“If any of you has a dispute with another, do you dare to take it before the ungodly for judgment instead of before the Lord’s people? Or do you not know that the Lord’s people will judge the world? And if you are to judge the world, are you not competent to judge trivial cases? Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more the things of this life! Therefore, if you have disputes about such matters, do you ask for a ruling from those whose way of life is scorned in the church? I say this to shame you. Is it possible that there is nobody among you wise enough to judge a dispute between believers? But instead, one brother takes another to court—and this in front of unbelievers! The very fact that you have lawsuits among you means you have been completely defeated already. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated Instead, you yourselves cheat and do wrong, and you do this to your brothers and sisters.”
1Corinthians 6:1-8

Frankly, this is a difficult passage to apply because it seems so unrealistic. I love how NT Wright handles this passage. And because he’s an incredible Bible scholar, I’m going to borrow and quote heavily from his commentary, Paul for Everyone: 1 Corinthians, to highlight some important ideas.

First, Paul truly believes that the small Corinthian community of Jesus-apprentices will have a future role to judge angels.

Write states, “Paul really does regard the Christian community – even the small and muddled community in Corinth – as the community of God’s people, to whom God will one day entrust the task of judging the world, including the angels.”

Daniel 7 states that “the holy ones of the most high” are set in authority over the world. All who belong to Jesus are truly God’s “holy ones” and will therefore judge the world.

Second, being “in the Messiah” or apprentices to Jesus, means we are becoming a new kind of human being, particularly one who embodies God’s justice. We are becoming like Jesus, God’s New Creation in human form who can embody the resurrection life of the age to come in our present world. Again, here’s Wright:

“If God’s true people at the moment look a very unlikely crew to be judging anyone or anything, well then, they must shape up and come into line. They must become, through moral reflection and discipline in the present time, the people they actually are ‘in the Messiah’ and in the purposes of God.”

Wright once again:

“The Christian community in any given place is called to be modelling genuine human existence; if it isn’t doing that, what’s it there for? What is it? And part of that genuine human existence is justice – God’s justice, the true justice by which the world will one day finally be put to rights.”

Third, Paul’s practical application in regard to justice is twofold. Wright states:

“[Paul] thus issues a double challenge. First, if you must go to law against another Christian, allow the company of Christian believers, the little church itself, to choose people who are competent to try cases. Since all of you are destined to be judges of the world, however unlikely that seems, you should surely be able to find someone who can do the equivalent here and now!”

“Second, though, and still more challenging for us, it would be better that Christians didn’t go to law against one another at all.”

Wright summarizes the daunting second challenge by stating:

“Paul’s challenge to the church might almost have come from Jesus himself. He, after all, told the rich young ruler to give up all his property and follow him (Mark 10.21). Paul declares that it’s better to put up with being defrauded in order to follow the Messiah, in order to show the world that there’s a different way to be human.”

Finally, Wright concludes his examination of this passage by stating:

“Those who name the name of Jesus and claim to follow him have an astonishing destiny in the future, which results in an astonishing responsibility in the present. Our life as a community, as Paul says in Philippians 2.14–16, should be like a light shining into a dark world.”

I think many Jesus-apprentices don’t spend enough time thinking about eternity. As Dallas Willard frequently said, “You are a never-ceasing spiritual being with an eternal destiny in God’s great universe.” If we do think about our “eternal destiny in God’s great universe,” it’s generally about how the pain, suffering, and sin of this world will be gone. As boundlessly wonderful as that reality is, I think we also need to spend time imagining what daily life in the age to come will be like.

Passages like 1Corinthians 6:1-8 both rattle and inspire me. Paul seems to casually throw out an amazing idea. “Do you not know that we will judge angels?” Actually, no I didn’t, Paul! What do you mean? What will that be like? How will I do that?

But Paul assumes that our apprenticeship with Jesus is transforming us into people who will embody the wisdom, character, and skill to perform such an amazing task.

This makes me wonder what other roles and projects will be part of my “eternal destiny in God’s great universe”?

In Revelation 22:2, after the fulfillment of God’s age-old plan to restore his creation, it says, “On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.”

Like Paul’s statement about judging angels, this verse rattles and inspires me. In the New Creation, why do the nations still need healing? Will God’s people be distributors of this healing? Is so, what does that look like and how do we do it?

NT Wright’s conclusion that I shared above contains some profound wisdom:

“Those who name the name of Jesus and claim to follow him have an astonishing destiny in the future, which results in an astonishing responsibility in the present.”

Now let me add a lengthy quote from Dallas Willard that I’ve been thinking about recently and dovetails nicely into this discussion:

“Those who remain undiscipled in this age will not be developed as they should be for their responsibilities in the next age. I don’t think, for example, that a person who steps into the next world as a child of God is going to have problems with rebellion against God, doing what they know to be wrong. But there is much more to our personality than that, because life is not just a matter of “not sinning.” When people have lived a life of sin, that affects everything about them—their capacity to live in a social context, or their ability to handle jobs and carry out projects—which I believe is what we will be doing in the age to come. I do think Scripture teaches personal, though not moral, development in the life to come. I think the image of God in man is creative goodness, and that we are enlisted into God’s cause. The clear teaching of Scripture is that we will reign with him forever and ever. We will serve him forever. So we need to understand that that is the capacity in which we will continue to grow. And we will never cease growing in that regard. So, suppose you have the responsibility of running a solar system? That’s going to be a demand on you, even though you’re going to be running it with God! So the rule is, if you were faithful over two cities, take five. People who have matured in their relationship with God are going to have a much better idea of how to run cities with God. Those who have not will have a lot of learning to do. So I think our preparation now makes a lot of difference. Once you get over the idea that you are going to be warehoused for all eternity when you die, lying about on shelves, listening to harp playing on Muzak, you can see how it makes a real difference.”

I don’t know what the age to come will look like. I do believe it’s the renewal of our current space/time/matter universe. But I don’t know what business, technology, medicine, politics, science, education, entertainment, law or any other aspects of human society will look like, especially when sin, selfishness, and self-autonomy, along with all of the pain, injustice and suffering they cause, are completely removed from the equation.

One thing I do know is New Creation will be filled with astounding potential to serve and reign with God in this vast and wondrous universe.

In that light, our astonishing destiny in the future shapes our astonishing responsibility in the present. Whether it’s the wisdom and skill to judge angels or the character and faith to potentially lose everything at the hands of another person, it’s clear that our apprenticeship to Jesus should be forming us into genuinely new kind of human beings — those who shine like stars in the present and are being equipped to reign with God among the stars in the future.