1Co 6:8 . . . .: “Nay, but you commit wrong and robbery this too ( cf. 6) upon your brothers!” Mr [951] reads this, like the parl [952] clause of 1Co 6:6 , as a further question; it is the answer to the question of 1Co 6:7 the sad fact contrasted with the duty of the Christian. The spiritual kinship which heightens the duty of submission to wrong, aggravates its commission.

[951] Meyer’s Critical and Exegetical Commentary (Eng. Trans.).

[952] parallel.

Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson

Nay = But.

do wrong = act unjustly. Greek. adikeo, as above.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

8.] cannot be, as Meyer, a continuation of the question, on account of the emphatic , which would thus be without meaning. The account of this emphatic is to be found in an ellipsis after to the effect, as our Lord commanded us His disciples, or as it behoves the followers of Christ. Then comes in contrast: YOU on the contrary (, see above 1Co 6:6) do wrong, and defraud, and that (your) brethren.

Fuente: The Greek Testament

1Co 6:8. , ye) Emphatic. The Antithesis is to those, from whom they ought rather to suffer injury.-, ye do injury) by taking away.-, ye defraud) by refusing [to give back a trust] and retaining.-, brethren) This increases the fault.

Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament

1Co 6:8

1Co 6:8

Nay, but ye yourselves do wrong, and defraud, and that your brethren.-Unless there were efforts to wrong and defraud one another there would be but slight cause for differences among brethren. If each would look to his brothers interest instead of his own, the occasions of difference would be greatly lessened. The same sin exists today for the same causes. Men are covetous and selfish. They are anxious for more than belongs to them. They look every man to his own things, not to the things of others. (Php 2:4). This leads them to differ and to appeal to the tribunals of Caesar in order to obtain them. Some think there is less wrong in going to law now than in the apostolic days, because the tribunals are somewhat more liable to do justice than then, and because Christians sometimes take part in political affairs. But the latter is only a step further in the wrong prohibited. If Christians cannot appeal to the tribunals of the State to settle differences that arise between them, much less can they manage, control, and participate in the operation of these tribunals.

Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary

Lev 19:13, Mic 2:2, Mal 3:5, *marg. Mar 10:19, Col 3:25, 1Th 4:6, Jam 5:4

Reciprocal: Exo 2:13 – and he said Lev 19:11 – shall not Lev 25:14 – General Est 1:16 – done wrong Isa 5:7 – he looked Jer 34:9 – serve Eze 45:9 – take away Mat 5:24 – there 2Co 12:20 – debates Col 3:13 – quarrel

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

1Co 6:8. It would be wrong to go to law even when a brother was being defrauded, but it is worse when he takes the case to court in order to despoil another of his rights, as some

of these Corinthians were doing.

Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary

Section 3. (1Co 6:8-20.)

The holiness of those whose bodies are temples of the Spirit.

The apostle proceeds now to speak of the holiness which befits those whose bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit. They were, in fact, acting in utter forgetfulness of this. They were not only not suffering themselves to be defrauded, they were doing wrong and defrauding their own brethren. “Do ye not know,” he asks, “that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God?” and then gives a catalogue of evil works, samples only, after all, of what was in the world at large, and which certainly God would never tolerate in His kingdom. Here it is of no use pleading grace in any wise. Grace is that which breaks the dominion of sin, sets the soul right to go on with God; and if this be not the result of it, grace has not been learned at all, nor can it be pleaded as availing in behalf of those who, whatever they may profess, show themselves uninfluenced by it. This was indeed the character of some of these Corinthian saints, in a city which was proverbial for its immorality. God had brought them out; they were “washed, sanctified, justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the. Spirit of our God.” The order and connection of these things is to be noted. The washing comes first, which is, of course, but the removal of the positive evil with which they were connected. Sanctification carries this on to the full setting apart to God Himself, so that the life shall be His. Justification as it is put here is evidently that which is implied in the Spirit of God taking possession of the believer as His temple. This is indeed the most wondrous justification, and could only be the result of the Lord’s work in their behalf. Thus it is said “in the name of the Lord Jesus,” and this applies to the whole three things. The washing was on the authority of the name of Hui who is our Saviour Lord.

One need hardly say that the reference which some here find to baptism is a mistake as to one essential character of Christianity. No external washing can affect the soul. The “washing of water,” as the apostle himself has told us, is “by the word.” God never uses things out of the place which He has given them. This is magic, not mystery. It is a perversion of things, it is essentially evil and of Satan. The parent it has surely been of a multitude of evils. The washing of baptism is at the hands of disciples, and no disciples hands can cleanse the soul; but this is an error which has gone far and wide in Christendom.

Sanctification is here both positional and practical, as “in the name of the Lord Jesus” it implies, first of all, the power of His blood to set apart to God; but it is also by the Spirit, therefore practical and internal, the making good in inward reality what the blood has made positionally ours.

As to justification in the sense in which we have it here, we find it once again in the first epistle to Timothy, where it is said of Christ that He was justified in the Spirit, the Spirit of God as coming upon Him being the witness to His absolute perfection. His was an anointing without blood; ours, on the contrary, is because of the value of that precious blood with God. Thus, then, the soul is brought into freedom. The law has not accomplished this, and therefore he speaks for a moment here of the entire liberty from law which thus results. “All things are lawful to me” does not, of course, for a moment change eternal moral conditions, but has reference to restrictions which were ceremonial merely. “Meats for the belly,” as he says, and “the belly for meats.” As to these things, there was the fullest and most absolute freedom; and yet even here there might be things inexpedient, and the apostle refuses to be brought under the power of things that are lawful. This is an important matter for our own guidance, for it may well be that that in which we loosely allow ourselves within the range of things entirely lawful may nevertheless have a sorrowful effect upon us. We have to use everything with the wisdom of God, and in our conduct with regard to others in an especial way are not to maintain our own rights, but to seek to minister to the needs of others. These were all things, as he shows us, of a merely temporary nature. Food was necessary in the meanwhile for the life that is, but it will come to an end and that which sustains it. On the other hand, there were things, -and the Corinthians needed the warning, -things which for the heathen in his darkness had little of real evil, but which, brought once into the light of Christianity, were seen in their true character; yet, after all, the power of bad habits might revive, even in the Christian. and thus he has to warn them that the body is simply for the Lord and the Lord for the body. God has already raised up the Lord, and we are to be raised up. In the meanwhile the body will betray us, if we do not take care to govern its appetites. But how wonderful that it is in the body of the believer that the Spirit of God has His abode! “Your bodies,” says the apostle, “are members of Christ.” This is a different mode of speech from that which we find elsewhere. It is not that believers simply are members of Christ, members of His body, but that our bodies are His members. They belong to Him and are to be used for Him. The body is in the world, that by which we maintain our connection with external things, and in which, therefore, the mind of the human spirit is manifested. Now it is the Spirit of God that has control; the body, as we have been taught in Romans, being simply to be offered up to God as “a living sacrifice, acceptable to Him through Jesus Christ.” Our members are to be His members, expressing His mind in lives devoted to Him. “Shall I then,” he says, “take away,” as the word is, “the members of Christ, and make them the members of a harlot? Far be the thought!” He refers to the Lord’s words in Genesis to show how really this would be taking away the body from the Lord. Every other sin, he says, that a man may practise is without the body, does not compromise it in the same way. Gluttony, for instance, or any kindred thing, evil as it is of course, yet after all does not take the body away from Him, and put it in the hands of that which is contrary to Him. With the sin in question, this was in fact what was done. The man sinned, therefore, against his own body. “Know ye not,” he says, “that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you, which ye have of God, and,” as the result of it, “ye are not your own, for ye were bought with a price? Glorify God, therefore, in your body.” There are readings here which evidently have come from the thought that this was, after all, altogether too meagre a statement; but if the body be indeed kept in this way for God, if He be glorified in it, if this be really carried out, the whole life must of necessity be His. Our life is in the body; and to have control of the body is to have the life governed for Him. Thus it may be that the body is spoken of as the temple of the Holy Spirit, and not the spirit as His temple, which one would rather expect. It is a triumph of divine grace indeed that here where even as yet the power of redemption is not known, for “we wait for the adoption, that is, the redemption of the body,” yet, through the work of Christ, the Spirit of God can dwell in us. How thoroughly that shows He is the witness to Christ’s perfection, to the perfection of His blessed work, and not to any perfection of our own; and here, where the contact with the world is seen in the fullest way, the Spirit of God is found to deliver us from the evil influences of that contact. The anointing oil, as we may say, flows from the head down to the hem of the garment. In the Lord Himself we remember; also, that it was His body of which He expressly spake as the temple which, if men destroyed, would be raised up; and it is the Church as the body of Christ in which, therefore, the Spirit dwells. Here the same thoughts are found connected, in whatever different spheres. The Church is that which is to express the mind of Christ as here in the world, the Spirit of God ruling for Him, and the absent Christ thus being, as it were, manifested before the eyes of men; as the apostle says in another place, we are “the epistle of Christ, read and known of all men.” Thus we can understand, also, why it is that the Church is not looked at as people so commonly look at it, as partly now in heaven (in those who are its members there) and partly upon earth. The Spirit is in the Body and the Body is upon earth, -in our bodies, and that makes it decisive that death must of necessity for the time interfere with this. He that is joined to the Lord is indeed one Spirit. Through the body is the present expression of this in the world.

Fuente: Grant’s Numerical Bible Notes and Commentary

Vv. 8. But there is more: to account for a lawsuit, there is needed something else than the lack of charity on the one hand; there must be a graver want still on the other, the want of justice. To speak of maltreated, robbed, is to speak of maltreating, robbing. Hence the gradation expressed by : But much more! The , ye, coming first, expresses indignation: It is ye, Christians, who…! The, and that, indicates a new gradation: the want of justice betrays a more odious character when it assails one nearer our heart, a brother!

It is easy to see why certain copyists have substituted (the two acts mentioned) for .

It really seemed that the Corinthians, since they had received grace, thought themselves freed from all moral responsibility; it is this dangerous security which the apostle attacks in what follows.

Fuente: Godet Commentary (Luke, John, Romans and 1 Corinthians)

Nay, but ye yourselves do wrong, and defraud, and that your brethren. [Far from enduring wrong and obeying Christ (Mat 5:40; 1Pe 2:22; comp. Pro 20:22), they were actually perpetrating wrong upon their brethren. In view of this flagrant wickedness Paul proceeds to warn them of the results of wickedness, and of their professed repentance as to it.]

Fuente: McGarvey and Pendleton Commentaries (New Testament)

8. But you do wrong and defraud, and that your brethren. Primary truth lies at the bottom of this castigatory decision of Paul, i. e., that lawsuits are not even a financial success. They are like Aesops fable of the two cats finding a cheese, jumping into a fight and making the fur fly terrifically, till the monkey comes in, and pleading with them to desist from their mutual cruelty, proposes to make an equitable division of the cheese equally between them. To this they give their mutual consent. Sitting down and watching the proposed settlement of all difficulties by their neighbor monkey, who, taking a knife and cutting the cheese in two in the middle, putting one-half in either end of the scale, and observing that one piece is too heavy, pulling up the other, goes to it, eating off the excess till it tilts up. Then he goes to the other end, and with his sharp teeth gratifies his appreciative appetite till that piece flies up and the other comes down. So he proceeds with his contract to effect an equal division, constantly eating the heavier piece, till the cats see he is going to eat it all, and interpose, begging him to desist, and proposing to settle the matter themselves. The monkey now gravely observes, But the balance is due me for my service.

Fuente: William Godbey’s Commentary on the New Testament

An even more shocking condition was that some of the Christians in Corinth were more than the victims of wrong and fraud. They were the perpetrators of these things (cf. Mat 5:39-41).

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)