1 Corinthians 6:9-10
Ps Paul Cheng
Dear Bethelites,
Have you ever tried to minister to a homosexual, and he or she says to you, “Well, I was born this way. I was born a homosexual, and it is in my genes or DNA, and I cannot help it. Just like if you are born Chinese or Indian, and you cannot help it”?
We want to tell the person that it is not true, no one is born a homosexual, but everyone is born in sin. Homosexuality is a sin, and just like all the other sins, he or she can be delivered from it by turning to Jesus Christ to deal with that sin.
How wonderful it would be if we can find a testimony of someone who was previously a homosexual, and by God’s grace, today he has been transformed by the power of the gospel! We want to show to the person that it is possible to be delivered from such a sin. In the year 2014, there was a documentary video released in the United States about former homosexuals. The video featured interviews with many former homosexuals, and they testified how they no longer considered themselves as homosexuals, nor were they attracted to the same sex anymore, all because they were transformed by their relationship with Jesus Christ. What is so amazing about the video is that it was inspired by this passage that we want to consider for our pastoral chat. The name of the documentary was, “Such were some of you.”
Dear friend, if you ever want to find any biblical testimonies of transformed homosexuals to show that it is possible to be delivered from such a sin, you do not need to search any further. 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 is the passage, as the Apostle Paul said to the Corinthians, such were some of you; they were not only homosexuals, but they were also fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, thieves, covetous, drunkards, revilers, extortioners. But that was in the past, before their conversion, and at the time of Paul’s writing, they were washed, sanctified and justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of God.
This is a most encouraging passage especially to those people who have been ensnared by the sin of homosexuality. We want to tell them that the power to change is freely available to them today. The key to finding this power is to acknowledge that homosexuality is a sin, and once they are able to recognise that it is a sin; then they will turn to the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation. But if they keep on insisting that they are born this way, then they will never be able to change because they do not think that they have a problem.
There are two things we want to learn from this passage in 1 Corinthians 6:-9-11; firstly, we want to understand what sin will do to us, and secondly, we want to understand what salvation will do to us.
I. We want to understand what sin will do to us
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 (1 Corinthians 6:9-10).
The Corinthian church, due to their spiritual pride, had misconstrued the idea of Christian liberty. They had become so insensitive to sin that they were able to tolerate the sin of a member sleeping with his own stepmother. When the floodgate of sin is opened, all kinds of compromises would take place.
Notice the kinds of sins that Paul had to address here. They were horrendous sexual immorality. Apparently, the Corinthians were beginning to embrace these kinds of sins in the church, including the sin of incest. People had become so complacent and comfortable with the things happening around them that they were able to tolerate the very things that were hateful and abominable to God.
The word unrighteous is a reference to the unbelievers (similar to the word used in verse 1 which was translated as the unjust). It does not mean that we will not fall into any one of those sins, but what it meant was that those people whose lives are totally characterised by such sins are not saved. Here the list of sins is not exhaustive; it simply represents all the major types of moral sin.
In a way, Paul was saying to the Corinthians, and it applies to us as well, “Why do you keep living like the unrighteous, the unsaved? Why do you keep going back to the ways of your old life, the life from which Christ has saved you? Do you not know that those who practise such sins are the unbelievers, and they shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not deceive yourself.” And he went on to give a list of those sins that characterised the unbelievers.
Let us briefly look at those sins;
- Be not deceived: neither fornicators – Fornication has to do with sexual immorality in general. When someone has a sexual relationship outside of marriage or engaged himself or herself in a sexual relationship when he or she is not yet married, etc.
- idolaters – The word idolatry not only refers to those who worship any false gods or false religious systems, it is a very broad term. In Colossians 3:5, the Apostle Paul connects covetousness with idolatry. In other words, when one is covetous, and he is always desiring for more, and envies what others have, he is an idolater. When one values, gives priority, or places his confidence in things and people more than God (whether it be his work, relationships, wealth or material things), he is an idolater.
Let us pause and contemplate, does the world today consider fornication as a big thing? Most certainly not! To a large extent, the world has no issue with fornication, and it is an accepted practice especially amongst the younger generation. Forty years ago, it was a big deal. People living together while they were unmarried! No way! Certainly, some people did it, but it was generally unacceptable by the vast populace. Now fast forward forty years later, by and large, it has become an acceptable practice. The idea of remaining a virgin, and abstinence before marriage, is considered unrealistic. Not only young people but also adults, think it is unrealistic. Thus in 2017, doctors in Victoria were allowed to prescribe the contraceptive pill to students as young as 12 years old in government schools. Can you imagine that?
Basically, the root problem of idolatry is that one’s relationship with God is not able to satisfy him; that is why he is not content with God’s will for his life. And whatever he thinks can satisfy him; that becomes his “God.” In a sense, everyone in this world is a worshipper, one either worships the one living and true God, or he worships something else in His place.
- adulterers– Adultery is to be sexually unfaithful to the person one is married to. The world tries to trivialize adultery. They joke about adultery, make movies out of it, and write books about it. For those people who love to watch dramas and soap operas, they would be able to tell you how much adultery is involved in those shows. The question is, how can God’s people find that entertaining? Have we become so comfortable with sin, that what God actually hates, has become our form of entertainment? God forbid!
What about spiritual adultery? For example, the lust of the eyes; when one covets someone who is not his wife or her husband. Jesus clearly said, whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart, which means to entertain and fantasise a relationship with someone, and to have sexual thoughts, was adultery in the sight of God.
Then Paul moved on to say,
- nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind– The literal meaning for effeminate means soft, and it refers to men who willingly submit themselves to homosexual acts. Some theologians view these two descriptions as the passive and active part of homosexuality. The Bible is absolutely clear that homosexuality is a sin; it is a sin that calls for the wrath of God.
Homosexuality is condemned throughout Scripture. In the Bible, there were these two cities, Sodom and Gomorrah, which were known for their wicked sins, especially homosexuality. It was so characteristic of Sodom that the term “sodomy” is a synonym for that sin. The men in the city of Sodom were so perverted in their sexual desires that on one occasion in Genesis 19, they surrounded Lot’s house and demanded that the two angels (who had come in the form of men) be sent out so that they could have homosexual relationships with them. God completely destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah because their sins were exceedingly grave/serious.
During Paul’s time, homosexuality had been rampant in Greece and Rome for centuries. In his commentary on this passage, William Barclay wrote, “Socrates was a homosexual, and most probably, Plato was a homosexual because in his writing on love, he glorifies homosexuality, and it is likely that fourteen of the first fifteen Roman emperors were homosexuals. Nero, who reigned close to the time when Paul wrote 1 Corinthians, had a boy named Sporis castrated in order for the boy to become the emperor’s “wife,” in addition to his natural wife. After Nero died, the boy was passed on to one of Nero’s successors, Otho, to be used in the same way.”
What about our modern time? One pastor aptly said, “Before 1967, the act of homosexuality was a crime known as sodomy. Then in 1967, it was changed to a mental illness. Subsequently, in 1973 it was removed from the list of mental illnesses due to pressure from the gay community. In the 1980s, homosexuality was attributed to environmental conditioning. In the 1990s, it was promoted as an alternative lifestyle. Today, it is considered as the preferred way of life, it is an expression of the highest form of a loving relationship, and it is the best means of population control.”
Today, same sex marriage has been legalised in 27 countries around the world, of which Australia is one of them. In a matter of fifty years, homosexuality has moved from being a crime to being a celebrated relationship. What will become of our children’s time in another ten or twenty years’ time? We dare not even think about it!
What about the church? There was a time when the church dealt with this sin, but slowly, she has grown to accept this sin. Today, there are ordained gay ministers, and homosexual weddings have been solemnised in the church, and there are many churches defending homosexuality, and accepting it as genetic, as a matter of nature. Do you think God will punish someone because of something genetic? Do you think God would say, “I am going to punish you, and you shall not inherit the kingdom of God, because I have made you to be homosexual”? Most definitely not!
People who commit the sin of homosexuality would often argue that they are born this way. That is a hopeless excuse! Notice in this passage, the sin of homosexuality was placed together with eight other sins. It shows that each of us has different sinful tendencies, and we are tempted differently. If we yield to the temptation, we end up sinning against God. One person may be easily tempted to steal whenever there is an opportunity to steal, but he has the responsibility to resist the temptation to steal. Another person may have no problem at all with stealing, but he is easily tempted to drink. Whenever he sees the bottle, he struggles hard to resist the temptation and sometimes ends up getting drunk.
Supposing one day, the thief says, “It is just too hard to keep up with the temptation not to steal, and in order to justify his habit of stealing, he says, “I am born this way, and therefore I can never change.” Or the drunkard says, “It is just too hard not to drink, and in order to justify his habit of drinking, he says, “I am born this way, and therefore I can never change.” Can they be absolved of all responsibility just by saying, “I am born this way”? Surely not! The same thing must then apply to all the rest in this list, including homosexuals.
There are those people who argue that homosexuality is not a sin, because it is genetic. Take a look at the list; fornication is a sin, idolatry is a sin, adultery is a sin, stealing is a sin, so are the covetous, drunkards, revilers, extortioners, they are all sins, but tucked in between them, homosexuality, and, “Well, that is not a sin, that is genetic!” Does it make any sense to you? The truth is that they are all sins!
- Nor thieves, nor covetous – Both relate to the same basic sin of greed. The covetous person desires that which belongs to someone else, while the thief takes it, either by deception, force, or by illegal means. In other words, one desires to have it, and the other actually takes it. We live in a time where there is stealing everywhere; some steal from shops, others steal from their income taxes, yet others steal funds, stationery and time, from their workplaces. The spectrum is so wide! The root problem is greed, and Christians should not be characterised by greed!
In this regard, we must remind ourselves not to steal from God, in our tithes and offerings, as Malachi 3:8 said, Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings.
- nor drunkards– To be a drunkard is to be affected by alcohol so much so that you are not yourself. When I was serving my National Service in Singapore, I had army buddies who were generally quite timid, and they were afraid of trouble, and kept to themselves most of the time. But the moment they started to drink alcohol, all of a sudden, they had the kind of false courage that would cause them to challenge others to fight and get themselves into all kinds of trouble. They were never like that when they were sober, they were not themselves, and we would always say, “That is alcohol guts!” The harm that alcohol does to individuals and to families is beyond what one can imagine.
- nor revilers– These are the people who destroy with their tongues; those who gossip, slander and abuse with their words. Some people think that this is not a very serious sin, after all, they are just words. But God considers this sin to be very serious because those words come from a heart that is full of hate, and they cause much pain and misery in the lives of those they attack.
- nor extortioners– These are the robbers who steal indirectly, or take advantage of others for their own financial gains.
Indeed, these were horrendous sins, but they were not unpardonable sins. How do we know? We will discuss that in our next pastoral chat!
In Christ,
Pastor Paul Cheng
(To be continued in the next pastoral chat)