“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11)
The Basket Case Chronicles #53
“Now therefore there is utterly a fault among you, because ye go to law one with another. Why do ye not rather take wrong? Why do ye not rather suffer yourselves to be defrauded? Nay, ye do wrong, and defraud, and that your brethren” (1 Cor. 6:7-8).
Paul has made it quite clear that brothers are not to haul their grievances into courts controlled by unbelievers. The behavior is appalling on many levels, and in this part of the passage, Paul shows us just how important the principle is. He says that rather than ask unbelievers to sort through the dirty laundry of Christians, the Christians concerned should be willing to suffer loss instead. I should therefore prefer to lose my shirt to a fellow believer than to get that shirt back, courtesy of an unbelieving judge.
Just to be clear, this is not unclear. In addition, the principle doesn’t change as the amounts get larger. One man might be willing to suffer loss if it is ten bucks, but if it a thousand bucks, he would argue his case before unbelievers, and would do so with the veins on his neck sticking out.
But we should be careful. Paul appears to have set a trap for us. In v. 7, he says that we should rather be defrauded financially by a fellow Christian than to have the name of Christ defrauded in our public testimony. But when a believer responds to the apostle by saying “that’s not realistic,” or “surely he doesn’t expect me to just accept this loss,” the apostle anticipates us with his response. No, he says, you do wrong, and you defraud. This means that the person unwilling to be defrauded is the one who is actually guilty, at some level, of fraud. Like Solomon, the apostle Paul offers to cut the baby in two.