This is the transcript of Restitutio episode 590: 1 Corinthians in Context 7 - Lawsuits with Sean Finnegan

This transcript was auto-generated and only approximates the contents of this episode.

Audio file

590 1 Corinthians 7.mp3

Transcript

00:00
Hey.

00:01
I'm Sean.

00:02
And you are listening to Restitutio podcast.

00:05
Seeks to.

00:06
Authentic Christianity and live it out today.

00:12
How should Christians deal with internal disputes? As with so many other issues, the Christians in Corinth were failing to distinguish between the body of Christ and the world.

00:21
Today we'll consider what Paul wrote in the first half of First Corinthians Chapter 6 in order to get a handle on his instructions to the church, we'll consider the Roman legal system and how litigation worked.

00:33
We'll see that.

00:34
Paul wanted them to workout their grievances internally rather than going to court before unbelievers, however, does this mean that Christians should never?

00:43
Go to court.

00:44
Find out in this episode here now is episode 590.

00:49
Part seven of our first Corinthians and context class lawsuits.

01:00
Let's jump in to the scripture it says in First Corinthians chapter 6, verse one. When any of you has a grievance against another.

01:11
Do you dare to take it to court before the unrighteous instead of taking it before the Saints? When we look at the section this is in.

01:21
We might ask the question why talk about lawsuits and courts here?

01:27
Chapter 5 was about sexual immorality.

01:32
The second-half of Chapter 6 is about sexual immorality.

01:36
Is the first.

01:37
Why is this middle part about legal issues?

01:42
Just seems like a strange interruption in the flow.

01:47
Dale Martin suggests a reason.

01:50
For this, he says.

01:51
What underlies and connects all these issues is Paul's anxiety about the boundaries of the body.

02:00
Paul's primary concern is to maintain the boundaries separating the church from the cosmos from the world.

02:08
He considers it inappropriate for internal arguments to be settled by outsiders.

02:15
So in first Corinthians Chapter 5, we had an outsider posing as an insider, and Paul said this is the guy that was sleeping with his father's wife. And Paul says drive him out from you, deliver him to Satan, get get him out of the church. So he.

02:30
Outsider, who was posing as an insider. And they.

02:34
Weren't accurately discerning that, and he's honestly.

02:37
He's like, look, I can tell from here is literally on a different piece of land separated by a sea and he's like.

02:46
Yeah, he needs.

02:46
Go like it's not even a debate.

02:49
And then in first Corinthians 6, the verses 12 and following, it's the issue of prostitution, which we've already covered.

02:57
And in that case, you have insiders who are uniting with outsiders who are becoming one flesh with outsiders.

03:04
And so in this section, in between those two, the incest and the prostitution, we have court cases.

03:12
Where insiders are going to outsiders, people who are outside the church and asking them to judge those who are inside the church.

03:19
So in that sense, these three are all related in that they're all issues related to not discerning the body of Christ. And if you think about a body, there is this idea of a boundary that everybody has. Your body has limits.

03:36
There's a place where you.

03:37
There's a place where you aren't the seat next to you that you're not sitting in.

03:41
Guess what?

03:42
Your body's not.

03:43
Your body is in the seat that you happen to be in the body of Christ is something that Paul is very focused in this chapter to help them to understand.

03:53
To make that distinction between insiders and outsiders, between the church and the world.

03:59
Now, in order for us to handle this chapter I Corinthians chapter 6. The first half, we need to think about and learn about the Roman legal system.

04:09
And to do that, I want to begin with a quote from Cassius Dio.

04:13
Now he's writing in the early 2 hundreds which?

04:16
Is way later after our period.

04:18
But he's a historian, and he's referring to a time in in the year 69, which 69 is pretty close to our time, our times in the 50s when Paul wrote First Corinthians.

04:29
So anyhow, Cassius Dio writes about the Roman legal system.

04:32
Says it is imperative.

04:34
That anyone who from time to time commits a crime should pay the penalty.

04:40
Most men are not kept within the bounds of moderation by mere admonition or even by example.

04:49
It is absolutely necessary to punish them by disenfranchisement, by exile or by death.

04:57
Moreover, such penalties are not infrequent in an empire. The size of ours which contains such a vast population, especially at the time of any change of government. If a man is accused of committing a private offence, he is brought before.

05:12
A private court and must answer to a jury of his equals if he is charged with a public crime, then in this instance, 2.

05:21
Jury of his peers who are chosen by lot judges the case.

05:26
This makes it easier to accept the verdicts, which are reached by these.

05:29
Juries since then recognize that whatever penalty they suffer neither originates from a judge's power, nor has been wrung from him as a favor.

05:39
This is much like our distinction that we have in our law courts in America.

05:46
Between criminal law and civil law.

05:49
So public, what they're calling public crimes are crimes against the society where the government prosecutes the defendant.

05:59
So you can think of murder, bribery, forgery.

06:04
Arm robbery or even adultery was considered a public offense, a crime against society itself. Actually, in New York State, adultery is still listed as a crime.

06:18
You know that.

06:19
But the last case to be prosecuted was 2011, so it's been a while since anyone has.

06:27
Prosecuted on the crime of adultery, other states like New Jersey have decriminalized.

06:34
And pretty much I don't think very many states are these days enforcing the crime of.

06:40
They're look at it as a civil issue to be worked out between the lawyers of the individuals involved, the couple involved, anyhow, on to the next point, which is private crimes or what we would call civil law.

06:53
These are lawsuits between individuals.

06:57
You have a business dealing with somebody. They say they're going to do something.

07:02
You pay them the money. They don't do it.

07:06
What do you?

07:07
You sue them, you take them to court, and then you try to get them to pay you.

07:13
Back what you paid them or finish the job.

07:15
Get some sort of resolution.

07:17
That's what we call civil law. And the Romans already in the 1st century, already in the time of Paul, had this all figured out and they had lawyers and they had courts and they had a legal system and it was fairly developed.

07:30
By the time we're talking about in the middle of the 1st century.

07:34
So civil cases might involve theft, property damage, breaching a contract or some sort of fraud.

07:43
And justice, like many times we see today in ancient times as well, the wealthy, the people of great influence and status tended to get away with more.

07:57
But I I assure you.

07:59
It was worse then.

08:00
OK.

08:01
It was worsened no matter how bad you think it is.

08:03
Here is a quote from Seneca the Elder, he writes.

08:07
Is it any wonder to you that a poor man hasn't summoned up the courage to accuse a rich man?

08:15
You see, now that's really it, right?

08:17
The poor man is not going to accuse a rich man.

08:21
He keeps quiet, yet finds himself accused.

08:25
This rich man was powerful and influential, as he himself acknowledges. He thought he could never have anything to be afraid of, even if he were accused.

08:34
So that's sort of expressing the confidence of a wealthy person in the Roman Empire that, you know, the poor people can't touch me. They really did.

08:43
Know this is really hard for us as Americans.

08:46
They really did have a class system where people were on different levels.

08:52
They did not look at each other as equals.

08:56
And most people were poor people and poor people could not.

09:00
The judge would not allow it.

09:02
Could not sue a rich person.

09:05
Juvenile writing about this, of course. He's a wise guy, so he says it in a satirical way, he says.

09:12
I afford to accost her.

09:14
It's the same with court witnesses.

09:17
Morals don't count if pneuma or Scipio took the.

09:20
And he escorted the mother goddess to Rome, or Metellus, who rescued Minerva's image from the. The immediate question would still be how much?

09:29
He worth.

09:30
With only an afterthought on his character, how many slaves does he keep?

09:35
What's his acreage?

09:37
How?

09:37
How good is his dinner service?

09:40
Each man's word is as good as his bond.

09:43
Rather, the number of bonds in his strong box.

09:46
A pauper can swear on every altar between Samothrace and Rome.

09:50
He'll still pass for a perjurer.

09:54
He's laying it on a little thick there, but you get the idea that when people are coming to court, they're asking first and foremost like, what is his wealth.

10:04
That's what we want to know.

10:05
Rich is this guy.

10:08
That's not supposed to be a question in justice.

10:10
You know, we have a statue of justice.

10:14
And she has this Lady Justice and she has her her eyes covered.

10:18
You know that.

10:19
Because the idea is that justice is supposed to be blind.

10:23
They did not have that sensibility.

10:26
Their statue of Justice was eyes wide.

10:28
And looking at you and judging you and seeing what favors you would dole out if you got the sentencing you wanted, Bruce Winter writing about this, it says if the defendant was a parent, a patron, a magistrate or a person of high rank.

10:45
Charges could not be brought by children, Freedman, private citizens and men of low rank respectively.

10:51
You see how that pairs off?

10:54
You have a parent, so a child can't bring something.

10:58
I guess.

10:58
Parent and then the next one was a Friedman.

11:01
Bring something against a patron.

11:03
And then you know, you have a magistrate versus a private citizen and then you have a person of high rank and then a person of low rank.

11:11
What he means?

11:12
He's he's pairing these all off like, so. The point is, if you're not equals.

11:19
Or superior to the person that you're taking to court.

11:22
You can't do it.

11:24
He goes.

11:25
Generally, lawsuits were conducted between social equals who were from the powerful of the city or by a plaintiff of superior social status and power against an inferior.

11:37
The reason for these prescriptions was to avoid one.

11:41
Insulting the good name of the person concerned, or to showing lack of respect for one's patron or superiors.

11:49
Now, just like in modern times, there were. There were a variety of opinions about lawyers as well.

11:57
And one of those opinions is by a man named Dio Chrysisstom.

12:01
And he talks about lawyers.

12:04
He he specifically lawyers in Corinth, he says that they are innumerable and they're perverted judgement.

12:13
So Corinth was known as a place that had lots of crooked lawyers, which is interesting.

12:18
And yet other people recognized lawyers as a respectable profession.

12:24
Their knowledge of the law was important to navigate the situation and they were experts at rhetoric which was the art of persuasion and so to be able to convince a jury that somebody's guilty or somebody's not guilty, you needed to be a very persuasive speaker.

12:43
Cicero, who was the most famous lawyer of the Roman Empire.

12:48
He lived about a century before Paul.

12:51
He talks about how he would go to the ocean.

12:55
And he will put rocks in his mouth.

12:58
And practice speaking into the waves to strengthen his body, to strengthen his articuliteness so that he could speak clearly when his mouth had no rocks in it, and there were no waves making a bunch of noise.

13:16
He train himself in rhetoric.

13:19
And not just the physical side, but also the the wordsmithing side.

13:23
And we have dozens of his works that have survived.

13:28
Today that people are still reading Cicero, it's incredible.

13:32
He was a.

13:33
He he was not from a wealthy family.

13:37
He was a new man and he was able to have this law career launch him into a political career that brought him up to the level.

13:45
A quiver.

13:46
And then a pride, and then a console.

13:49
Console is the highest office in Rome, the city of Rome.

13:54
Beneath the emperor, like. But you don't. A shot at becoming the Emperor unless you're related to somebody and you're.

14:00
And you survive. Everyone else getting assassinated.

14:03
You know you have to be a fair bit lucky too, but like, that's really the like the the highest honor you could possibly get to most people would be a castle and Cicero got there.

14:15
So that's just a little bit about lawyers.

14:17
Let's come back to our text. First Corinthians 6 once again, when any of you has a grievance. When you have Christians, has a grievance against another, do you dare to take it to court before the unrighteous instead of taking it before the Saints?

14:32
Do you not know that the Saints will judge the world?

14:36
And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases?

14:42
Do you not know that we are to judge angels, to say nothing of ordinary matters?

14:48
So this phrase here has a grievance.

14:51
This is sort of a technical phrase that means a lawsuit.

14:57
This is a term or a phrase that means you have a legal action against another person and then you notice in verse two he mentions trivial cases.

15:11
And in verse three he mentions ordinary matters.

15:15
So we're talking about civil cases.

15:19
Talking about private cases.

15:22
We're not talking about criminal cases or public cases, just as I showed you when we started there.

15:29
These different levels in their society already developed to that degree, also in our society today.

15:36
Same thing Bruce Winter talks about this. He.

15:39
Legitimate reasons for pursuing enmity relationships into the civil courts included.

15:45
Are all the things you would.

15:46
Somebody over.

15:47
You ready for the list?

15:49
To settle scores with political opponents, retaliation for breaching relationships of trust and obligation to take up the baton on behalf of offended relatives and friends.

16:01
To compete for a rung on the ladder of the curses.

16:04
Anoram the of political posts in the city, the curses.

16:09
Hanorum is the list of accomplishments that I just mentioned to.

16:14
Kwei Sir Pryder console, whereas in Corinth they would have different names. You still have a queerster, but then you would be have an E dial and then a duo would be the top and then above the duovir the agonathetes which is the.

16:27
Master of ceremonies for the ismian.

16:30
Like the Olympics, you know, the person in charge of that.

16:33
So it goes on.

16:36
Another reason would be jealousy of a young rising star.

16:40
Yeah, we'll sue him.

16:41
You have to undercut the powerful because of their disproportionate influence in politics political system.

16:50
To retaliate against those interfered with one's political aspirations and to undermine a power base secured by 1's clients by attacking them.

17:02
These are what they suit each other over typically, and we have this in the church. We're not talking about some Christian that killed another Christian.

17:11
Not talking about murder.

17:12
We're not talking about rape, we're talking about one Christian that's suing another Christian.

17:18
Either just to see what happens, or because there was a legitimate grievance and legitimate offence. It could be that somebody in your family was offended by this by this guy and you are now taking up their case and doing something.

17:34
Paul says, however, in one Corinthians 6 that your future should affect your present.

17:41
The fact that they're going to rule the world should have an effect on how they live now, such that if they're going to rule the world, shouldn't they be able to figure out these things?

17:51
Is his argument. You're going to unrighteous outsiders for.

17:56
Look at verse 4. If you have ordinary cases, there's that phrase.

18:00
We're not talking about criminal cases.

18:02
Not talking about.

18:04
Something that would be in public.

18:07
We're talking about private law. If you have ordinary cases, then do you appoint as judges those who have no standing in the church?

18:15
I say this to your shame.

18:19
Can it be that there is no one person wise enough to decide between brothers and sisters instead, brothers and sisters go to court against one another, and this before unbelievers. Can you feel how exasperated he is?

18:32
Try to turn that on a little bit for you people in the church are suing each other and it's not even over anything serious.

18:40
It's just ordinary matters, just like matters of this life.

18:44
David Gill writes about this.

18:45
Young men drawn from the social elite might bring trivial cases to demonstrate their forensic skills.

18:53
Perhaps some of the social elite from the church at Corinth are bringing trivial civil cases against fellow Christians in order to establish their own position and harm their opponents.

19:04
And this has caused tensions within the church.

19:09
Paul sees this behavior as insane. Like he says to them, this is such a this is such a strong statement, he says to them. I say this to your shame.

19:20
In their world, it's an honor, shame society.

19:24
To shame somebody is the worst thing you can do. I mean, this is this is like the part in the the letter where people are reading it aloud to the church and the people that are involved in these this litigation are just like red.

19:40
Because he's just called them out and shamed them and everyone else is just like I can't believe you just did that.

19:46
Else, is he going to say?

19:47
Reading.

19:48
You know, like this is, this is really something that would get their attention when they receive this letter and had it read aloud.

19:55
People avoided shame at all costs. Verse 5 Paul says.

19:59
Can it be that there is no one person wise enough to decide between brothers?

20:06
Look what Bruce Winter says about this, he.

20:08
It is easy to overlook the significance of the highly unusual way in which Paul used a familial term here and elsewhere.

20:17
No, Roman, this blew my mind.

20:19
No Roman would have used the term brother of another person except one who shared the same bloodline or a male who had been formally adopted into the family.

20:32
Nobody did that.

20:35
He goes on when Paul used this term, he indicated that the Christian community is family and as such it would be unheard of for its members to engage in litigation.

20:47
It was the role of the pater familias to rule in disagreements among blood or adopted brothers.

20:54
Romans considered it highly inappropriate to engage in intra family litigation.

21:02
This is why Paul's so.

21:03
This is why he's saying I said this to your shame like guys. Come on, your brother's in Christ, you can't.

21:09
Don't have one wise person.

21:11
Here's a here's a congregation of people that pride themselves in their wisdom, in their standing, they're all competitive.

21:18
All trying to.

21:20
Elevate themselves like this is.

21:22
Is definitely a burn.

21:23
He's that's a burn. Like you don't have one.

21:26
Don't have any wise people at all.

21:29
And so he's trying to get them to figure it out on their own. This is the role of an arbiter.

21:35
An arbiter is someone who hears both sides and makes a decision.

21:38
Educated members of the church would have learned oratory.

21:44
They were already trained in this.

21:45
This was standard if you were an elite person in a city like Corinth that you were from a good, wealthy family.

21:51
There, we know there weren't many in the church, but there were probably a few.

21:55
Then guess.

21:56
You had training in arguing cases in understanding how the courts worked.

22:03
Was just part of the package of what you learned.

22:06
We don't have that in our education system.

22:08
You'd be lucky if you learn just like the basics about laws and stuff like that. If you if you retain any of that, this is something that they would have had.

22:18
And so they could get one of their people that's trained in this sort of thing to just sit down with these guys and figure it out. Like, this is what we're going to do. You pay this much.

22:27
All right, done.

22:29
But it would only work if both parties prioritize unity over winning.

22:36
Right over getting one up on the other guy, you have to prioritize unity once again, this body of Christ idea, this sense that there's there are insiders and we are insiders and we we have to treat each other as brothers and sisters instead of treating each other as.

22:49
Just other people of the city.

22:53
Think of skin.

22:54
Skin on your.

22:55
It's permeable stuff comes out of it like sweat for example, like that tells us that it's not like a plastic surface that has no permeability, right?

23:06
Our skin is permeable, but is also a barrier.

23:12
It's like, think about it like this.

23:14
Like the Corinthians?

23:16
Believed in the body of Christ, but they didn't think the body of Christ had any skin on it.

23:20
So there was just no barrier between the body of Christ and the world, which is really gross.

23:25
I'm sorry but.

23:27
Like that's how you get infections, that's how.

23:30
Know what I?

23:30
Your skin does a lot to protect you, even if it is permeable, it is still very protective and he's trying to get them to recognize that.

23:40
There.

23:41
There's a boundary, but it's a permeable boundary.

23:43
It is a boundary.

23:46
Taking fellow Christians to court in a civil lawsuit is showing the world that Christianity doesn't work.

23:56
Christianity is claiming we have found the.

23:58
We have found the way, the truth and the life and his name is Jesus and we're following him.

24:03
And this is the best way.

24:05
Meanwhile, you have the Stoics over here.

24:07
Saying no xeno.

24:09
Zeno's a.

24:10
What do you mean?

24:11
Let's follow Zeno and the cynics are like Zeno was a loser.

24:15
Follow diogenes. Then you have the Platonists, the rishtelius, the peripatetics.

24:21
Got everybody.

24:22
They're all doing their you got Epicureans.

24:25
Like no Epicurious. He really knew.

24:27
And so you have a lot of contested competition.

24:32
And you know, for an Epicurean to sue another epicurean be like, how embarrassing.

24:38
Why wouldn't you guys figure that out?

24:40
You bringing that into the public, you're showing us that your philosophy doesn't work.

24:45
Same thing with.

24:46
That's how Paul is looking at it.

24:47
Suing each other discredits us, showing we are just as fraught with difficulty and dysfunction.

24:56
Ironically, when they brought Paul, when the Jewish people brought Paul to Galileo, this is what Galileo said to them.

25:04
1814, he said.

25:06
Justice Paul is about to speak. Galileo said to the Jews.

25:09
If it were a matter of crime.

25:11
Or serious villainy, if it was a public crime, I would be justified in accepting the complaint of you Jews.

25:18
But since it is a matter of questions about words and names and your own law, see to it yourself.

25:25
I do not wish to be a judge of these matters.

25:28
That's exactly what Galio said to the Jews.

25:30
Yo, this is a Jewish problem.

25:32
You guys figure it out.

25:34
This is what Paul is now saying to the Corinthian Church.

25:37
Hey guys this is an internal.

25:38
You have one Christian who's mad at another Christian because of.

25:41
So you guys figure it out, you don't need to go to the unrighteous.

25:47
Six verse 7 says in fact to have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you.

25:53
Why not rather be wronged?

25:56
Why not rather be defrauded, but you yourselves wrong and defraud and brothers and sisters.

26:03
Now this goes to a fact of the ancient world. The ancient law courts, that is, they attacked each other in.

26:09
Now this happens in our law courts too. If you watch any of those crime shows you, you've probably seen this where they get somebody up on the stand and they they just go after their credibility and they attack the person, right?

26:19
This.

26:19
This is something that was even more so.

26:22
In the ancient world, Bruce Winter comments on this.

26:24
He says the proceedings were not conducted dispassionately but with great acrimony. What the Romans called Reprehension, the Thai or vituperation a personal attack on the character of one's opponents was taken as normal.

26:40
And manuals of rhetoric dealt in great detail with the most effective ways to construct a vituperation, the prosecutor, with his hostile speeches and damaging evidence of his witnesses caused great personal resentment and loss of dignity for the defendant.

26:58
No areas were immune from ferocious attacks and quintilian's manual on rhetoric.

27:03
We are expressly told that the beginning of a court speech should contain a consideration of the persons involved, and this must involve the blackening of the person on the other side, which is the Latin word Imphal mondum.

27:18
So the idea is that you are supposed to attack the other person.

27:23
It was a public loss for the world to see Christians.

27:28
Christians is what he's saying.

27:31
On to verse 9.

27:33
Don't you know that the unrighteous will not inherit God's Kingdom?

27:36
Do not be deceived.

27:38
No sexually immoral people, idolaters, adulterers, or males who have sex with males.

27:44
No thieves. Greedy people. Drunkards, verbally abusive people or swindlers will inherit God's Kingdom and some of you used to be like this.

27:55
But you were washed.

27:56
You were.

27:57
You were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the spirit of God.

28:02
Now we looked at this last time.

28:04
Paul's saying don't do these crimes.

28:07
Do these.

28:08
Don't have these vices in your life? That's what you used to be.

28:11
The old you.

28:13
This is who you are.

28:14
And we kind of focus on the sexual stuff because this is kind of the hinge point in the chapter where he now turns to sexual matters.

28:21
But look at some of these other ones thieves.

28:24
If you're stealing from each other, that would be a reason for a lawsuit.

28:27
Or, if you're just greedy, that would be a reason for a lawsuit. If you're verbally abusive. If you swindle somebody in a bad business deal, this is a list of different behaviors that he's saying, like, look, guys, don't do this. Don't don't do these kinds of behaviors.

28:43
If you do, you do not inherit God's Kingdom.

28:47
Bottom line, so don't conform to this world's toxic power structures.

28:52
Let's talk about application.

28:54
Well, the first thing I want to say is that it's important to limit our application to scenarios that are comparable in the particulars.

29:03
So Paul's talking about trivial cases, what we would call civil suits, not criminal cases, so.

29:10
You can't use Paul's instructions here as a basis for covering up crimes in the church.

29:18
You see where I'm going with this?

29:19
Is a huge point.

29:22
In 2002, the Boston Globe exposed many instances of Roman Catholic priests molesting children.

29:30
Church authorities did not turn these pedophiles over to the courts.

29:35
Instead, they moved them to a new area which enabled the behavior to repeat.

29:42
Now I don't know what the Roman Catholic Church was thinking.

29:46
But if I had to guess, I bet they were thinking well in one Corinthians 6, Paul says work these things out among yourselves.

29:54
This is a Catholic.

29:55
A.

29:56
We just work it out and we don't need to report it to the outside.

30:01
And it's not like the Catholics are the only ones.

30:03
Have gotten in trouble for this.

30:05
The Southern Baptists had a big expose in 2019 in the Houston Chronicle of all kinds of different allegations of abuse. The Jehovah's Witnesses have been.

30:16
Accused Mormons independent Fundamental Baptist churches, Pentecostal churches and the Anglican church, just to mention a few others that get accusations of this kind of thing.

30:28
For someone guilty of a crime.

30:31
Would Paul say to them just work this out among you and the person you wronged?

30:38
No, no. The person who was guilty of a crime was already in the last chapter.

30:42
Was the guy who slept with his father's wife.

30:45
How did he deal with that guy?

30:46
You're not a real.

30:47
Get the heck out of here.

30:49
He cast him out.

30:52
He didn't protect him and say, OK, well, let's get everybody in counseling.

30:55
You know I'm not.

30:57
Mean I.

30:57
Was being a little too facetious there.

31:00
Has great.

31:01
I don't want to disparage it, but my point is that when somebody commits a crime, it's not the church's role to cover the crime up.

31:10
It's just.

31:10
That's not an appropriate application of what Paul?

31:13
Paul is clear that he's talking about trivial cases and ordinary matters that are basically what we would call civil suits.

31:23
Christians have the same burden as other members of society to report serious crimes to the authorities.

31:30
However, we should when dealing with non criminal personal offence or business dealings between Christians, we should seek arbitration within the church.

31:43
How do we do?

31:44
Well, that's what the elders are for.

31:46
Why we have elders?

31:47
These are experienced people that have been vetted over many years that have character that has been tested over time, who can come alongside you and help hear the different cases and then help you figure out what to do.

32:02
You should pay that person $2000.

32:04
You.

32:05
You should finish the deck that you started that you never finished, or whatever. Whatever the the situation is, we can handle these kinds of things ourselves.

32:15
Still, there might be rare cases where it is appropriate.

32:18
To sue an individual.

32:21
Our world is a complicated place that should not be our heart. That should not be our starting.

32:27
We should not say, well, I'm. I'm going to sue Christine because she looked at me funny. Better. Better to work this out among ourselves, right then to. Well, that was a trivial.

32:36
Was a trivial case, right?

32:38
Better to work it out among ourselves rather than go to the world and go on Judge Judy. And, you know, here's Eduardo. And here's Wesley and you know, we're going to air all our dirty laundry as publicly as we can rather than figure it out. Come on.

32:59
So I think when it comes to application for First Corinthians 6, you have to be careful, recognize the limitations of what he was dealing with, and then ask the question does this situation I'm in line up with that or is it really different than that?

33:15
Secondly, we need to ask ourselves the question what should we change as a Community?

33:24
It's easy to judge.

33:25
It's easy to look at a celebrity or an athlete or famous singer and be.

33:30
Oh, did you see what they did?

33:32
I can't believe you know. I just judge them and just be like, look at that idiot or look at this power hungry maniac.

33:38
Right. Those are people outside the church, he said in the last chapter. At the end of the last chapter, he said.

33:45
Do I have to do with judging outsiders?

33:47
That's that's.

33:48
Scott's going to judge the outsiders, but you need to judge the inside.

33:50
Is your job. You guys should have cast out that guy.

33:54
Paul should.

33:56
So let's look at just winding down.

34:00
This this quote from Bruce Winter, by the way, I really like this book after Paul F Cornth.

34:05
Very good, he.

34:07
The Corinthian Church appeared to have judged the outsider.

34:11
When they had no right to do so, but failed dismally to judge the insider who was sleeping with his father's wife when that was their task.

34:21
Paradoxically, they had allowed the unrighteous outsiders to judge the insiders when they should have resorted to using a fellow Christian who, by reason of his legal training, would have had the requisite qualifications to act as a private arbiter.

34:38
So we have to ask ourselves the question, are we adequately judging ourselves?

34:43
Where are we falling short in T, right?

34:45
The question where in today's?

34:47
In my church, are we behaving in such a way that we are shaming the gospel in the eyes of the world?

34:54
Is an important question to ask ourselves.

34:58
We need to pursue holiness.

35:00
We are not supposed to fit into the world easily like I think you should have contact with non Christians. I think that's great.

35:08
Else, are you ever going?

35:09
Share the gospel with people. If you don't have any non Christian friends.

35:12
But like at the same time, you have to recognize that there is a difference between inside the body of Christ and outside the body of Christ.

35:20
And if you don't recognize that difference, you're going to be making some of the same mistakes we just saw here.

35:26
We need to be different and we need and we do need to judge ourselves as as a group.

35:31
Are we tolerating too much of this or are we doing not enough of that?

35:35
Is something that is an ongoing process for us as Christians.

35:40
So that's a quick rundown on the background context for lawsuits in First Corinthians 6. In our next session, we'll consider marriage, divorce, and remarriage as we continue through this class.

35:54
Corinthians in context.

36:00
Well, that brings this presentation to a.

36:02
What did you think? Come on over to restatutio.org and find Episode 590 on lawsuits and leave your questions and feedback there. Now, before engaging with any feedback from previous episodes, I did want to mention that in this presentation I said Cicero would put pebbles in.

36:20
Mouth eek into the crashing waves at the ocean in order to develo his ability to speak clearly.

36:28
I had that.

36:29
I need to give you a correction.

36:30
It was actually Demosthenes who lived a few centuries before Cicero, who did that. So, so part of the mistake on that now in Episode 588, which was.

36:43
Covering the topic of sexual immorality, Robert wrote in on the Restitudio Facebook group, asking a question about how strictly we should interpret these verses.

36:56
He says.

36:57
I'm learning a lot from the recent Corinthians in context series.

37:01
I have to admit I'm struggling with Charter 5A plain reading of 1511 seems to say we should excommunicate sinners.

37:10
At the very least, we can't call them Christians or have fellowship with them.

37:15
I'm obviously not saying we should endorse any sins, but how can we reach sinners if they aren't even allowed?

37:21
Door. Apparently I'm missing something.

37:24
Well, Robert, you raise an interesting point here.

37:27
Corinthians 511 reads.

37:29
But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of Brother or sister who is sexually immoral or greedy, or an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler.

37:41
Do not even eat with 21 in order to understand this, we need to back UA couple of verses to 9.

37:48
Reads I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral persons. Not at all, meaning the sexually immoral of this world or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since you would then need to go out of the world.

38:04
And then he picks that back up in verse 12, he says.

38:06
For what have I to do with judging those outside?

38:09
Are you not judges of those who are inside?

38:12
God will judge those outside.

38:14
So we really have a double standard here and this is something that Paul is really trying to get the Corinthians to understand that there is such a thing as a body and within the body the rules are different than in the world.

38:26
And there is a distinction between somebody who's in the body and somebody who's in the world. Now he does anticipate will see this in later chapters. Outsiders attending services, people who are checking things out.

38:39
Or are curious or are invited by somebody to attend.

38:44
And so that is certainly something that is possible, that he expects those outsiders will be sent full people because, hey, they're not even Christians yet.

38:54
He doesn't deal with the scenario where somebody comes to the Lord and.

38:59
Then begins the process of sanctification.

39:01
Which lasts over some time.

39:03
I know that for myself, sanctification becoming more holy with time, this is something that is ongoing.

39:10
And we do need to be patient, especially with newbies who come to the faith and maybe they just quit sleeping with their boyfriend or girlfriend.

39:19
And yet they're still using foul.

39:23
Or they're still getting drunk on the weekends.

39:25
In such cases, I think it's appropriate to give people time to work through their sense. A lot of times a glaring scent like say for example, cohabitating sleep with somebody.

39:35
Not married to.

39:36
This is really what you focus on 1st and dealing with that and then as time goes on, you learn.

39:43
Wow. I'm supposed to have edifying language and.

39:46
Instead of always making fun of people or using abusive speech and you start to change in that way.

39:54
And then you might say, oh wow, it says not to be drunk, not to be a party animal. And this kind of lifestyle that.

40:01
Is very common in the world, even in our time where you get drunk or you get high, or you use some sort of other drugs just to alter your state of mind and quote UN quote have a good time, right?

40:12
So I think when it comes to new Christians, it is incumbent upon us to walk alongside them, give them time.

40:20
Obviously, we do want to help them and point things out, but.

40:24
We're not expecting somebody to instantaneously become fully righteous the moment they become a Christian.

40:30
That just wouldn't be realistic. I'm not saying, Robert, you're saying that I'm just making this point.

40:35
So at his point, which is, I think more about outsiders attending the service, I think we do have to still make a distinction.

40:42
Sinners are going to sin. The people of the world are going to act worldly, and we should expect that when people attend our church services, we should expect that they're going to have.

40:53
Worldly ways of thinking and living, and until that person names the name of Christ, makes a confession of faith, and commits to following Jesus as their Lord.

41:03
They're not under our rules now. Obviously we have some sort of like House rules where we won't allow somebody to like interrupt the meeting or get in physical fights with other people, right?

41:12
Not what I'm talking.

41:13
I'm talking about just general Christian ethics. Of course we have to have some sort of basic public meeting rules, Russ.

41:20
Meetings will be disturbed, but like to put the Christian ethic on somebody.

41:25
Just curious about Christianity is not yet.

41:29
Believed just isn't really a fitting starting place for someone. Oi think we do need to give people time to consider the faith deely.

41:38
There are some people that just like going to church and they're not interested in believing they're there for other reasons.

41:45
And you give people a space and then at a certain point, I've done this as a pastor, where I have confronted people and said, look.

41:52
It seems like you have all the information you need to make a.

41:55
You've been worshipping here with us for a long time, and you know what's what's your deal?

42:01
And really confronting somebody in that way, I wouldn't do that in the the first few times somebody showed U, right?

42:08
And so I think that is important to realize when it comes to Christians.

42:12
Christians who are sexually immoral, greedy idolaters, revilers, drunkards and swindlers.

42:19
Let's face it, you have bigger problems than just whether or not to eat with that person.

42:24
This same sort of list of vices shows U in Charter 69 and it says that these people will not inherit the Kingdom of God.

42:31
This is very serious.

42:33
We need to take it seriously and I know it's not so common in our churches today to have a standard of holiness and to have a desire for sanctification.

42:43
It is still very biblical and it is still very important and we do need to get better on this.

42:49
How much sand is required in order to identify somebody as a reviler or a drunkard or a?

42:56
You know, if somebody has too much to drink one weekend, is that person now classified as a drunkard and somebody that we should?

43:04
Excommunicate from the church?

43:06
You know, these are these are the issues that God has placed elders in churches to figure out.

43:14
That's how it's supposed to work.

43:16
Elders are supposed to be getting involved in people's lives and.

43:21
Trusting in the leading of God through his spirit to discern what's going on, discern a genuine person who is trying and struggling from somebody who is not trying, and they're just taking their faith as a license to sin or something like that.

43:40
And so that's why there are elders in churches. I know that.

43:43
All churches function well in their elders.

43:47
But it is something that the Bible sets up very clearly in the pastoral epistles to function in a way to help people and make these kinds of hard decisions.

43:57
To confront somebody when to show grace in a situation.

44:02
When to even kick somebody out. And that's something that I think probably every church does from time to time in certain situations.

44:09
So hopefully that answer your question, Robert, if not, take another stab at it. If anybody else wants to jump in on this question, feel free to join the Restitudio Facebook group and then you can get in on the action and give your take on the question.

44:25
Well, that's going to be it for.

44:26
Stay tuned for next week, where we dive into Charter 7 and talk about marriage, divorce and remarriage, and see what Paul says there.

44:37
Certainly another non controversial.

44:40
Episode. Sometimes I wonder to myself, like, what did I get into with this class?

44:44
Hey, I'm just going to keep.

44:46
I'm just going to keep going week by week and we'll just chip away at it and we'll try to cover each issue honestly and within this context as.

44:56
Accurately as we can. And then let the chips fall where they may. I have been learning a lot going through this class. I did not used to believe the way I currently believe about lawsuits.

45:07
Was new.

45:09
This was a new understanding that I came to and I hope it is helpful to you as well.

45:15
If you'd like to support us, you can do that at restitudio.org. Thanks to all of you who are doing that.

45:20
I'll catch you next week and remember, the truth has nothing to fear.