Tuesday 07 September 2010

Background

The previous chapter of this letter dealt with the importance ofthe Church judging those within its fellowship, and excluding thosewith sinful patterns of life. The Corinthian church's failure toact in anotorious case is now contrasted withtheir equally blameworthy (in Paul's view) eagerness to go to courtagainst each other. One believer has apparently defrauded another,who in response sued in the public court, bringing the church intodisrepute. Many of the early Christians were slaves, so the twocharacters concerned were probably among the better off andtherefore prominent members of the church.

Paul doesn't argue that Christians ought not to behave like this,but merely mixes exclamations of horror, rhetorical questions andthreat! This results in some doubts about how to punctuate thepassage, since the original Greek offers no way of telling thedifference between a statement and a question. But the gist isclear enough.

Underlying Paul's position is his view of the Church as an'eschatological community', that is to say God's people who belongto the future age (or 'saints' for short), in which he expects themto share in judging people and angels (compare Daniel7:22). In this sense, life in this world is relatively trivialand time should not be wasted on its institutions. The Churchshould resolve its own disputes.

Both the fraud and the response of the victim to it are wrongs. Andin verses 9 to 10 Paul issues a strong warning against a wide rangeof sinful practices which have no place in the kingdom of God, sono room for those who persist in them. But - as always with theChristian gospel (the good news of Jesus) - the warning is thenbalanced with the hope-inspiring reminder that the work of Christand the continuing work of the Spirit have freed believers fromsuch lifestyles.

Most of the behaviours in the list are self-explanatory and need tobe interpreted broadly: so, for example, "fornicators" covers everykind of sexual immorality, and "idolaters" all those who placeanything before God in their affections. But the words translated"male prostitutes, sodomites" have been subject to muchspeculation, though probably the best meaning in modern terms is"rent boys, paedophiles". This passage, therefore, is not one fromwhich we can deduce Paul's view of homosexual relationships betweenconsenting adults.

To Ponder

We now realise the age of the kingdom of God wasnot as close as Paul thought when he advised churches to constructa life that avoided 'this-worldly' institutions. To what extentshould Christians today sit lightly to worldly politics, and towhat extent ought they be committed to the effectiveness of itsinstitutions?

What signs are there that we may have become toowedded to the values of this age rather than the age to come?

In what instances is it indeed better to sufferwrong from a fellow-Christian than to wash dirty linen in public?When might going to court be the right thing to do?