http://feeds.thecripplegate.com/~r/TheCripplegate/~3/gUMyCQrbv7g/

I once received a phone call from another elder from a church not far from the one I was serving at. He told me that a member of his congregation owned a business, and a member of my congregation had been injured at work. There were no denials about what happened, nor was there any dispute about the blame. There was, however, a catch.

The business had workman’s comp insurance, but the insurance company was requiring that the injured worker’s personal insurance company file a claim in court in order to compel payment. The bottom line: in order to get covered, a believer (or his insurance company) would have to sue another believer (or his insurance company).

The elders at the other church reached out to the elders at my church (at the time I was at Grace Community Church in Los Angeles). We all wanted to apply 1 Corinthians 6, but we also all wanted to make sure the injured worker was covered. In other words, nobody was trying weasel out of anything, and we were trying to apply the scriptural principle that two believer’s shouldn’t sue each other. Here is the relevant passage:

1 When one of you has a grievance against another, does he dare go to law before the unrighteous instead of the saints? 2 Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases? 3 Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more, then, matters pertaining to this life! 4 So if you have such cases, why do you lay them before those who have no standing in the church? 5 I say this to your shame. Can it be that there is no one among you wise enough to settle a dispute between the brothers, 6 but brother goes to law against brother, and that before unbelievers? 7 To have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you. Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded? 8 But you yourselves wrong and defraud—even your own brothers!1 Corinthians 6:1-8

So, what is an injured worker at a company owned by a Christian supposed to do? Is he out of luck?

Well, a careful study of this passage reveals that Paul was not giving a blanket prohibition on Christians using the court system, but instead was laying out a much more profound principle: it is better for Christians to count themselves as wronged than it is to be right in a way that brings shame to the church.

First, verse 1 rebukes those who go to court over a “grievance” against another believer. In fact, the word “grievance” is intentionally broad. Paul is not covering a limited kind of Greco-Roman law. Rather he uses a word that includes any kind of division or issue with another believer. In Luke 1, this word is used to cover all the “matters” or “events” of Jesus’ life (Luke 1:1). In Hebrews 6:18 it is just translated “things.” In 1 Corinthians 6:1, Paul is saying “if you have anything” dividing you, then apply the rest of this passage.

Then in verse 2, Paul calls any kind of division between brothers a “trivial matter.” This too is a fascinating word. It is used for the “smallest” of a ship’s rudders (James 3:4), or for Paul himself, as in “I am the least of all the saints” (Ephesians 3:1). Paul is saying that compared to the surpassing weight of glory, any division with another believer is certainly trivial.

Then verses 3-6 get to the problem. Going to court reveals that there are not elders competent enough to mediate a dispute. There could be lots of reasons for that. The elders might not be impartial, the congregants may not trust the elders, or the elders may not be sufficiently versed in biblical wisdom to navigate a complex issue. But behind all of those reasons is the reality that the elders in the church are not properly functioning.

So if you are confronted with a “trivial” matter (and remember, trivial in comparison to the glories of salvation), and it involves division with another believer, and your elders cannot handle a trivial matter, the temptation would be to go to court. Yet, Paul’s point in verse 7 is that by going to court a Christian is exposing the church’s dysfunction for the world to see.  The angels see it (vs. 3), the world sees it (vss. 4, 6), and believers ought to be embarrassed by that. When believers sue other believers, it is like Ham exposing his father’s nakedness. Instead, believers should count themselves as wronged, pretend they’d lose in court, and call it a day (vs. 7). They should be like Shem, and instead of exposing their elders for the world to see, they should cover them by not drawing attention to their dysfunction.

Now, this does not mean that believers should never use the court system. In Acts 25:11, Paul appealed to Caesar, which was his right as a Roman. In so doing, he exposed the truth that Festus could not protect an innocent person in Israel. That was Paul’s right as a citizen. But it did not bring shame on the church because it did not involve division with another Christian.

So what about in the worker’s comp issue above? A few elders from each church got together and talked. We decided that the insurance company’s insistence on a lawsuit was simply part of living in this world, and that nobody who heard about it would think “those elders don’t know what is going on.” Instead, both sets of elders agreed that allowing the lawsuit to go forward was the best way to get the medical expenses covered, and that it would not bring shame on the church. Key for us was realizing that even though this would result in a lawsuit, the lawsuit was not connected to division between believers. The elders, worker, and owner all left the meeting rejoicing in our common faith.  

That relationship between the two churches was important, because years later a person in one church was scamming somebody from the other church, and swindling them out of thousands of dollars. Now, this is a case where the elders should be involved! So the person doing the swindling was confronted, she refused to repent, and so she was disciplined out of the church. Then, of course, the victim could sue to get her money back, as she was no longer suing someone in the church, but rather someone who had been put out of the church for exactly what she was being sued for.

I share those examples because they both show the nature of applying biblical principles to life. The principle is taught in 1 Corinthians 6—it is better to count yourself as cheated than it is to sue another believer—and it encourages elders to be involved in using wisdom to apply that principle (vs. 5). When the principle is rightly applied, the church is protected, people are confronted, and God is glorified.

But if elders run from their duty to mediate, if they lack wisdom, if they turn away from conflict resolution, or if they simply don’t care about biblical church membership and discipline, then they are exposed as being unqualified. When that happens, immature believers (like the Corinthians were) will be tempted to run to court. First Corinthians 6 is an appeal to those believers to grow up, and count yourself cheated for the greater good of glorifying God.

So, should believers sue each other over a “trivial” matter? No. It is better to be wronged than it is to disregard the Bible’s teaching, and in a quest to be right, end up wronging the church.

When a healthy 70-year-old man is bedridden for ten days, he can lose up to 10% of lean muscle mass in his legs, according to Dr D. P. Jones of the University of Texas. Likewise, if you don’t use a learned language at all, or if you rely too heavily on tools like software, your fluency will atrophy like unused muscle. That is what we looked into last week. Next week I will supply some strategies for regaining reading fluency of Greek.

Today I want to clarify what we are trying to do. We need to understand the difference between reading Greek, and translating Greek.

These are two distinct skills, and each has its place. You will need to adjust your approach at retention, based on which of these skills you are aiming to improve.

Translating Greek refers to the ability to render a Greek word, phrase, or sentence into a suitable English equivalent. Now, of course, you can just skip this step by reading your English Bible, which people a lot better at translation than you will ever be, already did.

But for preachers digging for exegetical insights or nuances in the Greek, translating the passage yourself is the way to go. Or at the very least looking at the Greek words one at a time with your helps, to get a feel for what is lying beneath the veil of translation.

Greek words are made of parts, for example, the lexical stem (which is the definition of the word given in a lexicon), the augment (an added vowel on/near the front of some verb forms that indicates something about which English tense to use in the rendering), and the ending, which are letters on the end of the stem that signal the case (nominative/accusative, etc.) gender (masculine/feminine/neuter), the number (singular/plural), etc.

So, to translate a sentence from Greek to English you need to be able to figure out (“parse”) what’s going on in the words, OR… you can consult a tool to parse it for you. The most helpful “helps” are interlinear Bibles (that put an English gloss above the Greek word), analytical Greek texts (that list the parsing), and Bible software, like Logos, BibleWorks, or Accordance, which allow the user to float a mouse pointer over the Greek word and have the parts and gloss supplied.

I put “helps” in quotes because they certainly do “help” with translation… but they do not help you to improve your reading skills. That is why you need to know the difference between translating and reading—so you know which skill you want to improve.

Reading is the ability to look at the letters, words, phrases, and sentences of the New Testament, and recognize enough of what is going on with the forms so that you know what is being communicated without help. Reading is not analyzing, it is grasping the sense of the letter, the story, the poem, or prophecy without the help of English. A good reader of Greek is literally thinking in Greek as they read, even if they don’t know every word’s meaning or its exact form.

Think of it this way. If you know no Afrikaans (a dialect of Dutch spoken only in South Africa), and I type a paragraph of this blog post in Afrikaans, and you wanted to know what it said, you could use Google translate to tell you, and you would have a pretty good idea of what I said. You would be trusting entirely on the software. Or you could look up every word, one at a time, in an Afrikaans-English dictionary. And yes, you could figure out what I was saying, especially if you had had a semester or two of Afrikaans studies, so you would understand the changes you see that are different from the dictionary entry.

But that’s not reading Afrikaans. That’s translating.

If you want to try that, here is a sample:

Want so lief het God die wêreld gehad, dat Hy sy eniggebore Seun gegee het, sodat elkeen wat in Hom glo, nie verlore mag gaan nie, maar die ewige lewe kan hê.

Translating would feel like this…

Want (Because) so (thus) lief (love) het (have) God (God) die (the) wêreld (world) gehad (had), dat (that) Hy (He) sy (his) eniggebore (only-born) Seun (Son) gegee (gave) het (did), sodat (so that) elkeen (each one) wat (that) in (in) Hom (Him) glo (believe), nie (not) verlore (lost) mag (may) gaan (go) nie (not), maar (but) die (the) ewige (eternal) lewe (life) kan (can) hê (have).

Pretty cool, huh?

You can understand that a word at a time. But a fluent reader of Afrikaans would have a different experience taking it all in as it flows into their understanding, and they would have a different appreciation for how powerfully and beautifully it is being said.

Translating is not immoral.

If you took Greek in seminary, and then, after five years of using software and an interlinear, you can translate the passage you are preaching on into English a word at a time (or just compare it carefully to the ESV, NASB, LSB or another more literal translation), then that’s great—if that’s your goal.

However, if your goal is to read Greek, to think in Greek as it streams into your consciousness, then you will need some strategies to help you acquire that reading fluency.

And for some suggested strategies, sien julle hier weer volgende week! (see y’all back here next week!)