What Does 1 Corinthians 6:2 Mean?
Have you not seen that the set-apart ones will judge the world? And if the world is judged by you, are you too light for the smallest courts?
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world? and if the world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters?THE KEY
The “smallest matters” are court cases from the same judgment-root as “judge the world”, one capacity working at two scales.
THE MEANING
The verse places you among the set-apart ones whose discernment reaches the world’s order. It carries that same capacity into the smallest cases, holding world-scale judgment and ordinary disputes within one field.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A matter’s smallness does not make those entrusted with judgment unfit to weigh it.
THE ROOT
κρίνω
krinō
GROWS FROM
κριν-
krin-
To distinguish, decide, or judge.
“courts” in this verse is krinō. The κριν- (krin-, “decide or judge”) stem runs through “judge the world” and “judge the smallest matters.” The verse holds these together as one act of discernment, scaled from the whole world to a small case.
ALSO GROWS
krisis: Judgment or decision.
κρίσις
This names the act or outcome of deciding, keeping judgment connected to the verb used here.
kritēs: A judge, one who decides.
κριτής
This names the person who carries out the same act of judgment.
kritērion: A tribunal or case for judgment.
κριτήριον
This is the Greek word behind “matters” in this verse; it makes clear that even the smallest matters are judicial cases.
κόσμον
kosmon
GROWS FROM
κοσμ-
kosm-
To arrange or set in order; by extension, the ordered world.
κόσμος (kosmos, “world” or “ordered world”) can name more than a collection of individual troubles: it carries the sense of an ordered whole. The verse places judgment of that whole beside judgment of the smallest tribunal.
ALSO GROWS
kosmeō: To arrange, put in order, or adorn.
κοσμέω
This related verb makes the order within κόσμος (kosmos, “world”) audible.
kosmios: Orderly or well-arranged.
κόσμιος
This adjective carries the same family’s sense of order into personal conduct.
THE PATTERN
Judgment entrusted at the largest scale includes the small cases within its reach.
You shall not recognize faces in judgment; hear and respond to the small as well as the great; do not shrink from the face of man; for the judgment is God's; and the word that is too hard for you, draw it near to me, and I will hear and respond to it.Until the Ancient of Days came, and judgment was given to the set-apart ones of the Uplifted One. And the time reached, and the set-apart ones possessed the kingdom.And Jesus said to them, Truly, I say to you, that you who have followed me, in the rebirth, when the Son of Man sits on the throne of his weight, you also shall sit on twelve thrones, to judge the twelve tribes of Israel.THE THREAD
And Jesus said to them, Truly, I say to you, that you who have followed me, in the rebirth, when the Son of Man sits on the throne of his weight, you also shall sit on twelve thrones, to judge the twelve tribes of Israel.Matthew uses κρίνω (krinō, “to judge or decide”), the same Greek verb found in this verse. It opens the scale of the word: judgment over the tribes and judgment in the smallest cases belong to the same family of discernment.
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