Take Your Lawsuit to Church
1How dare you take one of your fellow believers to court over a legal disagreement. You are going to ask an unbeliever to settle your dispute when you could have asked believers to help you reach a settlement? 2Don’t you know that one day the believers will judge this world? If we are capable of doing that, what makes us incapable of trying minor cases like an argument between two people?3Hasn’t anyone told you that we will one day judge the angels. Come on, don’t you think we can settle the everyday squabbles we have with each other? 4So when you have some of those common legal disputes, are you really going to take those cases to judges who don’t have anything to do with the church?
5Shame on you! You don’t have anyone in the church who is savvy enough to settle a disagreement between fellow believers? 6So, you’re okay with one believer taking another believer to court and then airing the complaints to unbelievers? 7If you have a lawsuit like that, among believers, you’ve already lost the case. Instead of going to court, why not just accept the fact that you were treated badly? And if you were cheated, why not accept that as well, and then move on? 8But the fact is that you cheat and mistreat your own fellow believers.
These Folks Aren’t Citizens of God’s Kingdom
9Don’t you know that people who behave badly aren’t going to inherit any part of the kingdom of God? [1] That includes sex sinners, people who worship idols, adulterers, male prostitutes, homosexuals, 10thieves, greedy people, drunks, crooks, and folks who lie about others. [2] Don’t get tricked into believing otherwise. 11Some of you committed those kinds of sins. But you were washed clean and spiritually purified. Everything was made right between you and God. All of that happened in the name of our leader, Jesus the Messiah, and through the work of God’s Spirit.Your Body Doesn’t Belong to You Anymore
12“I’m free indeed to do as I please.” [3]But not everything I’m free to do would be helpful.
“I’m free indeed to do as I please.”
But I won’t get enslaved by anything I’m free to do.
13“Food is for the stomach, and stomach is for the food.” [4]
But God will get rid of them both.
The body is not for sex sins.
The body is for the Lord and the Lord is for the body.
14God raised our leader. And God in his power will raise us too. 15Don’t you know that your bodies are linked to the Messiah? Should we link those bodies to a prostitute too? Absolutely not! 16Don’t you know that when you link yourself to a prostitute, the two of you become one body? That’s what the Bible says, “The man and woman become part of each other—two people, yet one.” [5] 17But the person who links to the Lord becomes one Spirit with him.
18Run away from sex sins. Every other sin a person commits takes place outside the body. But people who commit sex sins are sinning against their own body.
