Judges of the World on High, Cowards in the Courts Below!
Sermon preached on September 30, 2018
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!
1 Corinthians 6:1-8
Imagine if one of the princes, a son of a great king, committed some offense against another of the royal sons or daughters. It may only be a petty injury, or an insult, or perhaps something more serious. It happens that the two of them, or maybe just one of them, begins to call on others in the royal court to bring the matter before the king.
Now as a few of them had frequently made their way among the common people, they overheard that, in the local tavern, in the middle of the rough and muddy streets below, the commoners had been holding these events where they settle disputes in front of drunken mobs. But they plaster these posters all over the dirty village with words like “Justice” and “Fairness” and “Violations of Community Standards” and “Guilty of Unwinsomeness,” and the like. Some such slogans were to be dismissed because they were absurd, while others were important words, yet on the lips of veritable barbarians, were turned into a mockery of justice. Worse yet, the center-most poster, larger than the others, and treated no longer like a court docket or a political campaign ad, but more like an advertisement for the main event in boxing, was two opponents sparring—which two opponents at law are that prince and the other royal to whom he had given offense. It was their own doing.
This two-layered allegory, if you can imagine it, is only a distant shadow of how utterly incongruous the appeal of Christians to the secular courts against other Christians. Such was the danger of a cheapened spiritual life in Corinth.
A Secular Hearing is Forced to Our Shame
A Sacred Hearing is Fitting to Our Destiny
Three Who Paul Rebukes; One Who He Does Not
Doctrine. Our inability to judge between petty and serious injury, in the court of the church, puts us on trial in the world.
A Secular Hearing is Forced to Our Shame
‘When one of you has a grievance against another, does he dare go to law before the unrighteous instead of the saints?’ (v. 1) Calvin describes the basic sin of the Corinthians here as “an excessive fondness for litigation, which took its rise from avarice.”1 Another parallel to our day. We live in a very litigious society. What that means about us is that we think more about “what’s coming to me” than our larger responsibilities together. All Christians are in the process of being converted from the norms of our culture (whether Corinthian or American). So Paul says, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind” (Rom. 12:2). God is changing us, but we have a default by nature. This particular default is to think first about what I can get out of the situation. This is the first and most obvious part of this passage.
Here is the second obvious feature. Paul is going to blame them for not being able to resolve the conflict as a church. ‘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’ (vv. 4-5a). What all of this implies, once again, is that the church is a legal assembly: a court. It is much more than that, but it is never less. “No standing” here means no jurisdiction. The church’s court is the true Supreme Court on earth! Yet here we are appealing to a lower court as if it is higher. Returning to our opening analogy, in moving down from ecclesial courts to civil courts—when it is ecclesial business—is like those royals soiling their robes in the mob. Note that caveat, though, that this movement down is only the case when ecclesial matters are punted. Civil courts, in and of themselves, have their nobility—if the matter is truly civil. We will return to that.
‘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’ (vv. 5b-7a). The upshot of this is a lesser to greater argument. To even have lawsuits among you—in the church, as church member toward church member—means preventative discipline did not happen. How much worse for it to boil over onto the stage of the world! There are people designated to judge lesser cases in the church, in both Old and New Testament, as when Jethro advised Moses,
You shall represent the people before God and bring their cases to God, and you shall warn them about the statutes and the laws, and make them know the way in which they must walk and what they must do. Moreover, look for able men from all the people, men who fear God, who are trustworthy and hate a bribe, and place such men over the people as chiefs of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties, and of tens. And let them judge the people at all times. Every great matter they shall bring to you, but any small matter they shall decide themselves. So it will be easier for you, and they will bear the burden with you (Ex. 18:19-22).
Thus, when Paul charges the Roman Christians as a whole, “you yourselves are … able to instruct one another” (Rom. 15:14),2 this spanned the whole set of cases in which the counsel of believers ought to produce a gracious remedy that spares reproach of Christ. Our inability to judge between petty and serious injury, in the court of the church, puts us on trial in the world.
A Sacred Hearing is Fitting to Our Destiny
This is the theological grounding of Paul’s rebuke. This is the anchor on the shores of the eternal kingdom. ‘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?’ (v. 2) Paul is not leaving it to their common sense to see why this is such a shame. He is going to raise their heads up to a reality that they had not thought about. This is one of the applications of his previous words: “The spiritual person judges all things” (2:16) and later, “For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world” (3:21-22). This inheritance is not an isolated individualism, but it is heaven’s-eye-view down into the whole moral universe. In fact, as the rest of Romans 12:2 says, the reason for that renewal of our minds is for decisive moral action: “that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”3
‘Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more, then, matters pertaining to this life!’ (v. 3) Now this is a mysterious passage. Perhaps it means only the fallen angels. We may like to know more. But there should be no doubt as to how Paul is using the information. SHAME ON YOU! God is going to, in some way, place angels under your jurisdiction on the Last Day: these exalted beings who, every time a human runs into one in Scripture, the human being almost dies from the terror! Such angelic beings will be placed under humanity in rank in some sense. Yet for all of that, what men really fear is having to assess facts of a case between mere mortals. Such a pusillanimous specimen may be a Christian, but his perspective is most certainly not. Our inability to judge between petty and serious injury, in the court of the church, puts us on trial in the world.
Three Who Paul Rebukes; One Who He Does Not
I am usually amazed and frankly annoyed when I hear people speak on this passage. It is often used as a pretext for abuse. So I have included this third section. I have already hinted at one qualification. Ecclesial courts excel civil courts in a kind of dignity so that its participants are nearer to God’s love and goodness, and so have been granted access to more of His wisdom and justice. This is comparable to those royal courts and all of the kingdom privileges. On the other hand, civil courts have their place. There are actions that may be committed so unbefitting to this kingdom that it is appropriate that such are tried according to the extremities of the moral law—that is, those externals of the law of nature by which man is related to man precisely as man rather that as brother in Christ.
The first person that Paul rebukes is the most obvious. This is a rebuke on the surface. He sees a petty squabble that is the occasion for taking this outside the church. So he says: ‘Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded?’ (v. 7b). This is the first and obvious, surface-level rebuke—namely, anytime the fight is over something that both sides could easily (or even not so easily) surrender their “rights” about. If one suffers wrong at the hands of their brothers, then one is at least like Jesus. Jesus, who says, “But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also” (Mat. 5:39), was also abandoned by those He called friends. Notice the main point: This is one’s own private grievance or offense. As I always tell people when this verse is abused: Notice the Jesus does not say, “If someone violates one of your sisters, offer him also your other!” The grievance to be absorbed is one which does not cause one to turn one immorality into another. Private vengeance is a sin, but so is failing to defend the weak. The weak are not my cheek. Those under my care are not to be confused with a petty grievance.
The second person that Paul rebukes is the one committing the offense, which suggests two things: OBJECTIVE SIN—that is, a definable transgression of actual commandments in God’s word, and, very often, what I have called in the past PRIMAL SIN—that is, the sin which instigates and prosecutes the offense. Here it is sin against one’s brother (or sister), so we can substitute the word “offense” for “sin.” That’s why the discipline process in Matthew 18 starts with the words, “If your brother sins against you” (18:15). Jesus says that your brother can sin against you in such a way that it would not be petty to bring it to church court. That is the first layer underneath the surface. Those are the key words, though: objective and primal. Let me further unpack what I mean by each of those, first, by quoting Paul’s next words: ‘But you yourselves wrong and defraud—even your own brothers!’ (v. 8). Let me ask you. Do you think Paul is just repeating the same rebuke to the same two hotheads, but in a different way? I do not, for a very simple reason. Notice that in verse 7 “suffering wrong” and “being defrauded” are passive. The sufferer, or the wronged party, is the one receiving the action. Now look at verse 8: You yourselves “wrong” and “defraud,” or in other words, “You (someone) are the actor … the offending party.”
There is a third person that Paul rebukes, and it may be even harder to see this one. But look back up in verse 5: ‘Can it be that there is no one among you wise enough to settle a dispute between the brothers’. Now who is he rebuking here? He is rebuking the judge(s) who have abdicated their responsibility. He is rebuking the whole church for fleeing the courtroom. In short, he is rebuking the sin of judicial cowardice: an irrational fear of courtrooms.
Were I to write for him my laws by the ten thousands, they would be regarded as a strange thing (Hos. 8:12)
Practical Use of the Doctrine.
Use 1. Correction. I mentioned three groups of people who Paul is collectively casting shame upon. However, there is also a group of people that Paul does not have in his crosshairs here, and to use this passage to silence and bind these people would be very wicked. Paul is most certainly not shaming and beating down the genuinely oppressed and abused who have gained no hearing in the church’s non-court or false courts, and who therefore have no recourse but to flee (hopefully to some other portion of Christ’s kingdom, where His courts are open and abounding in justice; but if it cannot be found, even to secular sources. At that point, shame on the church that the secular world is practicing justice more than the church! That is actually part of what Paul means by the shame. He is blaming those in power who have traded in the justice of action for the injustice of silence. He is not shaming the power-less victims of injustice.4 One might think that this qualification should be so obvious that it need not be said. However, I have my doubts about that. Our inability to judge between petty and serious injury, in the court of the church, puts us on trial in the world.
Use 2. Consolation. Jesus was put on a false trial. He was tried in the courts below, and that by a perversion of the law that He had revealed in purity. It was the leadership of God’s people who whisked him away, in the middle of the night, to hand him over to the Gentiles. The ultimate people who should have cared about the truth, put Him who is Truth on trial and killed Him. Even where we have reproached the name of Christ by our petty squabbles and sinful divisions, He has beat us to the courts below even here, and that as an act of love rather than justice: “For Christ did not please himself, but as it is written, ‘The reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me’” (Rom. 15:3). Because of His supreme act of mercy, let us take courage to be that more just and gracious order in the courts of Zion.
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1. Calvin, Commentaries, XX:198.
2. This is the infinitive form, νουθετεῖν, for the verb that is more like “admonish,” “counsel,” or “warn.”
3. For anyone who struggles with the church judging the world in any judicial sense, Calvin reconciles Matthew 19:28 and John 5:22, which teach that all judgment belongs to the Son, with our truth here. One verse to which he appeals is Hebrews 11:7, which says that, “By faith Noah … condemned the world.”
4. Calvin takes the same position in the end. In answering the objection that it belongs to the civil magistrate to hear legitimate cases, he distinguishes: “I answer, that Paul does not here condemn those who from necessity have a cause before unbelieving judges … but those who, of their own accord, bring their brethren into this situation, and harass them, as it were, through means of unbelievers, while it is in their power to employ another remedy” (Commentaries, XX:198-99).
