See you in court? (1Cor 6:1-6)

Does any one of you, when he has a case against his neighbor, dare to go to law before the unrighteous and not before the saints? Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? If the world is judged by you, are you not competent to constitute the smallest law courts? Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more matters of this life? So if you have law courts dealing with matters of this life, do you appoint them as judges who are of no account in the church? I say this to your shame. Is it so, that there is not among you one wise man who will be able to decide between his brethren, but brother goes to law with brother, and that before unbelievers? (1Cor 6:1-6)

Usually in literature chapters come at natural breaks in the text, and changes of topic. That’s true most of the time in the Bible as well, but we need to keep in mind that the division into chapters and verses were added to the text 1500 years later.

So then we need to ask ourselves, does this break considerably from what we were talking about in chapter five with church discipline, or is it just a natural extension of it?

Last time we were talking about how the church deals with a member who sins, and this time we’re talking about how the church deals with a member who sins. The difference is this time the sin has caused a deep disagreement between two members of the church, and it is not immediately clear which one of them actually is the sinner and which one is the victim.

So, being the Greeks they are, and being children of their time, the most natural thing for them to do is to take their brother to court to have the dispute settled. The courts of the time were called the dikastic courts, and were run by fairly simple principles. There was an assembly of 200 to 500 men, depending on the type of case. These men held the title of dikastai. They were appointed at the beginning of every year. To become a dikastai, you had to be a legal citizen over the age of 30, and you had to be willing to take a dikastic oath.

The accuser would make a speech before the court, and then the defendant would do the same. Then the dikastai, would vote in favor of one of them. If it was a crime that required punishment, they would have another round afterward, where the accuser and defendant both proposed what they saw as an appropriate punishment, and they would decide that as well by vote.

The democratic courts were the pride and joy if the Greek civilisation. The symbol of their civility and wisdom. In most other cultures at the time, you would take them before a regional leader appointed by the king, or even just someone who had great power because he was rich, and the verdict and punishment would be completely at this one mans discretion.

But the wisdom of the world is not like the wisdom of God. And what is right in the eyes of a democratic assembly is not necessarily what God wants.

God’s laws are written on every man’s heart, and this is reflected in every law text of every country in the world to some degree. But sin clouds our judgment and causes us to collectively make up provisions for it. And those compromises make it into law as well. So even though the laws and morals of unbelievers are influenced by God, they are not a perfect reflection of his righteousness.

So Paul poses the question, why would you not rather go to those who have the spiritual wisdom to judge? Why do you go to those who lack an intimate knowledge of the heart of God, and ask them to decide? The implication being, maybe the unregenerate are more likely to rule in your favor. Maybe they will not see your subtle “legalized” sin in all of this, but rather rule against the one you’re disagreeing with. While in God’s eyes you yourself are the offender. It is probably in this sense Paul say that you wrong and defraud your brethren, when you go to court against them in verse 8.

The saints will rule the earth with Christ in the millennial kingdom. And angels will be subject to us as well. So is the spiritual state in Corinth so poor that there isn’t even one in the church who has the wisdom to pass good judgments? Do they need to get an unbeliever to decide in even the most minor of disagreements?

Paul is not proposing here, that we should set up a Christian court system, like the Muslims do with their sharia courts. What would have been the right response is for the man who feels he has been defrauded, to go about the normal procedure for church discipline. After all this man would probably have committed a sin that would warrant church discipline. So first he would need to talk to the offender and see if he would repent. Then take with him one or two other brothers, and finally, if he refused to repent, take him before the whole church.

Now if this man was expelled from the church, I suppose by this text, it wouldn’t be unlawful to then open a court case against him, but as we will see soon that is not really the heart of a believer. Stay tuned for the next post!