Paul has been chastising the church at Corinth for lacking spiritual wisdom, which led them into not dealing effectively with sin. Chapter 6 includes six statements that begin with “do you not know”:

• 6:2 Do you not know that the saints will judge the world?
• 6:3 Do you not know that we will judge angels?
• 6:9 Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?
• 6:15 Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?
• 6:16 Do you not know that the one who joins himself to a prostitute is one body with her?
• 6:19 Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?
  

If they knew those things they would not be in this predicament. Instead, their shallow spirituality resulted in them encountering problems that they didn’t know how to resolve.

When they presented problems to him for his guidance, Paul called them his brethren, but he also said he couldn’t talk to them as spiritual people: “I could not speak to you brethren as to spiritual men, but as to men of flesh, as to infants in Christ. I gave you milk to drink, not solid food; for you were not yet able to receive it. Indeed, even now you are not yet able, for you are still fleshly” (1COR 3:1-3).

Churches and individual Christians must be well-grounded in the ways of God so that they know how to properly deal with life. The teachings of scripture must form the value system by which we diagnose problems and make decisions.

Consider the current issue this church was grappling with – a man was having sex with his father’s wife (5:1-2).

If we chain together the six “do you not know” statements above, we get this:

“The saints will judge the world and the angels, but the unrighteous will not inherit God’s kingdom. A Christian’s body is a member of Christ, so if a Christian joins his body to a whore he becomes one body with the whore. Yet his body also is the Holy Spirit’s temple. God gave the Holy Spirit to us and He lives in us, so we don’t belong to ourselves.”

Would knowing those spiritual truths have helped this church to properly deal with this believer who had joined his body to the body of his mother or step-mother? Yes, definitely. The church would have known exactly how to respond to that sin. Instead, they were so caught up in their infighting and divisions over who the best teacher (see 1:10-13) that they completely lacked spiritual wisdom.

» 1COR 5:12-6:5
For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Do you not judge those who are within the church? But those who are outside, God judges. Remove the wicked man from among yourselves. Does any one of you, when he has a case against his neighbor, dare to go to law before the unrighteous and not before the saints? Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? If the world is judged by you, are you not competent to constitute the smallest law courts? Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more matters of this life? So if you have law courts dealing with matters of this life, do you appoint them as judges who are of no account in the church? I say this to your shame. Is it so, that there is not among you one wise man who will be able to decide between his brethren?

Should Christians be judgmental? I think the answer is clear in this passage: Yes. We are to judge each other. “Remove the wicked man from among yourselves” (5:12-13). The NIV footnote for those verses lists numerous references to this statement in Deuteronomy. There it is translated “Purge the evil from among you.”

There’s an apparent contradiction in this text that need to reconcile. In v.2 Paul wrote that “the saints will judge the world,” but three verses earlier (5:12), he asked “what business is it of mine to judge those outside the church?” Those seem to contradict each other. How do we reconcile them?

The answer is in the word “will” in the first statement. The saints will judge the world. That is important to the entire theology of the New Testament (see Matt 19:28; Rev 20:4; et al). But that’s in the future, not now. So if you point out some sin in the world and an unbeliever says “you aren’t supposed to judge!” he is correct.

Right now, we aren’t to judge the world. In fact Paul clearly said in 4:5, “do not go on passing judgment before the time, but wait until the Lord comes.”

Right now we are to judge each other, but not the world.

This should affect the way we deal with unbelievers and how we look at all the sin in the world around us. Unbelievers act the way their fleshly natures dictate, just as Christians should act the way their spiritual natures dictate.

Human solutions can’t solve human problems. Only spiritual rebirth can solve the problems, yet so often we turn to human systems (government, psychology, commerce, etc.) and expect them to fix things. They can’t and they won’t.

Rather than lobbying for or investing our energy into earthly solutions, we should focus all our efforts into genuine transformation but introducing the dead world to the Author of life.

Our text goes on to discuss taking Christians to secular courts. That appears to be the way this church in Corinth tried to deal with the incestuous brother.

But we are very clearly told not to take another believer before a secular court: “Does any one of you, when he has a case against his neighbor, dare to go to law before the unrighteous and not before the saints?” (6:1).

What’s wrong with a Christian taking another Christian to a secular court?

1. (6:1-2) If we are going to judge the world, the world can’t possibly be in a position to judge us. Imagine parents asking their child to make adult decisions for them. The adult is should be more developed and wiser than the child. Likewise, believers should be wiser than any fleshly judge.
2. (6:2-3) We will someday judge angels! Worldly matters should be a piece of cake. They are the “smallest” cases in the scope of things.
3. (6:4) Even people “who are of no account in the church” should make better judges of issues between Christians than people of the world.
4. (6:5) Disputes between believers require more wisdom than anyone in the world could possess because they don’t “have the mind of Christ” (see 1COR 2:16).
5. Worldly courts are only capable of judging external actions and issue punishment. But “the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart” (Heb 4:12) and causes us to men “to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Peter 1:3).
   

» 1COR 6:6-8
But instead, one brother goes to law against another--and this in front of unbelievers! 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? Instead, you yourselves cheat and do wrong, and you do this to your brothers.

Paul wrote here that secular lawsuits among Christians show that Christians have “been completely defeated already.” Those are strong words! Why would he say this?

Consider what “defeated” means. It means failing in your mission or goal. And as Christians, our mission or goal is to save the world by representing God in a way that attracts unbelievers to Him.

When we ask the world to solve our problems it communicates that they are wiser than God! So by using human wisdom and human systems, we fail in our mission to attract the world to God. We are defeated.

Paul says it would be better to allow ourselves to be wronged or cheated than to ask the world to judge or solve our problems. We should rather give up our “rights” and/or feelings than represent Christ badly to the world.

» 1COR 6:9-11
Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

Does the above scripture mean that a genuine Christian cannot be sexually immoral or homosexual or greedy or an alcoholic? Does it mean that if a Christian is one of these things, he or she won’t go to heaven when they die? If it doesn’t mean that, what is the intention of these statements?

V. 11 says some of you WERE all of those things that prevent you from inheriting the kingdom. But it also says you ARE washed, sanctified, and justified. Compare this to 5:7, which says to “Get rid of the old yeast [sin] that you may be a new batch without yeast—as you really are.” Who they really were (unleavened dough) was true even though they currently yeast. The presence of sin didn’t invalidate the perfection that God used to judge them.

That makes it clear to me that a Christians could be involved in practically any sin. But we must get rid of sin because, as with yeast, it will otherwise cause the whole sinful batch of dough (the church) to grow in sin even more.