Verse-by-Verse Bible Commentary
1 Corinthians 6:8

Clarke's Commentary

Verse 1 Corinthians 6:8. Nay, ye do wrong — Far from suffering, ye are the aggressors; and defraud your pious, long-suffering brethren, who submit to this wrong rather than take those methods of redressing their grievances which the spirit of Christianity forbids. Probably the apostle refers to him who had taken his father's wife.

Bridgeway Bible Commentary

Lawsuits before heathen judges (6:1-11)

If a dispute arises between believers, it should be settled within the church, not in a public court of law (6:1). If Christians are to share in the future judgment of the world, surely they can judge everyday affairs of the present life (2-3). The Corinthians boast of their wisdom, yet not one among them is wise enough to decide the matter. Instead they shame themselves by taking Christian problems to non-Christian people for a decision (4-6).
Christians should not have lawsuits at all. They should be willing to suffer ill-treatment, as Jesus taught, but at Corinth they attack and cheat each other (7-8). They behave like the sorts of people they were before they became Christians. God has declared them righteous and holy through Jesus Christ, and therefore they should be righteous and holy in their conduct (9-11).

Coffman's Commentaries on the Bible

Nay, but ye yourselves do wrong, and defraud, and that your brethren.

There were some in the Corinthian congregation who made a habit of defrauding their brethren, using sinful devices, procuring advantage by the instrumentality of the pagan system of justice. Such persons would have been those who were skilled in such lawsuits, or those who through some circumstance might have enjoyed preferment in such courts. In any case, some of the Christians were being defrauded by other members of the church.

Barnes' Notes on the Whole Bible

Nay, ye do wrong ... - Instead of enduring wrong patiently and cheerfully. they were themselves guilty oi injustice and fraud.

And that your brethren - Your fellow Christians. As if they had injured those of their own family - those to whom they ought to be attached by most tender ties. The offence in such cases is aggravated, not because it is in itself any worse to injure a Christian than another man, but because it shows a deeper depravity, when a man overcomes all the ties of kindness and love, and injures those who are near to him, than it does where no such ties exist. It is for this reason that parricide, infanticide, etc. are regarded everywhere as crimes of special atrocity, because a child or a parent must have severed all the tenderest cords of virtue before it could be done.

Living By Faith: Commentary on Romans & 1st Corinthians

6:7-8: Nay, already it is altogether a defect in you, that ye have lawsuits one with another. Why not rather take wrong? why not rather be defrauded? 8 Nay, but ye yourselves do wrong, and defraud, and that (your) brethren.

Christians suing each other is described as a “defect” (the KJV has “fault”). Defect (hettema) described a defeat in court. In other words, going to non-Christian judges and bringing a case against a fellow Christian was actually a defeat. No matter what the judge decided, the case was lost! Suing a Christian is a lose-lose proposition! Notice, too, the present tense (“is” a defect-this was happening again and again). Thayer (p. 281) says in this verse defect means the loss of salvation, though this conclusion seems too drastic (in 1 Corinthians 1:2 these Christians are still addressed as “the church of God”). Gingrich and Danker (p. 349) defined defect as “an utter loss.” In the Greek text the point is especially forceful. While it may be difficult to see in English translations, Paul began with an adverb (the English equivalent would be “already”), then used a conjunction (“indeed” would be the English equivalent), then used a second conjunction (the English equivalent would be “therefore”), and then inserted another adverb (“altogether” would be the English equivalent).

Instead of taking fellow Christians to court (7b), Paul proposed that brethren allow themselves to be wronged and even defrauded (this echoes the words of Jesus in Matthew 5:38-42). The word rendered “take wrong” (adieko) is used in Matthew 20:13 to describe wrongs between employees and their employers. Here take wrong means “to suffer one’s self to be wronged, take wrong” (Thayer, p. 12). In the Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament (1:31) the definition is “do wrong, commit injustice.” This is similar to Paul’s instructions in Romans 12:19-20. Since take wrong is a passive voice verb (the person described is the receiver of the action), and it is also in the present tense (continuous action), the point is very strong.

A basis for accepting wrong is found a little later in this letter (1 Corinthians 13:1-13). Today people need to hear what is said in 1 Corinthians 6:1-20 and 1 Corinthians 13:1-13. “Man’s preoccupation with his rights, which leads to his suing his neighbour and hating him and fighting him, is shattered by a love of his neighbour and his enemy” (Brown, 3:576). Christians should expect to face times when they are wronged; they choose to let God dispense justice on His timetable because it is the right and best thing to do (compare 1 Peter 2:19). Though Americans are often taught to insist on their rights, this is not God’s plan for Christians as they deal with others.

At the end of verse 7 Paul asked a second question: why did the Corinthians refuse to be “defrauded”? Defrauded, just as “take wrong,” is a passive voice verb (Christians were to accept losses and damages). It also in the present tense. The sense is: “Why didn’t the Corinthians allow wrongs against themselves again and again?” A definition for defraud is found below in the commentary for verse 8. Here we may simply say Paul used two different verbs to make his point in verse 7 and then repeated these same two verbs in the next verse. It may appear that Paul simply repeated himself, but there is a subtle difference. While the words for take wrong and defraud are the same in verses 7-8, Paul changed these two verbs to the active voice in verse 8 (i.e. Paul said the Corinthians were committing these sins). In verse 7 he said the Corinthians should allow themselves to suffer wrongs. In verse 8 he said these Christians were doing wrong and defrauding others. For other verses on accepting wrongs, see Romans 12:17; Romans 12:19; Colossians 3:13-14; 1 Peter 2:23.

There is a story (whether true or not I do not know) of a truck driver who stopped at an all-night restaurant in Broken Bow, Nebraska. The waitress had just finished serving the semi driver when three swaggering, leather-jacketed motorcyclists (rough and mouthy) entered the establishment. They rushed up to the trucker, perhaps hoping he would fight. One of the bikers grabbed the hamburger off his plate; another took a handful of his french fries; the third picked up his coffee and began to drink it. The trucker did not visibly respond to what was being done. He calmly rose from his seat, picked up his check, walked to the front of the diner, placed the check and his money on the cash register, and went to his rig. After putting the money into the register the waitress watched him leave. One of the cyclists said to her, “Well, he’s not much of a man, is he?” She replied, “I can’t answer as to that, but he’s not much of a truck driver. He just ran over the three motorcycles in the parking lot.” As people we are naturally inclined to take vengeance. We want our rights. When threatened or hurt, we want to retaliate. The Corinthians had these same desires and they often acted on them. Paul said these desires had to be overcome. For more information on love and how it is to prevent revenge, see the commentary on 1 Corinthians 13:5 (“love takes no account of evil”).

Paul’s conclusion about being defrauded and cheated does not mean Christians allow themselves to be abused. For an illustration, consider this scenario. A Christian family has a gathering in their home and many members of their local congregation attend. An injury occurs and the Christian hosts are held responsible for the accident. The insurance company determines that it will pay for the hospital bills resulting from the accident but nothing more. The injured party, who is a member of the church, wants compensation for his pain and suffering. He refuses arbitration by members of the church, chooses to sue the Christian family for pain and suffering, and the amount of the lawsuit is nearly equivalent to the Christian’s house and total possessions. Does turning the other cheek (Matthew 5:39) mean the Christian family who hosted the event must give up his house and goods to satisfy the covetous brother? No. Jesus once said we are not to “cast pearls before swine” (Matthew 7:6). He meant we have no obligation to share the good news of the gospel to those who show repeated contempt and hate for it. We are told to “turn away” from people in certain circumstances (Romans 16:17; 2 Timothy 3:5). These principles also apply to the subject matter in 1 Corinthians 6:1-20. In most cases we should choose to do exactly what 7b says because love is to conquer evil (Romans 12:20-21). There are other cases, however, where legal proceedings are not only right, they may actually be required. We must use common sense when we deal with Bible principles and this applies to the legal issues.

Verse 8 contains another key to understanding what was taking place at Corinth. Paul said these Christians were “defrauding” (apostereo) one another (in addition to being used in verse 7, this term is also found in 7:5). Here it is a present tense verb (on-going action). Thayer (p. 68) defined it as “to defraud; rob; despoil.” Gingrich and Danker (p. 99) understand the thought as: “you defraud (people), even your own brothers.” “To say then that the wronged man goes to law before wrongdoers is nothing else than to say that he desires to retaliate and wishes to do wrong to the second in return, which is likewise to do wrong also himself” (Brown, 3:380). This information further illustrates how the Corinthians were not after justice. They were in the habit of going to court for personal gain, even if this gain came through fraudulent or barely legal activities. This type of behavior, from members of the church, was appalling. Thus, Paul rightly shamed these brethren for their sin (verse 5). An excellent final comment is found in The Church’s Bible (p. 95): “But someone will say, ‘It is a terrible thing to suffer wrong and be maltreated.’ No, my friend, it is not terrible, not at all. How long will you be distressed about present things? God would not have commanded that if it were terrible. Consider this: the one who has committed injustice leaves the court with money but with a bad conscience, but the one who has suffered injustice, even if he is deprived of his money, has confidence before God, a possession more precious than countless treasures.”

Calvin's Commentary on the Bible

8.But ye do injury. Hence we see for what reason he has inveighed against them with so much bitterness — because there prevailed among them such a base desire of gain, that they did not even refrain from injuring one another. He premised a little before, with the view of exposing the magnitude of the evil, that those are not Christians who know not to endure injuries. There is, then, an amplification here, founded on a comparison: for if it is wrong not to bear injuries patiently, how much worse is it to inflict them?

And that your brethren Here is another aggravation of the evil; for if those are doubly culpable who defraud strangers, it is monstrous for brother to be cheated or despoiled by brother Now all of us are brethren that call upon one Father in heaven (Matthew 23:9.) At the same time, if any one acts an unprincipled part towards strangers, Paul does not palliate the crime; but he teaches that the Corinthians were utterly blinded in making sacred brotherhood a matter of no moment.

Smith's Bible Commentary

Chapter 6

Now Paul brings up another issue, and that was the taking of a brother before the pagan courts.

Dare any of you, having a matter against another, go to law before the unjust, and not before the saints? Do you not know that the saints shall judge the world? and if you are going to be judging the world, are you unworthy to judge in the smallest matters? ( 1 Corinthians 6:1-2 )

Now, there were those within the church of Corinth that were going to the pagan courts in Corinth with judgments against a brother within the church. And Paul is saying ideally your differences should be resolved within the church, by the church, for God has committed judgment to the church; the church will be judging the world.

Now, we know that Christ will be the one that judges the world, but we are one in Christ. And so in Him we will be participating in the judgment of the world. Now, if that awesome responsibility is to be placed upon the church in Christ, then surely we should be able to judge in these small matters that exist between brothers. And differences should be resolved, if possible, within the church.

Now Paul is not saying that, if necessary, that we should not take legal recourse. He is dealing, first of all, with a situation within the church itself. There are those that perhaps you have a legal problem with who are outside of the church and they would not submit to the authority of the church's decision. And thus, it is sometimes necessary to take legal recourse in order that you might obtain justice.

Paul himself, when he was getting the old political runaround before Festus, when Festus said, "Are you willing to go up to Jerusalem and face these charges?" And he'd already spent two years waiting for justice to be done there in the prison in Caesarea. And Paul realizing this is just one more little political go-round, and he said, "I appeal unto Caesar." And he exercised his right as a Roman citizen, made his appeal to Caesar.

So that Paul himself took a legal recourse to save himself further manipulating by the politicians. But as much as God has placed judgment within the church, we should be able to judge in the matters that deal with those within the church.

Know ye not that we shall judge angels? ( 1 Corinthians 6:3 )

Now, there are angels which did not keep their first estate. Who probably with Satan rebelled against the authority of God, for Revelation would indicate that as many as perhaps one third of the angels joined Satan's conspiracy against the authority of God. And Jude tells us that they are being reserved in chains awaiting the day of judgment.

Now again, Christ will be, no doubt, the one figure of judgment against the angels, but we are in Christ and we are associated with Christ. We are together with Him, joined with Him in the kingdom age as one with Him. And so we join in Him even in the judgment of angels.

Now, it doesn't mean that you're going to have a chance to say to your guardian angel, "Hey, where were you on the sixteenth of October when I ran into that guy? Why weren't you there to hold me back?"

But those angels which kept not their first principals are to be judged. They are awaiting the day of judgment in chains of darkness, awaiting the day of judgment. But if we're going to be judging in these spiritual issues,

how much more should we be able to judge in things that pertain to this life? If then you have judgment of things pertaining to this life, set those to judge who are least esteemed in the church ( 1 Corinthians 6:3-4 ).

You know, the least esteemed Christian is more capable of honest, true judgment than the smartest judge in the superior court, as far as able to render righteous judgment. Now, more and more as I read of some of the judgments coming out of the superior courts, I wonder concerning the competency to judge. I am alarmed; I'm shocked at how light a sentence or non-sentences some of those convicted of terrible crimes are receiving.

So the least esteemed. You see, the courts of the land know nothing of the laws of the Spirit. Paul was talking about the natural man does not know the things of the Spirit, or does not understand the things of the Spirit, neither can he know them; they are spiritually discerned. But he which is spiritual understands all things, though he is not understood by the world. So in dealing with issues within the church, especially issues that involve spiritual things, the least of the saints are more competent to judge than the wisest of the world. In the same token, you can learn more divine truth from an uneducated, simple, Spirit-filled believer, you can learn more spiritual truth from them than you can the wisest Ph.D. or Th.D. in the country who is not born again.

Scholarship has nothing to do with the understanding of things of the Spirit because the natural man cannot understand them, neither does he know them. And thus, they cannot be a guide to spiritual truth nor can they be competent to judge in spiritual matters. These issues should all be settled within the church. Paul said,

I'm speaking to your shame ( 1 Corinthians 6:5 ).

I'm hoping to shame you by your actions.

Is it so, that there is not a wise man among you? not one that shall be able to judge between his brethren? ( 1 Corinthians 6:5 )

Don't you have one person there who is wise enough to deal with these issues?

But a brother goes to law with a brother, and that before the pagans. Now therefore there is utterly a fault among you, because you go to law with one another. Why do you not rather take wrong? Why do you not rather allow yourselves to be defrauded? No, you do wrong, and you defraud, and that your own brethren ( 1 Corinthians 6:6-8 ).

Tragic, tragic that it hasn't stopped. There are still those who are within the church today who would defraud even their own brothers. It's a shame. And so Paul is speaking of the shameful condition. Now again, this does not at all dictate against going to court with a person who is not a brother; that is sometimes our only recourse. And it is not a prohibition, nor is it to my knowledge or understanding a prohibition of going to court with a brother if the brother is not willing to settle it within the church. You see, if he's unwilling to submit to the arbitration within the church, then you may have to take other recourse, but Paul said that's a shame. It would be better if you would just be defrauded. Allow it. If a man sues you to get your coat, give him your cloak also, Jesus said.

Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? ( 1 Corinthians 6:9 )

Now we're getting down to some very serious issues. Those who are going to inherit the kingdom of God. Paul declares, "Don't you realize that the unrighteous are not going to inherit the kingdom of God?

Don't be deceived: neither fornicators ( 1 Corinthians 6:9 ),

The word here in Greek is male prostitutes.

nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor the effeminate, nor [the homosexuals] the abusers of themselves with mankind [is the Greek word for homosexuals], nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revelers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God ( 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 ).

Paul, writing to the Galatians in chapter 5, declares, "For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh. And these are contrary one to the other so that you cannot do the things that you would. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh which are manifest are these: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft [which is in the Greek pharmachia, the use of drugs], hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revelings, and such like, of the which I've told you before, as I've also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God" ( Galatians 5:17-21 ).

Is that plain? Paul said don't be deceived. A lot of people are deceived into thinking that they can live however they please and still inherit the kingdom of God. Not so. And thus, these words should come as a searchlight to our own hearts. If I desire to inherit the kingdom of God, these things should be searching my own soul. For the unrighteous are not going to inherit the kingdom of God, neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, not abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.

And such were some of you: but you have been washed, but you are sanctified [that is, set apart for God's use], you are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God ( 1 Corinthians 6:11 ).

Though that may have been a part of your past life, that's where it should be, in the past life. If any man is in Christ, he is a new creation, and the old things are passed away. But what do I say if the old things are not passed away? Then obviously you're not a new creation. Don't be deceived. Do not be deceived in taking the grace of God as a cloak for lasciviousness, thinking, "Because the grace of God is covering my life, I can live as I please after the flesh."

There is a lot of clamor today, even within the church, to broaden the road to eternal life, to open the doors to all kinds of lifestyles, to a toleration of ungodly lifestyles within the family of God. For are we not all seeking the same goal? Are we not all walking the same path? For all roads lead to God. And that endeavor to broaden the road.

But let me remind you that Jesus said, "Strive to enter in at the straight gate, for straight is the gate and narrow is the way that leads to eternal life and few there be that find it. But broad is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction and many go in thereat. Beware then," He said, "of false prophets." Right after warning about these two gates. "Beware of false prophets, who will be there as wolves in sheep's clothing" ( Matthew 7:13-15 ). The false prophets who say, "Hey, it doesn't matter. God loves everybody. It doesn't matter how you live." Beware of false prophets. They may have reversed collars. They may be there in ministerial garb, but many of them are wolves in sheep's clothing. "But, Grandma, what a big mouth you have."

I get so totally upset with men who purport themselves to be ministers of Jesus Christ. They seem to love to take the title of Reverend. And do you know that in a suit filed against President Reagan by the ACLU, that they have several ministers from the Southern California area here who have joined in the suit against President Reagan for declaring 1983 as the Year of the Bible? And they have filed a civil suit against the President, several ministers. They must be ministers because they have Reverends in front of their names. Hey, they are wolves in sheep's clothing. They're disguising themselves as servants of Christ, but as Satan is able to transform himself into an angel of light in order to deceive, so are his ministers.

And these are servants of Satan disguised as ministers of Jesus Christ, and they are working to destroy the body of Christ and the church. The communists have planted many men in places of position in some of the major denominations across the United States. The World Counsel of Churches is close to a communist front organization and espouses almost every communist cause and supports every crooked thing going. I could get carried away with this. I'll tell you, I would not give one dime to any church that is a part of the World Counsel of Churches or the National Counsel of Churches. When they support the guerrillas that are killing the missionaries in Zimbabwe and the little children over there, when these militant groups are supported by the World Counsel of Churches. Your money would be used when they support PLO, when they support Angela Davis.

Some of you were such, but thank God we've been washed. Washed, first of all, then sanctified, then justified. Oh, that glorious work of God in my heart through Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. I have been changed. I no longer am what I was. My life has been changed through the power of the Holy Spirit and faith in Jesus Christ. And it is a new life and the old things have passed away and all things are become new. Now,

All things are lawful unto me ( 1 Corinthians 6:12 ),

That is a very, very broad statement. It is as about as broad an ethic as any man could ever express. The Epicurean philosophy came close to it; they said, "All things are lawful for me if they bring me pleasure." It doesn't matter what it is, as long as it brings me pleasure it's all right to do. So you talk to them about some horrible thing you did, "Well, did you enjoy it?" "Oh, yes." "Well, it's all right as long as it brought you pleasure."

Paul said,

All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient ( 1 Corinthians 6:12 ):

Again, as a child of God I'm a goal-oriented person. My goal is to be found in Him, not having my own righteousness which is by the law, but the righteousness which is of Christ through faith. My goal, one day I'm going to stand before Jesus Christ, and you are going to stand before Him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ to receive for the things that we have done while we are in these bodies, to receive the rewards for our faithfulness for our stewardship in our lives, what I have done for the Lord. Because I have only one life and it soon will be past, and only what I do for Jesus Christ is going to last.

And I'm going to stand before Him to receive the things done in my body. My works will be judged by fire, what sort they were. And my goal is that when I stand before Jesus in that day of judgment, He will look upon me and say, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant. You've been faithful in a few things, now enter into the joy of the Lord. I'll make you ruler over Kauai. Have thou rule over five cities, or ten cities, or whatever." I don't care what I've done in life, what I've accomplished, what I've gained for myself, none of that will matter when I stand before Jesus. At that point, to receive His words of approval and commendation are all important. That's what I'm living for; that's what I'm looking towards.

Now, there are things that I can do that would be all right. They're not going to damn me. I am saved because of my trust and faith in Jesus Christ. But there are things that I could get caught up in, very easily caught up in them, that would impede my progress towards my goal, that would rob my time and my energies so that I would not have time or energy to do the work of the Lord or the things for the Lord. I could become so involved, oh they're perfectly all right, there's nothing wrong with it. But yet, it takes me away from my primary goal. It's an impediment in my movement towards my desired end. And thus, though it is lawful, though it is all right, I don't do it because it's not expedient. It doesn't expedite my journey towards my goal.

So it is important as a Christian that I learn to prioritize my life lest I get caught up and I'm spending an inordinate amount of time in nonessentials. Because that's a very easy trap for people to fall in, where you get so involved in things that really don't count eternally. And you can spend months in these projects and then watch the whole thing go down the tube. And then, "Hey, what have you been doing for the last six months?" "Nothing, it all blew up last week." Six months of labor.

Yet, Paul tells us at the end of the epistle, "Know this, that your labor for the Lord is never in vain." One day we're going to stand before the judgment seat of Christ. Oh, to hear Him say, "Good job, well done. Enter into the joy of the Lord."

all things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any ( 1 Corinthians 6:12 ).

Only a Christian knows what it is to be free. The man who is living in sin is not free at all. Paul, writing to Timothy, said, "That we might take them from the captivity of the enemy who has taken them captives against their will" ( 2 Timothy 2:26 ). Paul writes, "That the god of this world has blinded their eyes that they cannot see the truth." So he's holding them captive against their will, blinding their eyes, and you can't say he's really free.

Don't tell me that fellow snorting coke every weekend is free. Don't tell me the alcoholic is free. Or a person who is bound by any kind of a habit, "Oh I've just got to go out, man. I gotta have it," you know. That's not freedom; that's bondage. Only the child of God knows what it is to be free. I appreciate my freedom. I love my freedom.

You see, it isn't really the freedom to do those things that's so exciting to me, it's the freedom not to have to do them. That's the kind of freedom I enjoy. I have the freedom not to have to do them. I don't have to do those things to get kicks. I don't have to do those things to feel a sense of well being or get excitement, or whatever else. Thank God I don't have to do them. I'm free.

Now, being free, it is possible to exercise that freedom in such a way as to bring myself into bondage. Being free to drink if I so desire. By the exercising of that freedom, if I drink to the point that my mind is now influenced by the alcohol that I've ingested into my system, that my judgment is now fuzzy or impaired that I am no longer able to think clearly, then I am not free; I am under the power or the influence of the alcohol that is numbing a part of my brain cells. Free to snort coke. But what I am doing is putting an insulator between the synapse gaps so that in my thinking now I can't make those connections, the synapse gap doesn't snap across. And though it may prolong a pleasurable sensation, I cannot make the proper connection in the synapse gaps. And thus, I don't think rationally and I can get addicted where I have to have it, and then I am not free. I've been brought under the power of it.

So it is foolish to exercise your freedom in such a way as to bring you into bondage, because you're no longer free. And some people have unwisely exercised their freedom in such a way as to bring themselves into bondage. So, though all things are lawful for me, I will not be brought under the power of any, because of my love for freedom that I have received through the power of Jesus Christ, that glorious freedom not to do those things that are destructive.

Meats are for the belly, and the belly for meats ( 1 Corinthians 6:13 ):

That's a part of the body itself. So if I eat meat, it doesn't matter. That's not the issue that's being dealt with. The meat that I eat is going to be destroyed.

God will destroy both it and them. But the body is not for fornication ( 1 Corinthians 6:13 ),

God didn't give you this beautiful instrument, God didn't place that strong sex drive in you, nor the pleasurable delight that you might use the body for fornication.

Your body is not for fornication, but it is for the Lord; and the Lord is for the body. And God hath both raised up the Lord, and will also raise up us by his own power ( 1 Corinthians 6:13-14 ).

Now, I'm to have a new body. Even as God raised up Jesus Christ, so He's going to raise me up. And my body is not for living after the flesh or after the things of the flesh, after fornication. It isn't just to satisfy the desires of my body that I live in this body. But it becomes a beautiful, delicate instrument in the hands of God to do His will and to do His work.

Know you not that your bodies are the members of Christ? shall I then take the members of Christ [or the instruments of Christ], and make them members of a harlot [or a prostitute]? God forbid. Don't you realize that he which is joined to a prostitute is one body with her? for the scripture says the two shall become one ( 1 Corinthians 6:15-16 ).

Through the act of intercourse the two become one. Now, your body is a member of Christ, or an instrument of Jesus Christ. And if you use your body for fornication or to be joined with a prostitute, you are actually joining Christ together, if such could be the case, with that relationship.

But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit ( 1 Corinthians 6:17 ).

We are joined to Jesus Christ, one spirit with Him, and thus, we are not to take our bodies and use them in an animalistic way.

Flee fornication ( 1 Corinthians 6:18 ).

Paul, writing to Timothy, said, "Flee youthful lust. Run from them, Timothy."

Oh, God help us to run from temptation, to be like Joseph who, when Potiphar's wife grabbed hold of him and said, "You're going to go to bed with me," wriggled loose and ran naked out of the house rather than to succumb to her charms. God help us to flee fornication.

Every sin that a man does is without the body; but he that commits fornication sins against his own body ( 1 Corinthians 6:18 ).

Most of the rest of the sins are done without the body, outside of the body. But fornication is a sin done against your own body.

What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which you have of God, and you are not your own? ( 1 Corinthians 6:19 )

"Don't you realize this?" Paul said. Your body is the temple, and again, this is the Greek word naos, which is the Holy of Holies. It's the dwelling place of God. It's a place of divine activity. It's not the hieron, the whole temple precinct. It's the naos, the inner sanctuary. Your body is the inner sanctuary of the Holy Spirit, which you have of God. You are not your own.

For you have been bought with a price ( 1 Corinthians 6:20 ):

That's what redemption is all about. You see, I was a slave to sin. I was a slave to my own flesh. I did those things because I was bound by my flesh. But Jesus Christ set me free, free so that I don't have to do those things anymore. And my body, which I once abused, I now offer to Him as the instrument through which He might work, the temple in which He might dwell. And thus, it becomes a holy place, a sanctuary.

For you see, Jesus redeemed me. He paid the price. He purchased me from my slavery to sin in order that I now might be His servant. But as His servant, I must obey Him. I've been bought with a price. I belong not to me. He didn't redeem me so that I could be my own man. He redeemed me so that I would belong to Him. I've been bought with a price; I am not my own to do with as I please. My life now belongs to Him to do as He pleases.

therefore we are to glorify God both in our bodies, and our spirits, which are his ( 1 Corinthians 6:20 ).

Again, "If any man defiles the temple of God, him will God destroy" ( 1 Corinthians 3:17 ), Paul said. We need to respect our bodies. They are marvelous instruments created by God.

I was reading the other day that your brain in one day makes more connections than all of the telephone systems in the entire world. No wonder you're tired at night. The operator up there is putting all these lines together, all day long. More connections are made in your brain in a single day than in all of the telephone systems of the world.

As David said, "We are fearfully and wonderfully made." A beautiful instrument, my body, given to me by God that it might be the medium of expression for my spirit. That it might become the medium of expression for God. That God might express Himself through my body, and that's the divine ideal. God revealing Himself through you, through your body, as His instrument, revealing His love, revealing His work, revealing His plan.

And so we need to hold our bodies as instruments of God and respect them as such and not do that which would destroy or harm the temple of God. Oh yes, it may be lawful. You may be able to prove that it's all right, but that's not the question. Is it expedient? Does it bring you under its power? Does it build you up or tear you down?

Father, we thank You for Thy Word. May it be like a light shining in the dark recesses of our lives, illuminating, bringing to light those hidden things. That if there be in us, oh God, a wicked heart, an evil desire, a covetousness, an envy, bitterness, that these things, oh Lord, might be exposed by the light of Your Word and brought unto the cross and placed there. That we might renounce those hidden works of darkness and walk in the light as He is in the light. Knowing this beautiful union and fellowship with Him as our lives are being cleansed by the blood of Jesus Christ. Thank You, Lord, for Thy Word and for the privilege of fellowshipping together with your children. Thank You, Lord, for making us one together, to share in Thy kingdom and in the joy of Your kingdom forever. Bless us now. Help us now. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

May the blessing of the Lord rest upon your life and may you be enriched in all things in Christ Jesus as you grow in grace and in knowledge of His love and of His way and of His goodness. And may your body become truly an instrument through which God works as He seeks to reveal Himself to a lost world. God bless you and strengthen you in your walk with Him and give you discernment and help you in using your time well as you redeem the time in this present evil age. In Jesus' name. "

Contending for the Faith

Nay, ye do wrong, and defraud, and that your brethren.

Paul uses the same words "wrong" and "defraud," as in the previous verse, to emphasize the Corinthians’ unChristlike attitude. Paul is explaining how the Corinthians’ spirituality has deteriorated rapidly. "Do they allow themselves to be wronged?" Paul says, "Nay," (alla) or "contrariwise" (Strong #235). Instead of being like Christ and suffering wrongs done to them, the one who has been wronged turns around and wrongs and defrauds another brother. Obviously this sin was characteristic of the church in Corinth.

Dr. Constable's Expository Notes

2. Litigation in the church 6:1-11

The apostle continued to deal with the general subject of discipline in the church that he began in 1 Corinthians 5:1. He proceeded to point out some other glaring instances of inconsistency that had their roots in the Corinthians’ lax view of sin. Rather than looking to unsaved judges to solve their internal conflicts, they should have exercised discipline among themselves in these cases. Gallio had refused to get involved in Jewish controversies in Corinth and had told the Jews to deal with these matters themselves (Acts 18:14-16). Paul now counseled a similar approach for the Christians.

"In this section Paul is dealing with a problem which specially affected the Greeks. The Jews did not ordinarily go to law in the public law-courts at all; they settled things before the elders of the village or the elders of the Synagogue; to them justice was far more a thing to be settled in a family spirit than in a legal spirit. . . . The Greeks were in fact famous, or notorious, for their love of going to law." [Note: Barclay, The Letters . . ., pp. 55, 56.]

"Roman society was notoriously litigious, and Corinth, with its rising class of nouveau riche, was even more so." [Note: Keener, p. 52.]

". . . the congregation’s root problem lies in its lack of theological depth. It shames itself by not understanding itself as an eschatological community (’Do you not know that we are to judge angels?’) and as a community redeemed by Christ." [Note: Cousar, "The Theological . . .," pp. 98-99.]

"Paul has not finished with the theme of church discipline in regard to sexual life; see vi. 12 and chapter vii; but in 1 Corinthians 6:12 f. he had spoken of judgement [sic], and this brings to his mind another feature of Corinthian life of which he had heard . . ." [Note: Barrett, p. 134.]

Dr. Constable's Expository Notes

Paul’s judgment in the matter 6:7-11

The apostle now addressed the two men involved in the lawsuit but wrote with the whole church in view.

Dr. Constable's Expository Notes

An even more shocking condition was that some of the Christians in Corinth were more than the victims of wrong and fraud. They were the perpetrators of these things (cf. Matthew 5:39-41).

Barclay's Daily Study Bible

Chapter 6

THE FOLLY OF THE LAW COURTS ( 1 Corinthians 6:1-8 )

6:1-8 When any of you has a ground of complaint against his fellow, does he dare to go to law before unrighteous men, and not before God's dedicated people? Are you not aware that God's dedicated people will one day judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you unfit to deal with the smallest matters of judgment? Are you not aware that we will judge angels--let alone things which have to do with ordinary everyday life? If then you have questions of judgment which have to do with ordinary everyday life, put those who are of no consequence in the eyes of the Church in charge of them. It is to shame you that I speak. Do you go on like this because there is not a wise man among you who will be able to arbitrate between one brother and another? Must brother really go to law with brother, and that before unbelievers? If it comes to that there is a grave defect among you that you have court cases with each other at all. Why not rather submit to injury? Why not rather submit to being deprived of something? But you injure others and you deprive others of things--and brothers at that!

Paul is dealing with a problem which specially affected the Greeks. The Jews did not ordinarily go to law in the public law courts at all; they settled things before the elders of the village or the elders of the synagogue; to them justice was far more a thing to be settled in a family spirit than in a legal spirit. In fact the Jewish law expressly forbade a Jew to go to law at all in a non-Jewish court; to do so was considered blasphemy against the divine law of God. It was far otherwise with the Greeks; they were characteristically a litigious people. The law courts were one of their chief entertainments.

When we study the details of Athenian law we see what a major part the law courts played in the life of any Athenian citizen; and the situation in Corinth would not be so very different. If there was a dispute in Athens, the first attempt to settle it was by private arbitrator. In that event one arbitrator was chosen by each party, and a third was chosen by agreement between both parties to be an impartial judge. If that failed to settle the matter, there was a court known as The Forty. The Forty referred the matter to a public arbitrator and the public arbitrators consisted of all Athenian citizens in their sixtieth year; and any man chosen as an arbitrator had to act whether he liked it or not under penalty of disfranchisement. If the matter was still not settled, it had to be referred to a jury court which consisted of 201 citizens for cases involving less than about 50 British pounds and 401 citizens for cases involving more than that figure. There were indeed cases when juries could be as large as anything from 1,000 to 6,000 citizens. Juries were composed of Athenian citizens over 30 years of age. They were actually paid 3 obols a day for acting as jurymen, 1 obol being worth about 1/2 pence. The citizens entitled to act as jurymen assembled in the mornings and were allocated by lot to the cases on trial.

It is plain to see that in a Greek city every man was more or less a lawyer and spent a very great part of his time either deciding or listening to law cases. The Greeks were in fact famous, or notorious, for their love of going to law. Not unnaturally, certain of the Greeks had brought their litigious tendencies into the Christian Church; and Paul was shocked. His Jewish background made the whole thing seem revolting to him; and his Christian principles made it even more so. "How," he demanded, "can anyone follow the paradoxical course of looking for justice in the presence of the unjust?"

What made the matter still more fantastic to Paul was that, in the picture of the golden age to come, the Messiah was to judge the nations and the saints were to share in that judgment. The Book of Wisdom says, "They shall judge the nations and have dominion over the people" ( Wis_3:8 ). The Book of Enoch says, "I will bring forth those who have loved my name clad in shining light, and I will set each on the throne of his honour" (Wis 108:12). So Paul demands, "If some day you are going to judge the world, if even the angels, the highest created beings, are going to be subject to your judgment, how, in the name of all that is reasonable, can you go and submit your cases to men and to heathen men at that?" "If you must do it," he says, "do it inside the Church, and give the task of judging to the people of whom you think least, for no man who is destined to judge the world could possibly be bothered getting himself involved in petty everyday squabbles."

Then suddenly Paul seizes on the great essential principle. To go to law at all, and especially to go to law with a brother, is to fall far below the Christian standard of behaviour. Long ago Plato had laid it down that the good man will always choose to suffer wrong rather than to do wrong. If the Christian has even the remotest tinge of the love of Christ within his heart, he will rather suffer insult and loss and injury than try to inflict them on someone else--still more so, if that person is a brother. To take vengeance is always an unchristian thing. A Christian does not order his dealings with others by the desire for recompense and the principles of crude justice. He orders them by the spirit of love; and the spirit of love will insist that he live at peace with his brother, and will forbid him to demean himself by going to law.

SUCH WERE SOME OF YOU ( 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 )

6:9-11 Are you not aware that the unrighteous will not inherit the Kingdom of God? Make no mistake--neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor sensualists, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor rapacious men, nor drunkards, nor slanderers, nor robbers shall inherit the Kingdom of God--and such were some of you. But you have been washed; you have been consecrated; you have been put into a right relationship with God through the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and through the Spirit of our God.

Paul breaks out into a terrible catalogue of sins that is a grim commentary on the debauched civilization in which the Corinthian Church was growing up. There are certain things which are not pleasant to talk about, but we must look at this catalogue to understand the environment of the early Christian Church; and to see that human nature has not changed very much.

There were fornicators and adulterers. We have already seen that sexual laxity was part of the background of heathen life and that the virtue of chastity was well-nigh unknown. The word used for fornicators is specially unpleasant; it means a male prostitute. It must have been hard to be a Christian in the tainted atmosphere of Corinth.

There were idolaters. The greatest building in Corinth was the Temple of Aphrodite, the goddess of love, where idolatry and immorality flourished side by side. Idolatry is a grim example of what happens when we try to make religion easier. An idol did not begin by being a god; it began by being a symbol of a god; its function was to make the worship of the god easier by providing some object in which his presence was localized. But very soon men began to worship not the god behind the idol but the idol itself. It is one of the chronic dangers of life that men will come to worship the symbol rather than the reality behind it.

There were sensualists. The word (malakos, G3120) literally means those who are soft and effeminate, those who have lost their manhood and live for the luxuries of recondite pleasures. It describes what we can only call a kind of wallowing in luxury in which a man has lost all resistance to pleasure. When Ulysses and his sailors came to the island of Circe they came to the land where the lotus flower grew. He who ate of that flower forgot his home and his loved ones and wished to live forever in that land where "it was always afternoon." He had no more any of the stern joy that comes from "climbing up the climbing wave." The sensualist desires this life in which it is always afternoon.

There were thieves and robbers. The ancient world was cursed with them. Houses were easy to break into. The robbers particularly haunted two places--the public baths and the public gymnasia where they stole the clothes of those who were washing or exercising themselves. It was common to kidnap slaves who had special gifts. The state of the law shows how serious this problem was. There were three kinds of theft punishable by death: (1) Theft to the value of more than 50 drachmae, that is, about 2 British pounds. (ii) Theft from the baths, the gymnasia and the ports and harbours to the value of 10 drachmae, that is about 40 pence. (iii) Theft of anything by night. The Christians lived in the middle of a pilfering population.

There were drunkards. The word used comes from a word (methos, compare G3178) which signifies uncontrolled drinking. Even little children in ancient Greece drank wine; the name for breakfast is akratisma and it consisted of bread dipped in wine. The universality of wine drinking was of course due to the inadequate water-supplies. But normally the Greeks were sober people, for their drink was three parts of wine mixed with two of water. But in luxury-loving Corinth uncontrolled drunkenness abounded.

There were rapacious men and robbers. Both words are interesting. The word used for rapacious is pleonektes ( G4123) . It describes, as the Greeks defined it, "the spirit which is always reaching after more and grabbing that to which it has no right." It is aggressive getting. It is not the miser's spirit, for it aimed to get in order to spend, so that it could live in more luxury and greater pleasure; and it cared not over whom it took advantage so long as it could get. The word translated "robbers" is harpax ( G727) . It means grasping. It is interesting to note that it is used for a certain kind of wolf and also for the grappling irons by which ships were boarded in naval battles. It is the spirit which grasps that to which it has no right with a kind of savage ferocity.

We have left the most unnatural sin to the end--there were homosexuals. This sin had swept like a cancer through Greek life and from Greece, invaded Rome. We can scarcely realize how riddled the ancient world was with it. Even so great a man as Socrates practised it; Plato's dialogue The Symposium is always said to be one of the greatest works on love in the world, but its subject is not natural but unnatural love. Fourteen out of the first fifteen Roman Emperors practised unnatural vice. At this very time Nero was emperor. He had taken a boy called Sporus and had him castrated. He then married him with a full marriage ceremony and took him home in procession to his palace and lived with him as wife. With an incredible viciousness, Nero had himself married a man called Pythagoras and called him his husband. When Nero was eliminated and Otho came to the throne one of the first things he did was to take possession of Sporus. Much later, the Emperor Hadrian's name was associated with a Bithynian youth called Antinous. He lived with him inseparably, arid, when he died, he deified him and covered the world with his statues and immortalised his sin by calling a star after him. In this particular vice, in the time of the Early Church, the world was lost to shame; and there can be little doubt that this was one of the main causes of its degeneracy and the final collapse of its civilization.

After this dreadful catalogue of vices, natural and unnatural, comes Paul's shout of triumph "and such were some of you." The proof of Christianity lay in its power. It could take the dregs of humanity and make them into men. It could take men lost to shame and make them sons of God. There were in Corinth, and all over the world, men who were living proofs of the re-creating power of Christ.

The power of Christ is still the same. No man can change himself, but Christ can change him. There is the most amazing contrast between the pagan and the Christian literature of the day. Seneca, a contemporary of Paul, cries out that what men want is "a hand let down to lift them up." "Men," he declared, "are overwhelmingly conscious of their weakness in necessary things." "Men love their vices," he said with a kind of despair, "and hate them at one and the same time." He called himself a homo non tolerabilis, a man not to be tolerated. Into this world, conscious of a tide of decadence that nothing could stop, there came the radiant power of Christianity, which was triumphantly able to make all things new.

BOUGHT WITH A PRICE ( 1 Corinthians 6:12-20 )

6:12-20 True, all things are allowed to me; but all things are not good for me. All things are allowed to me, but I will not allow any thing to get control of me. Foods were made for the stomach and the stomach was made for foods; but God will obliterate both it and them. The body is not made for fornication but for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body. God raised up the Lord, and by his power he will raise us too. Are you not aware that your bodies are the limbs of Christ? Am I then to take away the limbs which belong to Christ and make them the limbs which belong to a harlot? Or, are you not aware that he who has intercourse with a harlot is one body with her? For these two, it says, will become one flesh. But he who unites himself to the Lord is of one spirit with him. Strenuously avoid fornication at all times. Every sin which a man may commit is external to his body; but the man who commits fornication sins against his own body. Or, are you not aware that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is within you, the Spirit which you have received from God? So you are not your own, for you have been bought with a price. So then glorify God with your body.

In this passage Paul is up against a whole series of problems. It ends with the summons, "Glorify God with your body." This is Paul's battle cry here.

The Greeks always looked down on the body. There was a proverbial saying, "The body is a tomb." Epictetus said, "I am a poor soul shackled to a corpse." The important thing was the soul, the spirit of a man; the body was a thing that did not matter. That produced one of two attitudes. Either it issued in the most rigorous asceticism in which everything was done to subject and humiliate the desires and instincts of the body. Or--and in Corinth it was this second outlook which was prevalent--it was taken to mean that, since the body was of no importance, you could do what you liked with it; you could let it sate its appetites. What complicated this was the doctrine of Christian freedom which Paul preached. If the Christian man is the freest of all men, then is he not free to do what he likes, especially with this completely unimportant body of his?

So, the Corinthians argued, in a way that they thought very enlightened, let the body have its way. But what is the body's way? The stomach was made for food and food for the stomach, they went on. Food and the stomach naturally and inevitably go together. In precisely the same way the body is made for its instincts; it is made for the sexual act and the sexual act is made for it; therefore let the desires of the body have their way.

Paul's answer is clear. Stomach and food are passing things; the day will come when they will both pass away. But the body, the personality, the man as a whole will not pass away; he is made for union with Christ in this world and still closer union hereafter. What then happens if he commits fornication? He gives his body to a harlot, for scripture says that intercourse makes two people into one united body ( Genesis 2:24). That is to say, a body which rightly belongs to Christ has been prostituted to someone else.

Remember that Paul is not writing a systematic treatise; he is preaching, pleading with a heart on fire and a tongue that will use whatever arguments it can find. He says that of all sins fornication is the one that affects a man's body and insults it. That is not strictly true--drunkenness might do the same. But Paul is not writing in order to satisfy an examiner in logic, but in order to save the Corinthians in body and in soul; and so he pleads that other sins are external to a man, but in this he sins against his own body, which is destined for union with Christ.

Then he makes one last appeal. Just because God's Spirit dwells in us we have become a temple of God; and so our very bodies are sacred. And more--Christ died to save not a bit of a man, but the whole man, body and soul. Christ gave his life to give a man a redeemed soul and a pure body. Because of that a man's body is not his own to do with as he likes; it is Christ's and he must use it, not for the satisfaction of his own lusts, but for the glory of Christ.

There are two great thoughts here.

(i) It is Paul's insistence that, though he is free to do anything, he will let nothing master him. The great fact of the Christian faith is, not that it makes a man free to sin, but that it makes a man free not to sin. It is so easy to allow habits to master us; but the Christian strength enables us to master them. When a man really experiences the Christian power, he becomes, not the slave of his body, but its master. Often a man says, "I will do what I like," when he means that he will indulge the habit or passion which has him in its grip; it is only when a man has the strength of Christ in him that he can really say, "I will do what I like," and not, "I will satisfy the things that have me in their power."

(ii) It is Paul's insistence that we are not our own. There is no such thing in this world as a self-made man. The Christian is a man who thinks not of his rights but of his debts. He can never do what he likes, because he never belongs to himself; he must always do what Christ likes, because Christ bought him at the cost of his life.

In the section of our letter which stretches from the beginning of 1 Corinthians 7:1-40 to the end of 1 Corinthians 15:1-58, Paul sets himself to deal with a set of problems concerning which the Corinthian Church had written to him, asking advice. He begins the section by saying, "With regard to what you wrote to me about...." In modern language, we might say, "With reference to your letter...." We shall outline each problem as we come to it. 1 Corinthians 7:1-40 deals with a whole series of problems regarding marriage. Here is a summary of the areas in which the Corinthian Church sought and obtained advice from Paul.

1 Corinthians 7:1-2: Advice to those who think that Christians

should not marry at all.

1 Corinthians 7:3-7: Advice to those who urge that even those who

are married should abstain from all sexual relations

with each other.

1 Corinthians 7:8-9: Advice to the unmarried and to widows.

1 Corinthians 7:10-11: Advice to those who think that married

people should separate.

1 Corinthians 7:12-17: Advice to those who think that, if the

marriage is one in which one of the partners is a

Christian and one a pagan, it should be broken up

and dissolved.

1 Corinthians 7:18; 1 Corinthians 7:24: Instruction to live the Christian life in

whatever state they happen to be.

1 Corinthians 7:25: Advice regarding virgins.

1 Corinthians 7:36-38: Advice regarding virgins.

1 Corinthians 7:26-35: Exhortation that nothing should interfere

with concentration upon serving Christ because the

time is short and he will very soon come again.

1 Corinthians 7:38-40: Advice to those who wish to remarry.

We must study this chapter with two facts firmly in our minds. (i) Paul is writing to Corinth which was the most immoral town in the world. Living in an environment like that, it was far better to be too strict than to be too lax. (ii) The thing which dominates every answer Paul gives is the conviction that the Second Coming of Christ was about to happen almost immediately. This expectation was not realized; but Paul was convinced that he was giving advice for a purely temporary situation. We can be quite certain that in many cases his advice would have been quite different if he had visualized a permanent, instead of a temporary, situation. Now let us turn to the chapter in detail.

-Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)

Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible

Nay, you do wrong and defraud,.... So far were they from taking and acting up to the advice given, that instead of taking wrong, they did wrong; and instead of suffering themselves to be defrauded, they defrauded others:

and that your brethren; that were of the same faith, of the same religion, and in the same church and family: in short, neither party, not the plaintiff, nor the defendant, sought anything more or less than to wrong, trick, and defraud each other; such a sad corruption and degeneracy prevailed among them: hence the apostle thought to deal plainly and closely with them, as in the following verses.

Light of Israel Bible Commentary

COMPLETELY DEFEATED

The very fact that you have lawsuits among you means you have been completely defeated already. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated? 1 Corinthians 6:7

Lawsuits among Christians were a sure sign that they had already suffered defeat. They had already transgressed the simple teaching of the Lord Jesus. The Lord says in Matthew

"But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles" (Matthew 5:39-41). In other words, go ahead and give the person the shirt off your back (and your coat too). We are commanded not just to resist evil but to overcome it (Romans 12:21).

The Corinthians failed at this. The Greek word used here is hēttēma and it means defeat, loss, and moral failure.<footnote>Smith, 1 Corinthians, The Bible Knowledge Word Study, p. 245.</footnote> Their case was already lost. The reformer Calvin says, "I acknowledge, then, that a Christian man is altogether prohibited from revenge, so that he must not exercise it, either by himself, or by means of the magistrate, nor even desire it…it is rare to find a single instance of an upright litigant."<footnote>Calvin, Commentary on 1 Corinthians, Calvin's Commentary on the Bible, v. 6:7.</footnote>

In the days of the early church fathers, they seemed to have taken seriously Jesus' commands concerning this. Tertullian (c. 200) said, "Men of old were used to requiring 'eye for eye, and tooth for tooth' and to repay evil for evil…But after Christ has supervened and has united the grace of faith with patience, now it is no longer lawful to attack others even with words, nor to merely say 'fool,' without danger of the judgment…Christ says, 'Love your enemies and bless your cursers, and pray for your persecutors.'"<footnote>Alexander Donaldson, et. al., Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 3 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark; Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1889), p. 711.</footnote>

"Instead, you yourselves cheat and do wrong, and you do this to your brothers and sisters" (6:8). Utley comments, "The western church, with its emphasis on the individual, has skewed the gospel. We have missed its continual emphasis on the whole, the corporate, the body! We see Christianity as something for us individually instead of something for the gospel."<footnote>Utley, Free Bible Commentary, v. 6:8.</footnote> Thus, we do wrong and hurt those whom we should love the most, our dear brothers and sisters in Christ.

Henry's Complete Commentary on the Bible

      1 Dare any of you, having a matter against another, go to law before the unjust, and not before the saints?   2 Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world? and if the world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters?   3 Know ye not that we shall judge angels? how much more things that pertain to this life?   4 If then ye have judgments of things pertaining to this life, set them to judge who are least esteemed in the church.   5 I speak to your shame. Is it so, that there is not a wise man among you? no, not one that shall be able to judge between his brethren?   6 But brother goeth to law with brother, and that before the unbelievers.   7 Now therefore there is utterly a fault among you, because ye go to law one with another. Why do ye not rather take wrong? why do ye not rather suffer yourselves to be defrauded?   8 Nay, ye do wrong, and defraud, and that your brethren.

      Here the apostle reproves them for going to law with one another before heathen judges for little matters; and therein blames all vexatious law-suits. In the previous chapter he had directed them to punish heinous sins among themselves by church-censures. Here he directs them to determine controversies with one another by church-counsel and advice, concerning which observe,

      I. The fault he blames them for: it was going to law. Not but that the law is good, if a man use it lawfully. But, 1. Brother went to law with brother (1 Corinthians 6:6; 1 Corinthians 6:6), one member of the church with another. The near relation could not preserve peace and good understanding. The bonds of fraternal love were broken through. And a brother offended, as Solomon says, is harder to be won than a strong city; their contentions are like the bars of a castle, Proverbs 18:19. Note, Christians should not contend with one another, for they are brethren. This, duly attended to, would prevent law-suits, and put an end to quarrels and litigations. 2. They brought the matter before the heathen magistrates: they went to law before the unjust, not before the saints (1 Corinthians 6:1; 1 Corinthians 6:1), brought the controversy before unbelievers (1 Corinthians 6:6; 1 Corinthians 6:6), and did not compose it among themselves, Christians and saints, at least in profession. This tended much to the reproach of Christianity. It published at once their folly and unpeaceableness; whereas they pretended to be the children of wisdom, and the followers of the Lamb, the meek and lowly Jesus, the prince of peace. And therefore, says the apostle, "Dare any of you, having a controversy with another, go to law, implead him, bring the matter to a hearing before the unjust?" Note, Christians should not dare to do any thing that tends to the reproach of their Christian name and profession. 3. Here is at least an intimation that they went to law for trivial matters, things of little value; for the apostle blames them that they did not suffer wrong rather than go to law (1 Corinthians 6:7; 1 Corinthians 6:7), which must be understood of matters not very important. In matters of great damage to ourselves or families, we may use lawful means to right ourselves. We are not bound to sit down and suffer the injury tamely, without stirring for our own relief; but, in matters of small consequence, it is better to put up with the wrong. Christians should be of a forgiving temper. And it is more for their ease and honour to suffer small injuries and inconveniences than seem to be contentious.

      II. He lays before them the aggravations of their fault: Do you not know that the saints shall judge the world (1 Corinthians 6:2; 1 Corinthians 6:2), shall judge angels?1 Corinthians 6:3; 1 Corinthians 6:3. And are they unworthy to judge the smallest matters, the things of this life? It was a dishonour to their Christian character, a forgetting of their real dignity, as saints, for them to carry little matters, about the things of life, before heathen magistrates. When they were to judge the world, nay, to judge, it is unaccountable that they could not determine little controversies among one another. By judging the world and angels, some think, is to be understood, their being assessors to Christ in the great judgment-day; it being said of our Saviour's disciples that they should at that day sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel,Matthew 19:28. And elsewhere we read of our Lord's coming with ten thousand of his saints to execute judgment on all, c., Jude 1:14; Jude 1:15. He will come to judgment with all his saints,1 Thessalonians 3:13. They themselves are indeed to be judged (see Matthew 25:31-41), but they may first be acquitted, and then advanced to the bench, to approve and applaud the righteous judgment of Christ both on men and angels. In no other sense can they be judges. They are not partners in their Lord's commission, but they have the honour to sit by, and see his proceeding against the wicked world, and approve it. Others understand this judging of the world to be meant when the empire should become Christian. But it does not appear that the Corinthians had knowledge of the empire's becoming Christian; and, if they had, in what sense could Christian emperors be said to judge angels? Others understand it of their condemning the world by their faith and practice, and casting out evil angels by miraculous power, which was not confined to the first ages, nor to the apostles. The first sense seems to be most natural; and at the same time it gives the utmost force to the argument. "Shall Christians have the honour to sit with the sovereign Judge at the last day, whilst he passes judgment on sinful men and evil angels, and are they not worthy to judge of the trifles about which you contend before heathen magistrates? Cannot they make up your mutual differences? Why must you bring them before heathen judges? When you are to judge them, as it fit to appeal to their judicature? Must you, about the affairs of this life, set those to judge who are of no esteem in the church?" (so some read, and perhaps most properly, 1 Corinthians 6:4; 1 Corinthians 6:4), heathen magistrates, exouthenemenous, the things that are not,1 Corinthians 1:28; 1 Corinthians 1:28. "Must those be called in to judge in your controversies of whom you ought to entertain so low an opinion? Is this not shameful?" 1 Corinthians 6:5; 1 Corinthians 6:5. Some who read it as our translators make it an ironical speech: "If you have such controversies depending, set those to judge who are of least esteem among yourselves. The meanest of your own members are able surely to determine these disputes. Refer the matters in variance to any, rather than go to law about them before heathen judges. They are trifles not worth contending about, and may easily be decided, if you have first conquered your own spirits, and brought them into a truly Christian temper. Bear and forbear, and the men of meanest skill among you may end your quarrels. I speak it to your shame," 1 Corinthians 6:5; 1 Corinthians 6:5. Note, It is a shame that little quarrels should grow to such a head among Christians, that they cannot be determined by arbitration of the brethren.

      III. He puts them on a method to remedy this fault. And this twofold:-- 1. By referring it to some to make it up: "Is it so that there is no wise man among you, no one able to judge between his brethren?1 Corinthians 6:5; 1 Corinthians 6:5. You who value yourselves so much upon your wisdom and knowledge, who are so puffed up upon your extraordinary gifts and endowments, is there none among you fit for this office, none that has wisdom enough to judge in these differences? Must brethren quarrel, and the heathen magistrate judge, in a church so famous as yours for knowledge and wisdom? It is a reproach to you that quarrels should run so high, and none of your wise men interpose to prevent them." Note, Christians should never engage in law-suits till all other remedies have been tried in vain. Prudent Christians should prevent, if possible, their disputes, and not courts of judicature decide them, especially in matters of no great importance. 2. By suffering wrong rather than taking this method to right themselves: It is utterly a fault among you to go to law in this matter: it is always a fault of one side to go to law, except in a case where the title is indeed dubious, and there is a friendly agreement of both parties to refer it to the judgment of those learned in the law to decide it. And this is referring it, rather than contending about it, which is the thing the apostle here seems chiefly to condemn: Should you not rather take wrong, rather suffer yourselves to be defrauded? Note, A Christian should rather put up with a little injury than tease himself, and provoke others, by a litigious contest. The peace of his own mind, and the calm of his neighbourhood, are more worth than victory in such a contest, or reclaiming his own right, especially when the quarrel must be decided by those who are enemies to religion. But the apostle tells them they were so far from bearing injuries that they actually did wrong, and defrauded, and that their brethren. Note, It is utterly a fault to wrong and defraud any; but it is an aggravation of this fault to defraud our Christian brethren. The ties of mutual love ought to be stronger between them than between others. And love worketh no ill to his neighbour,Romans 13:10. Those who love the brotherhood can never, under the influence of this principle, hurt or injure them.

Kelly Commentary on Books of the Bible

As usual, the introductory words (1 Corinthians 1:1-3) of the epistle give us no little intimation of that which is to follow. The apostle speaks of himself as such "called [to be ] an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God," but coupling a brother with him, "and Sosthenes our brother," he writes to "the church of God at Corinth" not to the saints, as was the case in the epistle to the Romans, but to the church at Corinth "to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus," as in the former epistle "called [to be] saints, with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours."

This will be found to lead the way into the main subject of the present communication. Here we must not look for the great foundations of Christian doctrine. There is the unfolding of the assembly in a practical way; that is, the church of God is not viewed here in its highest character. There is no more than an incidental glance at its associations with Christ. No notice is here taken of the heavenly places as the sphere of our blessing; nor are we given to hear of the bridal affections of Christ for His body. But the assembly of God is addressed, those sanctified in Christ Jesus, saints called, "with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord." Thus room is left for the profession of the Lord's name. It is not, as in Ephesians, "to the saints which are in Ephesus, and to the faithful in Christ Jesus." There is no such closeness of application, nor intimacy, nor confidence in a really intrinsically holy character. Sanctified they were in Christ Jesus. They had taken the place of being separate, "calling upon the name of the Lord;" but the remarkable addition should be noticed by the way "with all that in every place call upon the name of the Lord, both theirs and ours." And this is the more notable, because if there be an epistle which the unbelief of Christendom tries more than another to annul in its application to present circumstances, it is this first letter to the Corinthians. Nor need we wonder. Unbelief shrinks from that which calls, now rather recalls, the saints to a due sense of their responsibility in virtue of their position as the church of God here below. Those at Corinth had forgotten it. Christendom has not merely forgotten but denied it, and so would fain treat a large part of that which will come before us tonight as a bygone thing. It is not disputed that God did thus work in times past; but they have not the smallest serious thought of submitting to its directions as authoritative for present duty. Yet who can deny that God has taken more care to make this plain and certain in the very frontispiece of this epistle than anywhere else? He is wise and right: man is not. Our place is to bow and believe.

There is another point also to be weighed in the next verses (4-8). The apostle tells them how he thanks his God always on their behalf, but refrains from any expression of thankfulness as to their state. He recognises their rich endowments on God's part. He owns how they had been given all utterance, and all knowledge, the working of the Spirit of God, and His power. This is exceedingly important; for there is a disposition often to consider that difficulties and disorder among the saints of God are due to a want of government and of ministerial power. But no amount of gift, in few or many, can of itself produce holy spiritual order. Disorder is never the result of weakness alone. This, of course, may be taken advantage of, and Satan may tempt men to assume the semblance of a strength they do not possess. No doubt assumption would produce disorder; but weakness simply (where it leads souls, as it should, to spread out their need before the Lord) brings in the gracious action of the Holy Ghost, and the unfailing care of Him who loves His saints and the assembly. It was not so at Corinth. Theirs was rather the display of conscious strength; but at the same time they lacked the fear of God, and the sense of responsibility in the use of what God had given them. They were like children disporting themselves with not a little energy that wrought in vessels which altogether failed in self-judgment. This was a source, and a main source, of the difficulty and disorder at Corinth. It is also of great importance to us; for there are those that continually cry out for increase of power as the one panacea of the church. What reflecting spiritual mind could doubt that God sees His saints are not able to bear it? Power in the sense in which we are now speaking of it that is, power in the form of gift is far from being the deepest need or the gravest desideratum of the saints. Again, is it ever the way of God to display Himself thus in a fallen condition of things? Not that He is restrained, or that He is not Sovereign. Not, moreover, that He may not give, and liberally as suits His own glory; but He gives wisely and holily, so as to lead souls now into exercise of conscience and brokenness of spirit, and thus keep and even deepen their sense of that to which God's church is called, and the state into which it has fallen.

At Corinth there was a wholly different state of things. It was the early rise of the church of God, if I may so say, among the Gentiles. And there was not wanting an astonishing sample of the power of the Spirit in witness of the victory that Jesus had won over Satan. This was now, or at least should have been, manifested by the church of God, as at Corinth. But they had lost sight of God's objects. They were occupied with themselves, with one another, with the supernatural energy which grace had conferred on them in the name of the Lord. The Holy Ghost in inspiring the apostle to write to them in no way weakens the sense of the source and character of that power. He insists on its reality, and reminds them that it was of God; but at the same time he brings in the divine aim in it all. "God," says he, "is faithful, by whom ye were called unto the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord." Immediately after he alludes to the schisms that were then at work among them, and calls on them to be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment; informing them of the tidings which had reached him through the house of Chloe, that there were contentions among them, some saying, "I am of Paul," others "I am of Apollos;" some, "I am of Cephas," and others "I am of Christ himself." There is no abuse to which flesh cannot degrade the truth. But the apostle knew how to introduce the Lord's name and grace with the grandly simple but weighty facts of His person and work. It was unto His name that they were baptized; it was He that had been crucified. And be it observed, that from the first of this epistle it is the cross of Christ that has the prominence. It is not so much His blood-shedding, nor even His death and resurrection, but His cross. This would have been as much out of place in the beginning of Romans as the putting forward of propitiation would be out of place here. Expiation of sins by Christ, His death and resurrection, are given of God to be displayed before the saints, who needed to know the firm, immutable foundation of grace; but what the saints wanted most was to learn the gross inconsistency of turning to selfish ease, honour, and aggrandisement the privileges of God's church, and the power of the Spirit of God that wrought in its members.

It is the cross which stains the pride of man, and puts all his glory in the dust. Hence the apostle brings Christ crucified before them. This to the Jew was a stumbling-block, and to the Greek foolishness. These Corinthians were deeply affected by the judgment of both Jews and Greeks. They were under the influence of man. They had not realized the total ruin of nature. They valued those that were wise, scribes, or disputers of this world. They were accustomed to the schools of their age and country. They conceived that if Christianity did such great things when those who possessed it were poor and simple, what might it not do if it could only be backed by the ability, and the learning, and the philosophy of men! How it must ride triumphantly to victory! How the great must bow, and the wise be brought in! What a glorious change would result when not the unlettered poor only, but the great and the noble, the wise and the Prudent, were all joined in the confession of Jesus!

Their thoughts were fleshly, not of God. The cross writes judgment on man, and folly on his wisdom, as it is itself rejected by man as folly; for what could seem more egregiously unreasonable to a Greek than the God that made heaven and earth becoming a man, and, as such, crucified by the wicked hands of His creatures here below? That God should use His power to bless man was natural; and the Gentile could coalesce as to it with the Jew. Hence too, in the cross, the Jew found his stumbling-block; for he expected a Messiah in power and glory. Though the Jew and the Greek seemed opposite as the poles, from different points they agreed thoroughly in slighting the cross, and in desiring the exaltation of man as he is. They both, therefore, (whatever their occasional oppositions, and whatever their permanent variety of form,) preferred the flesh, and were ignorant of God the one demanding signs, the other wisdom. It was the pride of nature, whether self-confident or founded on religious claims.

Hence the apostle Paul, in the latter part of chap. 1, brings in the cross of Christ in contrast with fleshly wisdom, as well as religious pride, urging also God's sovereignty in calling souls as He will. He alludes to the mystery (1 Corinthians 2:1-16), but does not develop here the blessed privileges that flowed to us from a union with Christ, dead, risen, and ascended; but demonstrates that man has no place whatever, that it is God who chooses and calls, and that He makes, nothing of flesh. There is glorying, but it is exclusively in the Lord. No flesh should glory in his presence."

This is confirmed in1 Corinthians 2:1-16; 1 Corinthians 2:1-16, where the apostle reminds them of the manner in which the gospel had entered Corinth. He had come there setting his face against all things that would commend himself. No doubt, to one of such eminent ability and such varied gifts as the apostle Paul, it was hard, to speak after the manner of men, to be nothing. How much it must have called for self-denial utterly to decline that which he could have handled so well, and which people at Corinth would have hailed with loud acclamation. Just think of the great apostle of the Gentiles, on the immortality of the soul, giving free rein to the mighty spirit that was in him! But not so. What absorbed his soul, in entering, the intellectual and dissolute capital of Achaia, was the cross of Christ. He determined therefore, as he says, to know nothing else not exactly to know the cross alone, but "Jesus Christ and him crucified." It was emphatically, though not exclusively, the cross. It was not simply redemption, but along with this another order of truth. Redemption supposes, undoubtedly, a suffering Saviour, and the shedding of that precious blood which ransoms the captives. It is Jesus who in grace has undergone the judgment of God, and brought in the full delivering power of God for the souls that believe. But the cross is more than this. It is the death of shame pre-eminently. It is utter opposition to the thoughts, feelings, judgments, and ways of men, religious or profane. This is the part accordingly that he was led in the wisdom of God to put forward. Hence the feelings of the apostle were distrust of self, and dependence on God according to that cross. As he says, "I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling." Thus, as Christ Himself is said in 2 Corinthians 13:1-14 to be crucified in weakness, such was also the servant here. His speech and his preaching was "not in enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power." Accordingly, in this chapter he proceeds to supplement the application of the doctrine of the cross to the state of the Corinthians by bringing in the Holy Ghost; for this again supposes the incapacity of man in divine things.

All is opened out in a manner full of comfort, but at the same time unsparing to human pride. Weigh from the prophecy of Isaiah the remarkable quotation "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit." There is first the great standing fact before our eyes. Such is the Saviour to the saved. Christ crucified is the death-knell on all man's wisdom, and power, and righteousness. The cross writes total condemnation on the world. It was here the world had to say to Jesus. All that it gave Him was the cross. On the other hand, to the believer it is the power of God and the wisdom of God, because he humbly but willingly reads in the cross the truth of the judgment of his own nature as a thing to be delivered from, and finds Him that was crucified, the Lord Himself, undertaking a deliverance just, present, and complete; as he says, "Of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption." Flesh is absolutely put down. Man cannot go lower for weakness and ignominy than the cross on which hangs all the blessedness God gives the believer. And therein God is glorified as He is nowhere else. This in both its parts is exactly as it should be; and faith sees and receives it in Christ's cross. The state of the Corinthians did not admit of Christ risen being brought in, at least here. It might have drawn a halo, as it were, round human nature this presenting the risen man in the first instance. But he points to God as the source, and Christ as the channel and means, of all the blessing. "Of him," says he, "are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption." But then, as he shows, there was not only this great source of blessing in Christ, but there is the power that works in us. Never is it the spirit of man that lays hold of this infinite good which God vouchsafes him. Man requires a divine power to work within him, just as he needs the Saviour outside himself

Accordingly, in 1 Corinthians 2:1-16, still carrying on the thought of Christ crucified, and connecting it with their condition, he intimates that he was in no wise limited to it. If persons were grounded in Christianity, he was prepared to go into the greatest depths of revealed truth; but then the power of entering safely was not human, but of the Holy Ghost. Man is no more capable of fathoming the depths of divine things than a brute can comprehend the works of human wit or science. This doctrine was utterly repulsive to the pride of the Greeks. They might admit man to have need of pardon, and of moral improvement. They fully admitted his want of instruction, and refinement, and, so to speak, of spiritualization, if it only might be. Christianity deepens our estimate of every want. Man not only wants a new life or nature, but the Holy Ghost. It is not merely His grace in a general sense, but the power of the Holy Ghost personally dwelling in him. It is this alone which can lead us into the deep things of God. And this, he lets us see, affects not merely this particular or that, but the whole working of divine grace and power in man. The whole and sole means of communicating blessing to us must be the Holy Ghost. Hence he insists, that as it is the Spirit of God in the first place who reveals the truth to us, so it is the same Spirit who furnishes suitable words, as, finally, it is through the Holy Ghost that one receives the truth revealed in the words He Himself has given. Thus, from first to last, it is a process begun, carried on, and completed by the Holy Ghost. How little this makes of man!

This introduces 1 Corinthians 3:1-23 and gives point to his rebukes. He taxes them with walking as men. How remarkable is such a reproach! Walking as men! Why, one might ask, how else could they walk? And this very difficulty as no doubt it would be to many a Christian now (that walking as men should be a reproach) was no doubt a clap of thunder to the proud but poor spirits at Corinth. Yes, walking as men is a departure from Christianity. It is to give up the distinctive power and place that belongs to us; for does not Christianity show us man judged, condemned, and set aside? On the faith of this, living in Christ, we have to walk. The Holy Ghost, besides, is brought in as working in the believer, and this, of course, in virtue of redemption by our Lord Jesus. And this is what is meant by being not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, which is proved by the Holy Ghost dwelling in us.

Here the apostle does not explain all this, and he gives a very withering reason for his reticence. These Corinthians had an uncommonly good opinion of themselves, and so they must be told plainly the reason why he does not open out these deep things. They themselves were not fit; they were but babes. What! the polished Greek believers no more than babes! This was rather what they would have said of the apostle or of his teaching. They thought themselves far in advance. The apostle had dwelt on the elementary truths of the gospel. They yearned after the fire of Peter and the rhetoric of Apollos. No doubt they might easily flatter themselves it was to carry on the work of God. How little many a young convert knows what will best lead him on! How little the Corinthians dreamt of depreciating the Second man, or of exalting the first! Hence the apostle tells them that he could not speak unto them as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ. "I have fed you with milk, and not with meat." Far from denying, he owns that their insinuation was true he had only brought before them elementary truths. They were not in a condition to bear more. Now this is full of meaning and importance practically at all times. We may damage souls greatly by presenting high truths to those that want the simplest rudiments of divine truth.

The apostle, as a wise master-builder, laid the foundation. The state of the Corinthians was such that he could not build on the foundation as he would have desired. His absence had given occasion for the breaking out of their carnal wishes after the world's wisdom. They were making even the ardour of a Peter and the eloquence of an Apollos to be a reason for dissatisfaction with one that, I need not say, was superior to both of them. But the apostle meets them in a way most unexpected to their self-satisfaction and pride, and lets them know that their carnality was the real reason why he could not go on with them into deeper things.

This leads him to point out the seriousness of the work or building; for he presents the church of God under this figure. What care each servant needs to take how and what he builds! What danger of bringing in that which would not stand the fire or judgment of God nay, further, of bringing in that which was not simply weak and worthless, but positively corrupting; for it was to be feared there were such elements even then at Corinth! Again he brings in another principle to bear upon them. Their party spirit, their feeling of narrowness, the disposition to set up this servant of Christ or that, was not only a dishonour to the Master, but a real loss to themselves. Not that there is any ground to suppose it was the fault of Peter or Apollos any more than of Paul. The evil was in the saints themselves, who indulged in their old zeal of the schools, and allowed their natural partiality to work. In point of fact this never can be without the most grievous impoverishment to the soul, as well as a hindrance to the Holy Ghost. What faith must learn is, that "all things are yours, whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas; . . . . . all are yours." Thus the subject enlarges, as is his wont, taking in an immense breadth of the Christian's possessions life, death, things present, and things to come. "All are yours, and ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's."

This again brings in another point before the subject closes. He is not content with the pressing of responsibility on others; he had a solemn sense of his own place, which made him wonderfully independent of the judgments of men. Obedience gives firmness as well as humility. Not in the smallest degree was the pride of the Corinthians met by pride on his part, but by keeping the Lord and His will before his soul. Yet this is certainly true that this effect of faith looks like pride to a man who merely views things on the surface. The calm going on in the service of Christ, the endurance of this spirit or that, as no more than the idle wind, was no doubt exceedingly unpleasant to such as were wise in their own conceit, and valued the criticism they freely bestowed on the different servants of the Lord. But Paul sees all in the light of the eternal day. They had forgotten this, and were in a sense trafficking with these powers of the Spirit of God. They were making them the counters of a game they were playing in this world. They had forgotten that what God gives He gives in time, but in view of eternity. The apostle puts the truth of the case before their souls as he had it vividly before his own. (1 Corinthians 4:1-21)

Another thing is noticeable here. He had reproached them with walking not as Christians but as men (that is, with their habitual life and conversation formed on human principles instead of divine). On the other hand, it would appear from what follows, that they reproached the apostle in their hearts, not, of course, in so many words, with not being enough of a gentleman for their taste. This seems to me the gist of the fourth chapter. It was a thing that they considered quite beneath a Christian minister to work from time to time with his hands, often poor, occasionally in prison, knocked about by crowds, and so on. All this they thought the fruit of indiscretion and avoidable. They would have preferred respectability, public and private, in one who stood in the position of a servant of Christ. This the apostle meets in a very blessed way. He admitted that they were certainly not in such circumstances; they were reigning as kings. As for him it was enough to be the off-scouring of all men, this was his boast and blessedness. He wished that they did indeed reign that he might reign with them (that the blessed time might really arrive). How his heart would rejoice in that day with them! And surely the time will come, and they would all reign together when Christ reigns over the earth. But he quite admits that for the present the fellowship of Christ's sufferings was the place he had chosen. Of honour in the world, and ease for the flesh, he at least could not, if they could, boast. Present greatness was what he in no wise coveted; to suffer great things for His sake was what the Lord had promised, and what His servant expected in becoming an apostle. If his own service was the highest position in the church, his was certainly the lowest position in the world. This was as much an apostle's boast and glory as anything that God had given them. No answer can I conceive more telling to any one of his detractors at Corinth who had a heart and conscience.

In 1 Corinthians 5:1-13 we enter on another and more painful part of the epistle. A fearful instance of sin had come to light, so gross, indeed, that the like was not even named among the Gentiles. In fact it was a case of incest, and this among those called of God, and sanctified in Christ Jesus! The question is not in the least raised whether the guilty person was a saint or not; still less does he allow that which one so often and painfully heard pleaded in extenuation, "Oh, but he [or she] is a dear Christian." Christian affection is most excellent; as brethren we should love even to laying down life for each other; as it is also very right that we should own the work God has wrought, above all what He has wrought in grace. But when one bearing the name of the Lord has, through unwatchfulness, fallen into wickedness, which of course grieves the Holy Ghost and stumbles the weak, it is not the time to talk thus. It is the time, in the very love that God implants, to deal sternly with that which has disgraced the name of the Lord. Is this to fail in love to the person? The apostle showed ere long that he had more love for this evildoer than any of them. The second epistle to the Corinthians entreats them to confirm their love to him whom they had put away. They were too hard against him then, as they were too loose now. Here their consciences needed to be roused. To deal with the matter they owed to the Lord Jesus. It was not merely getting rid of the obnoxious man. They had to prove themselves clear in the matter certainly; but he puts before them another course, whenever the guilty one had repented.

"I verily, as absent in body, but present in spirit, have judged already," etc. The case was most gross, and there was no question about it. The facts were indisputable; the scandal was unheard of. "I have judged already, as though present, concerning him that hath so done this deed, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, to deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh." There was no discussion raised whether the person might be converted. The fact is, church discipline supposes and goes on the ground that those on whom it is exercised are Christians; but when it is a question of discipline, it is not the season for the display of Christian affection. This would falsify the conscience and turn the eye from off the point to which the Holy Ghost was directing attention. There was wickedness in their midst; and while known and unjudged, all were implicated; none could be clean till it was put away. Accordingly the apostle, while he expresses the desire that the spirit of the man should be saved in the day of the Lord, flesh being destroyed, at the same time rouses the saints to that which became the name of the Lord on the very ground that they were unleavened. If they were free from evil, let them act consistently. Let them preserve that purity in practice which was theirs in principle. They were unleavened, and therefore should be a new lump. Notoriously there was old leaven among them. What business had it there? "Put away from" not the table of the Lord merely, this he does not say, but "Put away from among yourselves." This is much stronger than expelling from the table. Of course, it implies exclusion from the Lord's table, but from their table too "with such an one, no, not to eat." An ordinary meal, or any such act expressive even in natural things of fellowship with the person thus dishonouring the Lord, is forbidden.

Mark, they must put away. It is not the apostle acting for them; for God took particular care that this case, demanding discipline to the uttermost, should be where the apostle was not. What an admirable instruction for us who have no longer an apostle! None can pretend that it was an assembly where there was a high degree of knowledge or spirituality. The very reverse was the case. The responsibility of discipline depends on our relationship as an assembly to the Lord, not on its changing states. The Corinthians were babes; they were carnal. He who loved them well could not speak of them as spiritual. Nevertheless, this responsibility attached to the very fact that they were members of Christ His body. If saints are gathered to the name of the Lord, and so are God's assembly, if they have faith to take such a position here below, and have the Holy Ghost owned as in their midst, this, and nothing short of this, is their responsibility; nor does the ruined state of the church touch the question, nor can it relieve them from their duty to the Lord. The church at Corinth had soon failed most gravely far and wide. This was the more shameful, considering the brightness of the truth vouchsafed to them, and the striking manifestation of divine power in their midst. The presence of apostles elsewhere in the earth, the beautiful display of Pentecostal grace at Jerusalem, the fact that so short a time had elapsed since they had been brought out of heathenism into their standing in God's grace, all made the present state of the Corinthians so much the more painful; but nothing can ever dissolve the responsibility of saints, whether as individuals or as an assembly. "Put away from among yourselves that wicked person."

Another thing is to be observed, that the Holy Spirit's scale of sin is not that of man. Which of you, my brethren, would have thought of classing a railer with an adulterer? A railer is one who uses abusive language for the purpose of injuring another, not the transient out-breaking of flesh, sad as it is, but provoked it may be, or at any rate, happening through unwatchfulness. The habit of evil speaking stamps him who practises it as a railer; and such a man is unfit for the company of the saints, for God's assembly. It is the old leaven of malice and wickedness. He is unclean. Doubtless the world would not so judge; but this is not the world's judgment. The Corinthians were under the influence of the world. The apostle had already shown that to walk as men is beneath the Christian. Now we see that to walk as the world, no matter how refinedly, ever exposes Christians to act worse than men of the world. God has stamped upon His children the name of Christ; and what does not express His name is inconsistent, not only with the Christian, but with His assembly. They are all as such held responsible, according to the grace and holiness and glory of Christ, for the sin done in their midst, of which they are cognisant. They are bound to keep themselves pure in ways.

There was another case also: brother was going to law with brother. (1 Corinthians 6:1-20) We have no reason to think they had fallen so far as to go to law with those that were not brethren; this would seem to be a lower step still. But brother was going to law with brother, ,and this before the unjust. How often now-a-days one hears, "Well, one expects something better from a brother; and surely he ought to suffer the consequences of his ill-doing." This was just the feeling of the Corinthian plaintiff. What, then, is the weapon that the apostle uses in this case? The dignified place in the glory that God designs for the Christian: "Know ye not that we shall judge the world judge angels?" Were such going before the Gentiles? Thus is seen how practical all truth is, and how God casts the bright light of the approaching day on the smallest matters of the life of today.

Again, there was no quarter in the world where personal purity was more unknown than at Corinth. Indeed, such were the habits of the ancient world, it would only defile the ears and minds of God's children to have any proofs of the depravity in which the world then lay, and that too in its best estate, the wisest and the greatest not excepted, those, alas. whose writings are in the hands of the youth of our day, and more than ever, perhaps, in their hands. Those wits, poets, and philosophers of heathen antiquity lived in habitual, yea, often in unnatural grossness, and thought nothing of it. It is a danger for the saints of God to be tinctured by the atmosphere of the world outside when the first fervour of grace cools, and they begin to take up their old habits. It was certainly so at Corinth.

Accordingly the believers there were betrayed into their former uncleanness of life when the heavenly light got dim. And how does the apostle deal with this? He recalls to them the Holy Spirit's dwelling in them. What a truth, and of what force to the believer! He does not say simply that they were redeemed, though he brings it in also; still less does he merely reason on the moral heinousness of the sin; neither does he cite the law of God that condemned it. He presses upon them that which was proper to them as Christians. It was no question of man, let him be Gentile or Jew, but of a Christian. Thus he sets before them the distinctive Christian blessing the Holy Ghost dwelling in the believer, and making his body (not his spirit but his body) a temple of the Holy Ghost; for here was precisely where the enemy seems to have misled these Corinthians. They affected to think they might be pure in spirit, but do what they liked with their bodies. But, answers the apostle, it is the body which is the temple of the Holy Ghost. The body belongs to the Lord and Saviour; the body, therefore, and not the spirit only, He claims now. No doubt that the spirit be occupied with Christ is a grand matter; but the licentious flesh of man would talk, at any rate, about the Lord, and at the same time indulge in evil. This is set aside by the blessed fact that the Holy Ghost even now dwells in the Christian, and this on the ground of his being bought with a price. Thus the very call to holiness ever keeps the saint of God in the sense of his immense privileges as well as of his perfect deliverance.

1 Corinthians 7:1-40 naturally leads from this into certain questions that had been proposed to the apostle touching marriage and slavery questions which had to do with the various relationships of life. The apostle accordingly gives us what he had learned from the Lord, as well as what he could speak of as a commandment of the Lord, distinguishing in the most beautiful manner, not between inspired and non-inspired, but between revelation and inspiration. All the word is inspired; there is no difference as to this. There is no part of Scripture that is less inspired than another. " All (every) scripture is given by inspiration of God;" but all is not His revelation. We must distinguish between parts revealed and the whole inspired. When a thing is revealed of God, it is absolutely new truth, and of course is the commandment of the Lord. But the inspired word of God contains the language of all sorts of men, and very often the conversation of wicked men nay, of the devil I need not say that all this is not a revelation; but God communicates what Satan and wicked men say (as for instance Pilate's words to our Lord and the Jews). None of these evidently was that which is called a revelation; but the Holy Ghost inspired the writers of the book to give us exactly what each of these said, or revealed what was in the mind of God about them. Take, for example, the book of Job, in which occur the sayings of his friends. What intelligent reader could think that they were in any way authorised communicators of the mind of God? They say sometimes very wrong things, and sometimes wise, and often things that do not in the smallest degree apply to the case. Every word of the book of Job is inspired; but did all the speakers utter necessarily the mind of God? Did not one of the speakers condemn one or other of the rest? Need one reason on such facts? This, no doubt, makes a certain measure of difficulty for a soul at the first blush; but on maturer consideration all becomes plain and harmonious, and the word of God is enhanced in our eyes.

And so it is in this chapter, where the apostle gives both the commandment of the Lord, and his own matured spiritual judgment, which he expressly says was not the commandment of the Lord. Still he was inspired to give his judgment as such. Thus the whole chapter is inspired, one part of it just as much as another. There is no difference in inspiration. What was written by the different inspired instruments is of God as absolutely as if He had written it all without them. There is no degree in the matter. There can be no difference in inspiration. But in the inspired word of God there is not always revelation. Sometimes it is a record which the Spirit gave a man to make of what he had seen and heard, sometimes he recorded by the Spirit what no man could have seen or heard. Sometimes it was a prophecy of the future, sometimes a communication of God's present mind according to His eternal purpose. But all is equally and divinely inspired.

The apostle then lays down at least as far as may be here briefly sketched that while there are cases where it is a positive duty to be married, undisguisedly there was a better place of undivided devotedness to Christ. Blessed is he who is given. thus to serve the Lord without let: still it must be the gift of God. The Lord Jesus had laid down the same principle Himself. InMatthew 19:1-30; Matthew 19:1-30, it is needless to say, you have the selfsame truth in another form.

Again, while the Lord employs the apostle thus to give us both His own commandment and His mind, the general principle is stated as to the relationships of life. It is broadly laid down that one should remain in that condition in which he is called, and for a very blessed reason. Supposing one were a slave even, he is already, if a Christian, a freeman of Christ. You must remember that in these days there were everywhere bondmen: those that then ruled the. world took them from all classes and all countries There were bondmen highly educated, and once in a high position of life. Need it be said that often these bondmen rose up against their cruel masters? The very knowledge of Christ, and the possession of conscious truth, if grace did not counteract mightily, would tend to increase their sense of horror at their position. Suppose, for instance, a refined person, with the truth of God communicated to his soul, was the slave of one living in all the filth of heathenism, what a trial it would be to serve in such a position! The apostle urges the truth of that liberty in Christ which Christendom has well-nigh forgotten that if I am Christ's servant I am emancipated already. Match if you can the manumission he has got. Twenty millions will procure no such emancipation. At the same time, if my master allows me liberty, let me use it rather. Is it not a remarkable style of speech and feeling? The Christian, even if a slave, possesses the best freedom after all: anything else is but circumstantial. On the other hand, if you are a freeman, take care how you use your liberty: use it as the Lord's bondman. The freeman is reminded of his bondmanship; the bondman is reminded of his freedom. What a wonderful antithesis of man is the Second Man! How it traverses all the thoughts, circumstances, and hopes of flesh!

Then he brings before us the different relationships at the end of the chapter, as they are affected by the coming of the Lord. And there is nothing which shows more the importance of that hope as a practical power. There is not only the direct but the indirect allusion when the heart is filled with an object; and the indirect is a yet stronger witness of the place it holds than the direct. A mere hint connects itself with that which is your joy and constant expectation; whereas when a thing is little before the heart you require to explain, prove, and insist upon it. But this chapter brings vividly before them how all outward things pass away, even the fashion of this world. Time is short. It is too late either to make much of scenes so changing, or to seek this thing or that here below with such a morrow before our eyes. Hence he calls on those who had wives to be as those who had none, on those who were selling and buying to be above all the objects that made up the sum of business. In short, he puts Christ and His coming as the reality, and all else as the shadows, transitions, movements of a world that even now crumbles underneath us. No wonder that he follows all up at the end with his own judgment, that the man most blessed is he who has the least entanglement, and is the most thoroughly devoted to Christ and His service.

Next in 1 Corinthians 8:1-13 he begins to take up another danger for the Corinthian saints. They had the sound of the truth ringing in their ears; and assuredly there are few sounds sweeter than the liberty of the Christian. But what is more liable to abuse? They had abused power to self-exaltation; they were now turning liberty to license. But there is a solemn fact which none can afford to forget as to both power and liberty that without responsibility nothing is more ruinous than either. Herein lay the sad failure of these saints. In the sense of responsibility they were utterly wanting They seem to have forgotten completely that the Lord from whom the liberty had come is the One in whose sight, and for whose glory, and according to whose will, all power was to be used. The apostle recalls them to this; but he takes up their license in going into heathen temples, and eating things offered to idols, not first of all on the high ground of the Lord, but on account of their brethren. In their boasted liberty, and because they knew an idol was nothing, they considered that they might go anywhere, and do what they pleased. Nay, not so, cries the apostle; you must consider your brother. There is many a disciple who, far from knowing how vain idolatry is, thinks a good deal of the idol. Thus, you that know so much, if you make light of going here and there, will induce other disciples to follow your steps who may slip into idolatry through it, and thus a brother perish for whom Christ died; and what is the liberty of one who is instructed may prove the extreme ruin of one who is equally a believer in the Lord. Thus he looks at the thing in its full character and ultimate tendency if unchecked. Grace, as we know, can arrest these tendencies, and avert the evil results.

In 1 Corinthians 9:1-27 he interrupts the course of his argument by an appeal to his own place as an apostle. Some were beginning to question his apostolate. It was not that he in the slightest degree forgot his call by God's will to that special service; neither was he insensible to the blessed liberty in which he was serving the Lord. He could lead about a sister-wife like another; he had foregone this for the Lord's sake. He could look for support from the church of God; he preferred to work with his own hands. So in the second epistle to the Corinthians he begs them to forgive the wrong; for he would not accept anything from them. They were not in a condition to be entrusted with such a gift. Their state was such, and God had so overruled it in His ways, that the apostle had received nothing from them. This fact he uses in order to humble them because of their pride and licentiousness.

The course of this chapter then touches on his apostolic place, and at the same time his refusal to use the rights of it. Grace can forego all questions of right. Conscious of what is due, it asserts rights for others, but refuses to use them for itself. Such was the spirit and the faith of the apostle. And now he shows what he felt as to practical state and walk. Far from being full of his knowledge, far from only using his place in the church for the assertion of his dignity and for immunity from all trouble and pain here below, he on the contrary was as one under the law to meet him that was under it; he was as a Gentile to meet him that was free from law (that is, a Gentile). Thus he was a servant of all that he might save some. Besides, he lets them know the spirit of a servant, which was so lacking in the Corinthians in spite of their gifts; for it is not the possession of a gift, but love which serves and delights in service. The simple fact of knowing that you have a gift may and often does minister to self-complacency. The grand point is to have the Lord before you, and when others are thought of, it is in the love which has no need to seek greatness, or to a et it. The love of Christ proves its greatness by serving others.

This, then, was the spirit of that blessed servant of the Lord. He reminds them of another point that he was himself diligent in keeping his body in subjection. He was like a man with a race that was going to be run, and who gets his body into training. He puts this in the strongest way, "Lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway." Mark the tact of the apostle. When he has something discreditable to say, he prefers to say it about himself; when he has something pleasing to say, he loves to put it with regard to others. So here he says, "Lest I myself become a castaway," not " you." He meant their profit, no doubt; his aim was for them to have their own consciences searched by it. If Paul even was exercising himself to have a conscience void offence; if Paul was keeping his body in subjection, how much more did these men need it? They were abusing all the comfort that Christianity brings, to live at ease and play the gentleman, if one may speak according to modern language. They had not entered in the smallest degree into the spirit of the moral glory of Christ humbled here below. They had dislocated the cross from Christianity. They had severed themselves from the power of service. Thus they were in the utmost possible jeopardy; but the apostle, who had the blessedness of Christ before him, and the fellowship of His sufferings is scarce another had like him, even he used all diligence of heart, and held a tight rein over himself. Faithful man as he was, he allowed himself none of these licenses. Liberty indeed he prized, but it was not going here and there to feasts of idols. He was free to serve Christ, and time was short: what had such an one to do with heathen temples?

Thus he wants them to feel their danger, but first of all he begins with himself. He was free but watchful; and he was jealous over himself, the greater the grace shown him. It was not that he in the smallest degree doubted his security in Christ, as some so foolishly say; or that such as have eternal life may lose it again. But it is plain that men who merely take the place of having eternal life may, and often do, abandon that place. Those who have eternal life prove it by godliness; those who have it not prove the lack of it by indifference to holiness, and lack of that love which is of God. So the apostle shows that all his knowledge of the truth, far from making him careless, prompted him to yet greater earnestness, and to daily denial of himself. This is a very important consideration for us all (I press it more especially on the young in such a day as this); and the greater the knowledge of the saints, the more they need to keep it in view.

The apostle draws their attention to another warning in the history of Israel. These had eaten of the same spiritual meat, for so he calls it; they had the heaven-sent manna, had drunk of the same spiritual drink; yet what became of them? How many thousands of them perished in the wilderness? The apostle is approaching far closer to their state. He began with application to his own case, and now he points to Israel as a people sanctified to Jehovah. At length the word is, "Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall. There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man; but God is faithful." This was a great comfort, but it was also a serious caution. "God is faithful who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able." It is in vain, therefore, to plead circumstances as an excuse for sin. "But [He] will, with the temptation, also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it. Wherefore, my dearly beloved, flee from idolatry." He makes it plain that he is, with characteristic address, dealing with their little-exercised consciences from the statement of his own earnest vigilance over his ways, and then from the sad and solemn history of Israel judged of the Lord. Thus, too, he goes forward into new ground, the deeper spiritual motives, the appeal to Christian affection as well as to faith. The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? He begins with that which most nearly touches the heart. It would have been an order more natural, if one may so say, to speak of the body of Christ; as we know in the Lord's supper habitually, there is that which brings before us first the body and then the blood. The departure from what may be called the historical order makes the emphasis incomparably greater. More than that, the first appeal is founded on the blood of Christ, the answer of divine grace to the deepest need of a soul found in its guilt before God and covered with defilement. Was this to be slighted? "The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?" He does not here say, "the blood" or the "body of the Lord." This we find in 1 Corinthians 11:1-34; but it is here Christ, because it becomes a question of grace. "The Lord" brings in the idea of authority. This, then, is evidently an immense advance in dealing with the subject. Accordingly he now develops it, not on the ground of injury to a brother, but as a breach of fellowship with such a Christ, and indifference to His immense love. But he does not forget His authority: "Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons; ye cannot be partakers of the Lord's table and of the table of demons." It is not simply the love of Christ, but His full authority as the Lord. The apostle contrasts two mighty powers that were contesting demons, on the one hand, a power stronger than man, struggling as to him here below; and, on the other hand, there was the Lord that had shed His blood for them, but the Lord of all who should judge quick and dead. Hence he follows up with a comprehensive and simple principle, but full of liberty withal, that in going into the market you need ask no questions. If I do not know that the food has been connected with idols, the idol is nothing to me; but the moment I know it, it is no longer the question of an idol but a demon; and a demon, be assured, is a very real being indeed. Thus what the apostle insists on amounts to this, that their vaunted knowledge was short indeed. Whenever a person boasts, you will in general find. that he particularly fails precisely where he boasts most. If you set up for great knowledge, this will be the point in which you may be expected to break down. If you set up for exceeding candour, the next thing we may well dread to hear is that you have played very false. The best thing is to see that we give ourselves credit for nothing. Let Christ be all our boast. The sense of our own littleness and of His perfect grace is the way, and the only way, to go on well. "This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. Who is he that overcometh, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?"

Then in 1 Corinthians 11:1-34 we enter on another point. It would seem that the sisters at Corinth gave them a deal of trouble, and that they had forgotten entirely their due relative place. No doubt the men were at least as much to blame. It is hardly possible that women should ever put themselves forward in the church unless Christian men have deserted their true, responsible position and public action. It is the man's place to guide; and although women may assuredly be far more useful in certain cases, still, unless the man guides, what an evident departure from the order God has assigned to them both! How complete a desertion of the relative position in which they were placed from the first! Thus it was at Corinth. Among the heathen, women played a most important part, and in no quarter of the world, perhaps, so prominent a one as there. Need it be said that this was to their deep shame? There was no city in which they were so degraded as that in which the attained such conspicuous and unnatural prominence. And how does the apostle meet this new feature? He brings in Christ. This is what decides all. He affirms the everlasting principles of God, and he adds that which has so brightly been revealed in and by Christ. He points out that Christ is the image and the glory of God, and that the man stands in an analogous place as connected with and distinguished from the woman. That is to say, the woman's place is one of unobtrusiveness, and in fact, she is most effective where she is least seen. The man, on the contrary, has a public part a rougher and ruder task, no doubt one that may not at all bring into play the finer affections, but which demands a calmer and more comprehensive judgment. The man has the duty of the outward rule and administration.

Accordingly he marks the first departure from what was right by the woman's losing the sign of her subjection. She was to have a covering, on her head; she was to have that which indicated as a sign that she was subject to another. The man seemed to have failed just in the opposite way; and although this may seem a very little thing, what a wonderful thing it is, and what power it shows, to be able to combine in the same epistle eternal things and the very smallest matter of personal decorum, the wearing of long hair or short, the use of a covering on the head or not! How truly it marks God and His word!! Men. would scorn to combine them both in the same epistle; it seems so petty and so incongruous. But it is the littleness of man which calls for big matters to make him important; but the smallest things of God have significance when they bear on the glory of Christ, as they always do. In the first place, it was out of order that a woman should prophesy with her head uncovered; man's place was to do so. He was the image and the glory of God. The apostle connects it all with first principles, going up to the creation of Adam and Eve in a very blessed manner, and above all bringing in the second Man, the last Adam. Did they think to improve on both?

The latter part of the chapter takes up not the relative place of the man and the woman, but the supper of the Lord, and so the saints gathered together. The first part of it, as is evident, has nothing to do with the assembly, and thus does not dispose of the question whether a woman should prophesy there. In fact, nothing is said or implied in the early verses of the assembly at all. The point primarily mooted is of her prophesying after the manner of a man, and this is done with the greatest possible wisdom. Her prophesying is not absolutely shut out. If a woman has a gift for prophecy, which she certainly may have as well as a man, for what is it given of the Lord but for exercise? Certainly such an one ought to prophesy. Who could say the gift of prophecy given to a woman is to be laid up in a napkin? Only she must take care how she does exercise it. First of all, he rebukes the unseemly way in which it was done the woman forgetting that she was a woman, and the man that he is responsible not to act as a woman. They seem to have reasoned in a petty way at Corinth, that because a woman has a gift no less than a man, she is free to use the gift just as a man might. This is in principle wrong; for after all a woman is not a man, nor like one officially, say what you please. The apostle sets aside the whole basis of the argument as false; and we must never hear reasoning which overthrows what God has ordained. Nature ought to have taught them better. But he does not dwell on this; it was a withering rebuke even to hint at their forgetfulness of natural propriety.

Then, in the latter verses, we have the supper of the Lord, and there we find the saints expressly said to be gathered together. This naturally leads the way to the spiritual gifts that are treated of in1 Corinthians 12:1-31; 1 Corinthians 12:1-31. As to the supper of the Lord, happily I need not say many words to you. It is, by the great mercy of God, familiar to most of us; we live, I may say, in the enjoyment of it, and know it to be one of the sweetest privileges God vouchsafes us here below. Alas! this very feast had furnished occasion, in the fleshly state of the Corinthians, to a most humiliating abuse. What led to it was the Agape, as it was styled; for in those days there was a meal which the Christians used to take together. Indeed, the social character of Christianity never can be overlooked without loss, but in an evil state it is open to much abuse. Everything that is good may be perverted; and it never was intended to hinder abuse by extinguishing that which was only to be maintained aright in the power of the Spirit of God. No rules, no abstinence, no negative measures, can glorify God, or make His children spiritual; and it is only by the power of the Holy Ghost in producing a sense of responsibility to the Lord as well as of His grace that saints are duly kept. So it was then at Corinth, that the meeting for the Lord's Supper became mingled with an ordinary meal, where the Christians ate and drank together. They were glad to meet at any rate, originally it was so, when love was gratified with the company of each other. Being not merely young Christians, but unwatchful and then lax, this gave rise to sad abuse. Their old habits re-asserted their influence. They were accustomed to the feasts of the heathen, where people thought nothing whatever of getting drunk, if it was not rather meritorious. It was in some of their mysteries considered a wrong to the god for his votary not to get drunk, so debased beyond all conception were the heathen in their notions of religion.

Accordingly these Corinthian brethren had by little and little got on until some of them had fallen into intemperance on the occasion of the Eucharist; not, of course, simply by the wine drank at the table of the Lord, but through the feast that accompanied it. Thus the shame of their drunkenness fell upon that Holy Supper; and hence the apostle regulated, that from that time forward there should be no such feast coupled with the Lord's Supper. If they wished to eat, let them eat at home; if they came together in worship, let them remember it was to eat of the Lord's body, and to drink of the Lord's blood. He puts it in the strongest terms. He does not feel it needful or suitable to speak of "the figure" of the Lord's body. The point was to make its grace and holy impressiveness duly felt. It was a figure, no doubt; but .still, writing to men who were at least wise enough to judge aright here, he gives all its weight, and the strongest expression of what was meant. So Jesus had said. Such it was in the sight of God. He that partook undiscerningly and without self-judgment was guilty of the body and blood of the Lord Jesus. It was a sin against Him. The intention of the Lord, the true principle and practice for a saint, is to come, examining his ways, trying his springs of action, putting himself to the proof; and so let him eat (not stay away, because there is much discovered that is humbling). The guard and warning is, that if there be not self-judgment, the Lord will judge. How low is the state of things to which all saints tend, and not the Corinthians only! There ought to have been, I suppose, an interposition of the church's judgment between the Christian's lack of self-judgment and the Lord's chastenings; but, alas! man's duty was altogether lacking. It was from no want of gifts. They had no sense of the place God designed self-judgment to hold; but the Lord never fails.

In 1 Corinthians 12:1-31 accordingly, the apostle enters on a full statement of these spiritual powers. He shows that the distinctive feature of that which the Spirit of God leads to is the confession, not exactly of Christ, but of Jesus as Lord. He takes the simplest and most necessary ground that of His authority. This is observable in verse 3: "Wherefore I give you to understand that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed, and that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord but by the Holy Ghost." Impossible that the Spirit should dishonour, yea, that He should not exalt, Him who humbled Himself for God's glory. "Now, there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord; and there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God that worketh all in all." They had forgotten all this. They were pre-occupied with human thoughts, with this clever Jew and that able Gentile. They had lost sight of God Himself working in their midst. The apostle points out that if there were different services, if distinct gifts to one and another, it was for the common good of all. He illustrates the nature of the church as a body with its various members subserving the interests of the body and the will of the head. "By one Spirit were we all baptized into one body;" it is not the Holy Ghost merely making many members, but "one body." Accordingly he confronts with this divine aim their misuse of their spiritual powers, independence one of another, disorder as to women, self-glorification, and the like, as we see in1 Corinthians 14:1-40; 1 Corinthians 14:1-40 the detail. He presses that the least comely members, those that are least seen, may be of more importance than any others; just as in the natural body some of the most vital parts are not even visible. What would a man do without a heart, or liver, or lungs? So in the spiritual body there are members which are most important and not seen at all. But men are apt to value most those which make a showy appearance. Thus he rebukes the whole tenor and spirit of Corinthian vanity; at the same time he maintains their place of blessing and responsibility to the last. After all their faults he does not hesitate to, say, "Now ye are the body of Christ." This way of dealing with souls has been grievously enfeebled in the present day. Grace is so feebly known, that the first thought you will find amongst godly people is what they ought to be; but the ground and weapon of the apostle Paul is what they are by God's grace. "Ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular; and God hath set some in the church." It was far from his mind in the least to deny it. Observe here an important use of the expression, "the church." It cannot be the local assembly, because, looking at Corinth, no apostles were there. Whatever might be the providential arrangements outside in the world, he is looking at the assembly of God here on earth; and it is the assembly as a whole, the Corinthian assembly being, as every true assembly is, a kind, of representative, of the church universally. It is the church of God here below; not merely churches, though that was true also.

Thus we can look at what the church will be by-and-by glorified and absolutely perfect. We can also look at a particular local assembly. Besides there is this most important sense of the church never to be forgotten namely, that divine institution viewed as a whole on. earth. Members of Christ no doubt compose it; but there is His body, the assembly as a whole, in which God works here below. Such is the reason why we do not find in this epistle evangelists or pastors, because it is not a question of what is needed to bring souls in or lead them on. He looks at the church as a thing already, subsisting as the witness of the power of God before men. Therefore it was not at all necessary to dwell on those gifts which are the fruit of Christ's love to and cherishing of the church. It is regarded as a vessel of power for the maintenance of God's glory, and responsible for this here below. Therefore tongues miracles, healings, the use of outward powers, are largely dwelt on here.

But we pass on to another and a still more important theme, a wonderfully full picture even for God's word, that most perfect and beautiful unfolding of divine love which we have in 1 Corinthians 13:1-13. After all, if the Corinthians had coveted gifts, they had not coveted the best But even if we may desire the best gifts, there is better still; and the best of all is charity love. Accordingly we have this in the most admirable manner brought out both in what it is and in what it is not, and that too as corrective of the wrong desires of the Corinthians, and the evil spirit which had manifested itself in the exercise of their gifts; so that what seems to be an interruption is the wisest of parentheses between chapter 12, which shows us the distribution of gifts and their character, and chapter 14, which directs the due exercise of gifts in the assembly of God. There is but one safe motive-power for their use, even love. Without it even a spiritual gift only tends to puff up its owner, and to corrupt those who are its objects.

Hence 1 Corinthians 14:1-40 thus opens: "Follow after charity, and desire spiritual gifts, but rather that ye may prophesy." And why? Prophecy seemed to be somewhat despised amongst the Corinthians. Miracles and tongues were liked, because these made themselves of importance. Such wonders made men stare, and drew general attention to those who were invested evidently with a superhuman energy. But the apostle lays it down, that the gifts which suppose the exercise of spiritual understanding have a far higher place. He himself could speak more tongues than they all. It need hardly be added that he did more miracles than any of them. Still, what he valued most was prophesying. We must not suppose that this gift simply means a man preaching. Prophesying never means preaching. More than this, prophesying is not simply teaching. It, no doubt, is teaching; but it is a good deal more. Prophesying is that spiritual application of the word of God to the conscience which puts the soul in His presence, and makes manifest as light to the hearer the mind of God. There is a great deal of valuable teaching, exhortation, and application, that has no such character. It is all very true, but it does not put the soul in the presence of God; it gives no such absolute certainty of God's mind flashing on the condition and judging the state of the heart before Him. I do not speak now of the unconverted, though prophesying might affect such as well as the converted. The direct object of it was, of course, the people of God; but in the course of the chapter the unbeliever is shown coming into the assembly and falling on his face, and owning that God was among them of a truth. Such is the genuine effect. The man finds himself judged in the presence of God.

There is no need to enter into all that this chapter brings before us, but it may be well to observe that we have giving of thanks and blessing, as well as singing and prayer. Prophesying and the rest are brought in as all pertaining to the Christian assembly. What was not directly edifying, as speaking in a tongue, is forbidden unless one could interpret. I doubt very much whether there was any revelation after the scheme of Scripture was complete. To suppose anything revealed, when that which is commonly called the canon was closed, would be an impeachment of God's purpose in it. But till the last portion of His mind was written down in a permanent form for the church, we can quite understand His goodness in allowing a special revelation now and then. This gives no warrant to look for anything of the sort at any time subsequent to the completion of the New Testament. Again, it is plain from this that there are certain modifications of the chapter. Thus so far it is true that if anything has, through the will of God, terminated (for instance, miracles, tongues, or revelations), it is evident that such workings of the Spirit ought not to be looked for; but this does not in the smallest degree set aside the Christian assembly or the exercise according to God's will of what the Spirit still distinctly gives. And undoubtedly He does continue all that is profitable, and for God's glory, in the present state of His testimony and of His church here below. Otherwise the church sinks into a human institute.

In the end of the chapter a very important principle is laid down. It is vain for people to plead the mighty power of God as an excuse for anything disorderly. This is the great difference between the power of the Spirit and the power of a demon. A demon's power may be uncontrollable: chains, fetters, all the power of man outside, may utterly fail to bind a man who is filled with demons. It is not so with the power of the Spirit of God. Wherever the soul walks with the Lord, the power of the Spirit of God on the contrary is always connected with His word, and subject to the Lord Jesus. No man can rightly pretend that the Spirit forces him to do this or that unscripturally. There is no justification possible against Scripture; and the more fully the power is of God, the less will a man think of setting aside that perfect expression of God's mind. All things therefore are to be done decently and in order an order which Scripture must decide. The only aim, as far as we are concerned, that God endorses, is that all be done to edification, and not for self-display.

The next theme (1 Corinthians 15:1-58) is a most serious subject doctrinally, and of capital importance to all. Not only had the devil plunged the Corinthians into confusion upon moral points, but when men begin to give up a good conscience, it is no wonder if the next danger is making shipwreck of the faith. Accordingly, as Satan had accomplished the first mischief among these saints, it was evident the rest threatened soon to follow. There were some among them who denied the resurrection not a separate state of the soul, but the rising again of the body. In fact the resurrection must be of the body. What dies is to be raised. As the soul does not die, "resurrection" would be quite out of place; to the body it is necessary for God's glory as well as man. And how does the apostle treat this? As he always does. He brings Christ in. They had no thought of Christ in the case. They seem to have had no wish to deny the resurrection of Christ; but should not a Christian have at once used Christ to judge all by? The apostle at once introduces His person and work as a test. if Christ did not rise, there is no resurrection, and therefore no truth in the Gospel; "your faith is vain: you are yet in your sins." Even they were quite unprepared for so dreadful a conclusion. Shake the resurrection and Christianity goes. Having reasoned thus, he next points out that the Christian waits for the time of joy and glory and blessing for the body by-and-by. To give up resurrection is to surrender the glorious hope of the Christian, and to be the most miserable of men.. For what could be more cheerless than to give up all present enjoyment without that blessed hope, for the future at Christ's coming? Thus strongly was the whole complex nature of man before the apostle's mind in speaking of this hope of blessedness by-and-by.

Then, somewhat abruptly, instead of discussing the matter any more, he unfolds a most weighty revelation of truth "But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first-fruits of them that slept. For since by man came death, by man came also the. resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." True, the kingdom is not yet come for which we are waiting, but it 'will come. See how all truth hangs together, and how Satan labours to make a consistency in error. He knows the weakness of man's mind. Nobody likes to be inconsistent. You may be dragged into it, but you are never comfortable when you have a sense of inconsistency about you. Hence, after one. error gains empire over the mind of man, he is ready to embrace others just to make all consistent.

Such was the danger here among the Corinthians. They had been offended by the apostle's supreme indifference to all that is of esteem among men. His habits of speech and life were not at all up to the mark that they supposed seemly before the world in a servant of God. Out of this fertile root of evil has the clergy grown. It has been the effort to acquire as much refinement as possible. Holy orders make a man a sort of gentleman if he was not so before. This seems to have been at work in, the minds of these critics of the apostle. Here we find what lay at the bottom of the matter. There is generally a root of evil doctrine where you find people wrong in practice. At any rate, where it is a deliberate, persistent, and systematic error, it will not be merely a practical one, but have a root deep underneath. And this was what now came out at Corinth. It was feebleness about that which, after all, lies at. the very foundation of Christianity. They did not mean to deny the person of Christ or His condition as risen from the dead; but, this is what the enemy meant, and into this their wrong notion tended to drift them. The next step, after denying resurrection for the Christian, would be to deny it about Christ. And here the apostle does not fail to rebuke them, and in a manner trenchant enough. He (exposes the stupidity of their questions, wise as they flattered themselves to be. How? It is always the danger of man that he is not content to believe; he would like first of all to understand. But this is ruinous in divine things, which are entirely outside sense and reason. All real understanding for the Christian is the fruit of faith.

The apostle does not hesitate in apostrophising the unbeliever, or at any rate, the errorist he has in view, to expose his folly. "Thou fool," says he, "that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die." Thus the strongest possible censure falls on these Corinthians, and this for the very matter in which they plumed themselves. Human reasoning is poor indeed outside its own sphere. However, he is not content merely with putting down their speculations; he brings in subsequent and special revelation. The previous part of the chapter had pointed out the connection of Christ's resurrection with our resurrection, followed by the kingdom which finally gives place in order that God may be all in all. In the latter part of the chapter he adds what had not been explained hitherto, From the early portion we should not have known but that all saints die, and that all rise at Christ's coming. But this would not be the full truth. It is most true that the dead in Christ rise, of course, but this does not explain about the living saints. He had vindicated the glorious character of the resurrection; he had proved how fundamental, and momentous, and practical, is the truth that the body is to be raised again, which they were disposed to deny as though it were a low thing, and useless even if possible. They imagined the true way to be spiritual was to make much of the spirit of man. God's way of making us spiritual is by a simple but strong faith in the resurrection-power of Christ; look to His resurrection as the pattern and spring of our own. Then at the last he adds that he would show them a mystery. On this I must just say a few words in order to develop its force.

The resurrection itself was not a mystery, The, resurrection of just and unjust was a well-known Old Testament truth. It might be founded on Scriptures comparatively few, but it was a fundamental truth of the Old Testament, as the apostle Paul lets us hear in his controversy with the Jews in the Acts of the Apostles. In fact, the Lord Jesus also assumes the same thing in the gospels. But if the raising of the dead saints was known, and even the raising of the wicked dead, the change of the living saints was a truth absolutely unrevealed. Up to this it was not made known, It was a New Testament truth, as this indeed is what is meant by a "mystery." It was one of those, truths that were kept secret in the Old Testament, but now revealed not so much a thing difficult to comprehend when stated, as a thing not revealed before. "And behold," says he, "I show you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed." Evidently this supports and confirms, while it might seem an exception to, the resurrection; but, in point of fact, it gives so much the more force and consistency to the rising of the dead in a very unexpected way. The general truth of the resurrection assuredly does put the sentence of death on all present things to the believer, showing that the earth cannot rightly be the scene of his enjoyment, where all is stamped with death, and that he must wait for the resurrection power of Christ to be applied before he enters the scene where the rest of God will be our rest, and where there will be nothing but joy with Christ, and even this earth will behold Christ and His saints reigning over it till the eternal day. The addition to this of the New Testament truth of the chance gives immense impressiveness to all, and a fresh force, because it keeps before the Christian the constant expectancy of Christ. "Behold, I show you a mystery" not now that the dead in Christ shall rise, but "we," beginning with the "we" "we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump; for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed; for this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal shall put on immortality." And "therefore," as he closes with the practical deduction from it all, "my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work, of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord."

The last chapter is now before us, in which the apostle lays down a weighty exhortation as to collections for the saints. He puts it on the ground of their being prospered in any degree, and connects it with the special day of Christian enjoyment, when they gather together for the communion of saints. "Upon the, first day of the week let every one of you lay by in store as he has been prospered, that there be no gatherings when I come." Need it be said how human influence has dislocated the truth there? No doubt this was precisely what the apostle, or the Holy Ghost rather, discerned to be at work at Corinth, the same mistake that has wrought so malignantly in Christendom; that is to say, personal rank, learning, eloquence, or a great name (as of an apostle for instance), invoked to call out the generosity of the saints (perhaps, even of the world), and increase the proceeds by all these or like means.

But is there not another danger? Is there no snare for you, beloved brethren? When persons are more or less free from the ordinary incubus of tradition, when they are not so much under the influence of excitement, and of those appeals to the love of being known and of pleasing this or that man, or the cause, or any of those human motives that often do operate, I apprehend that they are exposed to danger in a wholly opposite direction. Do we sufficiently make it a matter of personal responsibility to the Lord, everyone of us, to give, and that in connection with the first day of the week and its blessed surroundings and objects, when we meet at His table? Do we every one of us give as we are prospered by the way? It is very well to keep clear of human influence, but let us see to it that we do not forget that "the Lord has need" of our giving for the purposes He loves here below. And of this I am sure, that if we have rightly cast aside mere human calls, and if we do thank God for the deliverance from worldly influence, and from the power of custom, public opinion, etc., it would be a deep reproach if we did not do double as much now, under the grace that confides in us, as we used to do under the law that used to govern us. Your own consciences must answer whether you can meet the Lord about this matter. I believe that we are in no small danger of settling down in the conviction that our old way was quite wrong, and simply keeping the money in our pockets. It does seem to me, I confess, that bad as human pressure may be in order to raise money, bad as may be a variety of earthly objects in this way or that, bad as a worldly lavish expenditure is, after all, a selfish personal keeping to ourselves of what we have is the worst thing of all. I am quite persuaded that the danger of the saints of God who have been brought outside the camp lies here, lest, delivered from what they know to be wrong, they may not seek in this an exercised conscience. Standing in the consciousness of the power of God's grace, they need to be continually looking out that they be devoted to Him. To cease doing what was done in a wrong way, and sometimes for wrong ends too, is not enough. Let there be zealous and vigilant exercise of soul, and enquiry how to carry out right objects in right ways, and so much the more, if indeed a simpler, fuller knowledge of God's grace and of Christ's glory has been given us.

Then we have various forms of ministry noticed. It is not here gifts as such, but persons devoted to labouring in the Lord; for there is a difference between the two things, as this chapter shows us strikingly. For instance, the apostle himself comes before us in ministry with his especial gift and position in the church. Then again, Timothy is there, his own son in the faith, not only an evangelist, but with a charge over elders at length, to a certain extent acting occasionally for the apostle Paul. Again, we have the eloquent Alexandrian thus introduced: "As touching our brother Apollos I greatly desired him to come unto you, but his will was not at to come at this time." How delicate and considerate the grace of Paul who wished Apollos to go to Corinth then, and of Apollos who wished not to go under the circumstances! On the face of the case we have the working of liberty and responsibility in their mutual relations; and the apostle Paul is the very one to tell us that Apollos's will was not to go as he himself wished at this time. It was no question of one in a place of worldly superiority regulating the movements of another of subordinate degree. The apostle did express his strong desire for Apollos to go; but Apollos must stand to his Master, and be assured that he was using a wisdom greater than that of man's. Finally, we observe another character of service lower down in "the house of Stephanas." This was a simpler case and a humbler position, but very real before God, whatever the danger of being slighted of men. Hence, I think, the word of exhortation "I beseech you, brethren, (ye know the house of Stephanas, that it is the first-fruits of Achaia, and that they have addicted themselves to the ministry of the saints,)" etc. They gave themselves up in an orderly manner to this work. "That ye submit yourselves," not merely to Timothy or to Apollos, but to such, to the simple-hearted Christian men whose desire was to serve the Lord with the measure of power they had, and this proved by their persevering labour. Undoubtedly, in the midst of the difficulties of the church, in the face of the oppositions and disappointment, manifold griefs, enemies, and sources of sorrow and shame, it requires the power of God to go on without being moved by any of these things. It is an easy thing to make a start; but nothing short of the power of God can keep one without wavering at the work in the face of everything to cast down. And this was the question. We may suppose that these Corinthians were troublesome enough. From the statements made in the early part of the epistle it is evident; and so the apostle calls upon them to submit themselves. Evidently there was an unsubject spirit, and those ministered to thought they were just as good as the house of Stephanas. It is good to submit ourselves "unto such, and to every one that helpeth with us and laboureth." I am persuaded, beloved brethren, that it is no impeachment of the blessedness of the brotherhood to maintain the speciality of ministry in the Lord. There can be in these matters no more deplorable error than to suppose that there is not to be this godly submission one toward another, according to the place and power that the Lord is pleased to entrust.

The Lord grant that our souls may hold fast the truth here revealed, and in no general or perfunctory way. All I pretend to now is to give a sketch or combination of the parts of the epistle. But may the word itself, and every part of it, sink into our souls and be our joy, that we may not only take the precious truth of such an epistle as the Romans for the peace and joy of our hearts in believing individually, but also may understand our place by faith as of God's assembly on earth, and with thankful praise as those that call on the name of the Lord ours as well as theirs as those that find ourselves practically in need of such exhortations. The Lord give us His own spirit of obeying the Father.