Part 5

006:004 If therefore you have things belonging to this life which need to be decided, is it men who are absolutely nothing in the Church-- is it *they* whom you make your judges?

006:005 I say this to put you to shame. Has it come to this, that there does not exist among you a single wise man competent to decide between a man and his brother,

006:006 but brother goes to law with brother, and that before unbelievers?

006:007 To say no more, then, it is altogether a defect in you that you have law-suits with one another. Why not rather endure injustice? Why not rather submit to being defrauded?

006:008 On the contrary you yourselves inflict injustice and fraud, and upon brethren too.

006:009 Do you not know that unrighteous men will not inherit God's Kingdom? Cherish no delusion here. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor any who are guilty of unnatural crime,

006:010 nor theives, nor avaricious people, nor any who are addicted to hard drinking, to abusive language or to greed of gain, will inherit God's Kingdom.

006:011 And all this describes what some of you were. But now you have had every stain washed off: now you have been set apart as holy: now you have been pronounced free from guilt; in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and through the Spirit of our God.

006:012 Everything is allowable to me, but not everything is profitable. Everything is allowable to me, but to nothing will I become a slave.

006:013 Food of all kinds is meant for the stomach, and the stomach is meant for food, and God will cause both of them to perish. Yet the body does not exist for the purpose of fornication, but for the Master's service, and the Master exists for the body;

006:014 and as God by His power raised the Master to life, so He will also raise us up.

006:015 Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take away the members of Christ and make them the members of a prostitute? No, indeed.

006:016 Or do you not know that a man who has to do with a prostitute is one with her in body? For God says, "The two shall become one."

006:017 But he who is in union with the Master is one with Him in spirit.

006:018 Flee from fornication. Any other sin that a human being commits lies outside the body; but he who commits fornication sins against his own body.

006:019 Or do you not know that your bodies are a sanctuary of the Holy Spirit who is within you--the Spirit whom you have from God?

006:020 And you are not your own, for you have been redeemed at infinite cost. Therefore glorify God in your bodies.

007:001 I now deal with the subjects mentioned in your letter. It is well for a man to abstain altogether from marriage.

007:002 But because there is so much fornication every man should have a wife of his own, and every woman should have a husband.

007:003 Let a man pay his wife her due, and let a woman also pay her husband his.

007:004 A married woman is not mistress of her own person: her husband has certain rights. In the same way a married man is not master of his own person: his wife has certain rights.

007:005 Do not refuse one another, unless perhaps it is just for a time and by mutual consent, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer and may then associate again; lest the Adversary begin to tempt you because of your deficiency in self-control.

007:006 Thus much in the way of concession, not of command.

007:007 Yet I would that everybody lived as I do; but each of us has his own special gift from God--one in one direction and one in another.

007:008 But I tell the unmarried, and women who are widows, that it is well for them to remain as I am.

007:009 If, however, they cannot maintain self-control, by all means let them marry; for marriage is better than the fever of passion.

007:010 But to those already married my instructions are--yet not mine, but the Lord's--that a wife is not to leave her husband;

007:011 or if she has already left him, let her either remain as she is or be reconciled to him; and that a husband is not to send away his wife.