1 Corinthians 6:2

Christian practice today, and even Christian thinking, differs greatly from the apostle's principle. Christians now have little conscience about appealing to a worldly court. It is clear that the Holy Spirit felt this to be an outrage. No Christian who is walking rightly could think of taking another to court before the world, however wrong that other may be. He must be forgetting what God counts each to be. The world has rejected His Son. The saints are those whom grace has separated from the world to God.

Here the apostle bases his reproof on how strange it is to seek judgment from the very people we shall judge at Christ's coming... The future judgment of the living in the kingdom of our Lord is a reality that acts on the apostle now. He uses it to judge the conduct of every day. How can it be a living truth if it does not work like this? Even the Corinthians did not doubt the fact about the future. But like all unspiritual people, they had let it slip in the very place where they should have remembered it... In the eyes of faith it was a glaring inconsistency. If the world is judged by the saints, are they unfit to judge the smallest matters? Such were and still are the questions people take to court.

"Judgment was given to them." That is, these saints receive royal authority to rule. It is the fulfilment of that grand and unqualified statement, "Do you not know that the saints will judge the world?" (1 Cor. 6:2).

They really ought to have known that "the saints will judge the world." This fact had been stated in the Old Testament. "The Ancient of Days came, and judgment was given for the saints of the Most High, and the time came when the saints possessed the kingdom" (Dan. 7:22; older translations read "judgment was given to the saints"). Had they really known it, they would not have dragged one another into pagan law courts. If we really knew it, we would perhaps avoid certain things that we do.

The saints are to judge as well as reign... This refers only to the earthly judgments connected with the kingdom. Where eternal issues are in question, we read of one "throne," not "thrones" (contrast Rev. 20:4 and 11). Still, the position is a wonderful one for us. Once we dreaded the judgment of God on ourselves, because of our many sins. Now all that dread has gone. We look forward to sitting on the judge's bench ourselves in the coming day when the earth is ruled in glory.

It simply means that the saints of God were going to law before the unjust instead of before the church of God. They were told to let the saints settle the matter. Why? Because the saints are going to judge the world. Many Christians think the saints will be judged along with the world. But they will be there as judges — quite a different thing. What a wonderful honour. It is most solemn. Think of Christ coming to take His saints to glory, and coming back with us to judge the world... All saved people in this present age are saints.

He asks them whether they do not know that the saints will judge the world. That is, of course, in the coming day of the Lord's rule over it; but it is for this that we are being trained and educated now. How could those who are on their way to such a place be unfit or unworthy to judge these small matters? In the apostle's estimate they count for very little.