1Can it be that, when one of you has a dispute with another, they dare to have their case tried before the heathen, instead of before Christ’s people?
2Don’t you know that Christ’s people will try the world? And if the world is to be tried by you, are you unfit to try the most trivial cases?
3Don’t you know that we are to try angels – to say nothing of the affairs of this life?
4Why, then, if you have cases relating to the affairs of this life, do you set to try them those who carry no weight with the church? To your shame I ask it.
5Can it be that there is not one among you wise enough to decide between two of their fellow followers?
6Must a follower sue a fellow follower? In front of unbelievers?
7To begin with, it is undoubtedly a loss to you to have lawsuits with one another. Why not rather let yourselves be wronged? Why not rather let yourselves be cheated?
8Instead of this, you wrong and cheat others yourselves – yes, even other followers!
9Don’t you know that wrongdoers will have no share in God’s kingdom? Do not be deceived. No one who is immoral, or an idolater, or an adulterer, or licentious, or a sexual pervert,
10or a thief, or covetous, or a drunkard, or abusive, or grasping, will have any share in God’s kingdom.
11Such some of you used to be; but you washed yourselves clean. You became Christ’s people! You were pronounced righteous through the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and through the Spirit of our God!
12Everything is allowable for me! Yes, but everything is not profitable. Everything is allowable for me! Yes, but for my part, I will not let myself be enslaved by anything.
13Food exists for the stomach, and the stomach for food; but God will put an end to both the one and the other. The body, however, exists, not for immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body;
14and, as God has raised the Lord, so he will raise us up also by the exercise of his power.
15Don’t you know that your bodies are Christ’s members? Am I, then, to take the members that belong to the Christ and make them the members of a prostitute? Heaven forbid!
16Or don’t you know that a man who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body (for ‘the two,’ it is said, ‘will become one’);
17while a man who is united with the Lord is one with him in spirit?
18Shun all immorality. Every other sin that people commit is something outside the body; but an immoral person sins against their own body.
19Again, don’t you know that your body is a shrine of the Holy Spirit that is within you – the Spirit which you have from God?
20Moreover, you are not your own masters; you were bought, and the price was paid. Therefore, honor God in your bodies.