The Scandal of Christians Suing each other before Heathen Tribunals. Paul has prepared for his next rebuke by his reference to the function of the church to judge its own members. But alas, Christians are to be found who will go so far as shamelessly to carry their disputes with each other before a tribunal of the unrighteous (what a paradox to appeal for justice to the unjust!) instead of submitting them to their fellow-Christians. They cannot be so ill-instructed as to be unaware that Christians are to judge the world; if so, they cannot be unfit to settle such trumpery squabbles. Yes, if even the angels, the world's loftiest order, are to stand at their bar, how much more are they competent to judge matters of everyday need! When they have such cases, they actually set heathens to decide them, who as such are of no account in the estimation of the church. The statement of the fact should shame them. Is their case so desperate that there is not one among them wise enough to arbitrate? so that Christian sues Christian, and that before heathens! Indeed, they are to blame not merely for having recourse to heathen judges, but for going to law with each other at all. Better far to be wronged and defrauded. But they practise these things rather than suffer them, and that on their brothers. Then they are unrighteous, and as such disqualified for inheriting the Kingdom of God. Let them beware of deluding themselves with vain hopes; the unchaste, idolaters, thieves, the grasping, the drunkards, the revilers, the extortioners (cf. 1 Corinthians 5:11) will not inherit the Kingdom. Such some of them had been, but they had had themselves baptized, had been made holy, been declared righteous in virtue of Christ's name and the efficacious working of God's Spirit.
1 Corinthians 6:1. any of you: the singular does not imply that Paul knows only of one case. 1 Corinthians 6:7 f. shows there are more.
1 Corinthians 6:2. The formula, know ye not. has occurred before (1 Corinthians 3:16; 1 Corinthians 5:6), but in this chapter it occurs no fewer than six times (1 Corinthians 6:2-3; 1 Corinthians 6:9; 1 Corinthians 6:15-16; 1 Corinthians 6:19). With all their boasted knowledge, are they ignorant of such truths as these? (John 3:10); one could not have credited such ignorance but for their conduct. That the saints will judge the earth is an article of Jewish belief (Daniel 7:22, Wis_3:8, Sir_4:15); in Matthew 19:28 the apostles are to judge the twelve tribes; Revelation 20:4 supplies a close parallel to our passage.
1 Corinthians 6:3. Angels are included in the world (1 Corinthians 4:9); the reference is not exclusively or perhaps even primarily to evil angels. There are several passages in the NT which negative the popular doctrine of angelic sinlessness, and in this the writers agree with the contemporary Jewish belief.
1 Corinthians 6:4. Difficult. We may take the sentence as interrogative with RV and understand those who are of no account in the church as heathen; do you set heathen, whom as such you hold in no esteem, to judge? Or we may take it as a statement of what actually happens, explaining those of no account either as heathen judges (so above) or the most insignificant members of the church. Or we may take it as imperative (so mg.), the language being sarcastic, the least weighty of your members can deal with such trifles as these.
1 Corinthians 6:11. Here again Paul humbles the conceit of the church by recalling the moral degradation from which some of its members had been rescued.