Sunday 9 February 2014

1 Corinthians 6:9-11 - Paul clarifies what he wrote earlier

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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