Christ in Our Conflicts (1 Corinthians 6:1-11)

We are in the 6th chapter of 1 Corinthians. 1 Corinthians is a letter written by Paul to the church that was in Corinth. And in this letter Paul is addressing issues that this church was struggling with. In chapters 1-4 Paul addresses the issue of divisions in the church, remember, they were divided over different Christian leaders, and also in those chapters Paul also talked about the foolishness of valuing worldly wisdom as opposed to Godly wisdom . And last week we took a look at chapter 5 and what Paul had to say to the Corinthians about the church judging sin inside of the church.

Here In chapter 6 he is still on the topic of judgement, but in a different context. So we’re going to dig into chapter six, and what we’re doing here is looking for gold. I need, you need, to get some profit from our time together in God’s word. We want to know more of Christ and more of God in a way that richly blesses us and influences our lives and the way we live. With all that in mind let’s get into it. Paul is addressing lawsuits in the church, don’t take my word for it just look at the chapter starting in verse one.

“When one of you has a grievance against another, does he dare go to law before the unrighteous instead of the saints? Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases? Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more, then, matters pertaining to this life?”

Pause there, this is the issue that Paul is addressing here in these verses. The believers in Corinth, on top of all the other issues, were dragging each other before the pagan, unbelieving, godless Roman officials, Paul doesn’t even refer to them as officials, he just calls them “the unrighteous”. The same people who would soon start persecuting and killing Christians. Paul says you’re going to them first with your “grievances” instead of the saints? And he uses a very interesting argument against this, “do you not know that the saints are going to judge the world?”. “do you not know that we are to judge angels?”. What does that mean? Paul is saying that the saints, us believers, will play a role, under Christ, in judging the enemies of God, both fallen angels and humans, on the day of judgment. What will that look like exactly, we don’t know. Jesus briefly mentions it in Matthew 19 and John writes about it in Revelation chapter 3. But the point that Paul is making is that if the saints are going to one day participate in the final judgment of the world, are they not capable of judging these disputes among themselves without escalating it to the point of a lawsuit before pagans?

These aren’t criminal charges here, they were petty disputes. Paul calls them “trivial cases” in verse two. The Greek word that’s used there translates to smallest or least of importance.  (lawnmower lawsuits analogy). Verse 4,

“So if you have such cases, why do you lay them before those who have no standing in the church? I say this to your shame. Can it be that there is no one among you wise enough to settle a dispute between the brothers, but brother goes to law against brother, and that before unbelievers?”. 

For a group of people who thought they were pretty wise, remember chapter 3, yet there was no one among them who could settle these disputes? Really? Paul says, shameful. And he emphasizes two things here, the same two things that he emphasized in the first verse of this chapter. “brother goes to law against brother, and that before unbelievers?” It ought not to have been! Even in the world today, this type of behavior among siblings would be viewed as disgraceful. But these are Christians brothers! Bound by something much more than just DNA, the precious blood of Christ. And they’re squabbling over little disputes before unbelievers? Didn’t that undermine the message that they were to proclaim to their friends? Their families? Their neighbors? The gospel, the good news about Jesus Christ. That God through one man was reconciling all things to himself. Romans 5:1 says, “Therefore since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ”. Peace with God! but not with each other? How does that make sense? (public Christian infighting over little things) verse 7,

“To have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you. Why not suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded?”

How could he say that? Wouldn’t defeat be suffering wrong? Wouldn’t defeat look like being defrauded? What Jesus teaches us, is that often, what looks like loss, defeat, in the world’s eyes, is actually gain, victory, for the one who has faith in God. Think of the cross, Jesus Christ betrayed, beaten, mocked and killed. Didn’t that look like defeat to the world? What was actually the greatest victory ever accomplished. These lawsuits were a defeat for them, shouldn’t Christ suffering wrong on their behalf, Christ being defrauded for their sake, have made them willing to humble themselves, and take a small hit, instead of dragging a brother to court, before unbelievers, potentially undermining the churches testimony? Again, we’re not talking about criminal cases here. Paul is not saying that there is never a circumstance in which it’s acceptable to sue another Christian. Context is important, these were small issues, lawnmower lawsuits, that they should have been able to handle inside of the church. “But you yourselves wrong and defraud—even your own brothers!”. So he says not only are you unwilling to suffer a little bit of wrong, which they should’ve, having Christ as their example, the Corinthians were actually the ones committing the wrong and defrauding their own brothers, fellow Christians. And so in response to that he says,

“Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, no revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God”.

What’s Paul doing here? Well he’s doing a couple of things. Number one, I think that’s he’s warning those among the Corinthian church who were doing some of the wronging, and defrauding, which are sins, to watch out! Don’t be deceived. Because by their actions they may be proving that they are not truly Christians. The Bible talks about that. The “wheat and the tares”. Those in the church who are not actually a part of the church. Jesus says in Matthew 7 “by their fruits you shall know them”. By their actions, their lives. (I’ve been reading through first John). But Paul mentions a variety of sins here. He expands, and goes from wronging and defrauding, to sexual immorality, idolatry, adultery, homosexuality, and he goes on and all of this leads up to him yet again pointing them back to another spiritual reality. That they had been washed, cleansed from sin, they had been sanctified, set apart from the world and set apart for God, and that they had been justified! A legal term declared righteous before God and his law, because of Jesus and by the work of the Holy Spirit. He’s been doing this since the first verse of this chapter. He identifies the issue and then points them to a spiritual reality. You guys are going to the law before the “unrighteous” instead of the “saints”. Don’t you know that you are going to judge the world, but you can’t handle trivial cases? You're wronging and defrauding your own brother, don’t you know the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? And that’s how they were behaving, as the unrighteous. But Paul reminds them, you were unrighteous but you’ve been washed, you’ve been sanctified, you were justified! So act like it, and treat each other in light of it.

So we’ve been taking a look at how Paul addressed the issue of believers in Corinth taking  each other to unrighteous Roman officials, over petty legal disputes instead of the church, who should have been able to handle them in light of the gospel. He deconstructs that type of behavior by pointing them back to spiritual realities that are rooted in the gospel. (He’s been doing this the entire book) What about us? What’s the application here? Because of Jesus we can deal with conflicts with one another in love. Friends we will have disputes with one another, it will happen and it has happened. But Jesus changes how we deal with them. How can that not be so? Look again at verse 9 we can just use the same argument Paul used.

“Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you!”

Way of Grace! What happened? You were radically changed by the grace of God on account of Christ’s sacrifice. And because we’ve been so radically changed it should affect the way we deal with each other especially when it comes to conflicts. We should have a willingness to suffer wrong, we should have a willingness to be defrauded, we might not always be able to but we should be willing, especially if it would preserve our testimony, our profession of faith in Christ. Friends, this is foreign to us sinful humans. When we are wronged we want to wrong, when we feel defrauded, we want to defraud. How do you feel when somebody cuts you off while you’re driving? How do you feel when you’re disrespected? Probably the same way I feel. But brothers, we’ve been washed, we’ve been sanctified and justified and so now Christ helps us to deal with conflict differently. He is our perfect example. Tell me a man who was really wronged, who was really defrauded. Was it not Jesus himself? Jesus was wronged, for you! Jesus was defrauded, for you! We sing about this (because the sinless savior died). Because of Christ we can deal with conflicts in love, not just only looking to our own interests but considering the interests of others. But if you don’t know Jesus, if you have not repented of your sins and turned to him in faith then it doesn’t really matter how you deal with earthly conflict, you still have heavenly conflict, conflict with God. We just heard in these verses that there is coming a day when the saints will judge the world, those who rejected God and his offer of salvation. Can you imagine standing before Christ and his saints on the day of judgement about to be crushed by the weight of your sin like 10 million pound barbell, and you look up and see someone from this church standing as a witness against you? You will have no excuse. Turn to Christ, he can save you. Let’s pray.