Beginning

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.

7 Now to deal with the questions you wrote about: “Is it good for a man to keep away from women?” ² Well, because of the danger of sexual immorality, let each man have his own wife and each woman her own husband. ³ The husband should give his wife what she is entitled to in the marriage relationship, and the wife should do the same for her husband. ⁴ The wife is not in charge of her own body, but her husband is; likewise, the husband is not in charge of his own body, but his wife is. ⁵ Do not deprive each other, except for a limited time, by mutual agreement, and then only so as to have extra time for prayer; but afterwards, come together again. Otherwise, because of your lack of self-control, you may succumb to the Adversary’s temptation. ⁶ I am giving you this as a suggestion, not as a command. ⁷ Actually, I wish everyone were like me; but each has his own gift from God, one this, another that.

⁸ Now to the single people and the widows I say that it is fine if they remain unmarried like me; ⁹ but if they can’t exercise self-control, they should get married; because it is better to get married than to keep burning with sexual desire.

¹⁰ To those who are married I have a command, and it is not from me but from the Lord: a woman is not to separate herself from her husband ¹¹ But if she does separate herself, she is to remain single or be reconciled with her husband. Also, a husband is not to leave his wife.

¹² To the rest I say — I, not the Lord: if any brother has a wife who is not a believer, and she is satisfied to go on living with him, he should not leave her. ¹³ Also, if any woman has an unbelieving husband who is satisfied to go on living with her, she is not to leave him. ¹⁴ For the unbelieving husband has been set aside for God by the wife, and the unbelieving wife has been set aside for God by the brother — otherwise your children would be “unclean,” but as it is, they are set aside for God. ¹⁵ But if the unbelieving spouse separates himself, let him be separated. In circumstances like these, the brother or sister is not enslaved — God has called you to a life of peace. ¹⁶ For how do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?

¹⁷ Only let each person live the life the Lord has assigned him and live it in the condition he was in when God called him. This is the rule I lay down in all the congregations. ¹⁸ Was someone already circumcised when he was called? Then he should not try to remove the marks of his circumcision. Was someone uncircumcised when he was called? He shouldn’t undergo b’rit-milah. ¹⁹ Being circumcised means nothing, and being uncircumcised means nothing; what does mean something is keeping God’s commandments. ²⁰ Each person should remain in the condition he was in when he was called.

²¹ Were you a slave when you were called? Well, don’t let it bother you; although if you can gain your freedom, take advantage of the opportunity. ²² For a person who was a slave when he was called is the Lord’s freedman; likewise, someone who was a free man when he was called is a slave of the Messiah. ²³ You were bought at a price, so do not become slaves of other human beings. ²⁴ Brothers, let each one remain with God in the condition in which he was called.

²⁵ Now the question about the unmarried: I do not have a command from the Lord, but I offer an opinion as one who by the Lord’s mercy is worthy to be trusted. ²⁶ I suppose that in a time of stress like the present it is good for a person to stay as he is. ²⁷ That means that if a man has a wife, he should not seek to be free of her; and if he is unmarried, he should not look for a wife. ²⁸ But if you marry you do not sin, and if a girl marries she does not sin. It is just that those who get married will have the normal problems of married life, and I would rather spare you. ²⁹ What I am saying, brothers, is that there is not much time left: from now on a man with a wife should live as if he had none — ³⁰ and those who are sad should live as if they weren’t, those who are happy as if they weren’t, ³¹ and those who deal in worldly affairs as if not engrossed in them — because the present scheme of things in this world won’t last much longer. ³² What I want is for you to be free of concern. An unmarried man concerns himself with the Lord’s affairs, ³³ with how to please the Lord; but the married man concerns himself with the world’s affairs, with how to please his wife; ³⁴ and he finds himself split. Likewise the woman who is no longer married or the girl who has never been married concerns herself with the Lord’s affairs, with how to be holy both physically and spiritually; but the married woman concerns herself with the world’s affairs, with how to please her husband. ³⁵ I am telling you this for your own benefit, not to put restrictions on you — I am simply concerned that you live in a proper manner and serve the Lord with undivided devotion.

³⁶ Now if a man thinks he is behaving dishonorably by treating his fiancée this way, and if there is strong sexual desire, so that marriage is what ought to happen; then let him do what he wants — he is not sinning: let them get married. ³⁷ But if a man has firmly made up his mind, being under no compulsion but having complete control over his will, if he has decided within himself to keep his fiancée a virgin, he will be doing well. ³⁸ So the man who marries his fiancée will do well, and the man who doesn’t marry will do better.

³⁹ A wife is bound to her husband as long as he lives, but if the husband dies she is free to marry anyone she wishes, provided he is a believer in the Lord. ⁴⁰ However, in my opinion, she will be happier if she remains unmarried, and in saying this I think I have God’s Spirit.

8 Now about food sacrificed to idols: we know that, as you say, “We all have knowledge.” Yes, that is so, but “knowledge” puffs a person up with pride; whereas love builds up. ² The person who thinks he “knows” something doesn’t yet know in the way he ought to know. ³ However, if someone loves God, God knows him.

⁴ So, as for eating food sacrificed to idols, we “know” that, as you say, “An idol has no real existence in the world, and there is only one God.” ⁵ For even if there are so-called “gods,” either in heaven or on earth — as in fact there are “gods” and “lords” galore — ⁶ yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom all things come and for whom we exist; and one Lord, Yeshua the Messiah, through whom were created all things and through whom we have our being.

⁷ But not everyone has this knowledge. Moreover, some people are still so accustomed to idols that when they eat food which has been sacrificed to them, they think of it as really affected by the idol; and their consciences, being weak, are thus defiled. ⁸ Now food will not improve our relationship with God — we will be neither poorer if we abstain nor richer if we eat. ⁹ However watch out that your mastery of the situation does not become a stumbling block to the weak. ¹⁰ You have this “knowledge”; but suppose someone with a weak conscience sees you sitting, eating a meal in the temple of an idol. Won’t he be built up wrongly to eat this food which has been sacrificed to idols? ¹¹ Thus by your “knowledge” this weak person is destroyed, this brother for whom the Messiah died; ¹² and so, when you sin against the brothers by wounding their conscience when it is weak, you are sinning against the Messiah!

¹³ To sum up, if food will be a snare for my brother, I will never eat meat again, lest I cause my brother to sin.