…And if the world [itself] is to be judged and ruled by you, are you unworthy and incompetent to try [such petty matters] of the smallest courts of justice? – 1 Corinthians 6:2, Amplified Bible (AMP)

Christians are commanded to do everything they do for the glory of God. The reason for this commandment is simple: the more that unsaved people see God’s supernatural impact on our lives, the more those unsaved people will want to have God’s supernatural impact on their lives.

The problem is that most Christians don’t live for God’s glory. They live for their own. As a result, the average Christian life reeks of human pride, lust, and self-interest, making the average Christian life a carbon copy of the average unsaved life. Since the average Christian’s life is saturated with natural pettiness, the unsaved see no need to swap their own pettiness for pettiness with a Christian label.

To illustrate this point, take John 13:35. In John 13:35, Jesus told us that the world shall know that we are His followers because of the love we show our fellow Christians. But how much love do you think the unsaved see when they witness Christians going at each other in a court of law? Christians suing Christians over simple civil matters* doesn’t communicate love; it communicates hatred, and in so doing it hurts the name of Christ by making Christians – and, therefore, Christ – seem as petty as everyone else.

As God (through Paul) teaches us in 1 Corinthians 6, Christians have no business suing Christians over simple civil matters.* When disputes arise, the proper course is to work out the issues amongst ourselves. If that doesn’t work, then we should have fellow believers judge our cases. We are not to take the issues before unsaved courts of law. Why? When we fight publicly amongst ourselves, we make Christ look worthless. “If Christ’s family is always fighting with themselves,” the unsaved think, “then why would we want to be part of that family?” In the end, it is really not our names at stake. It is God’s. This is why God (through Paul) tells us in 1 Corinthians 6:7 that it is better for us to lose our cases before our Christian peers than to win our cases before the unsaved judges. Preserving His name is more important than preserving our pride.

If we are to live out the command to bring glory to God in everything we do, then we need to keep our simple civil disputes* out of the hands of the unsaved and place them into the hands of our brethren. If we are to someday judge the world and the angels, then we ought to have enough sense to judge our own petty disputes.

* From John Gill’s Exposition of the Bible. John Gill preached in the same church as C. H. Spurgeon over one hundred years earlier. See Gill’s commentary on 1 Corinthians 6:3 and 1 Corinthians 6:4, indicating that the matters addressed in 1 Corinthians 6 pertained to pecuniary matters, meaning matters related to money and possessions. Life and death decisions (i.e., issues of great criminal magnitude) were to be addressed by civil authorities.

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