Sermon Tone Analysis

INTRO:

Trans:

Context: The testimony of this church in the community was not good.

Not only was there the sexual immorality we talked about last week but the believers were fighting with each other and in public asking nonbelievers to settle the matters for them.

It is possible that the litigants of 6:1–8 are the father and son of 5:1; if so, such litigation would clearly be displaying the church’s dirty laundry before the world.

“Defraud” (6:7–8) favors this suggestion (cf. 1 Thess 4:4–6); “why not be wronged?”

(6:7) may be against it.

Paul detected three tragedies in this situation.

First, the believers were presenting a poor testimony to the lost.

Even the unbelieving Jews dealt with their civil cases in their own synagogue courts.

To take the problems of Christians and discuss them before the “unjust” and “unbelievers” was to weaken the testimony of the Gospel.

Second, the congregation had failed to live up to its full position in Christ.

Since the saints will one day participate in the judgment of the world and even of fallen angels, they ought to be able to settle their differences here on earth.

The Corinthians boasted of their great spiritual gifts.

Why, then, did they not use them in solving their problems?

There was a third tragedy: the members suing each other had already lost.

Even if some of them won their cases, they had incurred a far greater loss in their disobedience to the Word of God.

“Now, therefore, there is utterly a fault among you” (1 Cor.

6:7) can be translated, “It is already a complete defeat for you.”

Paul was certainly referring to our Lord’s teaching in Matthew 5:39–42.

Better to lose money or possessions than to lose a brother and lose your testimony as well.

Throughout history churches have made the mistake of trying to handle issues in-house that require the intervention of the authorities.

If this had been an issue like embezzlement, abuse, sexual misconduct—any matter with actual legal ramifications—Paul would have called for the intervention of the authorities.

The scope of the passage is limited to intra-church disputes that don’t need to be elevated outside the community.

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The topic of judgment continued as Paul shifted to another disorder afflicting the Corinthian church.

The same laxity in dealing with the immoral brother was found in cases of personal disputes between members which the church refused to adjudicate.

Do you not know,” Paul pointed toward certain truths which should have prevented the problem in the first place.

The phrase recurs six times in this chapter alone.

(Outside this letter this construction appears only three other times in the NT.) Paul had used it before (3:16; 5:6) and would subsequently use it again (9:13, 24) to the same effect.

The implication that they should have known these things must have painfully hit home to a church enamored with its own wisdom and knowledge.

All the sins enumerated in verses 9–10 share the common traits of being self-indulgent and self-serving.

From a spiritual perspective, they also become self-destructive.

Sometimes in our society a quarrel between Christians over rights and property cannot help coming before a secular court.

When, for instance, a Christian is being divorced by his or her spouse, the law requires a secular court to be involved.

Or, in the case of child abuse or neglect, a Christian parent may be forced to seek court protection from a backslidden former spouse.

But even in those kinds of exceptions, when for some reason a Christian finds himself unavoidably in court with a fellow believer, his purpose should be to glorify God, and never to gain selfish advantage.

The general rule is: Do not go to court with fellow Christians, but settle matters among yourselves.

REVEALS LIFE CHANGE

The right attitude of a Christian is to rather be wronged, to rather be defrauded, than to sue a fellow Christian.

It is far better to lose financially than to lose spiritually.

Even when we are clearly in the legal right, we do not have the moral and spiritual right to insist on our legal right in a public court.

If the brother has wronged us in any way, our response should be to forgive him and to leave the outcome of the matter in God’s hands.

The Lord may give or take away.

He is sovereign and has His will and purpose both in what we gain and in what we lose.

We should gratefully accept that.

In short, he makes two main points: (1) if disputes require intervention, it should occur within the Christian community; and (2) it is even better to accept being wronged than to demand recompense in either a secular or a Christian context.

The verb “cheat” in verse 8 means to “defraud,” so some sort of complaint concerning property or business dealings seems to have been the problem.

Their litigation incenses him even more than their factiousness, because it so fundamentally compromises their witness before a watching world quick to ridicule and reject the church on such occasions.

“Is it possible that there is nobody among you wise enough …?” drips with irony, since the Corinthians had been claiming to be so wise (4:10).

But Paul probably also believes quite seriously that among the godly (minority?) in the church, some bear the marks of true Christian wisdom (2:6) and perhaps also legal training, so that they might intervene constructively.

“Believer” in verse 5 is literally “brother,” as in verse 6.

1, 2 In speaking of Christians taking other Christians to court, Paul does not specify any criminal cases because he teaches elsewhere that these must be handled by the state (Rom 13:3, 4).

In the expression pragma echōn (“having a lawsuit or dispute”), Paul means to include different kinds of property cases (v. 7).

By “dare” (tolmā), he strongly admonishes rather than commands Christians to take their legal grievances for settlement before qualified Christians.

In this way, he allows for the possibility that under some circumstances Christians might take cases to the secular civil court.

Paul writes in the light of Roman law, which allowed Jews, for instance, to apply their own law in property matters; and Christians, who were not yet distinguished as a separate class, must have had the same privilege (Hodge, in loc.).

According to rabbinic interpretation, it was unlawful to take cases before Gentile judges.

If appeal was made to Roman law for the right of Jewish and Christian communities to try their own property cases, certainly it would be right to take some cases before the civil court.

By analogy, Paul who had received his Roman citizenship according to Roman law, appealed to the civil courts—to the Roman commander (Acts 22:25–29), to the governor (Acts 23:27; 24:10–21), and to the emperor (Acts 25:4–12)—to establish his right to a proper trial and proper treatment as a Roman citizen (Acts 16:37–39).

In cases now to be judged by Christians, decisions would be ministerial and declarative (Matt 16:18, 19; 18:18–20; John 20:19–23), and not punitive, penalties being reserved for the state (Rom 13:1–7).

11 In describing their conversion, the apostle lists three transactions that occurred at the time when the Lord saved them: they were washed (apolousasthe), that is, they were spiritually cleansed by God, an act symbolized by baptism (cf.

Matt 28:19); they were sanctified (hēgiasthēte), an expression either to be interpreted as an amplification of the concept “washed” (cf.

Titus 3:5, 6) or meaning that they had been set apart as God’s people (cf. 1 Pet 2:9); and they were justified (edikaiōthēte), showing God’s act as judge in declaring the sinner righteous because of Christ (Rom 3:23–26; 5:1).

This expression gives the legal basis for the cleansing mentioned above.

wronged.

Suffer injustice.

cheated.

Defrauded, suggesting that the dispute is financial or about some other material matter.

See 13:5; Matt 5:39–40; Rom 12:17–21.

Do not be deceived.

Underlines the permanent need for self-examination.

sexually immoral.

Includes sexual relations with prostitutes, adultery, and homosexuality.

The phrase, “You were washed,” may include the imagery of baptism and its significance.

It seems that Paul is speaking of one event using three terms in order to convey his primary concern, namely, the transforming power and renewal of the gospel that occurs by the authority of Jesus and by the Spirit of God.

Baptism most certainly depicts this reality.

While the function of 6:11 is to draw out the contrast between the Corinthians and the unrighteous who will not inherit the kingdom and to remind them of their status in Christ, in and of itself the statement is a remarkable testimony to the power of the gospel in conversion.

Barrett comments, “Paul is not writing in merely literary or in imaginary terms, but addressing the greatest of miracles, a church of redeemed sinners, won from their old lifestyle by the power of God.” Similarly Morris: “The tremendous revolution brought about by the preaching of the gospel comes out in the quiet words, And that is what some of you were.

Paul’s outrage has to do not with the fact of grievances but with the taking of a grievance before the “ungodly” and not before the “saints.”

Some translations render “ungodly” as “unrighteous.”

Barrett contends that this is an unfortunate translation, that Paul’s use of the term is religious rather than a moral appraisal of the secular judges.

Paul’s exhortation for the Corinthians to settle their disputes before the saints reflects his Jewish heritage, but his reasons will be new (6:2).

In 6:5, unlike 4:14 where he claimed his intent was to warn rather than shame, Paul says exactly the opposite, “I say this to shame you,”

In litigation, from a worldly point of view, one side wins and the other side loses.

However, when one believer takes another believer to civil court over trivial matters, the guaranteed outcome is not only that nobody wins; even before the trial begins “you have been completely defeated already” (NIV).114

The adverb translated “completely” is the same adverb translated “actually’ in 5:1.

Robertson and Plummer take the adverb in the sense of “under any circumstance.”116

BDAG suggests as a possible translation of the phrase, “believe me, it’s an utter disaster.”

The defeat is “the very fact that you have lawsuits among you,” that one wise person in the church has not been able to adjudicate the matter (6:5).

The parties involved (and the church) have failed to demonstrate the wisdom of God and have instead followed the course of the wisdom of the world.

They have failed to live out the core principles of the gospel.

The teaching of Jesus surely underlies Paul’s ethics.

Paul asks, “Why not rather be wronged?

Why not rather be cheated?”

Instead, by having lawsuits among themselves they are the ones acting unjustly and defrauding their fellow believers.

What Paul says, in essence, is that, even if you have been wronged, you wrong others by taking them to court.

It is far better to suffer wrong, to be cheated, than to tarnish the reputation of the gospel before the unbelieving world and to wrong another believer.

How believers act in relation to other believers is a major emphasis in chaps.

8–14.

“Ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified” (1 Cor.