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10 with fornicators-not that I meant you absolutely to shun the fornicators of this world, or the covetous and extortionate, or idolaters, since in that 11 case you would be obliged to withdraw from the world. What I did write to you was this: if anyone who bears the name of "brother" be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or extortionate, keep no company with him, with such a man do not even 12 eat. As for those outside, what have I to do with judging them? Is it 13 not those inside that you judge? Those outside are judged by God. Banish the wicked one from your midst.

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Dare any of you, with some dispute against another, go to law before the unjust instead of before the saints?

What do you not know the saints shall rule the world?

And if the world is to be ruled by you, are you unfit to adjudicate upon mere trifles?

Do you not know we shall rule angels, let alone secular affairs?

So then, if you have to adjudicate on secular affairs, do you set up as judges people who in the Community are of no account whatever? 5 I say this to rouse your shame. Has it come to this, that there is not a single wise man forthcoming among you, who can decide a dispute 6 between his brothers? Must brother go to law with brother, and that 7 before unbelievers? Nay, so far as that goes, it is altogether a defect in you that you have law-suits with one another. Why not rather be 8 wronged? Why not rather be defrauded? Instead of which you yourselves inflict wrong and practice fraud, and that upon your brothers. 9 What! do you not know that unjust men shall not inherit the reign of God? Be not misled: neither fornicators nor idolaters nor adulterers 10 nor voluptuaries nor sodomites nor thieves nor covetous people nor drunkards nor revilers nor extortioners shall inherit the reign of God. 11 And such creatures some of you were; but you washed yourselves, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.

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"All things are lawful for me"?

Yes, but not all things are profitable.

All things are lawful for me:

Yes, but I will not be brought under the power of anything. "Foods for the belly, and the belly for foods":

Yet God shall do away with it and them alike.

But the body is not for fornication, it is for the Lord and the Lord for

the body:

God raised up the Lord, and by his power he will also raise up us.

15 Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?

Am I to take Christ's members then, and make them members of a harlot? God forbid !

16 What do you not know that he who joins himself to a harlot

Is one body with her

(For the two, it is said, shall become one flesh)?

17 But he who joins himself to the Lord

Is one spirit with him.

18 Flee from fornication:

Every sin a man does is outside the body,

But the fornicator sins against his own body.

19 What! do you not know that your body is a sanctuary of the holy Spirit

which is in you,

Which you have from God?

20 And you are not your own, you were bought with a price;
Then honour God in your body.

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Now in regard to the matters of which you wrote to me.

It is an excellent thing for a man not to touch a woman. Still, on account of fornications, let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband.

Let the husband render to the wife her due,

And likewise the wife to the husband.

The wife has not authority over her own body, but the husband: And likewise the husband also has not authority over his own body, but the wife.

5 Defraud not one another, unless for a time perhaps by agreement, that you may have leisure for prayer, and then come together again-so 6 that Satan tempt you not on account of your incontinence. But I say 7 this by way of permission, not by way of command. On the contrary, I would that all men were what I am. Yet each is endowed by God in his own way, one for this and another for that.

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To unmarried men and to widows I say: it is an excellent thing for 9 them if they remain as I am. Still, if they have no self-control, let 10 them marry. Better marry than be afire with lust! Married

people I charge (not I, but the Lord) that the wife should not be 11 separated from her husband-should anyone have actually separated, let her remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband also, that 12 the husband should not dismiss his wife. To the rest I say

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(I, not the Lord) :-

If any brother has an unbelieving wife, and she consents to dwell with him,

Let him not dismiss her.

And if a woman has an unbelieving husband, and he consents to dwell with her,

Let her not dismiss her husband.

For the unbelieving husband is sanctified in the wife,

And the unbelieving wife in the brother.

Else, of course, your children are unclean;

While as it is they are holy.

:

15 (However, if the unbeliever is bent on separating, separation let it be in such cases the brother or the sister is under no constraint.)

It is for a life of peace that God has called us.1

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Why, how dost thou know, O wife, whether thou shalt not save thy husband?

Or how dost thou know, O husband, whether thou shalt not save
thy wife?

Only, let each walk as the Lord has assigned him his lot,
As God has called him.

(And such are my instructions in all the Communities.)
Was any man called after being circumcised?

Let him not become uncircumcised.

Has any man been called in uncircumcision?
Let him not be circumcised.

Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing,
But to keep the commandments of God is everything.
Every man in the condition in which he was called,
There let him remain.

1 Reading ἡμᾶς.

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Thou wast called a slave? Never mind. (At the same time, if thou art able to get free, avail thyself of it rather than not.)

For the slave called in the Lord is a freedman of the Lord;
Likewise the free man who was called is a slave of Christ.
(You were bought with a price, do not turn slaves of men.)
Brothers, wherein every man was called,

Therein let him remain with God.

In regard to maidens I have no command of the Lord, but I give my opinion as one who is trustworthy owing to the mercy he has obtained 26 from the Lord. I think then that, considering the present trouble, this is an excellent plan: namely, for a man to be just as he is.

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Art thou bound to a wife? Seek not release.
Art thou loosed from a wife? Seek not a wife.
Still, even if thou shalt marry, there is no sin in that;
And if a maiden marry, there is no sin in that.

(At the same time such persons shall be distressed in the flesh, and I 29 would spare you that.) What I mean is this, brothers :

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The time is shortened.

Let those then who have wives be as though they had none,
The weeping as though they wept not,

The joyful as though they rejoiced not,

The buyers as though they grasped not their possessions,
Those who use this world as not using it to the full,

for the fashion of this world is passing.

32 I would have you free from anxiety.

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The unmarried man is anxious about the affairs of the Lord,
how he may please the Lord :

The married man is anxious about the affairs of the world,
how he may please his wife-and his attention is divided.
So also with the wife and the maiden.

The unmarried woman is anxious about the affairs of the Lord,
that she may be holy both in body and in spirit:

The married woman is anxious about the affairs of the world,
how she may please her husband.

35 I say this for your own advantage. It is not that I may restrict your liberty, but to promote propriety and undistracted attendance upon the 36 Lord. But if anyone considers that he is not treating his unmarried daughter properly, then, should she be past her bloom and should it require to be thus, let him do what he pleases, there is no sin in it-let her 37 be married. But the man of firm purpose who has made up his mind, who instead of being under any compulsion possesses power to carry out his own wish, and has determined in his own heart to keep his daughter unmarried, he shall do well.

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So then he who gives his unmarried daughter in marriage does well;
He who refuses to give her shall do better.

39 A wife is bound during the lifetime of her husband; but if he be fallen asleep, she is free to be married to anyone whom she pleases40 only, in the Lord. She is happier, however, if she remains as she is; that is my opinion, and I think that I also possess the Spirit of God.

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In regard to food offered to idols, we are aware that "we all have knowledge." Knowledge puffs up, love builds up. Whoever imagines that he knows something,

Does not yet know as he ought to know:

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In regard to eating food offered to idols, then, we are quite aware that "an idol in the world is a mere nothing," and that "there is no God but one." 5 For though there be so-called gods, in heaven or on earth,--as gods there 6 are in plenty and lords in plenty !--yet for us

there is one God, who is the Father

from whom all things exist
(and we exist for him),

and one Lord, Jesus Christ,
through whom all things exist

(and we exist through him).

7 Yet knowledge is not in all men.

Some, hitherto accustomed to an idol, eat the food as food offered to an idol; and as their conscience is 8 weak, it is defiled. Now, food will not present us to God.

If we do not eat, we are not inferior:

And if we do eat, we are not superior.

9 But take care lest haply this right of yours prove a stumbling-block 10 to the weak. For if anyone should see thee, a man with knowledge, reclining at meat in an idol's temple, will not his conscience (as he is a 11 weak man) be emboldened to eat food offered to idols? Then certainly he who is weak perishes through thy knowledge, the brother for whose 12 sake Christ died. In sinning thus against the brothers, and wounding 13 their weak conscience, you sin against Christ. Wherefore, if food be a hindrance to my brother, eat flesh I never will, never!--that I may not be a hindrance to my brother.

91 Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our 2 Lord? Are you not my work in the Lord? If to others I am no apostle, yet to you at least I am, for you are the seal of my apostleship in the 3, 4 Lord. My defence to my inquisitors is this. Have we no right to eat and 5 drink? Have we no right to take about a sister as a wife, like the rest 6 of the apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Kephas? What! Do we alone, I and Barnabas, lack the right to abstain from working at a trade? Who ever serves in war at his own expense?

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Who plants a vineyard without eating of its fruit?

Or who shepherds a flock without drinking of the milk of the flock? 8 Is this to speak from a merely human standpoint? Does not the 9 scripture say the very same? Why, it is written in the law of Moses : Thou shalt not muzzle an ox when he is treading out corn. Is God's concern for the oxen ?

Or does he say it altogether for our cakes?
Assuredly for our sakes it was written.

For the ploughman needs to plough in hope,

And the thresher to thresh in the hope of partaking.

If we sowed you spiritual good,

Is it a great matter if we reap your material good?

12 If others partake in this right over you, why not we still more? But,
you say, we did not avail ourselves of this right. No, we bear anything
so as to avoid putting any obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ.
13 Do you not know

that those who perform sacred rites
get their food from the sacred place,
that those who attend on the altar

have their portion along with the altar?

14 So too the Lord's instructions are

that those who proclaim the gospel

should "live by the gospel."

Woe

15 But I have not availed myself of these provisions at all, nor am I writing thus that it may come to this in my case. 16 than that anyone should render my exultation void? For if I preach Better for me to die the gospel I have nothing to exult about; necessity is laid on me. 17 to me if I preach not the gospel! For if I act thus from my own choice, I have a reward; but if it is not from my choice, then I am intrusted 18 with a stewardship. What then is my reward? This, that in preaching the gospel I make the gospel free of charge, so as not to entirely avail myself of my right in the gospel.

19 Why, free as I was from all, I made myself slave to all,

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To win over the greater number.

To the Jews I made myself like a Jew,

To win over Jews:

To those under the law like one under the law

I who was not under the law myself

To win over those under the law:

To those outside the law like one outside the law

I who was not outside the law to God, but under law to Christ

To win over those outside the law:

To the weak I made myself weak,

To win over the weak.

To all men I have made myself all things,

To save some in any and in every way.

23 I do all for the sake of the gospel,

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That I also may have my share in it.

[Do you not know that while the runners on a race-course all run, only 25 one receives the prize? So run that you may attain it. Every athlete practises complete self-control. They do it, however, to receive a perish26 ing wreath, while we do it for an imperishable. For my part, then, I 27 run with no unsteady aim; I plant no blows upon the air. Nay, I bruise my body and master it, lest haply after having preached to others I should myself become a reprobate.]

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For I would not have you ignorant, brothers, that

Our fathers all lived under the cloud and all passed through

the sea,

and all got baptised into Moses in the cloud and in the sea,

and all ate the same spiritual food,

and all drank the same spiritual drink

(For they drank of a spiritual Rock which followed them---
and the Rock was the Christ);

But in most of them God took no delight,

for they were laid low in the wilderness.

Now these things took place as warnings for us,

That we should not lust after evil, even as they lusted.

Nor be idolaters like some of them;

As it is written, The people sat down to eat and drink,

and they rose up to sport.

Nor let us commit fornication even as some of them did,
And in a single day three and twenty thousand fell.
Nor let us make trial of the Lord as some of them did,
And perished by the serpents.

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