1   If one of your number has a dispute with another, has he the face to take it to pagan law-courts instead of to the community of God's people? 2   It is God's people who are to judge the world; surely you know that. And if the world is to come before you for judgement, are you incompetent to deal with these trifling cases? 3   Are you not aware that we are to judge angels? How much more, mere matters of business! 4   If therefore you have such business disputes, how can you entrust jurisdiction to outsiders, men who count for nothing in our community? 5   I write this to shame you. Can it be that there is not a single wise man among you able to give a decision in a brother-Christian's cause? 6   Must brother go to law with brother—and before unbelievers? 7   Indeed, you already fall below your standard in going to law with one another at all. Why not rather suffer injury? Why not

Unity and order in the church rather let yourself be robbed? 8   So far from this, you actually injure and rob—injure and rob your brothers! 9   Surely you know that the unjust will never come into possession of the kingdom of God. Make no mistake: no fornicator or idolater, none who are guilty either of adultery or of homosexual perversion, 10   no thieves or grabbers or drunkards or slanderers or swindlers, will possess the kingdom of God. 11   Such were some of you. But you have been through the purifying waters; you have been dedicated to God and justified through the name of the Lord Jesus and the Spirit of our God.

12   ‘I am free to do anything’, you say. Yes, but not everything is for my good. No doubt I am free to do anything, but I for one will not let anything make free with me. 13   ‘Food is for the belly and the belly for food’, you say. True; and one day God will put an end to both. But it is not true that the body is for lust; it is for the Lord—and the Lord for the body. 14   God not only raised our Lord from the dead; he will also raise us by his power. 15   Do you not know that your bodies are limbs and organs of Christ? Shall I then take from Christ his bodily parts and make them over to a harlot? Never! 16   You surely know that anyone who links himself with a harlot becomes physically one with her (for Scripture says, ‘The pair shall become one flesh’); 17   but he who links himself with Christ is one with him, spiritually. 18   Shun fornication. Every other sin that a man can commit is outside the body; but the fornicator sins against his own body. 19   Do you not know that your body is a shrine of the indwelling Holy Spirit, and the Spirit is God's gift to you? You do not belong to yourselves; you were bought at a price. 20   Then honour God in your body.

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