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About Jesus Steve Sweetman Chapters 6 Previous Section - Chapters 4 and 5
Lawsuits
Among Brothers (ch. 6:1-11) Paul continues in chapter 6 with the issues at hand that need to be addressed. He says, “how dare you take a brother to the ungodly for judgment”. You can see the intensity in his words. Taking a Christian brother to a secular court is unquestionable. In Paul’s thinking a secular judge cannot be a judge over Christians, as we have seen earlier. (see ch. 2:15) We should be mature enough in the Lord that we can solve our own relational problems, but apparently that's not the case now, and it wasn't back then.
In
verse 2 Paul claims that the “saints will judge the world”.
If this is indeed the case, we should be able to judge one another
in our disputes. This judging,
or ruling the world will be at a future time in history when Jesus’
Kingdom is completely set up on earth and we will be rulers along with
Him. One might ask who we will
be ruling. Well, the book of
Revelation and the prophets of old speak of the thousand year rule of
Christ on earth. He, along
with us, will rule the nations on the earth at that time.
There will be nations on the earth, and people, who aren't
necessarily Christian, but will have to live by the rule of Christ.
It also appears that on the new earth, after the thousand years,
there will still be nations that will need ruling, yet at this point in
time, ruling is different than we presently think of because there will
not be any evil to deal with.
Paul
does not stop at us judging the world at some point. He also says that
“we will judge angels”. I
certainly don’t know just how all these things will work out, how we
will rule and judge not only the world, but angels, but Paul says we will.
We just accept the truth of this matter and look forward to that
day. In
verse 4 Paul says to “appoint those of little stature” among you to be
judges. Even the simplest
person among us, should do better than the worldly sinner, Paul thinks. He
is saying these things to shame them.
He asks, “is it possible that there is nobody among you wise
enough to judge a dispute”. Of
course there is. That’s
Paul’s point. Why go to the
world. You are more than
competent to judge between yourselves.
Instead
of judging themselves the Corinthians are taking each other to court “in
front of the unbeliever”. This
is wrong because we who claim brotherly love are in opposition with one
another to the extent that we are taking each other to court.
This is worldly. This
is not the witness that we should be.
It is a disgrace to the church and to the Lord. In
fact we are misrepresenting the character of Christ to the world.
Our job as Christians is to show forth the character of Jesus, and
for the most part we aren't. In
verse 7 Paul says that the very fact that there is lawsuits among these
people means that “they are defeated already”.
This means that both parties will lose. Even though a secular judge
will judge one side to win and one side to lose, Paul says that in the
long run, both lose. Even more
so, the church and the Lord loses. This
defeats both parties involved. This
defeats the church. The church
in the eyes of the world is no different than the world, therefore the
church has lost her witness, and is “completely defeated”.
How sad! Paul
says that it is better to be wronged or cheated than to take your brother
to court. If you are not
willing to settle the matter within the church, just be willing to be
wronged. It is not right to
prove yourself right in a secular court and lose the good witness of the
church in the long run. Human
tendency is to not admit when we are wrong.
Paul
is noting a couple of problems here. One
is the problem of taking your brother to court and another is that these
people “cheat and wrong one another” in the first place.
If they did not do the latter, the former would not have to exist.
In
verse 9 Paul asks, “do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the
If
Paul is referring to a future kingdom, then he is saying that wicked men
will not enter that kingdom. Yet
will they not enter because of their wickedness?
No, the number one reason why they won’t enter in is because they
have rejected Jesus. Our pass
into heaven does not depend on what we do, whether good or bad, it depends
on what Jesus has done for us and what we have done with Him.
Besides, these people are wicked because they have neglected the
truth found in Jesus. Now
if Paul is speaking of a present kingdom reality, he is saying that the
wicked won’t enter into it. In
this case wicked people could be one of two types. It could refer to the
wicked sinner. It is obvious
that those who reject Jesus can’t enter into God's present kingdom on
earth. Yet the wicked could
also refer to someone like the man sleeping with his father’s wife, as
we saw earlier in this letter. This
man may be a Christian, but his overt sin makes it impossible to enter
into the Kingdom
of Whatever
the case, sin hinders us from being in the centre of God's will and His
Kingdom. It should also be
noted that we enter Heaven when we die for one reason only, and that is
what we have done with Jesus. Wicked men miss Heaven first and foremost
because of their unbelief in Jesus, not because of their wicked acts.
Some
of these Corinthians were heavily involved in the above mentioned sins.
But Paul reminds them that this was a thing of the past.
Since then they have been washed, sanctified and justified.
This should result in a changed life.
Even if they are not now participating in these sins, they should
not let others effect the church in a negative way who want to go back to
their old life. These sins are
a thing of the past, and have no present place in the church.
Sexual
Immorality (ch. 6:12-20) In
verse 12 Paul says that “everything is permissible to me”.
We must be careful with what we do with this verse.
If you take this verse at face value, then there is not anything we
could not do. Anything and
everything is okay for us to do as Christians.
But is Paul really saying that? There
is a Biblical interpretation rule, and really a rule of ordinary
communication. The rule is
that we cannot take one individual phrase out of the context in which it
is said or written. The
context is more than the immediate context.
When it comes to writing, the context is more than the paragraph or
two around the phrase, though that is a good starting place to understand
the phrase. We need to
understand any phrase, whether spoken or written, within the context of
what that person has said or written both in the present and the past.
With an understanding of what the person thinks on all aspects of
the issue at hand, we then can interpret any individual phrase he says,
but not until then. One
of the main problems with communication between people is that we take
isolated words and phrases and twist them to mean something they don’t.
This happens frequently in an argument between people.
We should not do this in this instance. Paul
says that “everything is permissible” for him.
Yet from what we know of Paul, we know that killing someone is not
permissible. We know that sin
is not permissible. On the
other hand we know that certain Jewish traditions are no longer a must to
do. For example, Paul can eat
meat, and drink wine as seen in Rom. 14.
These things are now lawful for Paul to do.
So when we consider all of what Paul has written we can begin to
understand what he means by this one isolated, and somewhat hard to
understand statement. Paul
qualifies to a degree what he means by saying, “but not everything is
beneficial”, and “I will not be mastered by anything”.
This means that Paul is permitted to drink wine, but he is not
going to let wine master him. He
will not become a drunkard. He
will drink wine within the borders in which he has set for wine drinking.
You can read Rom. 14 and get a clear picture of what Paul is
thinking about on this issue. Concerning
contextual interpretation that I have just talked about. Let me give you a
common example from daily life.
Dick and Jane are having many marriage problems.
At he same time they are building a new house in the country.
Maybe a change of scenery will help their marriage.
While nailing some two by fours a friend drops by to see how things
are going with the new house. He
looks around and tells Dick that things are looking great.
Dick replies by saying, "yes, everything is going good".
The
point to be made here is that you need to understand individual statements
made by people in light of the context in which they are spoken, (or
written) and also in light of the whole of their life, beyond the
immediate context of the particular statement. This is why we understand
that Dick's house building venture is doing well, yet his marriage is not
doing well. So everything is
not good, even though Dick has made that statement. There
was a common phrase in Corinth
in those days that said, “food for the stomach and the stomach for
food”. Both were created for
each other. So when it comes
to food and the body, in Paul’s mind he appears to be indifferent
because God will someday destroy both.
Concerning
the phrase “food for the stomach and the stomach for food”, some in In
verse 14 Paul tells his readers that Christ’s body was raised from the
dead and so will ours. This
may imply that even though both food and body will be destroyed someday,
we will rise up in a new and transformed body.
So our body for this reason is sacred.
In
verse 15 Paul asks, “do you not know that your bodies are
members of Christ”. The
church is the physical expression of Jesus to the world.
So in one real sense of the word, we are the body of Christ and
therefore both individually and collectively, we are sacred and holy.
Therefore we should act accordingly.
He
goes on to ask another question. “Shell
I then take the members of and unite them to a prostitute”?
His answer, “never”. You
can see by what Paul says here that such activity is not permissible for
him. He will never do such a
thing. So the above
“permissible statement” does have definite
boundaries. Paul
quotes from Gen. 2:24 when he says that “the two shall
become one flesh”. He
is speaking about when a man and a woman come together in sexual
relations, as they unite themselves physically, they become one flesh.
In creation God had meant this to be between a husband and a wife.
Yet when a man or a woman commit adultery with someone other than
his or her spouse, they become one with that person as well.
This should not be. In
verse 17 Paul takes this one step farther and says that when we become
Christians, or “when we are united with the Lord”, as he puts it,
“we become one with him in spirit”.
We become one flesh with our spouse, and one spirit with the Lord.
When we receive the Spirit of God we indeed become one with Him, so how
and why should we be using our bodies in a sinful way? Paul
commands these Corinthians to “flee from sexual immorality”.
Run from such activity. Sexual
sin is different than any other sin Paul says.
“All other sins a man commits are outside the body, but he who
sins sexually sins against his own body”. (ch. 6:18)
We are not only sinning against the Lord, but we are sinning
against ourselves, Paul says. We
are the object of our own sin. If
we kill someone, we sin against the person we kill.
If we commit adultery, we are sinning against ourselves.
Paul
asks yet another question; his final defense on this point.
He asks, “do you not know that
your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit that is in you”?
Earlier Paul said that the church collectively was the
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