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From: 1 Corinthians 6:1-11
Recourse to Pagan Courts
[7] To have lawsuits at all with one another is defeat for you. Why not rather suf-
fer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded? [8] But you yourselves wrong and de-
fraud, and that even your own brethren.
[9] Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?
Do not be deceived; neither the immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homo-
sexuals, [10] nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers
will inherit the kingdom of God. [11] And such were some of you. But you were
washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus
Christ and in the Spirit of our God.
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Commentary:
1-6. As usually happens in his letters, in the course of dealing with some more
or less important event in the Christian community, the Apostle moves on to a
much higher plane, and from there focuses light onto the particular problem.
In this case, the scandal is that Christians are involved in lawsuits against one
another (v. 7) and are bringing these cases before pagan courts instead of trying
to settle them within the sphere of the Church; Paul, as we can see, is quite
incensed: “How dare any of your members...”
Through Baptism, Christians are become holy, justified; that is, they have ob-
tained a share in the life and virtues of Christ and are called to follow his example.
Furthermore, like the Apostles (cf. Mt 19:28; Lk 22:30), Christians will judge men
and angels on the Last Day. They are, therefore, instruments of and witnesses to
divine justice. So, they really should not go to law against each other; and if they
do have grievances the Christian community itself should provide people who are
equipped to act as arbitrators and have the grace of state to solve the problems
that arise. St Paul is not down-playing civil authority and its autonomy, for all au-
thority comes from God (Rom 13:1-5); he himself submitted to Roman tribunals,
and he even appealed to Caesar (cf. Acts 25:11-12). The specific advice he gives
here — that Christians should not bring cases before pagan court — ties in with
Jewish practice. Primarily, the Apostle is recommending to Christians to practice
fraternity and solve disagreements without going to pagan courts.
Moreover, going to law would be a great disservice to the Gospel: what attraction
could a community hold which was divided within itself? [7] It is this grave scan-
dal that he particularly wants to avoid.
3. The only Judge of the living and the dead, of angels and men, is Jesus Christ.
Christians are so intimately linked to Christ that St Paul sees no objections to
attributing the actions of the head to all the members. Therefore, he does not at-
tempt to speculate on the particular form the Last Judgment will take — whether,
for example, men will judge angels or at least the fallen angels. His aim here
may be simply to emphasize the intimate union of the Christian with Christ,
which ought to be reflected in just dealings with one another.
7-8. This is the reason why St Paul is so hard on the Corinthians. They have
failed to understand and to apply what our Lord said in the Sermon on the Mount
about bearing injuries (Mt 5:39-42). Worse still, they have gone to law against
each other in contravention of the standard set by those early Christians, who
had one heart and soul (cf. Acts 4:32). And they have tried to solve their disa-
greements in pagan courts which know nothing of Christian brotherhood. St John
Chrysostom points out the transgressions the Corinthians are guilty of: “For one
thing, not bearing injuries patiently; for another, offending others; then looking for
arbitrators to decide on the matter, finally, using this procedure in a dispute with
a Christian, a brother in the faith” (”Hom. on 1 Cor, ad loc.”).
St Paul’s advice about money can usefully be read in the light of Romans 12:
17-21: this shows us that he is not saying that a passive and weak attitude to
difficulties is the right one: difficulties should be faced and an effort made to do
positive good, at all times, to everyone.
“Let us especially resolve not to judge others, not to doubt their good will, to
drown evil in an abundance of good, sowing loyal friendship, justice and peace
all around us. And let us resolve never to become sad if our upright conduct is
misunderstood by others; if the good which, with the continuous help of our Lord,
we try to accomplish is misinterpreted by people who delight in unjustly guessing
at our motives and who accuse us of wicked designs and deceitful behavior. Let
us forgive always, with a smile on our lips. Let us speak clearly, without hard fee-
lings, when in conscience we think we ought to speak. And let us leave every-
thing in the hands of our Father God, with a divine silence — Jesus was silent’
(Mt 26:63 — if we are confronted with personal attacks, no matter how brutal and
shameful they might be. Let us concern ourselves only with doing good deeds:
God will see to it that they shine before men (Mt 5:16)” (”Christ Is Passing By”,
72).
9-10. In this list of sins, similar to that given in the previous chapter (cf. 1 Cor
5:10-11), St Paul explicitly teaches that those who commit these sins will not
inherit the Kingdom, that is, will not attain eternal salvation. The whole list is a
kind of explanation of what “unrighteousness” means. Thus, not only those go
against righteousness who wrongly go to law or defraud others: righteousness,
justice, in the language of the Bible is equivalent to holiness and therefore is op-
posed to every kind of sin.
“Do not be deceived”: the Greek can also be translated as “Do not let yourselves
be deceived” (cf. Eph 5 :5-6). Certainly, to make out that such actions are good
is worse than to commit them. And yet in Corinth, and in other places at other
times, there have been and are false ideologies which interpret sinfulness as vir-
tue. To combat tendencies that seek to tone down or deny the reality of grave
sin, the Church points out that “a person sins mortally not only when his action
comes from direct contempt for love of God and neighbor, but also when he con-
sciously and freely, for whatever reason, chooses something which is seriously
disordered [...]. Pastors of souls must exercise patience and generosity; but
they are not allowed to render God’s commandments null, nor to reduce unrea-
sonably people’s responsibility” (SCDF, “Declaration Concerning Sexual Ethics”,
10). Like Christ, pastors should be uncompromising with evil and merciful to evil-
doers.
11. This reminder about the dignity of Christians brings to an end this series of
warnings. It reminds the Corinthians of their Baptism, its effects and their need
to return to their initial holiness.
These last words clearly contain a reference to the Trinitarian formula used at Bap-
tism (cf. Mt 28:19). The inclusion of the name of the three persons of the Blessed
Trinity implies an act of faith in God, One and Three, and recognition that grace
and justification are given us by the Father, have been merited by his Son Jesus
Christ, and are applied to us through the action of the Holy Spirit.
Three words sum up the effects of Baptism—”washed”, “sanctified”, and “justified”
(cf. Acts 22:16; Eph 5:16; Tit 3:5); in addition to erasing original sin, and any per-
sonal sin, Baptism gives us sanctifying grace and the infused virtues: “The follo-
wers of Christ, called by God not in virtue of their works but by his design and
grace, and justified in the Lord Jesus, have been made sons of God in baptism,
the sacrament of faith, and partakers of the divine nature, and so are truly sanc-
tified. They must therefore hold on to and perfect in their lives that sanctification
which they have received from God” (”Lumen Gentium”, 40).
Reminding them of baptismal innocence, St Paul encourages the Corinthians to
return to that state by a new conversion. After Baptism, the sacrament of Pe-
nance received with the right dispositions restores sanctifying grace and is, more-
over, a means Christ chooses to conserve men in grace and bring them growth in
grace: “The sacrament of Penance contributes [much] to the development of the
Christian life” (Vatican II, “Christus Dominus”, 30).
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Source: “The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries”. Biblical text from the
Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of
the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.
Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and
by Scepter Publishers in the United States.