1 Corinthians 6:1-7 says the following.
Dare any of you, having a matter against another, go to law before the unrighteous, and not before the saints? Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world will be judged by you, are you unworthy to judge the smallest matters? Do you not know that we shall judge angels? How much more things that pertain to this life?
If then you have judgments concerning things pertaining to this life, do you appoint those who are least esteemed by the church to judge? I say this to your shame. Is it so, that there is not a wise man among you, not even one, who will be able to judge between his brethren? But brother goes to law against brother, and that before unbelievers!
Now therefore, it is already an utter failure for you that you go to law against one another. Why do you not rather accept wrong? Why do you not rather let yourselves be cheated? No, you yourselves do wrong and cheat, and you do these things to your brethren.
The FBFI is no stranger to controversy. Our fellowship was born out of a reaction to the doctrinal compromise of the Northern Baptist Convention during the fundamentalist/modernist conflicts of the early 20th century.
We have also been very vocal over the last 70 years or so regarding the compromise of New Evangelicalism, as well as compromise and errors within broader fundamentalism and evangelicalism.
However, with the advent of the internet, social media, and even this blog site, we have had to seriously consider about how we approach conflicts between Christian brothers and how we approach them. We cannot exempt ourselves from biblically-based ethics even if we would claim to be journalists (we don’t claim that, but even if we did).
A few years ago, there was a dispute rising in our corner of biblical fundamentalism. I published an article on this site identifying the sides in the dispute and talking about it without taking a side. Ashamedly, my approach was more of a Candace Owens style of “just asking questions.”
A brother admonished me privately about what I had written. I was wrong. He approached me in exactly the right way–privately. Since that time, I have been considering the implications of 1 Corinthians 6:1-8 in posting in blogs, on Facebook, or sending out a Tweet.
Consider the following ways in which this applies to posting online.
Taking a brother to court, is about dishonoring the name of Christ before an unbelieving world.
The online world is not the appropriate place to practice church discipline or air disputes between Christians. It is also not the place to air private gossip, and gossip does not have to be inaccurate to be gossip. Our online communications are not private. They are displayed before the entire unbelieving world and even worse than the Corinthian courts, our posts will remain visible and searchable forever.
Suffer loss if necessary to avoid taking our dirty laundry before an unbelieving world.
We are not talking here about identifying false doctrine or publicly declaring a believer is under church discipline. We make those things public only after careful debate and appropriate official decisions. And even then, we are very careful about posting sensitive local church matters online.
When my brother does something wrong, I must resist the urge to jump on X and tell everyone what he did, how he offended me, how he is a hypocrite, or why his confession was insincere. It is so tempting. We just HAVE an urge to talk about things. When flooded with questions, we reason that a public statement is better than repeating many times privately. It is not. And the urge to defend ourselves—especially to correct inaccuracies—–is overwhelming. Controversy and gossip gets views and likes, but that does not justify unbiblical behavior. Stirring controversy “sells” but it does not make for peace among brothers.
There is a place to resolve disputes, and it is within the walls of faith, not before the courts of the world.
One problem with resolving matters within the hall of faith is that sometimes, it won’t be resolved fast enough for my liking. Communication and cooperation take time and effort, and we often want to vent now. Another complication is that problems are not always resolved to my satisfaction. The indication in the 1 Corinthians 6 passage is that whatever matter was going on in the church was not resolved to someone’s satisfaction. So, they took it to a pagan court. Paul says that is not an ethical option for a believer. It is better to suffer the wrong, if you believe you have been wronged.
This does not mean that we should never speak up publicly.
There is an important biblical ministry of warning that we must honor. Jude says we should earnestly contend for the faith.
We are commanded to identify and condemn false doctrine. We should do this without apology. False teachers are condemned in principle by Jesus, Paul, Peter and John (Matthew 7:15, Acts 20:329-30, Galatians 1:6-9, 2 Timothy 4:3-4, 2 Peter 2:1-3, Jude 1:4, 1 John 4:1). Erring teachers are even condemned by name in the Bible–Hymenaeus and Alexander in 1 Timothy 1:19-20, Diotrophes in 3 John 9-10, and Philetus in 2 Timothy 2:17-18. The names of these men are recorded in the sacred text to be seen universally throughout Church History.
Paul even documented a conflict with a true Christian brother. His account of Peter’s compromise in Galatians 2 is not intended to air dirty laundry, but to protect the faith itself. We must be willing to stand up for the faith.
When believers are clearly walking in sin, there is a place to identify it and publicly distance the Church from it. That is what Paul commands the church at Corinth to do in 1 Corinthians 5. However, the church is only commanded to take this step AFTER they all come together and decide together. There is a threefold purpose for such a practice: maintaining the purity of the body, protecting the reputation of Christ and His church, and restoring the sinner to fellowship.
Christian tabloid style journalism does none of these. It is a violation of the ethics of scripture and does not advance the cause of Christ.
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