This is Not What You Are!

1 Corinthians 6:7–11 AV

Now therefore there is utterly a fault among you, because ye go to law one with another. Why do ye not rather take wrong? why do ye not rather suffer yourselves to be defrauded? Nay, ye do wrong, and defraud, and that your brethren. Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.

If you’ve ever read Marvel Comics’ The Transformers or seen any of the movies by the same name, you already know that the evil Decepticons can pretend to be almost anything mechanical. Young boys like them because they can transform themselves into cars, trucks, planes and even alarm clocks.

The devil — the original Megatron — and his angels are real Decepticons. Not only do they make sin look attractive, but they also disguise themselves as servants of God. The Bible says that Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness (2 Cor. 11:14–15). In fact, their deception is so great that, if it were possible, they would deceive the very elect (Matt. 24:24). We can all be very thankful that it’s not possible.

Sometimes even God’s people try to be Decepticons, except that we do in reverse. We are new creatures in Christ, but we try to pass ourselves off as old creatures. We choose to live in sin as if sin’s power has not been broken.

That was certainly true of the Corinthians. Anyone who saw how they behaved — boasting of wisdom that they didn’t have, puffing themselves up over personalities, allowing horrible sins to go on unchallenged in the church, and suing each other in civil courts — would never have guessed that they had been redeemed by the precious blood of Jesus Christ. Their lives just didn’t look like the lives of saints.

The Corinthians had not yet learned that, when it comes to Christians entertaining sin in our lives, this is not what we are.

Suffering Wrong

This evening’s text begins with the conclusion to what Paul wrote in the verses we looked at last week. The fact that the Corinthians had done things to each other that were actionable in civil court and then actually sued each other implies that they had failed in a big way. In verse 7 Paul wrote, Now therefore there is utterly a fault among you, because ye go to law one with another. The fact that they had lawsuits against one another was a complete loss.

I want you to understand just how badly the Corinthians had failed. This comes out in two ways in our text.

The first is a word that the KJV doesn’t even translate. It’s the word already (ἤδη), and it indicates that the loss that the Corinthians suffered loss before they ever stepped foot into a courtroom. They didn’t have to wait for a verdict. Their loss was that they brought shame on the gospel of Jesus Christ, called into question the church’s testimony and put brother against brother in a public setting.

That’s why Paul asked them two questions at the end of this verse: Why do ye not rather take wrong? why do ye not rather suffer yourselves to be defrauded? If the Corinthians really believed that there was not even one man in the church wise enough to settle their disputes and that their only option was to go to court, why didn’t they just let it go? Because their witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ was at stake, it would have been better to been cheated than to harm their testimony to the gospel. So what if they were robbed of a little money or property? What’s that compared to a man’s soul or the glory of God?

Of course, the possibility of letting the offender off didn’t cross the Corinthians’ minds. It’s probably not the first thing we think about either. We want people who sin against us to pay. We want them to pay dearly. When the Vikings conquered different people groups, they took a census literally by counting noses. They penalized those who refused to pay their taxes by slitting their noses from tip to eyebrow. So, even those who refused to pay “paid through the nose.” Sinners want those who offend them to pay through the nose.

We have to keep in mind that enduring an offense is not the end of the world. No one ever gets away scot-free. The term scot-free, by the way, refers to those whom the Vikings excused from paying their scot or tax. But the Lord never excuses anyone. If no one else holds a sinner accountable in this life, the Lord most certainly will in the next.

On the other hand, suffering wrong is not a believer’s only choice. The fact that the Corinthians couldn’t identify a wise man in the church to hear their cases doesn’t mean that the church shouldn’t have heard them anyway. As Paul wrote earlier in the chapter, even the least esteemed saint is a better judge of spiritual things than the best-educated unbeliever. If the church had heard these cases, either the offenders would have repented, which would have solved the problem, or they would not have repented and the church would have declared them unbelievers. That, too, solves the problem because once offenders are declared unbelievers, those who have been injured could sue them in a civil court, since it would no longer be brother against brother.

The second thing that shows how badly the Corinthians had failed is the phrase one with another. Almost every English translation uses the reciprocal pronoun one another here. But the Greek doesn’t use a reciprocal pronoun. It uses a reflexive pronoun. Literally it says, “Now therefore, the fact that you have filed lawsuits against yourselves is already a complete loss for you.”

Why is this important? It’s important because it gives us a slightly different picture of what Paul was saying. If he had written that the Corinthians had suffered loss because they had filed lawsuits “against one another,” he would have emphasized the diversity of interests among the Corinthians. Joe suffers loss because he won’t repent, and Harry suffers loss because he wants to sue Joe before an unbelieving judge, and so forth. But when Paul wrote that the Corinthians suffered loss because they had file lawsuits “against themselves,” he brought all of their interests together as one. Now what was this united interest that resulted in devastating loss for the whole congregation? Simon Kistemaker put it this way: “The entire Christian community … becomes a defendant before Gentile judges.” That is, civil litigation between church members subjects the entire church to the judgment of unbelievers. And that is something the church should never allow!

You see, what the Corinthians put into play when they started suing each other in courts was beyond bad. It was a total loss. But the Corinthians didn’t stop there. Instead of suffering wrong, they used the fact that they had been wronged to retaliate against each other. Verse 8 says, Nay, ye do wrong, and defraud, and that your brethren. The tense of the verbs wrong and defraud suggest, sadly, that this was their usual behavior.

The Corinthians mistreated and abused their own brothers. But how could they cheat other and still call one another brother? The answer is that they couldn’t. Brothers seek each other’s good. Brothers help each other. They do not tear each other down. Paul purposely used the word brethren at the end of this verse to force the Corinthians to consider what their behavior said about themselves.

Heirs of the Kingdom

Knowing that the Corinthians tended to miss the obvious, Paul asked them another “Do you not know” question in verses 9 and 10. He wrote, Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. The Corinthians should have known this. In fact, they probably did know it. But they had not taken it seriously.

The simple truth here is that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God. That is, those who stubbornly continue in their sin without repentance and refuse the gift of righteousness that comes only through the Lord Jesus Christ must not be counted as God’s children.

In these verses Paul gave the church a partial list of sins that exclude men from the kingdom of God unless they repent. It’s similar to the list that he had given in the previous chapter (v. 11), where he instructed the Corinthians not even to eat with such persons, except that he listed seven sins there and ten here. The three sins that he added in the verses we’re looking at today are: the effeminate, abusers of themselves with mankind, and thieves. I’ve already commented on the sins mentioned previously. Since we all know what thieves are, we don’t need to say too much about them, but in today’s current social climate I would be remiss not to address the other two.

The words translated effeminate (μαλακοί) and abusers of themselves with mankind (ἀρσενοκοῖται) both designate men who engage in homosexual activity. In fact, the ESV combines the two owrds into a single phrase: “men who practice homosexuality.” However, I don’t believe that was the right way to go because each of these words says something different about homosexuality. The first word refers to the passive partner in a homosexual relationship. They were literally men playing the role of a woman. It would include male prostitutes, for example. The latter refers to the active and more aggressive partner. It refers specifically to the sin of pederasty. As far as the Lord is concerned, both are forbidden.

Liberal churches of our day either redefine or ignore what Paul clearly wrote about this. They claim that he was the product of an unenlightened culture, or that he has been misunderstood, or that he was just plain wrong. And so they welcome practicing homosexuals into their congregations, ordain them as officers, and occasionally even establish congregations focused on their lifestyle. But if Paul was wrong about homosexuality, couldn’t he also have been wrong about covetousness? Yet, the same liberals who love homosexuality usually hate what they see as the greed of a free market economy. And of course theft and swindling are only problems for them when someone other than a leftist politician has his hands in another man’s pockets.

The point is that it’s not up to us to pick which sins we are acceptable and which sins are not. They’re all wrong. Thankfully, none of them — including homosexuality — is unforgiveable either, if those who commit them to the Lord. While we cannot condone sin, we must call sinners to put their trust in Jesus Christ. We must be willing to offer them the same compassion that God has given us.

There’s still one more thing I want you to see in these two verses. Paul introduced his list of sin in verse 9 with the words be not deceived. The truth is that sinners are often deceived. They deceive themselves into thinking that their sins can’t possibly be bad enough to keep them out of heaven or that they’ll be able to do enough good things to compensate for the bad.

If we will be faithful to Jesus Christ and truly love those who do not know him, it seems to me that one of the first things that we need to do is unmask their self-deception and set before them the promise of God’s Word that those who do such things cannot inherit the kingdom of God.

Washed, Sanctified and Justified

One of the chief reasons why we must be compassionate toward others is that we were once in the same predicament as they are. Concerning the Corinthians Paul wrote, And such were some of you.

As redeemed sinners, we know what it’s like to have been under the dominion of sin. Although our particular sin may not have been homosexuality or drunkenness, it was something equally as heinous. At the very least, we all came into this world as idolaters. Our hearts, as Calvin said, were factories of idolatry, spewing out new gods for any and every occasion. And we tell sinners that it doesn’t have to be this way because we also know what’s like to have sin’s dominion broken by the precious blood of our dear Savior.

When Paul told the Corinthians that there was a time when they were guilty of the various sins that he had mentioned, he used the past tense. This was true of them before they learned about Jesus Christ, but it wasn’t true any more. This is not what they were after they drank from the water of life.

Because the Corinthians had embraced Jesus, they had been washed from the defilement of their sins. Therefore they must not disgrace themselves by living in the same sins from which they had been cleansed. They had been sanctified or set apart from their former pollutions. Yes, the Lord was still working in them to change both their will and their behavior when Paul wrote this letter. He was causing them to will and to do his good pleasure. And the Corinthians had been justified from their guilt by the glorious imputation of Christ’s righteousness. The sentence of condemnation that once hung over their heads was gone, and they must never bring it upon themselves again.

To you here today who have believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, the same assurance is yours: And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God. All three person of the Trinity have laid hold of you. Your salvation is in the name of Jesus and by the power of the Spirit of God the Father. You are the special objects of trinitarian love and care. Sin has no place in your lives. That’s not what you are!

So, what are you? Are you a Decepticon that can morph into any shape you want? You can be a Christian on Sunday and a worldling the other six days of the week?

If that’s what you are, you need to know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God. The Word of God does not say that it’s less likely that you’ll inherit God’s kingdom, but that there’s no way it will ever happen. And then you need to seek your whole salvation in Jesus Christ.

But if you’re not a Decepticon, you still need to listen to this evening’s text. Why? Because even true believers are tempted to act like the world from time to time. You must never allow this to happen, though. Now that you have been washed, sanctified and justified, you need to be God’s children by adoption and brothers of likeminded believers in love. Amen.