Read the New Testament in 24 Weeks

Apostles of Christ Jesus

4 You should think of us as servants of Christ, the ones God has trusted to do the work of making known his secret truths. ² Those who are trusted with such an important work must show that they are worthy of that trust. ³ But I don’t consider your judgment on this point to be worth anything. Even an opinion from a court of law would mean nothing. I don’t even trust my own judgment. ⁴ I don’t know of any wrong I have done, but that does not make me right. The Lord is the one who must decide if I have done well or not. ⁵ So don’t judge anyone now. The time for judging will be when the Lord comes. He will shine light on everything that is now hidden in darkness. He will make known the secret purposes of our hearts. Then the praise each person should get will come from God.

⁶ Brothers and sisters, I have used Apollos and myself as examples for you. I did this so that you could learn from us the meaning of the words, “Follow what the Scriptures say.” Then you will not brag about one person and criticize another. ⁷ Who do you think you are? Everything you have was given to you. So, if everything you have was given to you, why do you act as if you got it all by your own power?

⁸ You think you have everything you need. You think you are rich. You think you have become kings without us. I wish you really were kings. Then we could rule together with you. ⁹ But it seems to me that God has given me and the other apostles the last place. We are like prisoners condemned to die, led in a parade for the whole world to see—not just people but angels too. ¹⁰ We are fools for Christ, but you think you are so wise in Christ. We are weak, but you think you are so strong. People give you honor, but they don’t honor us. ¹¹ Even now we still don’t have enough to eat or drink, and we don’t have enough clothes. We often get beatings. We have no homes. ¹² We work hard with our own hands to feed ourselves. When people insult us, we ask God to bless them. When people treat us badly, we accept it. ¹³ When people say bad things about us, we try to say something that will help them. But people still treat us like the world’s garbage—everyone’s trash.

¹⁴ I am not trying to make you feel ashamed, but I am writing this to counsel you as my own dear children. ¹⁵ You may have ten thousand teachers in Christ, but you don’t have many fathers. Through the Good News I became your father in Christ Jesus. ¹⁶ So I beg you to be like me. ¹⁷ That is why I am sending Timothy to you. He is my son in the Lord. I love him and trust him. He will help you remember the way I live in Christ Jesus—a way of life that I teach in every meeting of the church wherever I am.

¹⁸ Some of you are acting so proud, it seems as though you think I won’t be coming there again. ¹⁹ But I will come to you very soon, the Lord willing. Then I will see if these proud talkers have the power to do anything more than talk. ²⁰ God’s kingdom is not seen in talk but in power. ²¹ Which do you want: that I come to you with punishment, or that I come with love and gentleness?

Don’t Let Your People Live in Sin

5 I don’t want to believe what I am hearing—that there is sexual sin among you. And it is such a bad kind of sexual sin that even those who have never known God don’t allow it. People say that a man there has his father’s wife. ² And still you are proud of yourselves! You should have been filled with sadness. And the man who committed that sin should be put out of your group. ³ I cannot be there with you in person, but I am with you in spirit. And I have already judged the man who did this. I judged him the same as I would if I were really there. ⁴ Come together in the name of our Lord Jesus. I will be with you in spirit, and you will have the power of our Lord Jesus with you. ⁵ Then turn this man over to Satan. His sinful self^[a] has to be destroyed so that his spirit will be saved on the day when the Lord comes again.

⁶ Your proud talk is not good. You know the saying, “Just a little yeast makes the whole batch of dough rise.” ⁷ Take out all the old yeast, so that you will be a new batch of dough. You really are bread without yeast—Passover bread.^[b] Yes, Christ our Passover Lamb^[c] has already been killed. ⁸ So let us eat our Passover meal, but not with the bread that has the old yeast, the yeast of sin and wrongdoing. But let us eat the bread that has no yeast. This is the bread of goodness and truth.

⁹ I wrote to you in my letter that you should not associate with people who sin sexually. ¹⁰ But I did not mean the people of this world. You would have to leave the world to get away from all the people who sin sexually, or who are greedy and cheat each other, or who worship idols. ¹¹ I meant you must not associate with people who claim to be believers but continue to live in sin. Don’t even eat with a brother or sister who sins sexually, is greedy, worships idols, abuses others with insults, gets drunk, or cheats people.

^12-13 It is not my business to judge those who are not part of the group of believers. God will judge them, but you must judge those who are part of your group. The Scriptures say, “Make the evil person leave your group.”^[d]

Judging Problems Between Believers

6 When one of you has something against someone else in your group, why do you go to the judges in the law courts? The way they think and live is wrong. So why do you let them decide who is right? Why don’t you let God’s holy people decide who is right? ² Don’t you know that God’s people will judge the world? So if you will judge the world, then surely you can judge small arguments like this. ³ You know that in the future we will judge angels. So surely we can judge life’s ordinary problems. ⁴ So if you have such matters to be judged, why do you take them to those who are not part of the church? They mean nothing to you. ⁵ I say this to shame you. Surely there is someone in your group wise enough to judge a complaint between two believers. ⁶ But now one believer goes to court against another, and you let people who are not believers judge their case!

⁷ The lawsuits that you have against each other show that you are already defeated. It would be better for you to let someone wrong you. It would be better to let someone cheat you. ⁸ But you are the ones doing wrong and cheating. And you do this to your own brothers and sisters in Christ!

^9-10 Surely you know that people who do wrong will not get to enjoy God’s kingdom. Don’t be fooled. These are the people who will not get to enjoy his kingdom: those who sin sexually, those who worship idols, those who commit adultery, men who let other men use them for sex or who have sex with other men, those who steal, those who are greedy, those who drink too much, those who abuse others with insults, and those who cheat. ¹¹ In the past some of you were like that. But you were washed clean, you were made holy, and you were made right with God in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

Use Your Bodies for God’s Glory

¹² “I am allowed to do anything,” you say. My answer to this is that not all things are good. Even if it is true that “I am allowed to do anything,” I will not let anything control me like a slave. ¹³ Someone else says, “Food is for the stomach, and the stomach for food.” Yes, and God will destroy them both. But the body is not for sexual sin. The body is for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body. ¹⁴ And God will raise our bodies from death with the same power he used to raise the Lord Jesus. ¹⁵ Surely you know that your bodies are parts of Christ himself. So I must never take what is part of Christ and join it to a prostitute! ¹⁶ The Scriptures say, “The two people will become one.”^[e] So you should know that anyone who is joined with a prostitute becomes one with her in body. ¹⁷ But anyone who is joined with the Lord is one with him in spirit.

¹⁸ So run away from sexual sin. It involves the body in a way that no other sin does. So if you commit sexual sin, you are sinning against your own body. ¹⁹ You should know that your body is a temple^[f] for the Holy Spirit that you received from God and that lives in you. You don’t own yourselves. ²⁰ God paid a very high price to make you his. So honor God with your body.