1 Corinthians 6
6
The error of litigation in the Church
1Now another matter — the Greeks are devoted to litigation, it is a passion with them, but what has that to do with you? Are you going to haunt the law-courts of Corinth and with cases which you bring against one another! 2This has little to do with the true judgment and justice which your faith exemplifies. 3That is capable of judging angels, and if you have it are you not even capable of settling these business disputes which arise amongst yourselves? 4-7Have you no one wise enough for that, but must you go to law with one another, and invoke the methods and assistance of a corrupt judicial system to get the better of your brother? Questions of everyday life then cannot be settled by the Church, but you must needs take them before those who know nothing of your faith, and whom the Church on that account esteems as of no account. Yet you bring your quarrels and disputes before them! And why do such disputes arise? 8Is it not because you still have in your midst the old spirit of over-reaching and dishonesty? I declare it is better to be wronged, to be cheated and robbed, and to take the injustice and say no more about it, for that would more resemble your calling than to do the opposite. 9Yes, for the old world of wickedness that God is judging, which is for ever excluded from His Kingdom, is still lurking in your midst. O do not be deceived by it, whatever cloak it may put on! Fornication, idolatry, adultery, sodomy, 10dishonesty, greed, drunkenness, cursing, theft — these are the things that hide the Kingdom of God, and they can never win it. 11Were you once involved in them, and were you purified, cleansed, justified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and in the spirit of our God? Yes, you were, you had won clear of that spirit of perdition, but see that it does not entangle you again, know it for what it is.
Man not subordinate to physical nature
12True, I am free, I am independent, and can act as seems good to me, yet, though nothing is bad in itself, evil in its influence is dangerous. I am a free man, but I will not be mastered by any influences. 13Food and drink have nothing to do with my real being, they affect the belly, not me, you say, and I am in my true self independent of them. Yet that physical part of you is doomed to destruction along with the material things that feed it. Perhaps you would dare to apply the same view to the body. Never! The body is not for fornication. It is for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body. 14And as the Lord was raised from the dead by the power of God, so shall we be raised. 15For there is nothing legitimate or natural for you in an appetite which demands such vile institutions and uses for its satisfaction. Your bodies are no longer carnal, they are members of Christ. 16Shall I take that which is spiritual and convert it into the very opposite, change the limbs of Christ into the flesh of a harlot? “They twain shall be of one flesh,” says Moses (Gen 2:24), and so this awful substitution takes place, and in the place of Christ’s body we find that of a harlot. Such then is their practice, this besetting sin of Corinth. Flee from it. 17For the One Spirit makes us one with the Lord. 18That is the truth, of which the other is the lie. Just as in the truth man cannot separate himself from the Lord, for there is but one Spirit, so in the false, in the carnal action, man cannot separate himself from the sin to which he surrenders, he sins not against another only, nor does the wrong of his action merely affect that which is outside himself. He cannot excuse himself by saying “it has nothing to do with my true being, it is inherent in the body only, and I disclaim its connection with me, though as a physical being I am forced by the power of Nature to submit to it, even as I am forced by other appetites to eat and drink!” The reasoning is false. 19Your bodies are spiritual structures, the spirit that dwells in you is of God, and your bodies are correspondingly spiritual, as temples, rather than animal organisms; 20they owe allegiance not to the physical self, but to Him who redeemed them at a price. God Himself is to be glorified in your bodies.
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1 Corinthians 6: GWC
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Translated in 1916, published in 1937.
1st Corinthians 6
6
CHAPTER 6
1Dare any of you that hath a cause against another, be deemed at wicked men, and not at holy men [or saints]?
2Whether ye know not, that saints shall deem this world? And if the world shall be deemed by you, be ye unworthy to deem the least things?
3Know ye not, that we shall deem angels? how much more worldly things?
4Therefore if ye have worldly dooms, ordain ye those contemptible men, [or of little reputation], that be in the church, to deem.
5I say to make you ashamed [or I say to your shame]. So there is not any wise man, that may deem betwixt a brother and his brother;
6but brother with brother striveth in doom, and that among unfaithful men.
7And now trespass is always among you, for ye have dooms among you. Why rather take ye not wrong? why rather suffer ye not deceit [or fraud]?
8But also ye do wrong, and do fraud [or and defraud], and that to brethren.
9Whether ye know not, that wicked men shall not wield the kingdom of God? Do not ye err; neither lechers, neither men that serve maumets [or idols], neither adulterers, neither lechers against kind, neither they that do lechery with men,
10neither thieves, neither avaricious [or covetous] men, neither men full of drunkenness, neither cursers, neither raveners, shall wield the kingdom of God.
11And ye were sometime these things; but ye be washed, but ye be hallowed, but ye be justified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God.
12All things be leaveful to me, but not all things be speedful. All things be leaveful to me, but I shall not be brought down under any man’s power.
13Meat to the womb, and the womb to meats; and God shall destroy both this and that. And the body not to fornication, but to the Lord, and the Lord to the body.
14For God raised the Lord, and shall raise us by his virtue.
15Know ye not, that your bodies be members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ, and shall I make them the members of a whore? God forbid.
16Whether ye know not, that he that cleaveth to a whore, is made one body? For he saith, There shall be twain in one flesh.
17And he that cleaveth to the Lord, is one Spirit.
18Flee ye fornication; all sin what-ever sin a man doeth, is without the body; but he that doeth fornication, sinneth against his body.
19Whether ye know not, that your members be the temple of the Holy Ghost, that is in you, whom ye have of God, and ye be not your own?
20For ye be bought with great price. Glorify ye, and bear ye God in your body.
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Wycliffe’s Bible with Modern Spelling ©2017
Wycliffe’s Apocrypha ©2013, 2015
Wycliffe’s Bible © 2012, 2015
Wycliffe’s New Testament ©2001, 2011
Wycliffe’s Old Testament ©2001, 2010