A Call To
Holiness
A Series through
1 Corinthians
Part 15 – Such
were some of you (6:9-11)
***Commentaries
by David Prior and Leon Morris have contributed greatly to this outline***
I. Introduction
Philip Yancey recounts stories of
prostitutes who have been brought into the
Juanita,
for example, was sold into sexual slavery by her own mother at the age of four.
While other children went to school, she worked in a brothel, earning for her
mother the higher rates paid for young girls. Eventually she had two children
of her own, whom her mother took from her. With no education and no other
skills, she continued working in the brothel, in the process becoming addicted
to alcohol and cocaine.
One
day a customer grew enraged when she wouldn't do what he asked, and hit her on
the head with a baseball bat. She lay in a hospital bed, desperate. "I got
on my knees and pled with God. I wanted somehow to escape prostitution, to
become a real mother to my children. And God gave me a vision. He said, 'Look for
Rahab Foundation.' I didn't even know the word Rahab." She found the
organization's phone number, though, and a few days later Juanita showed up,
bruised and bandaged, at Rahab's door.
"I
need help," she said, sobbing. "I'm dying. I can't take it anymore."
A kindly woman named Mariliana took her in and told her about God's love.
"I couldn't believe the hope on Mariliana's face," Juanita recalled.
"She smiled and hugged me. She gave me a clean bed, flowers in the room,
and a promise that no men would harass me. She taught me how to be a real
mother, and now I am studying a trade to live for the glory of God."
Sandra,
from
"But
then I got addicted to drugs and alcohol. I cannot tell you how unutterably
lonely I began to feel. I sat on my bed and watched TV all day until the men
came in at night. I had no friends, no family. I lived with a deep sense of
shame. For a solid year I never got out of bed, I was so depressed."
Sandra
found her way to Linda's House of Hope, a Christian organization run by the
former top madam. "I'm still struggling, after six months off the streets.
I got addicted to the power and money, as well as the drugs. Yet I know what
God wants for me. I need to be healed." Philip Yancey,
"Back From the Brothel,"
http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2005/001/4.10.html
Let’s
remind ourselves of context. In chapter
5 Paul shifted gears off of division (Chapters 1-4) and started addressing
specific issues that the Corinthian believers were dealing with; a pattern that
will continue through the rest of this letter. The issue that was being addressed in chapter 5 was a problem of
incest. A man had his father’s
wife. Paul was appalled at the arrogance
of the Corinthians over this issue and commanded them to remove the evil person
from among them. Then, Paul went on to
explain the idea that it is not the people outside of the church that we are to
judge, but rather, those inside the church. Paul then continued on with the idea of judgment to speak about a
different issue; the issue of lawsuits against other Christians.
The
passage this morning is really a carry over from last week. Paul went on to explain the idea of why
believers should not allow non-believers to judge disputes amongst
themselves. The fundamental difference
is redemption!
1 Corinthians 6:9-11 Or do you not know that the unrighteous will
not inherit the
Let’s
take a look at what Paul has to say about the unrighteous and the
righteous. Here he gave his most compelling
argument for why believers should not judge those outside the church and why
believers should not allow those with no standing in the church to solve
matters of disagreement amongst the brethren.
II. The
Unrighteous (6:9-10)
1 Corinthians 6:9-10 Or do you not know that the unrighteous will
not inherit the
Here we see Paul’s fourth
“do you not know” statement since he turned the corner in chapter 5. Look at 5:6, 6:2, 6:3, 6:9. He’s going to use it three more times in
6:12-20 (next week’s passage). This is a
statement that Paul employed to point the Corinthians to truths that they
claimed to know. They already knew that
a little leaven leavens the whole lump. They already knew that the saints will judge the world. They already knew that the saints will judge
angels. And now he said they already
knew that the righteous will not inherit the
His point, however, is that
they were not living in accordance with these truths. If they had truly been living by the
knowledge they had they would not be seeking to judge those outside the church,
but to evangelize them. If they had been
living by these truths they would not be allowing the unrighteous to judge
matters of difference amongst the righteous. The unrighteous do not even belong to the same kingdom! The kingdom that the righteous belong to,
uniquely the
What’s funny to me is that
in modern Christendom we will often use this passage to show the unrighteous
that they are not going to heaven. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I must say that 99.9% of the time
that I have heard this passage used that way it is with a very judgmental
attitude! The very context of this
passage will not allow us to use this list of sins to judge people, but, I
would suggest, to warn them.
I am under strong
conviction that a lot of time is wasted scouring and speculating over what
biblical authors meant when they used certain terms. Most of you know that it is not my nature or
my style to try to explain to you what each of the vices in Paul’s list look
like in our culture. I firmly believe
there is danger in trying to define those things in the sense that if I don’t
include something that a particular person is struggling with then they think
it’s okay to continue on in it. John
MacArthur, who frequently gets criticized for not having enough application in
his messages, recently addressed this. I
was at a conference a few months back and he said the reason that he doesn’t
preach more application is that the application is different for each person in
the room. What he preaches is implication. He lets people know what the implication of the text is on their
spiritual and eternal state. He lets the
Holy Spirit take care of the application.
So, I will not be defining
what sexual immorality is. I will not be
defining idolatry, reviling, greed or any of the other unrighteous things in
this list. Typically our culture wants to know where the line is so that they
can run right up to it. I would rather
see you stay as far away from it as possible so that if you lose your balance
you don’t step over that line! If you
read through that list and start rationalizing with yourself then you’re
probably guilty of it!
It’s time for a little peek
into my past! I used to be an
alcoholic. When I came home from work I
would grab two beers, one for the walk back to the couch and the other for
after I sat down. I lived by the motto,
“24 hours in a day, 24 beers in a case.” Also, I used to smoke 2 packs of cigarettes a day. I am in no way, shape, or form proud of my
past. Before I got saved, had you asked
me what would be the harder of the two to give up, smoking or drinking, I would
have said, “smoking.” But after I got
saved it has been the drinking that was the hardest thing for me to give
up. And I didn’t completely give it up
right away. I quit getting drunk right
away, but I didn’t completely give up drinking. But here’s the thing, when I would go out and have one drink I would get
this overwhelming sense of guilt. Then
driving home I would be arguing with myself that it was okay, I was “allowed”
to have a drink. Finally, I realized
that if I had to argue with myself about it then it was wrong. So I quit altogether. That’s how I think we should look at this
list. I can defend that belief
biblically. In fact, I can defend it
within the confines of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, even. We’ll see later in chapters 8 and 10 that
Paul appealed to the idea of a clear conscience. We’ll talk more about that when we get there
because there is a lot to unpack in the idea of conscience. I will say, however, that a clear conscience
is not enough. For instance, if you are
having an affair with a clear conscience that does not make the affair okay; we
appeal to the conscience only on matters where the Bible is not explicit.
So, trying to define what
each of these things look like in our culture is a futile exercise. And, really, one that is unnecessary for Paul
certainly covered all the bases with the use of “unrighteous.” That brings us to another interesting
point. The definite article “the” is not
there in the Greek. Paul does not say
that “the unrighteous” will not inherit the kingdom; he simply says that
“unrighteous” will not inherit the kingdom. This pointed the Corinthians away from classifying people as just and
unjust and more towards a way of life. In essence, what Paul was saying is those whose lives are classified by
these actions are the ones that are not going to inherit the kingdom. It’s not those who got drunk once, or who
committed adultery once, or who stole once. It’s not even those who had done those things more than once. It’s those who unrepentantly and rebelliously
continue on in those sins.
You will notice a
similarity between this list and the one Paul used in chapter 5. Here Paul added the blanket term
“unrighteous,” and also added homosexuality, adulterers and thieves to the
list. By the way, I think this list
supports my theory from chapter 5 that they were struggling with a self-righteous
pride. Paul piles on more things the
Corinthians have to be ashamed about. This list is does not have any order to it from greater sins to lesser
sins, nor vice versa. All sin is sin in
the eyes of God. How much
unrighteousness does it take to be unrighteous? Well, Paul said “a little leaven leavens the whole lump.”
III. The
Righteous (6:11)
Certainly Paul was
continuing on with the question “who sees anything different in you?” (4:7).
The contrast that Paul is making here is between the unrighteous and the
righteous. He believed that the
1 Corinthians 6:11 And such were some of you. But you were
washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus
Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
John Stott’s description of
this verse sent chills down my spine when I read it. I can’t do it any better myself, so I’m going
to quote him:
There are few more exciting
and energizing statements in the New Testament than this little phrase, “and
such were some of you.” We have only to
recall the moral cess-pit of first-century
It is exciting to me to note
the past tense used by Paul. He says
such WERE some of you! This does two
things in my heart. One, it shows that
it is okay to stop sometimes and remind ourselves of where we’ve come
from. Paul does that in his own life
from time to time. He recalled his
persecuting of the church and termed himself the “chief of sinners.” What we need to be aware of, however, is that
he never dwelt on his past. The times
that Paul recalled his past he moved quickly to where God had brought him.
Galatians 1:13-17 For you have heard of my former life in
Judaism, how I persecuted the
Philippians 3:4-8 though I myself have reason for confidence in
the flesh also. If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the
flesh, I have more: (5) circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of
Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; (6) as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to
righteousness under the law, blameless. (7) But
whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. (8) Indeed, I count everything as loss because of
the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have
suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may
gain Christ
1 Timothy 1:15-17 The saying is trustworthy and deserving of
full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom
I am the foremost. (16) But I
received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might
display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him
for eternal life. (17) To the
King of ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and
ever. Amen.
Second, it shows us that we
should rejoice in where we are. Paul
never stopped with his sinfulness but instead appealed to the work that God had
done in his life to bring him to the point he was currently at. This is what I was talking about a week or
two ago when I mentioned not identifying ourselves with our sinfulness but with
the fact that we are called saints. We
don’t deny the fact that we sin; we simply recognize that we now have the power
to resist that sine. That’s what Paul was pointing the Corinthians to. Such were some of you, BUT. I love the
“divine buts” of the Bible.
They usually come after a
startling reminder of the past sinfulness in the lives of certain believers, in
this case the Corinthians. It is an
exciting reminder of the work of God in our lives.
Another interesting thing
to note about Paul’s encouragement is that not only is it all past tense, “you
were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified,” but they are also all
passive. The Corinthians didn’t wash
themselves, sanctify themselves or justify themselves. It was something that was done to them, not
by them. The contrast is with the list
of vices which are all active. No
outside influence can make you drunk, steal, commit adultery or practice
idolatry. You have to actively pursue
those things to not inherit the kingdom. Righteousness is passively given to us while wickedness is actively
pursued by us. Paul’s point was because
those things had been given to the Corinthians they needed to act like it. The call is the same for us!
IV. Conclusion
Are you going to inherit the
