In 1 Corinthians 6:1-6, the Apostle Paul writes:

If any of you has a dispute with another, dare he take it before the ungodly for judgment instead of before the saints? Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if you are to judge the world, are you not competent to judge trivial cases? Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more the things of this life! Therefore, if you have disputes about such matters, appoint as judges even men of little account in the church!  I say this to shame you. Is it possible that there is nobody among you wise enough to judge a dispute between believers? But instead, one brother goes to law against another — and this in front of unbelievers!

Paul’s words teach us three important truths.

First, in this life, conflict happens, even among Christians. Paul is a realist about the human condition. He does not teach that Christians will never disagree with one another, or even that such conflicts are inherently sinful. Rather, he assumes that conflicts will happen. What concerns him is not whether they happen but how they are resolved.

Second, Christians should resolve their own conflicts. It seems that at least two Corinthians (and perhaps more) sued one another in secular court. Paul’s rhetorical questions and exasperated exclamations indicate that he strongly disapproved of this practice. Instead, he instructed the conflicted parties to resolve their disputes themselves or in front of a council of fellow believers. Why? It is tempting to suggest that Paul didn’t want the Corinthian Christians to air their dirty laundry in public. We should probably resist the temptation, however. This may have been one of his reasons, but it’s not his stated reason.

Third, Christians are competent judges. This is the reason Paul states for disapproving of Christian lawsuits in secular courts. Paul reasons from the greater to the lesser. If Christians will judge “the world” generally and “angels” specifically, then they are more than capable of judging “trivial cases” and “the things of this life.”

This passage surprises modern believers. For one thing, they tend to associate Christianity with nonjudgmentalism and tolerance. The notion that Christians would act as judges, whether among themselves in this age or over unbelievers in the age to come, rubs against the grain of modern prejudices. But this notion is clearly biblical, which means that modern conceptions are not.

For another thing, modern Christians don’t reason about life from an eschatological point of view, as Paul did. I don’t mean that modern Christians don’t think about the end times. They do. Witness the popularity of the Left Behind books, in which the solution to the world’s problems is escape from it. To reason eschatologically is to envision and embody the reality of God’s kingdom here and now. It is to live in the present as if the future has already begun.

If we will judge angels, surely we can resolve our own conflicts!