First Letter to the Corinthians 6

¹ How dare one of your members take up a complaint against another in the lawcourts of the unjust[*a] instead of before the saints?

² As you know, it is the saints who are to ‘judge the world’; and if the world is to be judged by you, how can you be unfit to judge trifling cases?

³ Since we are also to judge angels, it follows that we can judge matters of everyday life;

⁴ but when you have had cases of that kind, the people you appointed to try them were not even respected in the Church.

⁵ You should be ashamed: is there really not one reliable man among you to settle differences between brothers

⁶ and so one brother brings a court case against another in front of unbelievers?

⁷ It is bad enough for you to have lawsuits at all against one another: oughtn’t you to let yourselves be wronged, and let yourselves be cheated?

⁸ But you are doing the wronging and the cheating, and to your own brothers.

⁹ You know perfectly well that people who do wrong will not inherit the kingdom of God: people of immoral lives, idolaters, adulterers, catamites, sodomites,

¹⁰ thieves, usurers, drunkards, slanderers and swindlers will never inherit the kingdom of God.

¹¹ These are the sort of people some of you were once, but now you have been washed clean, and sanctified, and justified through the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and through the Spirit of our God.

¹² ‘For me there are no forbidden things’;[*b] maybe, but not everything does good. I agree there are no forbidden things for me, but I am not going to let anything dominate me.

¹³ Food is only meant for the stomach, and the stomach for food; yes, and God is going to do away with both of them. But the body – this is not meant for fornication; it is for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.

¹⁴ God, who raised the Lord from the dead, will by his power raise us up too.

¹⁵ You know, surely, that your bodies are members making up the body of Christ; do you think I can take parts of Christ’s body and join them to the body of a prostitute? Never!

¹⁶ As you know, a man who goes with a prostitute is one body with her, since the two, as it is said, become one flesh.

¹⁷ But anyone who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him.

¹⁸ Keep away from fornication. All the other sins are committed outside the body; but to fornicate is to sin against your own body.

¹⁹ Your body, you know, is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you since you received him from God. You are not your own property;

²⁰ you have been bought and paid for. That is why you should use your body for the glory of God.