First Epistle to the Corinthians - The New Testament

¹ Is one of you with a complaint against another so brazen as to seek judgement from sinners and not from God's holy people?

² Do you not realise that the holy people of God are to be the judges of the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you not competent for petty cases?

³ Do you not realise that we shall be the judges of angels? - then quite certainly over matters of this life.

⁴ But when you have matters of this life to be judged, you bring them before those who are of no account in the Church!

⁵ I say this to make you ashamed of yourselves. Can it really be that it is impossible to find in the community one sensible person capable of deciding questions between brothers,

⁶ and that this is why brother goes to law against brother, and that before unbelievers?

⁷ No; it is a fault in you, by itself, that one of you should go to law against another at all: why do you not prefer to suffer injustice, why not prefer to be defrauded?

⁸ And here you are, doing the injustice and the defrauding, and to your own brothers.

⁹ Do you not realise that people who do evil will never inherit the kingdom of God? Make no mistake -- the sexually immoral, idolaters, adulterers, the self-indulgent, sodomites,

¹⁰ thieves, misers, drunkards, slanderers and swindlers, none of these will inherit the kingdom of God.

¹¹ Some of you used to be of that kind: but you have been washed clean, you have been sanctified, and you have been justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and through the Spirit of our God.

¹² 'For me everything is permissible'; maybe, but not everything does good. True, for me everything is permissible, but I am determined not to be dominated by anything.

¹³ Foods are for the stomach, and the stomach is for foods; and God will destroy them both. But the body is not for sexual immorality;

¹⁴ it is for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body. God raised up the Lord and he will raise us up too by his power.

¹⁵ Do you not realise that your bodies are members of Christ's body; do you think one can take parts of Christ's body and join them to the body of a prostitute? Out of the question!

¹⁶ Or do you not realise that anyone who attaches himself to a prostitute is one body with her, since the two, as it is said, become one flesh.

¹⁷ But anyone who attaches himself to the Lord is one spirit with him.

¹⁸ Keep away from sexual immorality. All other sins that people may commit are done outside the body; but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.

¹⁹ Do you not realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you and whom you received from God?

²⁰ You are not your own property, then; you have been bought at a price. So use your body for the glory of God.