When one of you has a dispute with another, how do you dare take it to court before the unrighteous instead of bringing it before the saints?
Do you not realise that the saints are already appointed to judge the world? And if the world is being evaluated through you, are you really unfit to handle ordinary matters?
Do you not know we are even judging angels? How much more, then, the matters of everyday life.
So if you have disputes about daily things, why seat as judges those who have no standing in the church?
I say this to shame you: Is there not even one wise person among you able to decide between brothers? Instead, brother goes to court against brother — and this before unbelievers.
The fact that you have lawsuits at all is already a defeat. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated? But you yourselves do wrong and cheat — and you do this to brothers.
Do you not know that the unrighteous do not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Those who practise sexual immorality, idolatry, adultery, sexual exploitation, same-sex acts, theft, greed, drunkenness, abusive speech, and swindling are not inheriting the kingdom.
And this is what some of you were. But you have been washed. You have been made holy. You have been set right with God in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
You say, “All things are lawful for me.” But not everything is beneficial. Yes, “all things are lawful,” but I will not be mastered by anything.
You say, “Food is for the stomach and the stomach for food,” and God is bringing both to nothing — but the body is not for sexual immorality. The body is for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body.
God has already raised the Lord, and He is also raising us by His power.
Do you not know your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never.
Do you not know that the one joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? “For the two,” He says, “become one flesh.” But the one joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him.
Flee sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.
Do you not know your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own.
You were bought with a price. Therefore glorify God in your body.
Chapters 1–4 confronted pride and factional identity. Chapter 5 confronted tolerated sexual corruption inside the community. Now Paul addresses two more community destroyers: public lawsuits between brothers and sexual behaviour justified as “freedom.” Both are identity issues: they are living like the old world while claiming New Covenant life.
Paul’s point is not that believers will one day sit in a futuristic tribunal. His point is: the church already carries Spirit-based discernment and authority, so dragging family disputes into pagan courts is a denial of who they already are. Paul speaks of this as present appointment because he uses it as a present argument.
Paul is describing what kind of life does not participate in the kingdom. He immediately follows it with: “such were some of you” (6:11). The point is transformation already given — washed, made holy, justified — not a fear campaign.
Paul speaks of resurrection power as active now (6:14). This is not a denial of bodily reality; it is a declaration that life in Christ has already broken the mastery of death. Paul uses present tense to ground ethics in the present reality.
Your body is a temple (6:19) is not metaphorical encouragement. It is covenant replacement: the Spirit now indwells people, not buildings. So sexual immorality is not “private” — it contradicts the new temple reality.
Freedom in Christ is not “I can do what I want.” Freedom is not being owned by anything. It’s living as a Spirit-indwelt person, able to choose love, truth, and integrity without compulsion.
Where am I calling something “freedom” that is actually mastery — and what would it look like to live from my true identity in Christ?
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