‘SUCH WERE SOME OF YOU’
Posted by Pastor Greg Allen on December 2, 2018 under 2018 |
Bethany Bible Church Sunday Message; December 2, 2018 from 1 Corinthians 6:9-11
Theme: In Christ, we should no longer live like the unrighteous people that we once were.
(All Scripture is taken from The New King James Version, unless otherwise indicated).
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I came to know the Lord Jesus from out of what you might call an ‘attitude’ of sin—although I was most certainly also a sinner in actual practice as well. I was not very old when I believed on Jesus—only sixteen years old at the time. But young as I may have been, I had definitely been heading down the road toward a very ungodly life. I knew, without a doubt, that I was a sinner who was worthy of eternal judgment. Hell was what I deserved.
And so; when I heard the gospel of Jesus in 1973—and heard that my sins could be washed away and that I could be clean before God—I placed my faith in Jesus and believed. I experienced the joy of having my sins forgiven; and of knowing that I was no longer doomed to eternal judgment.
But even though I had believed on Jesus, and even though I knew that my sins of the past were forgiven, and even though I knew I was now no longer destined for eternal judgment, I still thought of myself as an unworthy sinner—a ‘saved’ unworthy sinner, but an unworthy sinner nevertheless.
As I began attending a church, and began reading the Bible for myself, I began to understand the holy demands of a righteous life before God. I wanted to live like a Christian. And by God’s grace, I was certainly making progress. The foul language that I had regularly used was beginning to disappear. The friendships that had been influencing me into bad behavior were beginning to be broken off. The lying, and acts of selfishness, and dirty humor that I used to engage in, were all—slowly but surely—ceasing to be a part of my life.
But I was doing it all from the perspective of still—in my mind—being an utterly unworthy sinner who did not deserve to be clean and holy. I had grown up in a performance-based atmosphere in which I never quite felt as if I had measured up; and I brought that perspective with me into the early years of my Christian life. I even remember times when, after I would just ‘think’ a cuss word—or would accidentally let one fly out—I would go into another room somewhere and bite down hard on my tongue or punch myself in the leg as punishment—still viewing myself as a sinner unworthy of God’s pardoning grace. And there were even times when I would fall back into some old act, and then—in frustration—say to myself, “Well; I wished I hadn’t done that. But what more could I expect? After all, I’m nothing but a dirty sinner.”
In retrospect, I can see that I was trying to live the Christian life back then as if it were ‘against the grain’—as if where contrary to myself—as if it was fundamentally untrue of who I really now was—as if I was trying to live the new life in Christ while still being the old unworthy self that I used to be. And so, it was a constant struggle and a continual frustration.
Now once again; I can’t say for sure when it was that it happened. But the great change for me eventually occurred when I began to realize—and truly accepted—who the Bible says that I really was in Christ. I’m confident that it was the Holy Spirit who graciously opened my eyes to my identity in Christ. I came to understand that God did not see me as I saw myself. He did not look upon me as if I were a dirty sinner that He reluctantly saved and now just tolerated; but rather, He had fully adopted me as His redeemed son, and had made me 100% holy in His sight—as righteous in His sight, in fact, as Jesus Himself is. I came to understand that all of my sins—past, present, and future—where placed on Jesus and that He paid the full price for me on the cross; but more, that all of His righteousness and holiness before the Father had been placed on me! I began to understand that if any man or woman is in Christ, then they are completely new creations—and that all of the former things have passed away, and everything about them has been made new.
And when that understanding began to grow in me, and I fully began to embrace it by faith, it transformed my motivation for living the Christian life. I no longer looked upon living a holy life as if it were a thing that was contrary to who I was. It was no longer a performance-based endeavor—a tall, laborious ladder to climb—toward the goal of a holiness for which I had no right and to which I could never achieve. I began to find that I no longer wanted to commit the sins I struggled to resist; and this was because such sinful practices were now no longer true to who I really was. Instead, I wanted to live a genuinely righteous life before God because I had already been made righteous in His sight—and desired, out of grateful love to Him, to be what He had made me in Christ.
What a difference that change of perspective made in me! What a difference it continues to make! I’m still growing in the Christian life to this very day; but now, it’s a joy!
And this wonderful transformation is, I believe, at the heart of our passage this morning from 1 Corinthians 6.
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You see; the apostle Paul had been writing to the Christians in the ancient city of Corinth. Corinth was, as you’ll remember, an exceptionally immoral and ungodly city; and these Christians had grown up in the midst of all of the immorality and wickedness of their surrounding culture. At the beginning of his letter, Paul called them ‘saints’; and this was because that’s what they truly were in God’s sight. But he wrote to these ‘saints’ to instruct them to no longer live in the way that the unbelieving people around them were living.
In writing this letter, Paul had to solve lots of problems along the way. As we saw in our last time of studying this letter, for example, Paul had to deal with the problem of how these Christians were suing one another. They were dragging one another before human courts, and fighting before unbelieving judges. In doing this, they were behaving just like the unsaved people around them—displaying selfishness and greed and covetousness, while bringing dishonor to the name of Christ in the process.
Look at verses 7-8. Paul told them, “Now, therefore, it is already an utter failure for you that you go to law against one another. Why do you not rather accept wrong? Why do you not rather let yourselves be cheated?” That would be what holy living in Christ would look like. That would be what it would mean to live like Jesus. “No,” he said; “you yourselves do wrong and cheat, and you do these things to your brethren!”
And I believe that his words about how they were doing wrong and cheating each other—how they were acting in unjust and unrighteous ways toward one another and before the watching world—was what prompted him to say what he then wrote in our passage this morning. In verses 9-11, Paul wrote;
Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God (1 Corinthians 6:9-11).
I believe that what Paul was saying to these Corinthians was something like this:
“Dear brothers and sisters in Christ; dear ‘saints’; stop and consider the inappropriateness of what you are doing. You are engaging in acts of injustice toward one another, and are trying to cheat each other and misuse one another. You are behaving very unrighteously in all of this. In fact, there are other things you are doing that I need to write to you about in addition to this one. And in the course of it all, you are forgetting a basic, fundamental principle of God’s moral universe: that those who live lives that are characterized by persistent acts and practices of unrighteousness are actually prohibiting themselves from inheriting the holy kingdom of our holy God and Father. Don’t keep on being misled about the matter. It’s a spiritual fact: anyone who makes a life-practice of unrighteousness—of any kind—will most definitely not inherit His kingdom. You seem to have forgotten that!
“But you also seem to have forgotten another very important thing: that you—my brothers and sisters; my dear fellow-saints—are in Christ by faith; and that you are now no longer among the ‘unrighteous’. ‘Unrighteousness’ is no longer true to who you are. Don’t you remember? Don’t you realize what is now true of you? You have turned to Jesus and are now washed completely clean of all your sins. You have been set apart as true ‘saints’–as people who genuinely belong to Him. You are now ‘justified’—declared 100% righteous in His sight. You are holy! And it wasn’t that you earned this wonderful new identity by your own efforts; because you never could. Rather, it has been given to you by the Father through the work of Jesus on the cross; and it has been made a reality in your life through the ministry of the indwelling Holy Spirit.
“And so, dear brothers and sisters; stop living like what you no longer are! Start living a holy life; because you already are, in fact, truly holy!”
That is the great transformation that God had brought about in my thinking. That is the great transformation that I believe Paul was trying to impress upon the believers in Corinth. And I believe that that’s the message that the Lord wants to impress upon us this morning from this passage. This, of course, is not something that would be true of everyone. It would only be true of those who have placed their faith in Jesus and are redeemed by His blood. But the wonderful call of this passage to us is that, in Christ, we should no longer live like the unrighteous people we once were. Unrighteousness is no longer a true aspect of our identity. We have a new identity in Christ. We are ‘saints’ in Him. And so, we should no longer live like what we no longer are. Instead, we should live like the holy people God has declared us to be, and has made us to be in Christ.
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Now; I believe we can divide this passage up into two main parts—two main ‘affirmations’. And the first one is that …
1. UNRIGHTEOUS LIVING PREVENTS SOMEONE FROM INHERITING GOD’S KINGDOM.
In order to start living like what we truly are in Christ, this is something that we absolutely have to come to terms with. In verse 9, Paul begins by saying, “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?”
Now; what exactly does Paul mean in this passage by ‘the kingdom of God’? Many Bible teachers point out—and I believe rightly so—that, generally speaking, ‘the kingdom of God’ is simply another way of describing the realm over which God reigns. His ‘kingdom’ is that over which He rules. And there is a sense, of course, in which God rules over all His creation.
But I believe that the word ‘inherit’ in this verses puts a particular significance upon the phrase ‘the kingdom of God’. Those who ‘inherit’ it have a special relationship to it. Those who ‘inherit’ it will receive it in its fullness and enjoy the full blessings of it. Paul used the phrase ‘inherit the kingdom of God’ near the end of this letter—in 1 Corinthians 15:50. He was talking about the promise of resurrection, and of the fact that Jesus is our ‘model’ of resurrection hope; and then wrote,
Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does corruption inherit incorruption (1 Corinthians 15:50).
And so, I take it that the ‘inheritable’ aspect of the kingdom of God is the aspect that has to do with the full, eternal, incorruptible blessings of that kingdom—the blessings for which our God resurrects those who believe on His Son, so they may enter into His eternal home in full glory. In other words, ‘to inherit the kingdom of God’ means the same thing as ‘to go to heaven’—to enter into that condition of eternal ‘incorruption’ and glorious bliss that He promises to those who trust in His Son and are saved.
And so; what a sober thing it is that Paul says in verse 9; that the ‘unrighteous’ will not ‘inherit the kingdom of God’. He even says it in such a way as to suggest that it is something that these Corinthian believers should have already known. He says, “Do you not know …?” as if he would answer to his own question by saying, “Of course you know this!” They certainly should have known it, because it was something that our Lord Himself had taught.
In the Sermon on The Mount—in Matthew 7:21-23—Jesus said;
“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’” (Matthew 7:21-23).
How dreadful! Many people who fully expected that they were going to be welcomed into heaven—who did all kinds of outwardly ‘spiritual’ acts; but who still practiced those things that God said not to do—will be in for the shock of the ages! They will have deceived themselves about this absolute, unchanging, fundamental principle in God’s moral universe; that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God!
And it’s very interesting, then, that Paul warned his Corinthian brothers and sisters not to be deceived or misled about the matter. In verse 9, he says, “Do not be deceived.” In fact, in the original language, he puts this in a way that would mean, “Do not keep on being misled.” They had been fitting in with the cultural attitudes around them that made them think that the things that God says not to do are not really all that bad, or that they are not really subject to His righteous judgment. They were encountering sophisticated ‘justifications’ for unrighteousness all day long. And, dear brothers and sisters; isn’t that a danger we constantly face today? In Romans 1, Paul described the unrighteous acts of those who turn away from God; and at the end of it all, he said of such people that they are those
who, knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them (Romans 1:32).
And not only do the people of this fallen world mislead God’s people about the seriousness of sin, but so does the devil himself! Do you remember his words to Eve in the Garden of Eden? She repeated God’s command regarding the fruit of the tree—not to eat of it or touch it lest she die. And the serpent said, “You will not surely die.” Later on, she admitted that the serpent deceived her and she ate. The devil has been deceiving people about the commandments of God ever since. We truly need to pay attention to this warning from Paul to ‘not be deceived’.
And so; in order to ensure that his readers would not be deceived about this important principle, Paul repeated it in verses 9-10: “Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.”
What a list! One Bible teacher called this list of ten ‘the fearful catalog’! You can even hear the Ten Commandments being reflected in them. ‘Fornicators’ describes those who have sexual relations outside of marriage. ‘Idolaters’ describes those who worship false gods—and perhaps who even engage in the immoral acts that such worship often involves. ‘Adulterers’ describes those who violate faithfulness to their marriage. ‘Homosexuals’—in the original language—is a word that means ‘soft’; and most likely refers to those who feminized themselves for same-sex relations; and the word ‘sodomites’—in the original language—refers to those who made use of those who did so. ‘Thieves’ describes those who steal what does not belong to them; and ‘covetous’ describes those who inordinately desire what belongs to someone else. ‘Drunkards’ describes those who dull their spirits with intoxicating substances. ‘Revilers’ describes those who rail at others in anger, and who engage in name-calling and character assassination. And ‘extortioners’ describes those who aggressively take advantage of others, either by force or by law.
I don’t believe that Paul means that if anyone has ever committed any of these sins, they are forever prohibited from entering heaven. That couldn’t be the case; because if that were so, then not even Paul would have been allowed into heaven. I certainly wouldn’t be permitted in; and frankly, dear brothers and sisters, neither would you. Rather, I believe he means for us to understand that anyone who makes a lifestyle practice of these things—who do not turn from them, but who willingly persists in them; and who even justifies them and celebrates those who do them—are thus showing themselves to be ‘unrighteous’, and will not inherit the kingdom of God.
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Now; the apostle Paul said something very much like this in Ephesians 5. He wrote to his believing friends and said;
But fornication and all uncleanness or covetousness, let it not even be named among you, as is fitting for saints; neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks. For this you know, that no fornicator, unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Therefore do not be partakers with them (Ephesians 5:3-7).
Those words sound very much like the first point in this morning’s passage; don’t they? He lets us know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God. Such acts of unrighteousness are ‘not fitting’. We must not be partakers of unrighteousness with those who do them.
And why is this so? In Ephesians 5:8, Paul goes on to say, “For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light …” (v. 8). To go on living in unrighteousness is to live contrary to what we are. We are children of light! We are now holy in Christ!
And that leads us to the second main point of our passage this morning; that …
2. IN CHRIST, WE ARE NO LONGER UNRIGHTEOUS (v. 11).
After listing this ‘fearful catalog’ of lifestyle practices that would keep someone out of God’s eternal kingdom, Paul writes these wonderful words; “And such were some of you.” Why are they wonderful? Because they declare—unmistakably—the life-transforming power of the gospel. Those who believe on Jesus and are redeemed by Him are no longer identified with the sins that would keep someone from inheriting God’s kingdom. They are set free from such sinful practices and can now leave them behind.
Many people today think those who practice such things cannot be changed—that it’s who they are. But here, Paul is testifying that the Corinthian church was a church that had people in it who were former fornicators and idolaters and adulterers and homosexuals and sodomites and thieves and covetous people and drunkards and revilers and extortioners. Those are things that some of them ‘were’, but they aren’t those things anymore! Who it is that they were had been changed by God’s grace. They had been set free in Christ and were now holy. Some of us who are here this morning can say the same thing—that we once were some of these things; but that we are these things no longer—that we now belong to Jesus.
What specifically was it that happened? Paul said to these Corinthian believers that they had—at one time— been these things; “But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified …” (v. 11b). This describes three wonderful aspects of God’s transforming grace in our lives through Jesus Christ; and Paul mentions these things in such a way as to highlight them and emphasize each of them individually.
First, he wrote to these Corinthian believers that they had been ‘washed’. In the original language of this letter, Paul actually said, “you have washed yourselves”. And how was it that they did this? It was by believing on Jesus, and by being born-again. Paul may even have been thinking of how they had demonstrated that faith in Jesus by being baptized publicly. The apostle Peter once told the Jewish people who heard him preach about Jesus,
“Arise and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on the name of the Lord” (Acts 22:16).
It’s not the baptism, of course, that washed their sins away. Rather, it was the blood of Jesus. But their baptism demonstrated to everyone that they had believed on Jesus and had indeed been washed clean by His blood. All of the sins of their past, present, and future were washed away in Christ. That’s also true of us. In Jesus—no matter what our life had been before—it has now all been washed clean in Him “through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit” (Titus 3:5).
Paul also told these Christians that they had been ‘sanctified’. This speaks of how they had been set apart by God for Himself through Jesus Christ. They now belonged to Him, and were truly ‘holy’ in that they have been distinguished, by grace, as His own people. As the apostle Peter put it once;
But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; who once were not a people but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy (1 Peter 2:9-10).
And finally, Paul told these Corinthians that they had been ‘justified’. That means that they had been officially declared ’100% righteous in God’s sight. There was now no condemnation of them in God’s sight. And isn’t it wonderful that this is how Paul ended the matter? Before, in verse 9, he warned that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God; and now, in verse 11, he affirms that those who are in Christ are ‘righteous’ in God’s sight!
And this was all done by God’s grace. It was done, as he says at the end of verse 11, “in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.” We could never make ourselves “clean” or “sanctified” or “righteous” in God’s sight by our own effort. And praise God—once we have been made so in His sight, we could never keep ourselves there. It is all by grace.
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Now, dear brothers and sisters; we absolutely must take God at His word in this passage. The ungodly forces of the world around us will tell us otherwise. Ungodly people will justify and rationalize and celebrate that which God has commanded not to do. And behind the voices of these people, the devil himself is there—continually misleading people and calling God’s commandments into question. But we must not be misled. It is an absolute, unchanging principle of God’s moral universe: the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God.
But we also must remember that—in Christ—we are no longer unrighteous. We have been washed of our sins, and have been set apart as God’s own, and have been declared completely righteous in His sight through the blood of Jesus. Unrighteousness—and the acts of unrighteousness that God forbids in His word—are no longer true of who we are!
Therefore, let’s no longer live like unrighteous people. Such were some of us; but we are those things no longer. As Paul put it in Titus 2:11-14;
For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself His own special people, zealous for good works (Titus 2:11-14).
What a transformation! What a wonderful new motivation! In loving gratitude, let’s now be the holy people that we are in Christ!
EA
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