As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. (1 Peter 1:14)

The Dangers of Ignorance

Ignorance is a dangerous thing. We can think that we are doing something that is perfectly OK, only to discover that it is deeply harmful.

In the first half of the twentieth century, many people smoked. No-one saw anything wrong with it – a pleasant past-time like having a pint down the pub. Some doctors even suggested that smoking actually improved your health.

It was not until the early 1950s that it was conclusively shown and accepted that smoking led to lung cancer – a killer disease. Up until then many people had been ignorant and died an early death as a result.

In 1 Peter 1:14 it says,

“As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance.” (1 Peter 1:14)

Peter is saying that before his readers became Christians they had behaved as they did because they were ignorant of God, his ways and his guidance. Now, they have come to know God’s ways and so they must live differently.

In our reading this morning, Paul tackles the church in Corinth about their attitudes to wrongdoing and focuses on sexual immorality in particular. He says four times: ‘don’t you know’? In other words, are you still ignorant? Are you still pursuing this wrong way of living, because you have not understood the truths that God has now revealed to you in Christ?

He is concerned, because their ignorance on these issues could prove catastrophic.

Increasingly today as people come to faith out of a culture that has lost touch with a Christian understanding of sex or as Christians have allowed themselves to become more influenced by the society around them than the teaching of the Bible, there is a danger that many are falling into sexual behaviour that is ultimately harmful to them, the church and their relationships around them.

So let’s explore the three areas of ignorance that Paul tackles in this passage around the issues of sex. In the hope that we can be less ignorant and so learn the Christian approach to sex, one that is ultimately for our good, our blessing and our joy.

Ignorant about the Gospel – 6:9-11

Importantly as we talk about sex, it is important that we really understand the gospel, that is what the good news of Jesus actually says and what becoming a Christian means.

We sing a hymn called, ‘Just as I am’, which emphasises the great truth that you do not have to do anything or become anything to be welcomed into God’s family and to become inheritors of eternal life. The Corinthians and many people today are happy to accept that, but what they and many Christians seem to have forgotten is that as a Christian you cannot, ‘stay as you are.’ Jesus calls us to repent as well as to believe, not to change in order to come to God, but to come to God in order to change our behaviour.

In our passage, Paul lists a whole load of sinful behaviours and then says powerfully, “this is what some of you were.” We can assume that for each of these behaviours there was a Christian in the Corinthian church, who had lived in that way before they came to faith. There were people who had been adulterers, thieves, greedy, slanderers and so on. They had lived in ways incompatible with being a follower of Jesus.

In coming to Christ, they were transformed. They were cleansed of all sin and guilt. God’s memory of their wrongdoing was washed away. They became part of God’s holy people and they were put into a relationship with God, where they were no longer condemned for past wrongs. They came as they were and were totally accepted. This is grace, this is good news.

But, this transformation shows itself in terms of change. Paul is saying that if they continue to habitually sin in these ways, then it shows that they have not really been accepted and changed. We don’t change in order to come to God, but we come to God, that our behaviour is changed.

What’s the fuss with sexual sin?

So, we are called to change, but why such an emphasis on sexual sin? For some in the Corinthian church, sexual sin did not matter. Chapter 5, mentioned a particular bad example of a man sleeping with his father’s wife, but in this section, the issue is sexual sin more generally. Some of the Corinthians thought that it was fine for Christians to do whatever they like with their bodies. “All things are lawful for me!” they said, “Everything is permissible for me.” If the Jewish food laws no longer mattered for Christians, why should Jewish scruples about sex be applied to non-Jewish Christians.

Paul’s response to this anything goes attitude to sex, was to accuse them of being ignorant about their bodies and about the nature of sex.

Ignorant about our Bodies – 6:12-15,19-20; 7:3-4

Firstly, he accuses them of being ignorant about the importance of their bodies. The Corinthians like many people of their time, probably thought of the body as a kind of container for the soul. The two were separate, the body was temporary, but the soul might live on in some way. They thus believed that whatever you did with your physical body did not affect your soul.

As Christians, they probably thought that faith was merely to do with the soul and had no relevance to the body. So what you did with your body, including having sex is irrelevant to your spiritual life.

Paul could not disagree with this idea more. He emphasises how much our bodies do matter, they are not just a container for the real us. They are the real us. When Paul speaks about the body he means more than our flesh, blood and bone. It refers to the totality of who we are, our whole personality, emotional state and well-being.

Firstly, In 6:14 he reminds the Corinthians that our eternal future is not a disembodied spiritual one, it is a bodily one. Jesus was raised bodily from the dead and so we one day will be given transformed resurrection bodies – he talks a lot more about that in chapter 15. Our bodies are not temporary, they are eternal and so what we do with our bodies matters.

Secondly, in verse 15 he tells us that our bodies are members of Christ. We are not just united with Christ spiritually, but our physical presence in this world, becomes Christ’s presence in the world. What we do with our bodies is linked with how we represent Christ. What we do with our bodies matters.

Thirdly, in verse 19, he tells us that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. This links with the previous point. Whereas most people in the Bible thought that you went to a temple to meet with your god, Jesus created a radically different concept, where God is met in the bodily witness of Christians in community. Our bodies matter to God.

Finally, Jesus does not just save our souls, he redeems our bodies. His death on the cross was the price he paid to save us body and soul. He gave his body, to save our body. In that sense our bodies belong to him, we cannot use them in ways that contradict his will, but need to honour God with our bodies.

The thrust of Paul’s argument is that faith is not a purely spiritual thing, what you do with your physical body really does matter.

Ignorant about Sex – 6:16-18

But, Paul was also clear elsewhere, that some of the things that Jews did with their bodies, i.e. circumcision and not eating certain foods no longer mattered. The Corinthians were probably arguing, that if these things no longer constrained Christians, why should we be constrained when it comes to sex.

Paul’s response is to say, that they are ignorant about sex. Sex impacts us at an emotional level far more powerfully, than any food we eat.

In verse 16 he quotes from Genesis 2 the foundational verse on marriage and sex:

“The two will become one flesh.”

He applies this to having sex with a prostitute and explains that when you have sex with someone you are at an emotional level gluing yourself to them. Sex was designed to create a deep emotional unity between husband and wife in marriage, to help create a permanent bond and as a way to bring children into the world – in the context of a united mother and father. In the context of marriage, sex is a good and positive thing and in chapter 7, Paul encourages sex within marriage.

But outside of marriage, it acts as an emotional glue between two people, when such a bond is in appropriate. Paul says, how can you take your body, which belongs to Christ and emotionally glue it to a prostitute? It is an offense to Christ and emotionally and spiritually damaging to yourself and the prostitute.

This is why Paul says in verse 18, that to sin sexually is to sin against your own body. It is in a sense to emotionally glue yourself to someone who you are not meant to be sticking to. When you do that you damage your own body emotionally and the body of the person you have sex with.

When I went to university the biggest rule they stressed about our university rooms, was no blue tac. When you stick a poster to a wall with blue tac, it looks great, but when you come to take the poster down, the blue tac often pulls away some of the paint from the wall leaving a horrible mark. The same is true of sexual relationships. They look great while they last, but when they end, they leave an emotional scar.

That is why sexual abuse is worse than normal abuse. Because it leaves powerful emotional scars on people.

That is why sleeping around is so unhelpful, because it leaves people emotionally scarred and damaged, perhaps making it harder for them to eventually settle in a permanent long term relationship. Certainly, no-one can argue that the sexual revolution of the 1960s has not created a society full of people emotionally scarred by broken sexual relationships.

That is why adultery is so wrong. In chapter 7, Paul says, that as husband and wife you have a kind of ownership over each others bodies. In becoming one flesh, you have united with each other. To take your body that belongs to your husband or wife and unite it with someone else causes deep pain and loss to the other. In my ministry, I have seen the effects adultery has had on betrayed wives and it has been utterly devastating.

It is also why, living together before marriage, although not as emotionally scarring as adultery or sleeping around is also wrong. People often live together as a way of testing whether marriage is right. But if the act of sex is a powerful expression of permanent emotional union, of gluing together two people, having sex before you’ve made that commitment is at best a powerful lie and at worst is uniting two people who may not wish to stay united and condemning them to emotional pain when the separation happens.

As Christians, we need to grasp hold of a Biblical knowledge of what sex to understand why Jesus calls us to a better way with sex, to reserve it for marriage.

Homosexual Sex

But what about same sex couples? If they are in a permanent relationship is it not OK for them to have sex?

This is a big debate in the Church of England at the moment and the Church’s General Synod is completely split on the answer. Many who would want to see the church fully accept same sex marriage, would want to simply dismiss what the Bible says on this issue as no longer relevant. Others, however, would argue that the Bible does allow for same sex marriage.

I and many others are not convinced. In this passage two words are used for homosexual activity. Some argue that they refer not to homosexual sex generally, but to abusive homosexual relationships or to a relationship between and older man and a younger boy. The problem is that Paul uses a word that literally means, ‘one who sleeps with a male.’ There is no hint that abuse is an issue or that one of those involved is too young. In fact Paul could have used other Greek words to make clear that this is what he was referring to, but he doesn’t. On face value this seems to be a general prohibition of any kind of sex between two males.

And this is not the only place in the New Testament. In Romans 1, Paul, also makes it clear that same sex is wrong and the word also appears in 1 Timothy 1 in a list of sins.

This is not to say that people who engage in same sex sex or who identify themselves as gay or lesbian are barred from God’s salvation. The gospel is as much for them as anyone else. God’s free offer of salvation is for all including those in the LGBT community. We should show the same love, compassion, kindness and welcome to them as we would to anyone who comes into our church and share with them the good news of Jesus. We do not have to change to come to Christ, but we come to Christ that he may change our behaviour.

There were many who would describe themselves as gay or lesbian who spoke for the orthodox Biblical view on sexual morality at General Synod. I met someone who goes to a local church, only recently, who said he was gay, but is committed to a celibate life. There is an ordained minister in a nearby church, who used to be a regular at gay nightclubs, but has now turned his back on all of that. As Paul said, to the Corinthians, this is what some of you were… But now you are Christs!

Let us like them commit to using our bodies to honour Christ and fleeing from Sexual Immorality.

The Last Enemy to be Destroyed is Death

Though both his parents were wizards, Harry Potter grew up in a Muggle family, and on his first journey to wizard school, it fell to Hagrid to explain to Harry the wizarding world in general, and to break the news of his own early history in particular, of the death of his parents and the existence of his mortal enemy. This is what Hagrid said: “It begins, I suppose, with – with a person called – but it’s incredible you don’t know his name, everyone in our world knows…I don’t like saying the name if I can help it. No one does…people are still scared…this is difficult…His name was…”.¹

Well, eventually, Harry discovered the name of the wizard who murdered his parents. He also discovered that almost everyone called this wizard ‘You-Know-Who’ or ‘He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named’ out of fear. Quite a lot of people had convinced themselves that this wizard had gone away for good. Harry sometimes went along with this and called him ‘You-Know-Who’ to spare the feelings of those around him. Yet Harry was never afraid to speak the proper name of his deadly enemy. Usually he just called him ‘Voldemort’.

Why was that the case? Because Harry was the Boy who lived. Voldemort had tried to kill him on the night he murdered his parents, but he wasn’t able to do it. “No one ever lived after he decided to kill them, no one except” Harry.² Harry had faced the worst his enemy could throw at him, and he had faced him down. He took Voldemort seriously, but instinctively he knew he had nothing to fear from him.

That, of course, is just a story, but all of us here and all people in society at large have a common enemy. It is hardly ever discussed, and sometimes people convince themselves that it is a long way away. It is, however, inescapable, and when it comes down to it, it is widely feared. People often go to great lengths not to name the enemy outright. ‘I lost my mother,’ they say. ‘She passed away, she passed on, she departed.’ That common enemy is, of course, death.

Society at large makes a considerable effort to keep death and talk of death at some remove. We could almost say that society sub-contracts out the business of dealing with death to professionals, and the rest of us do our best to keep away from it. These professionals include doctors, nurses, carers, emergency service personnel – and, as we especially want to acknowledge today, members of the armed forces. The duty to put oneself in harm’s way, not to mention the requirement to contemplate taking the lives of others in the service of the nation, is a heavy burden to place on anyone’s shoulders. Devoting two minutes on one day a year to pondering that sacrifice, a sacrifice which to most of us is unimaginable, seems to me the least we can do.

To help us with that, here is another story, a true story this time, about an American Vietnam veteran talking in a var about his experience of war, a story I have taken from a book by Sam Wells.³ “Beside the bar, an older woman began to attack him. ‘You[‘ve] got no right to snivel about your little half-baked war. World War Two was a real war. Were you even alive then? … I lost a brother in World War Two.’ .. Finally the veteran had had enough. He looked at her and calmly, coldly said, ‘Have you ever had to kill anyone?’ ‘Well, no!’ she answered belligerently. ‘Then what right have you got to tell me anything?’

“There was a long, painful silence throughout the [bar].” … Then a friend of the veteran who was sitting with him “asked quietly, ‘When you got pushed just now, you came back with the fact that you had to kill in Vietnam. Was that the worst of it for you?’ ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘that’s half of it’. The friend waited for a very long time, but the veteran didn’t go on. He only stared into his beer. Finally the friend had to ask, ‘What was the other half?’ ‘The other half was that when we got home, nobody understood’. That, writes, Sam Wells, is the sacrifice we expect of our soldiers: the sacrifice of the unwillingness to kill, and the sacrifice of being isolated from all the rest of us, who have sub-contracted out and distanced ourselves as much as possible from that terrible responsibility.

Of course, the effort to distance ourselves from death is ultimately unsuccessful, whether we consider the reality of twentieth and twenty-first century warfare, in which civilians were and are victims to a degree never previously seen, or whether we simply stop to consider that disease, disaster and mortality are ever-present realities in our world. We see these realities on the news, and we experience these realities in our own family and friendship networks, and within our church family. The apostle Paul sums it all up by saying that ‘the last enemy to be destroyed is death’ (1 Corinthians 15:26).

‘Passing on, passing away, losing someone’ – in common with those around them in society, sometimes Christians use terms like these to spare the feelings of others. Yet Christians do not fear to speak the proper name of their mortal enemy. They do not fear to speak of death. It is not that they fail to grieve when they are bereaved. They do not pretend that death is an illusion, that death is nothing to worry about, or a cause for celebration, or that it is nothing at all. Make no mistake, they mourn and cry. There is a time for weeping, just as there is a time for dancing. But Christians need not grieve as those who have no hope. And why is that the case?

It is because Christians know that Jesus died and rose again. They know that their Lord is the Man who lived. Jesus Christ has faced the worst the enemy could throw at him – he surrendered to death itself – and by his resurrection, he defeated death. Because Jesus died and rose again, those who are called by his name take death seriously, but they know they have nothing to fear from it. Sam Wells speaks of the sacrifice of the Son of God as “the sacrifice to end all sacrifices” and “a truth to die for, [rather than] to kill for”. “Sometimes,” he writes, “I think that if we asked our heavenly Father what the worst part of the cross was, he would pause for a long time and say, ‘the sacrifice of my Son… that was half of it’. And if we waited in a terrible silence and finally found courage to ask, ‘What was the other half?’, he would say, ‘The other half was that 2,000 years later, nobody understands’.⁴

Yet Paul wrote this morning’s passage from I Thessalonians precisely so we would understand what the death and resurrection of Jesus means for us. He says in verse 13, “We do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or grieve like the rest of humanity, who have no hope”. The first letter to the Thessalonians was one of the earliest letters Paul ever wrote to the churches, if not the earliest, when Christianity was hardly a generation old. What concerned the first readers of that letter was that some of the first generation of Christian believers were growing old and dying before the promised return of Jesus. What would become of them? Had they passed away into the ether? Were they no more? Were they lost? To these questions, in verse 14 of chapter 4, Paul answers ‘No’. “We believe that Jesus died and rose again” – the sacrifice to end all sacrifices – “and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him”.

On the surface, that phrase “falling asleep” may sound like yet another euphemism for death, just another way of trying to live in cloud-cuckoo land and avoiding giving the last enemy its proper name. But in Paul’s usage, this idea of “falling asleep” is linked to the death and resurrection of Jesus. Jesus died a death which was “the wages of sin; and because [and only because] he endured the full horror implied in that death, [we understand that] he has transformed death for his followers into sleep”.⁵ If we die with Christ, we will also live with him (cf. Romans 6:8), because he died, and then was raised to life.

“Going to heaven when we die” is an imprecise way of trying to express the future confidence of a Christian. Heaven will instead come to us. Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians chapter 4 verse 14: “We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him”. We will rest in peace, then rise in glory, and finally (says Paul in chapter 4 verse 17) “we will be with the Lord forever”. If we have ever found ourselves wondering what heaven will be like, all we need to know is that the Lord will be there, and his unveiled, unmediated presence will be heaven to us.

Paul’s words in verses 16 and 17 of chapter 4 have unfortunately sent some folk in the direction of cloud cuckoo-land when thinking about heaven. “The Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.”

Paul is not here saying that those who have died in the Lord, together with those Christians still living, are going to be snatched from the earth in advance of its total destruction. The day of the Lord’s return will be about his arrival to reign upon the earth, rather than the final turning of his back upon it. It will be about the renewal, rather than the destruction, of the world. It will be about heaven and earth being united.

Two hundred years ago and more, Ramsgate Harbour was the main point of embarkation and disembarkation for travel to and from the European continent. At that time, harbours had not yet been built at Dover or at Folkestone. As a result, Ramsgate was a garrison town during the Napoleonic Wars of the early nineteenth century, and the memory of its close association with the armed forces survives in street names such as Wellington Crescent, Liverpool Lawn, Nelson Crescent and Military Road. After the Duke of Wellington’s victory at Waterloo, King George IV travelled through Ramsgate on his trips to Hanover, where he was also King. Famously, on his return from one of these trips in 1821, thousands of people went down to the harbour to welcome him back from his kingdom in Germany to his kingdom in Britain. At that time he designated Ramsgate a Royal Harbour, and an obelisk was constructed in memory of the event, which remains in place to this day.

This kind of welcome would have been very familiar to the citizens of Thessalonica, because in the classical world it was the custom for the leading citizens of a city to assemble outside the city walls and form a welcoming party when they were expecting visits from conquerors returning from battles and dignitaries on diplomatic missions. The honoured visitor would then be escorted back into the city in pomp and circumstance, just as in 1821 King George IV was accompanied by cheering crowds up from the harbour into Ramsgate Town and eventually all the way back to London.

F.F. Bruce, the biblical scholar, tells us that the Greek word used in classical literature for these meetings with returning conquerors is used by Paul in verse 17 of chapter 4 to describe our meeting with the Lord.⁶ We will be caught up in the clouds to meet him in the air.

But our heads won’t stay in the clouds on that day, any more than the crowds stayed at the harbour once George IV had arrived. Still less will the Lord depart the earth, having only just returned. Rather, on that day we will welcome our King to the earth which is rightfully his, and which will be renewed to be a fit dwelling-place for him, just as in 1821 the crowds escorted their returning King up into town. “And so we will be with the Lord forever” (1 Thessalonians 4:17), and that will be heaven.

So we understand that “resurrection is [not] an old-fashioned religious word for the survival of our souls after the inevitable death of our bodies…” Instead, resurrection is “the return of the whole person, body and soul together, not simply the continuing survival of his or her spiritual dimension.” It is not “a natural event, but rather a reversal of death brought about by” ⁷ the God who raised Jesus from the dead. Having done so once for his only-begotten Son, he will do so again for all who put their trust in him. His resurrection is the iron-clad guarantee of ours.

So when Christians speak of death, they know they are speaking about a mortal enemy, but an enemy who need not be feared, because it has been defeated by Christ. “Therefore,” says Paul in verse 18, who is always practical, even when, or especially when, he is at his most theological, “Therefore encourage one another with these words”.

Everyone knows that it’s hard to know what to say to a recently-bereaved person. There is a temptation to not say anything to them at all, for fear of saying the wrong thing. In this way, the loneliness and vulnerability experienced by people who have lost loved ones is often compounded. It is true that saying the wrong thing to a bereaved person is a real possibility. Saying that you know just how they feel isn’t normally very helpful. Nor is telling them that the death of their loved one was for the best, or that things aren’t so bad as they presently appear. A bereaved person is unlikely to be comforted by any of the mantras of positive thinking. However, the apostle Paul is telling us that there are words which can provide encouragement, and that there is a rock-bottom hope that gives a particular character even to their rock-bottom experience of grief. It is a hope, he has been saying, that is founded on the resurrection of Jesus Christ. So we may encourage one another with these words. Let us make the rock-bottom faith we share in Christ, let us make that faith the bedrock of our fellowship, in good times and in bad.

The reason we are able to encourage one another is that we have a sure hope for the future. This hope is not a generalised sunny optimism without any observable foundation; it is not the practice of positive thinking; it is hope that has been established by the fact that Jesus died and rose again for us. The entire secondary school career of Harry Potter was taken up with battling and finally defeating Voldemort. But that is just a story. In human history there have been, and continue to be, many wars. Yet the war to end all wars is not against flesh and blood but against sin, death and the devil. The last enemy to be defeated is death. And over this enemy, Jesus Christ has already triumphed. We believe that Jesus died and rose again – the sacrifice to end all sacrifices – and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. Therefore encourage one another with these words.

1 J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, pages 44-45.

2 Ibid., page 45.

3 Sam Wells, Power and Passion (2007), pp. 78-79.

4 Ibid., pp. 79-80.

5 Leon Morris, The Epistles of Paul to the Thessalonians, p. 85.

6 F.F. Bruce, 1 & 2 Thessalonians, pages 102-103.

7 Madigan and Levenson, Resurrection: The Power of God for Christians and Jews, page xii.

Dealing with Disagreements

How are we to deal with disagreements in church?

How are we to deal with disagreements in church?

There can be all kinds of disagreements.

Sometimes people say things that upset others, often without even realising they have done so. There is hurt and upset. Is one side being oversensitive or the other side being insensitive? How do we deal with such situations?

Sometimes there can be arguments over church policy. What to spend money on or not. What kind of music we should sing or not. When to put the heating on. How do we resolve such disputes? The Bible does not pronounce on these issues, but people can be quite passionate about them and sometimes fall out if they don’t get their way.

Sometimes there can be disputes about roles. Who is responsible for what. Concerns that people are not doing what they said they would. Or that someone is taking over my role. How do we deal with such situations.

Sadly, such disputes can lead to people leaving the church, upset that they haven’t been treated well or got their own way. They may then complain to others outside the church, through gossip or on social media with the hope of ‘winning’ the approval of the court of public opinion for their case, rather than trying to deal with the issue within the church.

What are we meant to do?

What’s going wrong in Corinth?

The church in Corinth give us a good case study of how not to do it!

In this letter, Paul is writing to the church and is challenging them about what is going wrong. In the reading we had this morning, he is especially upset with them:

‘Do you dare to…’ (vs. 1)

‘I say this to shame you…’  (vs. 5)

‘You have been completely defeated already…’ (vs. 7)

What is going on? There are disputes within the church, probably of a more serious nature than the ones I have listed, but still relatively small issues, that would be dealt with in what we might call a ‘small claims’ court, that rather than dealing with sensibly or in  a low key way within the church, they were taking each other to the public courts.

Now Paul is not talking here about more serious cases, properly criminal cases. The church in recent years has been rightly criticised for not taking issues of child sex abuse to the police, but trying to deal with them as an internal matter. Paul is clear in his letter to the Romans, that God has put in place the rulers of this world to deal with such criminal behaviour.

No, Paul is dealing with smaller issues, perhaps people who have failed to pay a bill in full or to complete work that was promised. Those kind of small claims issues – not murder of abuse. Paul is saying, that their failure to deal with such issues within the church was an utter disaster. They seemed to be more concerned with their personal gain, getting their own way, winning their dispute, than they were with building up and maintaining the church community.

What matters more to you: Church Community or Personal Gain?

And that is a challenge to us. What matters more to us, the Church Community or our Personal Gain?

In challenging the Corinthians in their disastrous behaviour, he touches on and hints at why the church community really matters and should be more important to us than our personal gain.

1. Church as holy

Firstly, he reminds them that they are the ‘holy ones’. This is the word translated, ‘saints.’ It does not refer to especially good Christians, but to all true Christians.

Paul has already reminded us in the letter, that the community of believers is God’s temple. In other words, his holy house. As such, if your actions damage the community, they are sacrilegious. Just as we might feel that if someone vandalised the church building it was in some way worse than other vandalism, because it is God’s house, so the New Testament would say that to damage the church community is an act of vandalism on God’s building. Paul puts this very bluntly in 3:16-17:

“Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him; for God’s temple is sacred, and you are that temple.” (1 Corinthians 3:16-17)

But also, to be holy is to be called to be set apart from the world, as an example of what it means to live for God. A lot of people love the fact that St. George’s lantern tower is lit up at night – a beacon of light, especially in the dark evenings of this time of year.

But the community of God’s people is meant to be a beacon of good. That is why in the previous chapter, that we looked at last week, Paul was so keen that people who persist in serious sin are put out of the church, so as not to corrupt it from its calling.

More positively, in a passage that also talks of the church as God’s temple, Peter says that the church community is called to:

“Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.” (1 Peter 2:12)

In this passage, Paul says something even more radical about what the holiness of the church means. He says that we are to judge the world and to judge even angels in verses 2 and 3.

What does this mean? It could mean that by living the good life of faith, we show up the unbelief and corruption of the world. That certainly fits with what I have said about being a church community as holy.

It could also refer to the fact that at the end of time, we will sit with Christ, when he comes to judge the world. This fits with some of the imagery in Revelation:

“To him who overcomes, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne.” (Revelation 3:21)

Whatever Paul means by this statement, the point Paul is making is something like this:

‘How can you go to those outside the church to judge your cases, when they will be judged by you?’

‘How can you rely on the judgement of those whose values are not in line with the values of Christ, who will one day judge them?’

‘How can you rely on the judgement of those outside the church, when you are called to live by a totally different set of values in order to show up the unbelief and corruption of the world?’

‘Don’t you realise the church is set apart, holy and distinct from the world? How can you allow the unholy to judge the holy?’

Do you value the church community above your personal gain, because you have come to see it as God’s holy temple, which is to be built up and not vandalised?

2. Church as family

But secondly, we also need to remember that the church is our spiritual family. Sadly, this point is a bit lost in translation. The Greek uses the word, ‘brothers’ in verses 5,6 and 8, but for some reason the NRSV mostly translated it ‘believers.’ The NIV does a better job at using the word, ‘brother.’

By putting their behaviour as one brother taking another to court in verse 6 and the idea of defrauding your brothers in verse 8 brings home the seriousness of what is going wrong.

It is wrong to exploit strangers and to fall into disputes with strangers, but it becomes even more wrong to do that to family. But when you do it to other members of the church community you are doing it to family.

Do you value the church community above your personal gain, because you have come to see it as family?

3. Church founded on the cross

Thirdly, we need to see the church and our behaviour as shaped by the cross.

In the first few chapters, as Paul wrote to encourage unity in the church, he focussed on the wisdom of the cross. Their church was founded on the message of the cross, that Paul brought to them:

“For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” (1 Corinthians 2:2)

The message of the cross does not fit with the thinking of the world, especially a world focussed on personal gain:

“For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength.” (1 Corinthians 1:25)

The point is this. On the cross Jesus utterly gave up all personal gain for the sake of others. He gave up all his rights, in order to win a place in God’s eternal home for all who believed in him. He paid the price, that we sinners may gain the reward.

If that is the basis of our faith, the cornerstone of the church, then surely as Paul says in verse 7, we should be willing to be wronged and cheated rather than allow disputes that threaten to destroy or undermine the work of Christ.

And how can we preach Christ crucified to those outside the church, if we come before them arguing for our personal gain at the expense of our brothers and sisters in Christ?

Do you value the church community above your personal gain, because you have truly understood the church as founded on the cross of Christ?

Dealing with disputes:

So, with a clearer understanding of the church as holy, as family and as founded on the cross, we can come to the question of how to deal with disputes. Remember we are talking about disputes not crimes. Actual crimes need to be reported to the police and safeguarding concerns to the safeguarding officer or me or straight to the Diocesan safeguarding officers.

When it comes to other disputes, however, I want to suggest as Christians that there are four levels to dealing with disputes. We should consider the lowest levels first and only move to the next level if it is really necessary.

1. Let it go? – vs. 7

The first level is to ask ourselves: Should I just let it go?

Yes, I may have been hurt, I may have lost out, but as Paul suggests in verse 7, in the interests of harmony and peace and following the example of Christ, is it best not to worry about this dispute and let the other person win, without even complaining?

This is probably the best way to act in many occasions, especially for smaller issues and one off problems. Let grace abound!

However, for more serious issues, or a recurring problem, which may suggest that there is a sin in the other that needs addressing or in order to protect the wider church, there are cases where you need to deal with the dispute.

2. Resolve one to one – vs. 7;  Mt. 18:15-17

So, the second level is to seek to resolve the dispute privately on a one to one basis. If you can do this, then you will avoid the defeat of having lawsuits that need to be judged, as Paul puts it in verse 7.

Jesus makes this point in Matthew 18:15-17:

“If your brother sins against you,  go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over.” (Matthew 18:15)

Of course it may be that as you talk to them with an open mind, you discover that you also are at fault or you have misunderstood the situation and things can be happily resolved. It may be that they accept what has gone wrong, apologise appropriately and commit to doing better in the future. These are the kind of resolutions you long for!!

To tackle someone in this way and to reach a positive resolution really helps to build the church up – it encourages holy behaviour and deepens relationships.

If, however, they do not listen to you and you still feel you are in the right and that is serious enough to justify involving  others then you may need to go to the next level.

3. Resolve a few to one – vs. 7

This is still just about avoiding the kind of situation Paul calls a defeat in verse 7, but now others are being involved as Jesus suggests for the next step:

“But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that `every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.'” (Matthew 18:16)

Again in taking others along, you may find that they make you realise that you are partly or wholly in the wrong and not the other person! But that could be a good thing!!

Assuming you are right and the other person is wrong, however, then in bringing more people to testify to them, the hope is that they will see the error of their ways and change without having to make the issue any more public.

If, however, they refuse to accept there is a problem, and the issue is serious enough, then you may need to take it to the fourth level.

4. Submit to church’s judgement – vs. 4; Mt. 18:15-17

The fourth level is the kind of tribunal Paul is talking about. For things to come to this is a kind of defeat, a failure of the earlier stages to resolve the situation, but on occasions it will be necessary.

Jesus says:

“If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.” (Matthew 18:17)

Here, Jesus encourages the dispute to be resolved within the church, as Paul argues for in 1 Corinthians 6. The vision in 1 Corinthians 6 is that the church would appoint someone they consider wise enough to make a judgement in such matters to decide disputes. It could be that as Jesus implies, there may be more than one person involved in making the decision.

But the point is that whatever decision is made, needs to be respected by all parties. It could be in bringing a dispute to this level, even if you have found others to agree with you that the final conclusion goes against you or doesn’t completely give you what you want. The important thing, however, as Jesus and Paul suggest is to submit to the ruling and accept the result.

Ultimately, as Jesus warns and as Paul has also hinted at at the end of chapter 5, those who continue to sin, despite the warnings of the church need to be put out of the church for the sake of the wider community. That is never the aim of this process, but it may sadly become the ultimate result.

Dealing with Disputes

The church community is special. Founded on the cross of Christ, it is holy, it is family. We need to value it above our own personal gain.

There will be disputes that arise within church communities. Some of these will be unimportant and others more important. We need to deal with them wisely, always seeking the right resolution, being willing to humbly accept we might be in the wrong and not rushing to escalate the dispute, but dealing with necessary issues, in the hope of real reconciliation and spiritual growth for all involved.