1 Corinthians 6:2 Commentary and Bible Study

Why are you going to law before the unbeliever, when you are perfectly capable to judging such cases yourself? Why are you damaging the testimony of the church by exposing disagreements between yourselves before an unbelieving world? Don’t you see that the world will immediately say, ‘Those Christians are no different from us. They too are concerned about protecting their interests, and they also fight against each other over little things. They claim to have their minds on heavenly things, and to have been changed by conversion, but they behave just like anyone else.’ It was shameful for the believers to air their grievances with one another publicly, and not to resolve them within the Lord’s family. ‘You do not need to go to a secular court to resolve these things; you can judge these things among yourselves.’How interesting the apostle begins this particular challenge! ‘Do ye not know?’ And he is going to do the same thing in verse 3. And in fact, throughout these verses there is going to be language of this kind – ‘Don’t you know this?’ ‘Don’t you know that?’ Haven’t you got a single wise person among you?’ Because of the Greek culture and because of the great pride of Corinth as a city, there was a great deal of pride in wisdom in the congregation in Corinth. They thought themselves to be rather wise. And it was a weakness. So he takes them down in this respect. You can’t help noticing it as you go through the passage. ‘Don’t you have a single wise person among you, capable of looking into this?’ How will saints judge the world? What we can glean from the Scripture in this: in the last day in the great judgement, the people of God will be given light and understanding to wholly conquer with the judgement of the Lord. He will be the judge, not really us; but we will find ourselves in total oneness and agreement with him. In that the final day of judgement when our hearts are purified and we are with Christ, we will be given all the insight we need to fully see the righteousness of the judgement of God and concur with it. In that sense we will judge the world: Paul is pointing to our high station. It is something we being prepared for: to be everlastingly righteous. ‘And you want to go to law before the world? You don't understand your calling and your privileges’, says the apostle. And these are little things. Are ye unworthy, end of verse two, to judge the smallest matters? Now in the English, it reads as though this is an incidental matter. It isn't. These are only small things that they going to law about.