In fact, then, it is already a total defeat on your part that you have lawsuits with one another. Why not instead suffer injustice? Why not instead be deprived? (David Bentley Hart's translation)This is a heavy verse, and it cuts against the grain of so much in our society today. Indeed, I needed to chew on this one a while, and I'm sure I'll still be worrying at it when the sun goes down tonight.
At first, I discovered my mind almost rebelling at this thought - why not suffer injustice? And the idea that to do otherwise is somehow a defeat, even a total defeat, did not make sense to me. But then I started thinking more about the total defeat. Why is bringing a lawsuit against a brother or sister in Christ a total defeat? Of course it wasn't just the fact of the lawsuit that made this a defeat for the Christian community, was it? It was that a lawsuit was pursued in a Roman law court. The issue here is that a fellow Christ-follower would pursue justice from a pagan legal system rather than from within the Christian community. This is the defeat for the community of Christ - that they would prefer the judgment of pagans to the judgment of fellow Christians. If a situation comes to such an outcome, then the community of faith is hardly living up to its founding principles.This is a profound insight into Paul's vision of the church. For him, the Christian community was not just a once-a-week, socio-religious gathering. On the contrary, the church was full-blown, alternate community. It was a different kingdom operating within a worldly empire. It was a community that recognized a different authority (Jesus rather than Caesar). It was a community that sought to live out different ideals (love rather than self-interest). It was a community that understood itself to be the living embodiment of the ideals of God. In the collection of believers at Corinth, the Kingdom of God was at hand - it was being realized on earth as it was in heaven. For them to then appeal to an authority other than a Christ-following authority was to tear this alternate community apart. Why exist at all if people's ultimate loyalties lay with Rome and with themselves? Better to suffer injustice, practice forgiveness, and preserve the Christ-community than to destroy the community by forsaking the loyalties that hold it together. Better to be deprived, forgive, and preserve the bond of love in Jesus than to break that bond for self-interest. Is this not the model of God's love revealed in Jesus?
We must be careful in drawing our present-day applications here or we may unintentionally sanction some horrible things. The lawsuits mentioned in the passage seem to be of the civil kind (legally speaking) - disputes involving money and property. These were not wrongs like murder or sexual abuse. Elsewhere (Romans) Paul speaks of the power of the (pagan) government to punish wrongdoers. This is a proper function for government - and a proper expectation from the community of faith. There was a place for the church to "hand over" wrongdoers to the adversary (Satan), but not every wrong committed required such breaking of fellowship. When it comes to matters of property and "civil" disagreements, Paul urges Christians to appeal to the authority of Christ and to the wisdom of Christ present in the Christian community. This will preserve and strengthen their bond of unity in the Lord.
In America, we are blessed with a rule of law that has been drawn (largely) from Christian principles and ideals. As such, we as the American church have been tempted to trust more in our national government than in our church communities. But we must remember that whatever its roots, the United States of America is not the Kingdom of God. As Christians, we are still citizens of an alternate kingdom. To confuse our loyalties and to give to a temporal government the love and devotion that belongs to Christ is to suffer a "total defeat."
What would Paul say of our Christian communities today?
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