1 Corinthians Episode 7: Lawsuits and Sexual Immorality Among Believers - Part 1

Paul gives commands concerning holiness to the Corinthians and reminds them that they are not their own, but belong to Jesus.

- Podcast Transcript - 

Wes

Welcome to the Two Journeys Bible Study podcast. This podcast is just one of the many resources available to you for free from Two Journeys Ministry. If you're interested in learning more, just head over to twojourneys.org. Now on to today's episode.

This is part one of episode 7 in our 1 Corinthians Bible study podcast. This episode is entitled, "Lawsuits and Sexual Immorality among Believers," where we'll begin our discussion of First Corinthians chapter 6:1-20. I'm Wes Treadway, and I'm here with Pastor Andy Davis.

Andy, what are we going to see in these verses that we're looking at today?

Andy

The apostle Paul in this chapter, this vital chapter, addresses the issue of our certainty of our personal state with Christ based on our own holiness. Paul says, "Do not be deceived. If you're living a certain kind of life, you're not a child of God." And that's especially important in the issue of sexual immorality. We live in a very sexually degenerate and permissive culture, especially since the '60s, and things are getting more and more that way. We also see in this chapter that Paul cares very much about the corporate witness of the Corinthian church, as he did in the last chapter on church discipline. He wanted to make certain that the testimony of the church was not corrupted by not disciplining a sinful member. Well, the same issue is here again with sexual purity, but also with lawsuits among believers. He said, "How in the world can you be going in front of unbelievers to have disputes?" Jesus said, "By this will all men know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." And here they are suing each other, and Paul said, defrauding each other.

So, we're going to talk about the issue of sexual purity, the issue of not being deceived about where you're at spiritually, and then the issue also of corporate witness. And that'll actually come first in the account.

Wes

Well, let me go ahead and read Corinthians chapter 6:1-20

When one of you has a grievance against another, does he dare go to law before the unrighteous instead of the saints? Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases? Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more then matters pertaining to this life? So, if you have such cases, why do you lay them before those who have no standing in the church? I say this to your shame. Can it be that there is no one among you wise enough to settle a dispute between the brothers, but brother goes to law against brother, and that before unbelievers? To have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you. Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded? But you yourselves wrong and defraud even your own brothers. Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. All things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be dominated by anything. Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food. And God will destroy both one and the other. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never. Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her, for as it is written, the two will become one flesh. But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

Andy, what is Paul most concerned about when it comes to these lawsuits among believers that he begins with?

Andy

Right. I think it's also the same concern as I mentioned in the intro, the same concern that they had in the previous chapter. The corporate witness of the church is damaged by the wickedness or sin of the church. And in this particular case, there are individuals who are members of the same local church there, the same church in Corinth, and they're going to court against each other. And again, that scripture as I cited, "By this will all men know if you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." And then as Jesus himself prayed in John 17, "May they be brought to perfect or to complete unity to let the world know that you sent Me." In other words, the world is evaluating Jesus on the basis of the unity of the church, and this is not a picture of unity. These are lawsuits, and before that, crimes, actual crimes, fraud. You're defrauding one another, and then the defrauded brother is angry and takes the defrauder to court, and he's saying, "How can you possibly do that?" And he's saying, "Look, we have to deal with all this stuff in-house. Should have been dealt with in-house."

Wes

What does Paul teach us in verse 2 when he says that the saints will judge the world and angels, and how does he use this to argue that the church is able to deal with disputes between members?

Andy

Right. Well, he's giving a prophecy here. The future verb will, so in the future this will happen. So this is... And it causes our eyebrows to raise. We don't really have a lot of teaching on this, although it does say in Revelation that, "My people will sit with Me on My throne just as I overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne." So one preacher put it, lap in lap in lap. So Jesus is in the lap of the Father, and we're in the lap of Jesus, but it's on the throne, and the throne has certain authority, including rulership or judgment. Jesus said the meek will inherit the earth, so we are going to own it. A picture of this might be at the second coming in Revelation 19, where Jesus leads the armies of heaven, and they come back to judge the Antichrist, the beast from the sea, and his troops, his wicked warriors.

And so, when coming back, the saints may have a role to play in judging the world in that sense. And then Jesus said to His apostles, "You who have..." Peter said, "We've left everything to follow you. What then will there be for us?" And Jesus said, "I tell you the truth. You who have left everything will sit on 12 thrones judging the 12 tribes of Israel." So there is hinted, in a number of places, some judgment roles, some authority roles. And I think also he says in Romans 16, "The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet." So the idea is that we will have a hand in condemning the Devil and his angels to the lake of fire. I don't know how, Jesus is the judge of the universe, but He may commit that to us, just like He commands the angels to bind the wicked hand and foot and throw them into the lake of fire.

And so created beings are involved in the judgment process or the condemnation process. Now, I do think this is interesting. There is a possibility that we could see the original fall of Adam at the Garden of Eden as a very clever reversal by the Devil of what should have happened there at the tree, that basically God brought Satan to the man, to Adam, to judge him. And Satan cleverly turned the whole thing around and basically recruited Adam and Eve to join him in his rebellion. And whereas Adam should have stomped on the serpent right there and then, he didn't do it. Then the Son of Man later, Jesus, did it. So I think there's a lot of dimensions to this that we don't fully understand, that we are going to judge the world, we are going to judge demons, angels, and that we'll have that role to play.

Wes

So would it be fair to say that this could be a "how much more" argument, saying, if that's where we're headed, certainly, we can deal with these disputes amongst our own members.

Andy

Definitely. It is a "how much more" argument. If we're going to do all that, how much more can we handle this in-house matter of one person who's defrauded another?

Wes

In verses 4-6, what attitude does Paul have about these lawsuits that are being resolved before unbelievers? And in what way does Paul feel the church should be ashamed?

Andy

Yeah, he's saying, "Look, this should be an easy matter for you. You could even choose," he says, "men of little account." I don't know what your translation says there, but just kind of not even the greatest members of the church, in verse 4. What does yours say?

Wes

He says, "those who have no standing."

Andy

Yeah. So people even at the lowest level can handle this, should be able to handle this. And so he's saying, "Look," so it is definitely a "how much more" argument. You should be able to address this. So let's get at what happened, and if someone in the church has actually defrauded someone else for money, there are significant questions as to whether that fraudulent person is genuinely born again. That's where he is going at the end of this little subsection here. He says, "Don't be deceived. If that's how you're living, you're probably not a Christian." Then you go back to chapter 5, where then the church will expel him, expel the wicked man from among them, and he won't be a member of the church. Therefore, the problem's solved. You don't need to go to the pagans, go to law in front of the pagans. We can take care of it in house.

Wes

Now, verse 7 contains some powerful questions that, if answered properly, have serious implications for us as Christians. What does Paul mean by, "Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded?" And how might this ethic be lived out in every area of Christian relationships?

Andy

Wes, I can't tell you the number of times I said this to my kids as they're growing up. We used to have that phrase, "Why not rather be wronged?" In other words, it's more important to maintain the unity and the love relationship than to press your case and make certain you get dealt with properly, especially to the nth degree, which would be revenge. It would be better to be wronged than to go to court and drag the name of Jesus down in the minds of these unbelievers that we're trying to win to faith in Christ. You should just eat it. Just take the loss at that point, bear the loss yourself. Now, this is just a different phraseology that Jesus gives of turning the other cheek. If someone strikes you on the one cheek, turn to him the other also, which is always interesting. It's like, you seem to have a need to hit me. Maybe it'll help you to hit me again. You seem to have the need to defraud me. If someone sues you and takes your cloak, let them have your tunic as well. It's the same kind of teaching, isn't it? So you been defrauded. Now don't fight it.

And this is not the picture we get in our culture. It's like, you're going to look out for number one. You're going to fight for your rights and all that. It's like, no, no, no. Be willing to lay down. Jesus was wronged. No one was wronged like Jesus. And he did that for our benefit. So in the same way, we should be willing to be defrauded, to be wronged, et cetera, rather than to drag the name of Jesus down into the muck.

Wes

This is such a powerful teaching for us in our relationships in the church, but I think even beyond that, in a marital relationship, I had a friend say to me one time, "It's better to be reconciled than to be right." And there's a lot of truth to that. And I think as we seek to live this out, to not look out for number one, but to seek to be unified, particularly as brothers and sisters in Christ.

Andy

Yeah. Yeah. I think there's Proverbs about this. What is it? "A dispute is like a breach in a dam." So drop the matter quickly before it gets worse. I think that's a "Why not rather be wronged?" I think that comes in to help you do that. It's like, all right, look, we're starting to argue here. Is it really worth it to me to be right, to make sure that my spouse or my sibling or whatever knows that I'm right? It's like, no, drop it, drop the matter. That's what Proverbs says, drop the matter quickly. So I think at that point it's, don't press your rights. Now listen, I know that any teaching in the Bible can be taken beyond all boundaries and go too far. He's not saying that you don't go... In Matthew 18, "If somebody sins against you, show him his fault." He's not saying that, but this is a very important tool in the toolbox.

Wes

Now, Paul goes on to show how far the Corinthians are from this selfless, loving, others-centered ethic. How does he expose their shame in their dealings with each other in verse 8?

Andy

Yeah, he says... And you asked about shame earlier. I don't think I really answered it. They should be ashamed. They should be ashamed a lot of levels. The godly in the church, the leaders, should be ashamed that they didn't step up and cut this thing off, head it off at the pass and say, "Look, we're not going to the pagans. You come to us. We should deal with it." So you should be ashamed you didn't do that. There should be shame in the mind, the heart of the fraudulent brother who's defrauding his brother from money. And the fact that there are lawsuits, Paul says, means you're completely defeated already. He says, "You should be ashamed of that, the whole thing. You've lost all perspective. Do you not understand that all of these material things are temporary?" And so fundamentally, he says, "Look at what you're doing." And in verse 8, he says, "Not only are you not being wronged and turning the other cheek, you yourselves are doing the fraud. You're lying and cheating. So you need to look deeper." And he's about to go there. "You need to look deeper to see if you're actually born again." He says, there's a shock factor here that you are actually defrauding your brother for money.

Wes

What does Paul mean in verse 9, as he continues, by "inherit the kingdom of God"? And how does Satan try to deceive people about this?

Andy

Yeah. The wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God. You have to be transformed from darkness to light, from a servant of Satan to a servant of God, from enslaved to sin to a slave of God or of righteousness, as Roman 6 says. You have to be rescued out of Satan's kingdom, and you have to be brought into the kingdom of light. This is the message we heard from the beginning and declared to you, God is light, and in Him there's no darkness at all. If we claim to be in the light yet walk in darkness, we lie and deceive ourselves. That's exactly what Paul's saying here. John and Paul are saying the same things. So do not be deceived. The wicked will not go to heaven. They will not be raised into a resurrection body and live in the new heaven and new earth and new Jerusalem. Do not be deceived. You have to be transformed.

So here's where we get to the theology of salvation. Justification inevitably leads to sanctification, which inevitably leads to glorification. They're linked. Romans 8 makes it very clear. "Those whom God foreknew, He predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those he predestined, he also called. And those he called, he also justified. And those he justified, he also glorified." And so, in other words, only those who are predestined will end up glorified. Everyone that's predestined will end up glorified. That's the set. That's what we're dealing with. And there's a process, this, then this, then this, then this.

So, you can look at yourselves. You should test yourselves to see if you are actually in the body of Christ. And so, he is saying here very plainly, if you do not see a principle of holiness going on in your life, you're not born again. You're not a child of God. Don't be deceived about that. Romans 8, 13-14, says, "If you live according to the flesh, you will die," meaning go to hell. "But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live," because those who are led by the spirit of God, these only are the children of God." So, if mortification, putting sin to death by the Spirit, is not happening in you, you're not born again, you're not a child of God. Don't be deceived. And Satan does deceive us. He tells people who are going to church, but they're not regenerate-they're going, doing the moral thing, they're saying the name, they're nominal-that they are fine, that they don't need anything more. And Peter tells them very, very plainly, "Make your calling and election sure. Make every effort to add to your faith, goodness, and to goodness, knowledge, and knowledge, self-control, and self-control, perseverance. Perseverance, brotherly kindness. Brotherly kindness, love." You've got to see these qualities in you positively. This is dealing here with wickedness. So, he's going to actually discuss wickedness and specifically sexual immorality, but other things as well.

"If mortification, putting sin to death by the Spirit, is not happening in you, you're not born again, you're not a child of God. Don't be deceived."

Wes

Andy, how does this warning and cataloging of these sins relate to the preceding issue of lawsuits that Paul's been dealing with, as well as the issue that he's about to deal with of sexual purity?

Andy

Well, the last thing in this list is swindlers. So that links the whole thing, keeps the whole thing together. So, somebody who defrauds a brother or sister in Christ is a swindler. They're presenting some business deal or some other thing that ends up being fake. They're lying, and they're doing it for money. Well, that's a swindler, and a con artist, I guess, would be a swindler at the end. And so, this whole sin list is expanded though. The original context was fraud, but he wants to talk about sexual purity. So, he's going to go from this to talking about visiting temple prostitutes. We'll get to that in a moment.

But sexual immorality is a great danger. And so, this list is just a suggestive list. There are longer lists. We have one in Galatians 5, "The acts of the flesh are obvious," and he lists a bunch of things there. The last couple of verses of Romans 1 gives a very long list, 21 different sins, I think. And so, what it means is, sin manifests itself in different diseases, I guess. There are different... Sins of the tongue, such as lying, slander, gossip, arguing, complaining. Those are sins of the tongue. There are sins of the body, like sexual immorality, or violence, attacks, things like that. There's just different ways that sin manifests itself. And so, we need the whole list so that we can see the way that sin's working in our lives and know by it, "How am I? What's going on in my life? Am I born again? Am I actually a Christian or not?" So, the sin list helps us to not be deceived.

Wes

Andy, on the heels of this list, how does verse 11 help to undercut the argument that homosexuality, along with the assertion that homosexuality is genetic and essential to a person's identity rather than a moral choice they're making, how does that relate to the "such were some of you" language, and how should that give hope to people struggling with these sins?

Andy

Right. All right, so it's a vital issue, vital question. In our time, we are seeing the gay agenda, so to speak, the LGBTQ+, et cetera, that whole program, that whole pattern, greatly escalated right before our eyes in a very short amount of time. A significant marker was in the Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage, so to speak, and thus overturning millennia of jurisprudence precedent. Just like that, as though we suddenly now know better about marriage than everyone that went before us. And fundamental to the presentation being made here is that homosexuality is a genetic issue. You're born that way, similar to race. And that's a key link in American culture especially, because we had race-based chattel slavery, which we all utterly repudiate and hate, and rightly so. And then we had in my lifetime, very early in my lifetime, the Civil Rights era and the ugliness of overt racism, institutional racism, the Jim Crow laws, all of those things, which any fair-minded individual would want to distance him or herself from immediately and say, "I don't ever want to be that kind of a person, I hate racism," et cetera.

Well, what they cleverly did is they linked homosexuality to all that. So, it's every bit as genetic as race is. Well, it's not. And this verse, First Corinthians 6:11, is a key clue in terms of God's truth on this matter. You can become a former homosexual. So, it's a choice that you make. You cannot become a former Ethiopian. "Can an Ethiopian change his skin, or a leopard, his spots?" Jeremiah asked. The implication is, no, you are what you are racially. I can't decide to not be Caucasian. Neither can you. It is what we are. So now we're all human. We know that those things are just different elements of the vast and complex genetic variation that can happen, all of us being descended from one couple, Adam and Eve, and then again, Noah and his wife. We're all descended from one person twice.

So obviously there's a wide variety of genetic differences: eye colors, hair color, skin color, height, and facial structures, and all that, what we call racial tendencies, and all that, that's all genetics. But to lump homosexuality in with that is a grave mistake. Why is it? Because race is amoral. It's just the diversity that God built into the human race. That's beautiful, and culture elements of it is amoral as well, just the way that people do architecture or clothing or music or food. And those are variations that are beautiful, and we celebrate amoral diversity. But the diversity that's being foisted or forced upon us now is this issue of homosexuality, and beyond that, into transgender confusion, gender dysphoria, where people are born biologically male and claiming to be female or vice versa.

Well, 1 Corinthians 6:11 cuts through all of that like a hot knife through butter. It just says, absolutely not. You can become a former homosexual through repentance and faith in Christ. And many have testified that that is true of them. Now, we're not saying that there are not genetic tendencies towards sins. I have genetic tendencies toward adultery. And before I was married, I had genetic tendencies toward fornication. I had flesh drives, so did you, that we had to resist. And so, people question about same-sex attraction, and that's what's ended up happening. People have strong feelings, strong feelings in a certain direction, and they fight and fight and fight, and finally they just can't fight anymore, and they give in to them, and they're relieved to find out by some counselors and academics that it's all genetic, it's who you actually are. Therefore, they are cut off from being healed. They are cut off from seeking healing. They're told this is who they really are, but it's not who they really are.

"Such were some of you," the text says. You can, through repentance and faith in Christ, be transformed and made a new creation. And so fundamentally, we need to understand it that way. We need to see all sin, homosexuality's part of it, fornication, adultery, and other sins that are listed on this list, like being a swindler, all of it as a spiritual sickness. And Jesus said, "It's not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I've not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance." Oh, if a gay person, a homosexual person believes it's genetic, they are not thinking they're sick. They're not going to seek healing from the physician. They're not going to think it's a spiritual illness. We Christians need to tell the truth. And the more we do, the more we're going to get pounded by our culture, the more we're going to get forced.

"You can, through repentance and faith in Christ, be transformed and made a new creation. And so fundamentally, we need to understand it that way. "

You'll be at an employer that's going to force you to do gay pride month and if you don't celebrate or put something out, you'll lose your job. Well, that's illegal. That causes people to violate their religions, but people don't know it's illegal. Our religious right to say, "No, we will not participate, and we think it's wrong," is protected, presently anyway, by the laws. So, we have to be willing, but not for our sake, not for the sake of our jobs or our comforts, but for the sake of the lost homosexual person who is in the grip of what Romans 1 calls "corrupt lusts," or "depraved lusts." It's a clear verse that says, "God gave them over to depraved lust or desires." It's wicked desires. That same sex attraction is a corrupted desire, like a desire that I would have for another man's wife or a desire that I had before I was married to sleep with a woman, that is also a corrupted lust. I have to fight it and say, "No, that's wrong." That's the way out, "such were some of you."

Now, in the verses here, Paul actually gives technical terms here for different types of homosexual expression that were going on in Corinth at that time. It's not anything new. Cross-dressing, the effeminate, for example. It says in verse nine, "homosexual offenders." What does your translation have in verse 9?

Wes

"Men who practice homosexuality."

Andy

Yeah. So, I think it was malakoi, something like that. But really, it heads toward transgenderism, it heads toward cross-dressing, a man that acts like a woman, that is soft like a woman, et cetera. There's a series of technical terms here, and he's saying, such were some of you, you were like that, but you are washed, you are sanctified, you are justified by faith in Christ.

Wes

What does Paul also say about what Christ did to the Corinthian believers in verse 11? And how do these words show us the extent of Christ's saving power?

Andy

Yeah, it's fantastic. And I just quoted it, but let's talk about it. You are washed. All right? There is a filth that comes with sin, all sin. So, adultery, fornication, it's unclean. It's called uncleanness. And so, homosexuality is uncleanness, but all sin defiles, all sin makes us dirty. Listed here is idolatry. We didn't mention that. But idolaters will not inherit the kingdom of God. Adulterers is listed here, male prostitutes, thieves, so stealing, you're filthy. So, Zacchaeus was a basically Roman-backed thief who had taken more than the taxes were required, and there's nothing that people could do about it. He repented and gave the money back fourfold. And so washed means cleansed of the defilement of sin. Sanctified means set apart unto God as his sacred possession. And then justified, it says, forgiven, made righteous in the sight of God by the name of Jesus, by his blood shed on the cross.

So fundamentally, I make an appeal to all of our listeners. Let's not yield on the homosexuality issue for the sake of people enslaved to the sin. We have to tell them the truth. It is not loving... We're being deceived on this issue of love. It is not loving to tell someone entrapped in a spiritual disease that Jesus is the physician for that they're not sick. Imagine a cancer doctor, and somebody comes, and the doctor knows very well that they have a treatable but potentially fatal form of cancer, and he lies to that person and says, "You're fine. Go home. Ignore any pains. You may feel whatever. Just don't worry about it." That's malpractice. That's criminal. But we can't do that spiritually. We've got to be courageous.

Wes

Well, there's much more for us to discuss in 1 Corinthians 6. So, we would invite you to join us next time for part two of our discussion, where we'll continue our journey through 1 Corinthians 6:1-20. Thank you for listening to the Two Journeys podcast and may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.