Translation
Therefore, if you were to have tribunals [pertaining to]
Go to footnote numberthe things of this life, the ones who are nothing
Go to footnote numberin the assembly,
Go to footnote numberthose you set up? (See comments below.)
Paraphrase
Therefore, suppose you, as a local congregation of followers of Jesus, needed to set up tribunals for the ordinary things of this life such as civil matters, (assuming the Roman government would let you do that), would you appoint to sit in those seats of legal authority the people associated with your congregation who are not good followers of Jesus, whom you suspect of not being genuine, and therefore are people you can’t trust?
Footnotes
1: "tribunals"
This noun, which refers to a “the place, the process and the person necessary for hearing court cases, thus a tribunal” is accompanied by a subjunctive verbal form of the word “have”. Subjunctive verbs communicated things that were not present reality but were hoped for, wished for, that might be, or were in the realm of possibility, not provable reality.
2: "those who are nothing"
This is a compound word coming from the preposition “out, completely out from” and the verb “to count or consider as nothing, to bring to nothing, to reduce to nothing.” It is often render as “utterly despise, to treat with utter contempt, to cast aside as worthless.”
3: "assembly"
This is the Greek word rendered “church”.
WAS PAUL USING SARCASM OR ASKING A QUESTION?
Yes!
In the context of this passage, either sarcasm or a question would be a way to further communicate that they were way off base by doing what they were doing.
I think Paul was doing both – using sarcasm and challenging them with a question. Remember that we have no punctuation whatsoever in the Greek manuscripts from ancient times, so there are times we are only guessing about it being a question or a statement. Here it makes most sense in English as a question.
The tribunal being discussed here would be one tasked with looking into matters of this life, not eternal matters. This describes a court under the authority of the Roman government.
The point about the tribunal would usually point away from the church. But whoever the people were who were “despised, considered nothing” were in the assembly, in the church, not outside the church.
The use of the subjunctive form of the verb “have” indicates something that is not real, but is supposed, hypothetical, or wishful thinking.
All these together give me the freedom in my paraphrase column to create a hypothetical situation which Paul used to drive his point home to the congregation at Corinth. It also allows for an English rendering that clears up an otherwise challenging Greek statement or question.
WHY DID PAUL INCLUDE THIS STRANGE QUESTION?
Everyone knows that a local congregation of believers could never set up their own court and hope for it to have legal authority; Rome would only recognize the courts it had established. But Paul’s point to them was this, “If you could do such things to settle simple matters pertaining to daily-life stuff, would you appoint judges you could not trust? Judges who follow their own whims? No, you would not. But that is what it is like when you take your case to a judge who is hostile to the principles of Christ!”