acts. All religion is part of Satan’s corrupt world system. Practicing this behavior was a maximum compromise of a believer’s spiritual life and was maligning the indwelling of the Godhead. For you have been bought with a price: therefore, glorify God in your body. The price that bought us was the substitutionary spiritual death of Christ on the Cross for our sin that completely satisfied the righteousness of God and provides eternal life for all who believe. Therefore, we are to use our bodies to glorify God!! (Romans 3:25; Hebrews 9:28)