First Corinthians 6:1-11 The Lawsuits Between Brothers

Well, good morning. Nice to see everyone here. Nice to have people in person. And then we have folks on Zoom here. Today, we're going to continue on our study of 1 Corinthians. So this section, if you're into lawsuits, is that your thing? Actually, we're going to talk about expert witnesses here a little bit. I know Courtney's been an expert witness. This should be an interesting section. So let's kind of get into it here. The outline I'm going to use here is from Macaulay. You know, we've been covering the book of 1 Corinthians. We're coming into chapter 6 and then chapter 5 talked about immorality in the church. I'm not going to review that. I'm just going to review the idea about judging a little bit.

But basically the two things we're going to talk about today are that The Corinthian lawsuits revealed their audacity or you know, why would they why would they sue a fellow brother in Christ? Why would they do that? It makes no sense Now you could say well he deserved it. Well, and then their ignorance about that the wonderful blessings they have as knowing the Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior. They have wonderful blessings. They're blessed enormously.

We're going to talk about that a great bit. Then the weeks to come we're going to go on and talk about how this lawsuits reveal their maturity and that's in the weeks to come. So a lot about lawsuits the next three weeks. Okay, so here's a review. This first review is going to be kind of focused on the whole book just briefly and real quick.

So basically, Paul, in the first four chapters of Corinthians, talks about the problem of dissension. The book of 1 Corinthians is a letter written to that church in Corinth, and it was to discuss some of their problems. They had problems, probably every church has problems, but this church had an abundance of problems, and their problems help us to understand what is God's view of these problems and how we're to deal with them.

So we spent a lot of time on dissensions. That's where I'm a Paul, I'm a Paulist, and they had factions, and they had one guy was their favorite, another guy was their favorite. So we've been through that in quite a bit of detail the last six months or longer. So now we're getting into the section. Last week, or the last three weeks, Mike covered a real interesting area of the problem, immorality. There was immorality in the church. We covered that, and we're going to just briefly talk about that. Now we're going to move into the section in chapter 6 about lawsuits and Christian liberty.

So actually the last several verses in chapter 5 kind of give us a taste of the idea of judging, judging believers in the church. And so verse 12 says, for what have I to do with judging outside the church? It's saying, am I to judge people outside the church? And the answer is no, do not judge those who are to judge within the church, not outside the church. And basically from verse 13, but those who are outside the church, God judges. And based on the last part of that verse, remove the wicked man from among yourselves.

So Paul is concerned with the purity of the church. He talks, if there's a problem in the church, that problem should be dealt with in a forthright manner, according to God's word. That's his focus. So now, here's his review, basically focused upon judging. In chapter 5, he teaches that the church is not to extend its jurisdiction into the world. The church is to be separate from the world. Believers are to judge matters within the church, not the world. Paul was concerned about the purity of the church, as I mentioned. Even though he lived in a very corrupt society, That wasn't his focus. He wasn't trying to correct the corruptness of the Roman society. Corinth was an awful place.

A lot of evils going on there, but he wanted men and women to come to know Jesus Christ as their Savior. to undo all the social ills. And that's our aim as we are today. Our mission is men and women coming to know Jesus Christ as their Savior. Yes, the world had lots of problems. Yes, we have opinions about that, very strong opinions. But that's not where God would have us be. He'd have us focused on the Lord Jesus Christ and that men and women come to know Him as their Savior. Okay, with that in mind, here's today's verses. So this is chapter 6, verse 1.

Does any 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 to be 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? Okay, so we're going to cover those four verses today. But before we do that, you know, I thought about this.

Why is Paul, you know, Paul is, I wouldn't say he's ticked off, but he's not excited about the church in Corinth in this area of lawsuits. He's not excited about people going to the Roman courts to dispute, I mean, to settle issues within the church.

And actually, I was reading and preparing for the lesson, I read J. Vernon McGee, which maybe you listen to occasionally on the radio, and he talked about a gentleman that came to his church in Los Angeles and said, you know, Pastor, I have a problem with one of your parishioners.

He's done me wrong. He's swindled some money from you. I want to come before your church board and tell them what he's done to me." So Dr. McGee said, okay, okay, we're willing to hear your case, but I want to find out one thing. Are you willing to abide by the decision of the church board? The man said, well, I'm willing to abide if it's in my favor. But I'm not willing to abide if it's not in my favor. So you can see the problem. So therein lies the problem right there. So anyway, I thought that was an interesting story. Alright, so let's look at this.

So now, so to get this in line, so what is a believer... What does a believer have that makes him so unique? Why is a person who knows the Lord Jesus Christ so unique? And maybe some in the world think he's not all that unique, he's just another one of those religious fanatics. They classify everybody as being, well they're religious and I'm not and who cares? But the Bible teaches clearly that the believer in the Lord Jesus Christ is blessed with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies. So let's just kind of review the resume of a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Because Paul is going to say, why can't you solve these problems yourself? It doesn't make sense. If you truly are born again, truly a child of God, and you know Christ is your Savior, why can't you resolve these problems yourself? That's what his beef is.

So first of all, I'm going to borrow a chart I've used in the past. So let's look at the believer's position. This is a little cartoon variation. So believer in his position, think about this. We have a position as Americans. We have a position, you know, that was, you know, we understand that from our Constitution. And we have certain rights, we have certain privileges.

Well, in a similar sense, the believer in the Lord Jesus Christ has a position. But what's interesting is his position is not on earth. It's in heaven. Scripture talks about the fact that we're seated with Christ in heavenly places. We're conducting our life from a heavenly perspective, not an earthly perspective.

Now some people say, well that sounds kind of, you're going to float around here and tell me all these cool things, and what does it have to do with me? Well I tell you, part two of this is, you also have a condition. How you conduct your life here on earth. So you have a position in the heavenlies, and your conduct is here on earth. And scripture constantly says, make your conduct equal your position.

Act in accordance with the wonderful blessings you have as a person who knows Jesus Christ, who is seated with Him in heavenly places. So I thought this little cartoon is kind of helpful. So let's just kind of review some of those points. So a believer is seated with Christ in heavenly places, which is taught in scripture. He's a citizen of heaven. So a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ is a citizen of heaven, and also a citizen of whatever country he's in. He has dual citizenship. And also it says that a Christian should be the best human citizen in whatever country he's in. He should be the model citizen. So he's not, some people say, well, aren't you torn? Aren't you torn away? You know, don't you kind of get, don't you want to be, no, he should be the best citizen. To the point actually that it hurts himself almost.

And we have a hope laid up in heaven for us. We have an inheritance reserved in heaven for us. And also in terms of our focus, the Christian is to focus on his heavenly blessings and how they relate to his earthly life. And we're to set our minds on things above.

And then lastly, I thought it would be good, we all have resumes at different times, right? You get a new job, or maybe you never had a resume. Maybe you were fortunate enough, you were born into money and didn't have to have a resume. It doesn't happen to too many of us.

So here's a resume for the believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. And it's not based, there's not one attribute of this that's based on anything that we have accomplished in our life. There's no accomplishments of our life in this resume. There's only accomplishments about Jesus Christ on our behalf. That's what makes this an incredible resume.

First of all, we've been redeemed. We've been bought out in the marketplace of sin. We've been reconciled. We've been forgiven all trespasses. We've been justified, declared righteous. We've been made near by the blood of Christ, it says in that verse. We've been delivered from the power of darkness, the devil, the evil one. We've been transferred into the kingdom of the Son of His love.

We're on the rock, Christ Jesus. We're firmly planted on the rock, Christ Jesus. This is an amazing thing. There's a passage in John 17 that just blows your circuits. It says that we're a gift. We, mankind, that God made in His image, we're a gift from the Son to the Father. Just amazing. We've been glorified in Christ. We're complete in Him.

And that's only a partial list of our resume. and you could, the list could be quite long, you know, there's at least 33 that this gentleman, Dr. Chaffer, has counted in scripture, but some, you can count even more. So that's our resume. So based on that resume, we're going to bring that resume and our position into these verses we're going to study.

So he starts off, does any one of you, Corinthians, so Paul's here talking about, he has this rhetorical style where he'll ask questions, rather than making statements, he'll ask questions. So his question is, does any one of you, when he has a case against his brother, and then he goes on. So basically, in this style, he brings forth truths that he wants to show us.

So here's some other examples of that. Do you not know that you are a temple of God and the Spirit of God dwells in you? Then in 4.21 it says, What do you desire? Shall I come to you with a rod or with love and a spirit of gentleness? So he uses these questions to foster understanding.

So now, the first part of this question is, when he has a case against his neighbor. So it seems like Paul sets up the situation where, and he doesn't really say, he doesn't say we have 10 cases of this, 2 cases of this, 5 cases of this, but it seems like there's multiple cases where brother is taking brother or sister is taking sister, whatever it was, to court. And that's what he's concerned about here. So he says, has a case. It's the idea. It's ongoing. It's not like you had a single point in time. It's like, I'm having a problem with brother X, Y, or Z. I'm having a problem here. That's what's going on.

A case against is a matter, an affair. In the forensic sense, it could be a lawsuit. So here's the same word, a case against, or a matter, in a different verse. In 1 Thess 4.6a, it says, not overstepping their rights, of wronging his brother in the matter or lawsuit or affair because the Lord is the avenger of all these things.

A little bit out of context but that word, one of the neat things about studying scripture is you can compare verse with verse and you can go find this word and try to understand it better by looking at another verse and that's what I tried to do here. And it's against his neighbor or brother So let's just look at this.

One of the cool things, if you're an English geek, I'm an engineer. English was not my friend in school. In fact, I avoided every class I could avoid that had anything to do with English. I avoided it. Courtney's laughing. I had a tough time with English. But then as time has gone on, I found English can be very helpful, especially in studying scripture. because it's actually written in Greek, but we read it in English.

So if you look at the subject and verbs and direct objects, you can make better sense of what's going on here. So with that said, so the complete subject here is, does any one of you, when he has a case against his neighbor, that's really the subject of the sentence.

And what the force of this is, the verb here is dare. Do you dare, or better, Do you have the audacity, it comes across one guy I read, do you have the audacity, you know, and it could be, would you even dare, and this verse here in Romans 7 has, for one would hardly die for a righteous man, though perhaps for a good man someone would dare to die. You have the audacity, and the direct object here is go to the law, or go to the law courts. Would you dare to do that?

And that's what his beef was. That's what he wanted to bring before them. And then Macaulay says about this, the word to go to law translates a word that means to judge. It refers to unbelievers for the judgment or opinion. It reflects going to unbelievers for a judgment or an opinion. So that was his problem. These people were going to unbelievers to get their problems resolved.

Okay, so the last part of the verse is, it's before the unrighteous and not before saints. So he says, well, why don't you, why do you dare or have the audacity to go to the law courts? Wouldn't it be better to go to the saints and not before the saints? And so that little phrase there modifies going to the law.

The unrighteous are ones basically that don't know Jesus Christ as their Savior. First Peter says, for Christ also died. for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that he might bring them to God. God desires that all men come to know him, but we do have unjust or unrighteous people."

So the term here, as pointed out by Macaulay, points to the fact that they're standing as terms of their salvation. Are they unrighteous or are they a saint is the question. And Paul doesn't imply here, and Macaulay points out, he doesn't imply that And this section does not imply that the Roman courts or our civil courts are unrighteous in what they do.

They do the best job that a human being can do. But he's pointing out that brothers who know the Lord Jesus Christ are a superior judge over any court outside the church. Okay, so let's go on to verse 2. Oh, actually, I haven't quite finished this part. Okay, and then saints here, we're contrasting the unrighteous with the saints, and saints in scripture, you may have a, you think, wow, those Christians say they're saints. They don't act like saints. They don't talk like saints. I think a saint is a person that, you know, he's super good. He never makes a mistake. He's flawless. Well, scripture doesn't, scripture defines a saint, and it's always in the plural, saints That's in the plural to describe believers. It describes a believer.

Once again, it's our position. It's who we are in Christ It's not our actions may be in concert with that or they may not be in concert with that God desires They are in concert with that, but they may be contrary to that So so why should Saints be doing this? Why should that be part of their job? So Paul in the following verses he's going to get some arguments.

He's going to say I I'm going to give you a couple arguments here why saints should be a superior judge in the church. And something you probably hadn't thought too much about, you probably didn't realize. He's going to make his case for why the believer or saints are superior judges for matters within the church.

So verse 2, Or do you not know that saints will judge the world? So that's his first argument, that saints are to judge the world. So the question is, what is he talking about right now? Saints, are we judging the world right now? And he's not talking about that. He's talking about a future time. Paul says to the Corinthians that they should know the following facts about being a judge. The saints will judge the world or nations.

So we see that actually, we see that in the Old Testament a little bit, and then we see it in Revelation. We see that saints, that in the millennial kingdom, when Christ returns, in power and great glory. We'll see that he talks about that in Daniel, in this verse in Daniel. He says, judgment was given to the saints of the Most High God and a time came when the saints possessed the kingdom.

So they're going to be the judges of the millennial kingdom. So that's a time period, that's not now. He's making his case, interesting, he's making his case on a future time period when saints will be judging the millennial kingdom, his world as he's set up when he returns again. And he's saying that's important in thinking about today's, they can be judges now. So he's counting upon basically our position, who we are in Christ, to be judges.

So the judgment, as I pointed out, will take place evidently when he comes, his second coming, when he returns again for the millennial kingdom. So he says if If the world is to be judged by you, so now he's going to make his point. If at a future time you're going to be a judge, then God's already placed you in a position of authority in the church. And it's assumed to be true. the world of nations will be judged by saints.

Based on these truths, the following should be true. He's saying that you are competent to constitute the smallest law court. He said if you're competent enough to judge the nations in the Millennial Kingdom, the nations in the Millennial Kingdom, there's going to be Jews, there will be Jews in the Millennial Kingdom, there's going to be Gentiles in the Millennial Kingdom. We're competent enough to judge those people then we're confident enough to judge the things in the smallest law court. And this word smallest law court is kind of interesting. Smallest matters. Matters of least weight or importance.

And actually if you read in the margin, many times in your Bible you'll see there'll be a little marginal entry. It'll give you the initial translation. They'll say, well you could translate it this way. So the marginal And the new American standard is to try the trivial cases. So you could render that, are you not competent to constitute, to try the trivial cases? So Kostelos says, once again, in light of the future millennial kingdom, I'm not sure I can pronounce that word exactly, any decisions that the believer must make in the church should be a relatively trivial thing. So if we're going to be judging nations that have been set up in the Millennial Kingdom, then we should have no problem with judging ones in the church.

So that's his first argument. His second argument is, do you not know we will judge angels? Now this is an interesting one. If you probably walk down the street, and maybe you ask Christians, and you say, Do you realize that you're going to be a judge of angels in a time to come? And they'll probably look at you kind of strange. First of all, they say, why did you even tell me that? I didn't want to know that.

But so he's this is part of his argument. He says you're going to judge angels. So let's think about that for a bit. And actually, we're going to find out that this verse is one of the I think this verse is the only verse in scripture that talks about that that I can see that there's one that intimates that but this is the clearest straightforward declaration of that in scripture.

The phrase, do you not know? Here's another technique that Paul uses. He says, it's like I'm saying, like I said to my grandkids. We've got five grandkids now. It's wonderful. They're all six and under. We had them all over yesterday. Don't you know this? Our oldest is called Cedar. Don't you know this, Cedar?

You shouldn't be doing that. Don't you know that, Paige? You shouldn't be doing that. We say that all the time. Don't you know that? What you're saying is you should know that, right? You should know that that's the case. So that's what Paul does. He says, do you not know? And it's in the perfect tense, which is the idea that something they knew in the past, and they continue to know it up into the present. So they knew it at some time in the past, And continue to know it.

I thought this was really interesting. This is something that Paul apparently had taught them. In his ministry there in Corinth. And he had to remind them of what he taught them. Which I thought was pretty interesting here. And here's one that Mike covered earlier. Do you not know? It's something they should know. That a little leaven leavens a whole lump of dough. That's something they should know.

We will judge angels. We saints are believers. So let's think about this. We will judge angels. To sit in judgment upon angels is how Weiss renders it. So this is to make his point even stronger. We're going to judge the nations and now we're going to judge angels.

So some facts about angels. Angels, if you look in scripture, they're the highest order of being under God. So that's a high sort of being. Angels are supernatural beings. They don't operate on our physical limitations. They are outside of that. But in spite of that, that's what makes that resume I gave at the beginning so important. In spite of that, the saints, the believers, are in a position in Christ of honor higher than the angels and will judge them. And once again, it's not now, we're not in a position now to judge angels, but at a future time, we will do that. And then one thing interesting, it says in scripture, this is kind of a mind-boggling thing, you think that if angels are the highest created being outside of God, then they would know everything.

Well, they don't understand. They don't understand how God is able to save sinful man. They haven't figured that out. so to speak. They desire to understand that. It says that in 1 Peter. Angels desire to look into the things of salvation. They kind of scratch their heads and say, how did God do that? Those people are sinners. They're awful people. And his son died for them?

And now they're going to judge us? It doesn't say that. That's me talking. But anyway, that's kind of the gist of it. Whoa. Okay. That's pretty cool stuff. How much more so he takes that how much more matters of this life. He's building his case We have these future times. We're going to be judging the world and angels how much more the matters of this life But we has it to say nothing of all of the judging the affairs of this life So that's pertained to this life. So using that same word I Talk and this time is translated the worries of this life this verse says be on guard so your hearts will not be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, so We should be able to judge the worries of this life as we trust in the Lord okay, so the action this last part is kind of sums up things and So, and actually so has been supplied, so if you have law courts dealing with the matters of life, so that's a statement.

We have law courts, and we do, we have our civil and judicial, all the different ones, state, local, whole works. And the Romans did too. Romans, in fact I was reading, the Romans and Greek loved to sue people. They just, that was their thing. And maybe that's why he was having a problem. They just, I mean you think, wow, it's only, some people besides us love to sue and they just did it all the time. Well, they did the same thing. That was kind of amazing. Okay.

So it's assumed to be true that you have law courts dealing with the matters of this life, the everyday matters of life. And Macaulay says a Roman judge presided over a minor court compared again to what the saints enjoy. So this comparison between the saints judging the world and angels versus the matters of this life. And then Constable says, Referring to the disputes and judicial procedures, the Christians should have used one another rather than the heathen court."

Okay, so now he says, do you appoint them as judges, these Roman judges or the world judges, who are no account to the church? So let's think, who are the no accounts? Okay. How do you appoint as judges such ones with little esteem by the church. That's probably a little bit better. How do you appoint a cause to sit as judges? They have little esteem.

So why do they have, why do these judges, you know, if you think about it, judges, and maybe this is the time for the expert witness thing, you know, judges go to school for a long time, you know, and so they're, you know, very well qualified, but does that qualify them In the body of Christ that qualify him in God's Church a church that he has put together So if you think about I was trying to think of a case you think about Like a person is well qualified a doctor Or whatever. Let's take a medical doctor.

We have Bob Eccles as our resident doctor here imagine if if there was a there was a lawsuit against Bob and Would he ask Courtney to come and be his expert witness? Courtney is in hydrology. He's an engineer in hydrology. Would he invite Courtney to come and judge him?

That probably wouldn't fit. Even though Courtney is well educated and knows his business, he wouldn't fit in the sphere of medicine. So that's part of the whole thing here. The whole thing is that people outside the body of Christ, even though they might be highly intelligent, do not necessarily understand the things of Christ. And that's his whole point here. A believer has a high calling in Christ, so he is well qualified. Judges of this world have a high position in the world system, but not in the church.

So that's his point about being little esteemed or of no account. Okay, so a final thought here. And I've been using constable quite a bit. So this is this is from from I think from Bruce, maybe FF Bruce. And he uses kind of an old old phraseology. So I don't know if you're old as I am, but I've heard the term before.

A church has come to a pretty pass when its members, believers, that they are more likely to get justice from unbelievers than from their own brothers. Let me read it again. A church has come to a pretty pass when its members believe that they are more likely to get justice from unbelievers than from their own brothers.

So that's kind of the case with my little story about J. Vernon McGee. That gentleman thought that he was going to get a better deal outside the church than he would in the church. Pretty sad situation. So next week we're going to continue on this. We're going to talk more about, are there cases? And there certainly are.

Capital punishment? I mean, crimes, do they have a place in the church for judging those? And the quick answer is no. Christ said, render to Caesar what is Caesar, render to God what is God. So it's a place for the believer in the world court, but it's in a different scenario and he's to be the best citizen and the best court person he can, if that makes sense.

Okay, let's close in prayer then. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you, Lord, for our time in your Word. Thank you for the blessings we have, Lord. Thank you for the marvelous truths we have about a future day when it seems incredible that we'll judge the world, the whole world seen in the Millennial Kingdom, and we'll actually judge angels, which seems like that seems incredible. But we realize it's nothing of ourselves, Lord. It's all that you've provided in your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.