In an earlier letter Paul told the Corinthian believers not
to associate with immoral people. They evidently had misunderstood it to mean
the immoral people of the society who were unbelievers. But Paul was referring
to the believers among them who were living immorally. And because they missed
what Paul was saying. They thought they could not associate with the
unbelievers who were immoral but freely associating with and even approving
that particular immoral believer in their midst. So in this letter Paul sought
to clarify with them and identify more specifically the group of people he
meant. Paul’s logic is simple: dissociating from unbelievers with immoral
conduct will not cause them to stop sinning. But refusal to associate with
believers who practiced immorality and making sin a lifestyle, could deter them
from sinning.
In these verses Paul in fact was
calling on believers to live righteously. Rhetorically, he told them to put the
ways of the world behind because perpetrators of an unrighteous lifestyle would
jeopardize one’s inheritance of the Kingdom of God. Paul clearly states that
fornicators, idolaters, adulterer, effeminate, homosexual, thieves, the
covetous, drunkards, revilers, swindlers would not inherit God’s Kingdom. And
some of the believers in Corinth were such kind of people before they came to
Christ. Their lives had undergone a transformation. They were sanctified and
justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of God. Paul
asserted that in the light of this transforming grace of God they should start
acting righteously.
Like
it or not, as Christians we have a new identity in Christ. This identity
requires that we break with our sinful past as well as the cultural patterns
that contradict the Biblical culture. Hence, we need to deny ourselves, take up
the cross each new day and follow after Christ.
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