Lawsuits Within the Church

All too often I read articles about Christians within the church suing their brothers and sisters in Christ. This is not about individual lawsuits, it's the local church members suing each other due to issues taking place within the local assembly. One local church (I won't reveal the church name and/or persons involved) has assembled a group of members and taken a lawsuit against other members. The pastor of this particular church passed away earlier this year. The head of the deacon board was given the leadership role (with the help of the church body) to carefully choose a new pastor. However, some felt that this particular deacon should not have been given this responsibility and questioned the leadership. As a result, the skeptical members secretly hired lawyers and filed lawsuits to have various people in church leadership roles step down.

Should we as Christians within the church body take one another to court to resolve our differences? What does the Bible say?

1st Corinthians 6:6-8:

" For I speak to your shame. Is it so that there is not a wise one among you, not even one in your midst who shall be able to judge between his brother? But brother goes to law with brother, and that before the unbelievers. Indeed then there is already on the whole a failure among you, that you have lawsuits with yourselves. Why not instead be wronged? Why not instead be defrauded? But you do wrong and defraud, and these things to brothers. "

The Apostle Paul told the church at Corinth that they should take matters before the church counsel and not before heathen judges who were unbelievers. It is also worth mentioning that lawsuits and litigation only give Satan a foothold in the church.

Psalm 18:19 "A brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city: and their contentions are like the bars of a castle."

When the bonds of the church are weakened, Satan is able to break in and cause division. The Word of God in several places (Old and New Testament) gives many examples on how we ought to handle matters within the church. Unfortunately, the church today does not use the Word of God as a guide. Instead, the church members use their carnal minds. If the aforementioned matter does go before a judge, no matter what the ruling may be, in the end the church as a whole will loose.