1 Corinthians 4-6

Complete Jewish Bible

4 So, you should regard us as the Messiah’s servants, as trustees of God’s secret truths. ² Now the one thing that is asked of a trustee is that he be found trustworthy. ³ And it matters very little to me how I am evaluated by you or by any human court; in fact, I don’t even evaluate myself. ⁴ I am not aware of anything against me, but this does not make me innocent. The one who is evaluating me is the Lord. ⁵ So don’t pronounce judgment prematurely, before the Lord comes; for he will bring to light what is now hidden in darkness; he will expose the motives of people’s hearts; and then each will receive from God whatever praise he deserves.

⁶ Now in what I have said here, brothers, I have used myself and Apollos as examples to teach you not to go beyond what the Tanakh says, proudly taking the side of one leader against another. ⁷ After all, what makes you so special? What do you have that you didn’t receive as a gift? And if in fact it was a gift, why do you boast as if it weren’t? ⁸ You are glutted already? You are rich already? You have become kings, even though we are not? Well, I wish you really were kings, so that we might share the kingship with you! ⁹ For I think God has been placing us emissaries on display at the tail of the parade, like men condemned to die in the public arena: we have become a spectacle before the whole universe, angels as well as men. ¹⁰ For the Messiah’s sake we are fools, but united with the Messiah you are wise! We are weak, but you are strong; you are honored, but we are dishonored. ¹¹ Till this very moment we go hungry and thirsty, we are dressed in rags, we are treated roughly, we wander from place to place, ¹² we exhaust ourselves working with our own hands for our living. When we are cursed, we keep on blessing; when we are persecuted, we go on putting up with it; ¹³ when we are slandered, we continue making our appeal. We are the world’s garbage, the scum of the earth — yes, to this moment!

¹⁴ I am not writing you this to make you feel ashamed, but, as my dear children, to confront you and get you to change. ¹⁵ For even if you have ten thousand trainers in connection with the Messiah, you do not have many fathers; for in connection with the Messiah Yeshua it was I who became your father by means of the Good News. ¹⁶ Therefore I urge you to imitate me. ¹⁷ This is why I have sent you Timothy, my beloved and trustworthy child in the Lord. He will remind you of the way of life I follow in union with the Messiah Yeshua and teach everywhere in every congregation.

¹⁸ When I didn’t come to visit you, some of you became arrogant. ¹⁹ But I am coming to you soon, if the Lord wills; and I will take cognizance not of the talk of these arrogant people but of their power. ²⁰ For the Kingdom of God is not a matter of words but of power. ²¹ Which do you prefer — should I come to you with a stick? or with love in a spirit of gentleness?

5 It is actually being reported that there is sexual sin among you, and it is sexual sin of a kind that is condemned even by pagans — a man is living with his stepmother! ² And you stay proud? Shouldn’t you rather have felt some sadness that would have led you to remove from your company the man who has done this thing? ³ For I myself, even though I am absent physically, am with you spiritually; and I have already judged the man who has done this as if I were present. ⁴ In the name of the Lord Yeshua, when you are assembled, with me present spiritually and the power of our Lord Yeshua among us, ⁵ hand over such a person to the Adversary for his old nature to be destroyed, so that his spirit may be saved in the Day of the Lord.

⁶ Your boasting is not good. Don’t you know the saying, “It takes only a little hametz to leaven a whole batch of dough?” ⁷ Get rid of the old hametz, so that you can be a new batch of dough, because in reality you are unleavened. For our Pesach lamb, the Messiah, has been sacrificed. ⁸ So let us celebrate the Seder not with leftover hametz, the hametz of wickedness and evil, but with the matzah of purity and truth.

⁹ In my earlier letter I wrote you not to associate with people who engage in sexual immorality. ¹⁰ I didn’t mean the sexually immoral people outside your community, or the greedy, or the thieves or the idol-worshippers — for then you would have to leave the world altogether! ¹¹ No, what I wrote you was not to associate with anyone who is supposedly a brother but who also engages in sexual immorality, is greedy, worships idols, is abusive, gets drunk or steals. With such a person you shouldn’t even eat! ¹² For what business is it of mine to judge outsiders? Isn’t it those who are part of the community that you should be judging? ¹³ God will judge those who are outside. Just expel the evildoer from among yourselves.^[a]

6 How dare one of you with a complaint against another go to court before pagan judges and not before God’s people? ² Don’t you know that God’s people are going to judge the universe? If you are going to judge the universe, are you incompetent to judge these minor matters? ³ Don’t you know that we will judge angels, not to mention affairs of everyday life? ⁴ So if you require judgments about matters of everyday life, why do you put them in front of men who have no standing in the Messianic Community? ⁵ I say, shame on you! Can it be that there isn’t one person among you wise enough to be able to settle a dispute between brothers? ⁶ Instead, a brother brings a lawsuit against another brother, and that before unbelievers!

⁷ Actually, if you are bringing lawsuits against each other, it is already a defeat for you. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated? ⁸ Instead, you yourselves wrong and cheat; and you do it to your own brothers! ⁹ Don’t you know that unrighteous people will have no share in the Kingdom of God? Don’t delude yourselves — people who engage in sex before marriage, who worship idols, who engage in sex after marriage with someone other than their spouse, who engage in active or passive homosexuality, ¹⁰ who steal, who are greedy, who get drunk, who assail people with contemptuous language, who rob — none of them will share in the Kingdom of God. ¹¹ Some of you used to do these things. But you have cleansed yourselves, you have been set apart for God, you have come to be counted righteous through the power of the Lord Yeshua the Messiah and the Spirit of our God.

¹² You say, “For me, everything is permitted”? Maybe, but not everything is helpful. “For me, everything is permitted”? Maybe, but as far as I am concerned, I am not going to let anything gain control over me. ¹³ “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food”? Maybe, but God will put an end to both of them. Anyhow, the body is not meant for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body. ¹⁴ God raised up the Lord, and he will raise us up too by his power.

¹⁵ Don’t you know that your bodies are parts of the Messiah? So, am I to take parts of the Messiah and make them parts of a prostitute? Heaven forbid! ¹⁶ Don’t you know that a man who joins himself to a prostitute becomes physically one with her? For the Tanakh says, “The two will become one flesh”;^{[b] 17} but the person who is joined to the Lord is one spirit. ¹⁸ Run from sexual immorality! Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the fornicator sins against his own body. ¹⁹ Or don’t you know that your body is a temple for the Ruach HaKodesh who lives inside you, whom you received from God? The fact is, you don’t belong to yourselves; ²⁰ for you were bought at a price. So use your bodies to glorify God.