Beginning

Scandal and judgment

5 Everybody’s talking about the sex scandal that’s going on in your community, not least because it’s a kind of immorality that even the pagans don’t practice! Well I never—a man taking his father’s wife! ² And you’re puffed up! Why aren’t you in mourning? Why aren’t you getting rid of the person who’s done such a thing?

³ Let me tell you what I’ve already done. I may be away from you physically, but I’m present in the spirit; and I’ve already passed judgment, as though I was there with you, on the person who has behaved in this way. ⁴ When you are assembled together in the name of our Lord Jesus, and my spirit is there too with the power of our Lord Jesus, ⁵ you must hand over such a person to the satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord Jesus.

Get rid of the “leaven”!

⁶ Your boasting is no good. Don’t you know that a little leaven works its way through the whole lump of dough? ⁷ Cleanse out the old leaven, so that you can be a new lump, the leaven-free lump you really are. It’s Passover-time, you see, and our Passover lamb—the Messiah, I mean—has already been sacrificed! ⁸ What we now have to do is to keep the festival properly: none of the leaven of the old life, and none of the leaven of depravity and wickedness, either. What we need is leaven-free bread, and that means sincerity and truth.

⁹ I wrote to you in the previous letter not to become associated with immoral people. ¹⁰ I didn’t (of course) mean immoral people in the world at large, or greedy people, or thieves, or idolaters. To avoid them, you’d have to remove yourselves from the world altogether! ¹¹ No; I was referring to people who call themselves Christians but who are immoral, or greedy, or idolaters, or blasphemers, or drunkards or robbers. You shouldn’t associate with them; you shouldn’t even eat with a person like that. ¹² Why should I worry about judging people outside? It’s the people inside you should judge, isn’t it? ¹³ God judges the people outside. “Drive out the wicked person from your company.”

Lawsuits in the church?

6 Can it really be the case that one of you dares to go to law against a neighbor, to be tried before unjust people, and not before God’s people? ² Don’t you know that God’s people will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you really incompetent to try smaller matters? ³ Don’t you know that we shall be judging angels? Why not then also matters to do with ordinary life? ⁴ So if you have lawsuits about ordinary matters, are you actually going to appoint as judges people whom the church despises? ⁵ I’m saying this to bring shame on you. Is it really true that there is no wise person among you who is able to decide between one Christian and another? ⁶ But one Christian is being taken to court by another, and before unbelievers at that!

⁷ Actually, to have lawsuits with one another at all represents a major setback for you. Why not rather let yourselves be wronged? Why not rather put up with loss? ⁸ But you yourselves are wronging and defrauding people, and fellow Christians at that!

Inheriting God’s kingdom—or not

⁹ Don’t you know that the unjust will not inherit God’s kingdom? Don’t be deceived! Neither immoral people, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor practicing homosexuals of whichever sort, ¹⁰ nor thieves, nor greedy people, nor drunkards, nor abusive talkers, nor robbers will inherit God’s kingdom. ¹¹ That, of course, is what some of you were! But you were washed clean; you were made holy; you were put back to rights—in the name of the Lord, Messiah Jesus, and in the spirit of our God.

What is the body for?

¹² “Everything is lawful for me”—but not everything is helpful! “Everything is lawful for me”—but I’m not going to let anything give me orders! ¹³ “Food for the stomach, and the stomach for food, and God will destroy the one and the other”—but the body is not meant for immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. ¹⁴ What’s more, God raised the Lord; and he will raise us, too, through his power.

¹⁵ Don’t you know that your bodies are members of the Messiah? Shall I then take the members of the Messiah and make them members of a prostitute? Of course not! ¹⁶ Or don’t you know that anyone who joins himself to a prostitute is one body with her? “The two shall become one flesh”—that’s what it says. ¹⁷ But the one who joins himself to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.

¹⁸ Run away from immorality. Every sin that it’s possible for someone to commit happens outside the body; but immorality involves sinning against your own body. ¹⁹ Or don’t you know that your body is a temple of the holy spirit within you, the spirit God gave you, so that you don’t belong to yourselves? ²⁰ You were quite an expensive purchase! So glorify God in your body.

Life within marriage

7 Let me now turn to the matters you wrote about. “It is good for a man to have no sexual contact with a woman.” ² Well, yes; but the temptation to immorality means that every man should maintain sexual relations with his own wife, and every woman with her own husband. ³ The man should give his wife her marital rights, and the woman should do the same for her husband. ⁴ The woman isn’t in charge of her own body; her husband is. In the same way, the man isn’t in charge of his own body; his wife is. ⁵ Don’t deny one another, except perhaps by agreement for a period of time, so that you may have more space for prayer. But then come together again, in case the satan might tempt you because of your weakness of will.

⁶ I’m not saying this as a command, but as a concession. ⁷ I would be happy to see everyone be in the same situation as myself. But each person has his or her own gift from God, one this way, another that way.

Marriage and divorce

⁸ To unmarried people, and to widows, I have this to say: it’s perfectly all right for you to remain like me. ⁹ But if you don’t have power over your passions, then get married. Much better to marry than to have desire smoldering away inside you!

¹⁰ I have a command, too, for married people—actually, it’s not just from me, it’s from the Lord: that a woman should not separate from her husband. ¹¹ If she does, she should remain unmarried or return to her husband. So, too, a man should not divorce his wife.

¹² To everyone else I have this to say (this is just me, not the Lord). If a Christian has an unbelieving wife, and she is happy to live with him, he shouldn’t divorce her. ¹³ If a woman has an unbelieving husband, and he is happy to live with her, she shouldn’t divorce him. ¹⁴ The unbelieving husband, you see, is made holy by his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy by her husband; otherwise your children would be impure, whereas in fact they are holy. ¹⁵ But if the unbelieving partner wants to separate, let them separate; a brother or sister is not bound in a case like that. God has called you in peace. ¹⁶ If you’re a wife, how d’you know whether or not you will save your husband? If you’re a husband, how d’you know whether or not you will save your wife?

Stay the way you were called

¹⁷ This is the overriding rule: everyone should conduct their lives as the Lord appointed, as God has called them. This is what I lay down in all the churches. ¹⁸ If someone was circumcised when he was called, he shouldn’t try to remove the marks. If someone was uncircumcised when he was called, he shouldn’t get circumcised. ¹⁹ Circumcision is nothing; uncircumcision is nothing; what matters is keeping God’s commandments!

²⁰ Everyone should stay within the calling they had when they were called. ²¹ Were you a slave when you were called? Don’t worry about it (but if you get the chance of freedom, seize it!). ²² The one who is in the Lord and called as a slave is the Lord’s freedman, just as the one who is called as a free person is the Messiah’s slave. ²³ You were bought at a high price; don’t become the slaves of human beings. ²⁴ So, brothers and sisters, let each person remain before God in the state in which they were called.

On remaining unmarried

²⁵ Now when it comes to unmarried people, I have no command from the Lord, but I give my opinion as (thanks to the Lord’s mercy!) a trustworthy person. ²⁶ This, then, is what I think is for the best: just at the moment we are in the middle of a very difficult time, and it’s best for people to remain as they are. ²⁷ Are you bound to a wife? Don’t try to dissolve the marriage. Have you had your marriage dissolved? Don’t look for another wife. ²⁸ But if you do marry, you are not sinning, and if an unmarried woman marries, she is not sinning. But people who go that way will have trouble at a human level, and I would prefer to spare you that.

²⁹ This is what I mean, my brothers and sisters. The present situation won’t last long; for the moment, let those who have wives live as though they weren’t married, ³⁰ those who weep as though they were not weeping, those who celebrate as though they were not celebrating, those who buy as though they had no possessions, ³¹ those who use the world as though they were not making use of it. The pattern of this world, you see, is passing away.

Divided loyalties

³² I want you to be free from worries. The unmarried man worries about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord; ³³ but the married man worries about the things of the world, in other words, how to please his wife— ³⁴ and he is pulled in both directions. So too the unmarried woman or girl worries about the things of the Lord, how to be holy both in body and spirit; but the married woman worries about the things of the world, in other words, how to please her husband.

³⁵ I’m saying this for your own benefit. I’m not placing restrictions on you; my aim is that nothing will get in the way of your appropriate behavior and steady devotion to the Lord.

³⁶ If anyone thinks he is behaving improperly towards his fiancée—if he finds the situation overly stressful, and matters reach a point of necessity—then let him do as he wishes, he won’t be sinning: let them marry. ³⁷ But the man who settles it firmly in his heart and is not under necessity, but in control of his own will, and has made his judgment in his own heart to keep her as his fiancée, will do well. ³⁸ So the one who marries his fiancée will do well; and the one who holds back from marrying will do better.

³⁹ A woman is bound in marriage as long as her husband lives. But if the husband dies she is free to marry anyone she likes, only in the Lord. ⁴⁰ But in my opinion she is happier if she remains as she is. And I think I too have the spirit of God.

Meat offered to idols

8 Now when it comes to meat offered to idols, we know that “We all have knowledge.” Knowledge puffs you up, but love builds you up! ² If anybody thinks they “know” something, they don’t yet “know” in the way they ought to know. ³ But if anybody loves God, they are “known”—by him.

⁴ So when it comes to food that has been offered to idols, we know that “idols are nothing in the world,” and that “there is no God but one.” ⁵ Yes, indeed: there may be many so-called “gods,” whether in heaven or on earth, just as there are many “gods” and many “lords.” ⁶ But for us

Respecting weak consciences

⁷ The problem is that not everybody has this “knowledge.” Some have been accustomed up to now to eating idol-food with the assumption that it really does belong to the idol. This has left them with a weak conscience, and now that conscience will be polluted. ⁸ But the food we eat won’t recommend us to God. We won’t be any worse off if we don’t eat, and we won’t be any better off if we do.

⁹ But you must take care in case this official right of yours becomes a danger to the weak. ¹⁰ Look at it like this: if someone with a weak conscience sees you, a person with “knowledge,” sitting down to eat in an idol-house, that conscience of theirs is likely to make up its mind actually to eat idol-food, isn’t it? ¹¹ And so, you see, the weak person—a brother or sister for whom the Messiah died!—is then destroyed by your “knowledge.” ¹² That means you’ll be sinning against your brother or sister, and attacking their weak conscience; and in doing this you’ll be sinning against the Messiah. ¹³ So, for this reason, if food causes my brother or sister to stumble, I will never ever eat meat, so that I won’t make my brother or sister trip up.