This verse is often misinterpreted as a total ban on Christians ever using civil courts under any circumstances, overlooking its specific context of lawsuits between believers that should be settled internally by godly wisdom; it neither prohibits legal action against non-believers nor suggests inherent inferiority of Christian judgment, but rather shames the church's failure to exercise available discernment among its members.
I Corinthians 6:5
King James Version (1769)
5 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?
Paul rebukes the Corinthian believers for their shameworthy practice of taking disputes among themselves to unbelieving judges in secular courts, emphasizing that within the church there should be wise members spiritually mature enough to arbitrate and resolve such matters justly, thereby demonstrating the transformative power of Christian wisdom and maintaining the community's witness to the world.