1 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 theTanakhsays, “The two will become one flesh”;
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 theRuach HaKodeshwho 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.