By Sarah Wootten
Moving into 1 Corinthians 6, the tone of the letter intensifies. In chapter 5, Paul was rebuking the church for not removing the immoral man from the congregation. Now we see Paul’s frustration toward the church come to a head. He asks the congregation “how dare you act like this?” (6:1). He also writes that he is ashamed of them (v. 5). Paul is a spiritual father to the Corinthian believers. What could the church possibly have done to elicit this kind of heightened response from Paul, so much so that he would say that he is ashamed of them?
Because human hearts are tainted with sin, we often find ourselves wronging each other. We assert our rights and our privileges above those of another. If our wallet is affected by someone’s actions, we demand repayment – with a pain and suffering markup added. We insist that others apologize for their misbehavior, but we are slow to repent ourselves. We defame those who have hurt us, and we are selfish beyond measure. Sadly, the world encourages this attitude.
Two church members had found themselves in a similar situation in Corinth. We don’t know the specifics, but one church member decided to sue the other (6:1). Instead of having spiritually wise church members mediate the situation and help the brothers work through their problem, the brothers went to the ungodly courts of the world to settle their dispute. We’ll get to the ridiculousness of one brother suing another brother next week, but the main problem that Paul had with this situation was NOT the lawsuit. Paul’s big frustration was directed toward how the church mishandled it.
Paul writes, “Can it be that there is no one [in the congregation who is] wise enough to settle a dispute between the brothers?” (6:5, ESV). Instead of the church stepping into the argument to mediate and help resolve the situation, the church was being hands off. No one was willing to step up and help these two brothers come to an agreement. Instead, the brothers went to the foolish wisdom of the world (see 2:20) to resolve their differences.
Clearly, the church lacked a kingdom mindset; they weren’t acting in a way that was fitting with the mind of Christ given to believers (2:16). Christians have the mind of Christ and should be able to apply the wisdom of God to all matters in life and walk faithfully (2:14-3:4). They are to look at situations and judge them through a wise, spiritual lens. In fact, Christians will judge the world and angels (6:2-3). What does that look like? I don’t know. But if we have been given the mind of Christ to be able to judge the world and angels, should we also not be able to look at “trivial cases” in this fleeting life and judge what is right and wrong according to God’s Word? Why would we go “before those who have no standing in the church” and ask them to resolve a problem between believers (6:4, ESV)?
This is shameful behavior for a church. Their complacency was severely damaging the testimony of the church to the outside world. They allowed the immoral man to remain in good standing, and now, they ignored the lawsuit between the brothers. The outside world saw a group of people who were incredibly immoral and wronged one another in the court of law. Instead of walking in the love of Christ that distinguishes the disciples of Christ (John 13:35), they acted in merely worldly ways.
God has not commanded His Church to be complacent. Because Christians still sin, there will be times where we will need assistance from others to resolve an issue. But when the congregation says, “Not my problem,” we allow the sin to blossom, spread, and damage the health of the church. We must not do this. Our commitment to the Word of God and our testimony to the lost doesn’t allow for this. Instead, we must be a people who have a spiritual mindset and can apply God’s truth to every situation in life. As a sidenote, this won’t happen unless we pour ourselves into knowing God and His Word.
There’s more in these verses for us to consider about living in unity and peace within the body of Christ. Lord willing, we’ll pick up there next week.
This article originally appeared in The Clarion Newspaper.
Corinth Baptist Church 