What Does 1 Corinthians 6:5 Mean?
I say this to turn you inward. So there is not a wise one among you who will be able to judge in the middle of his brother.
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
I speak to your shame. Is it so, that there is not a wise man among you? no, not one that shall be able to judge between his brethren?THE KEY
The rebuke exposes a community whose shame is not just its dispute but its inability to find anyone wise enough to discern between its own members.
THE MEANING
Where people are bound together, the inability to find one wise person who can discern between them exposes a fracture deeper than the dispute itself. The verse names that absence plainly as shame.
THE ROOT
διακρῖναι
diakrinai from diakrinō
GROWS FROM
κρίνω
To separate, distinguish, or decide.
The Greek verb carries the idea of distinguishing between things, so the verse’s “judge between” is an act of discernment as well as a ruling. English can make judgment sound like a verdict alone; the root reveals the missing capacity to make a wise distinction within the community.
ALSO GROWS
krisis: A judgment or decision reached by distinguishing between possibilities.
κρίσις
It shows judgment as the outcome of discernment, the very capacity the verse says is absent.
diakrisis: The ability to distinguish or evaluate.
διάκρισις
It shares the root and makes explicit the discerning faculty that “judge between” requires.
THE PATTERN
Wisdom makes distinctions that allow disputes to be judged within a community.
And I commanded your judges at that time, saying, Hear and respond between your brothers, and judge in alignment between each man and his brother, and the sojourner who is with him.So give your servant a heart that hears and responds, to judge your people, so that I may discern between good and bad. For who is able to judge this heavy people of yours?But the wisdom that is from above is first set apart, then whole, gentle, and easy to yield to, full of faithful love and good fruits, undivided, and without a mask.THE THREAD
For if we judged ourselves, we would not be judged.The verb shares the root κρίνω (krinō), meaning to distinguish or decide, so the judgment missing between brothers appears here turned toward oneself. This opens the possibility that communal discernment includes seeing one’s own part, not only assessing another’s.
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