What does it mean that the saints will judge the world (1 Corinthians 6:2)?

"Dare any of you having a matter against another, go to law [seek judgment] before the unjust and not before the saints?" (Ver. 1.) Here modern practice, or even thought, greatly differs from apostolic principle. Christians now-a-days have little conscience in appealing to a worldly tribunal. It is evident that the Holy Ghost felt it to be an outrage, nor could any Christian walking rightly think of prosecuting a suit before the world against another however wrong. He must forget what God accounts each to be: the world, as having rejected His Son; the saints, as those that are by grace separated from it to God.

Here however the apostle grounds his reproof on the anomaly of seeking judgment at the hands of those whom we shall judge at Christ's coming. "*Know ye not that the saints shall judge the world? And if the world is judged by you, are ye unworthy of the least judgments? Do ye not know that we shall judge angels? Much more things of this life. If then ye have judgments in things of this life, set up those who are of no esteem in the church." (Ver. 2-4.) The apostle thus brings in the light of the coming day to bear upon present matters. This is certain from verse 8, if any one could question verse 2. In vain the efforts of ancients (Chrysostom, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret, etc.) to make it moral, or of moderns (Mosheim, Rosenmüller, etc.) to make it political and worldly. The future judgment of the quick 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 operate not thus? Even the Corinthians did not doubt the fact as to the future; but, like all unspiritual persons, they had let it slip now where they ought to have remembered it.

It is evident however that "that day" was a truth so familiar and admitted on all sides by the saints that Paul could reason from it as unquestionable. The saints have the same life now, and the same Spirit; they have also the word of God. How monstrous then thus to ignore the glory with Christ to which grace calls them, and to fall into the ways of men! To faith it was the grossest inconsistency; for if the world is judged by the saints, are they unworthy of the "least judgments?" Such were and are the questions on which men usually go to law. Nor is it only the world but other beings the saints are to judge. "Know ye not that we shall judge angels? Much more things in this life."

Not a few statements may be traced in scripture, which have been given but a single mention; but they are just as certain as any others which are repeatedly named. The apostle Paul, in 1 Cor. 6:3, declares that the saints shall judge angels. It is not only that they shall judge the world, which no doubt is a truth revealed elsewhere; but it is there expressly said that they are to judge angels. I am not aware of any other scripture which intimates a destiny that most would consider strange if not incredible. We do find that the world to come is not to be put under angels; but that is a different thing. It does assure us that the habitable earth is to be put under the Lord Jesus in that day; and the saints are to reign with Him. To the risen saints will be given to share His royal authority; for that is the meaning here of "judging." It has nothing at all to do with Christ's final award of man. It is not a small mistake to suppose that the saints will exercise the final judgment over men or angels. All such judgment is exclusively given to the Son of man (John 5:22, 27; Rev. 20).

— “Judgment was given to them.” That is, royal authority to rule is conferred on these saints. It is the fulfilment of that grand and unqualified statement, “Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world?”‎ ‎(1 Cor. 6:2).‎

We come, now to matters between the saints. The Corinthians were going to law with one another, bringing in the world to witness their sad condition and to set right amongst them the things which it was a shame should be wrong. He asks them if they do not know that the saints shall 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, and how could it be possible that those who were on their way to such a place as this could be unfit or unworthy to judge these small matters, matters in the apostle's estimation of such very small account? Do ye not know, he asks, that we shall judge angels, how much more then matters of this kind? Still, if judgments were needed as to the things of this life, those practically of no account in the assembly were sufficient for such things as that. He does not, of course, literally mean that they were to choose persons of that character, but that these were matters that did not require even any extraordinary spirituality and were of too little importance to require any great ability of this sort to decide them; but they were exposing their shame before the world. They had better suffer wrong; they had better suffer themselves to be defrauded. There was to be no exaction even of their rights. Grace does not exact. One may say, can we suffer the wrong to go on in the assembly? That is another matter. The question here is entirely of seeking our own things. If the matter is grave enough to touch the assembly, Matt. 18 has given us the rule with regard to it. There the first effort is that which is to be characteristic of our whole course; it is to gain one's brother. That is, as already said, that which discipline aims at. It may be, in fact, for the moment, impossible to be attained; and then we have the steps needed to place any matter that requires it in the hands of the assembly. Put in their hands, it is to be left there. It is for them, to say as to what will set things straight. Just because they are our own things, we are not to be judges of them. No man was ever thought to be a rightful judge in his own cause, or could take the law, as people say, into his own hands. These are principles which are surely as good for us as they can be in the world at large. They are the result simply of the knowledge, alas, of our poor fallen nature.

The saints are to judge as well as reign (vv. 22-26). This is what the Apostle had in his mind when he rebuked the Corinthians for going to law with one another before the world. "Do ye not know," he indignantly exclaimed, "that the saints shall judge the world? … Know ye not that we shall judge angels?" (1 Cor. 6:1-3). This has reference only to the temporal judgments connected with the kingdom; when eternal issues are in question, we read of one "throne," not "thrones" (Contrast Rev. 20:4 and 11). But the position is nevertheless a wonderful one for us. Once we dreaded the judgment of God for ourselves, because of our many sins; now, all such dread has gone, and we look to sit upon the magisterial bench ourselves in the approaching day of earthly governmental glory.

1 Cor. 6:1-3. There is a good deal of misconception as to this scripture. It simply means that the saints of God were going to law before the unjust instead of before the Church of God, and they were told to let the saints arbitrate. Why? Because the saints are going to judge the world. It is a common idea in Christendom that the saints are going to be judged 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 — dear ones, perhaps, who are part and parcel of ourselves, but who are finding their joy here. All saved people in this dispensation are saints. In Jude 14-15 we find that Christ is coming back with ten thousands of His saints. How could He come with them if He had not fetched them first? He will fetch us first, then there will be the great tribulation. Then, when we have been with Him in the Father's house for a period of time, He is coming back, and we are going to be associated with Him in the judgment of the world.

There are two ways in which this Scripture may be fulfilled. Seeing “the world to come” is to be put under the dominion of the Son of man, and believers will be associated with their Lord in His earthly rule, it is quite possible that angels may be under the direction of the saints in that day. Or, as has been said, “when Christ shall judge the world and pronounce the doom of the [fallen] angels, the church will be associated with Him and take part in His judgment, for she has His Spirit and His mind.” The fact that we are to judge angels was mentioned to shame the Corinthian believers, who were going to law before the unjust.

But we have agreed that the twenty-four elders, the Old Testament saints and the church, being altogether in the heavenly scene of chapters 4 and 5 are worshipping the Lord Jesus on the throne. It seems to me that the Old Testament saints are mentioned indirectly in chapter 19 at the marriage supper of the Lamb as the guests at the marriage supper, as the friends of the Bridegroom, but nothing more is said in the Scriptures strictly speaking as to any place of the Old Testament saints in relation to the heavenly Jerusalem in chapters 21 and 22. There are definitely those who will be resurrected as the fourth, last stage of the first resurrection after the judgment of the world and before the introduction of the millennium kingdom of Christ, those will be with Christ judging the world, but to my knowledge they are not associated with the church as such. In 1 Corinthians 6 it is we who judge the angels and judge the world as the assembly linked with Christ, "the Judge of all the earth" (Gen.18:25).

But we have agreed that the twenty-four elders, the Old Testament saints and the church, being altogether in the heavenly scene of chapters 4 and 5 are worshipping the Lord Jesus on the throne. It seems to me that the Old Testament saints are mentioned indirectly in chapter 19 at the marriage supper of the Lamb as the guests at the marriage supper, as the friends of the Bridegroom, but nothing more is said in the Scriptures strictly speaking as to any place of the Old Testament saints in relation to the heavenly Jerusalem in chapters 21 and 22. There are definitely those who will be resurrected as the fourth, last stage of the first resurrection after the judgment of the world and before the introduction of the millennium kingdom of Christ, those will be with Christ judging the world, but to my knowledge they are not associated with the church as such. In 1 Corinthians 6 it is we who judge the angels and judge the world as the assembly linked with Christ, "the Judge of all the earth" (Gen.18:25).

With κρ. therefore ἐν is quite distinct from ἔμπροσθεν or ἐνώπιον and beyond controversy confirms instead of enfeebling what had just been laid down as an axiom of common christian knowledge, that the saints are to judge the world and even angels, not merely to be present when their judgment proceeds before the Lord. So Raphelius and Kypke, the last explaining the idiomatic use of ἐν from a company of judges in the midst of whom the case is disposed of. But the truth is that the preposition branches out from a mere local or material idea of inclusion into various applications characterizing what is spoken of, and so even meaning "with" or "by," as grammars and lexicons will show. κρίνεσθαι ἐπί is much more to be "judged before," as anyone can see in the preceding verse 1: ἐν ὑμῖν should be distinguished from this, as it unquestionably is the strictly proper phrase for the closer sense of "by you." It is not the final judgment, that of the dead, which is in the hands of the Lord, the Son of man (John 5), but of the quick, judging akin to the sense of reigning. (See Matthew 19:28; Revelation 20:4) Even now angels are ministering spirits sent out for service on account of those who shall inherit salvation: how much more when the saints shall be glorified and reign with Christ!