Keeping the Past in the Past
7/10/25 Bible Thought (1 Corinthians 6)
The Christian life is a fascinating reality.
In salvation, we are made new, forgiven, cleansed, and called holy even if we still feel like the same old “me” at first.
At times this can be hard. Salvation, while changing our eternal destination, doesn’t automatically make the conquest of sin easy in this life. God does give us the power and the will to live a God-pleasing life (see Phil. 2:13) and yet, we’re not instantly delivered from all future temptation.
Because of this, sometimes the Christian life can be messy.
We see this so clearly in 1 Corinthians. As we read yesterday, this church was dealing with some major sin problems—a man was sleeping with his stepmother, and the church wasn’t doing anything about it!
Now, as we turn to 1 Corinthians 6, Paul criticizes the church’s inability or at the least their unwillingness to deal with sin.
Sin is serious. It’s not to be taken lightly. The apostle points out in no uncertain terms how important this subject is:
“Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, 10 nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor. 6:9-10).
Sin separates us from our Creator and persistent sin evidences that one isn’t born-again (see 1 Jn. 3:9) and thus bars them from the Kingdom. If my sin put Christ on the cross, I can’t entertain it or treat it passively.
Yet, in the midst of this, Paul issues this incredible message of hope.
“And such were some of you…” (1 Cor. 6:11).
After outlining all manner of sins that keep one from the Kingdom, Paul concludes that these are all past-tense realities for the believers in Corinth.
Now, Corinth was a city so infamous for sin that in those days, “to act the Corinthian” meant fornication.[1] But the church wasn’t supposed to live based off cultural norms. Formerly the church might’ve been filled with fornicators who lived that commonplace life, but not anymore!
If this was true even for the Corinthians who were renowned for their wickedness in that day, then certainly it ought to be true of the believer today, no matter what our culture will try and normalize.
We likewise live in a highly sexualized society where nearly nothing is considered out-of-bounds and much of it is celebrated in popular shows and movies. But the believer’s standard is never what is normal, but what God says.
The task for the Christian in the present is to live out the reality of our new life in union with Christ.
No matter how sinful or wretched we were in our past life, we’ve been washed, sanctified, and justified (1 Cor. 6:11) and our record of debts was nailed to His cross (Col. 2:14). We’ve been made new!
Now that we are God’s own possession (1 Cor. 6:20) we should strive to do everything in His honor.
Our bodies are made to be His temple—this knowledge alone should cause us to think about our actions! Paul says specifically that we ought to, “Flee sexual immorality” (1 Cor. 6:18) not to entertain it, flirt with it, or think about it, but to RUN!
We’re no longer dead in trespasses and sins but raised to new life in Christ and if we are made new in Christ, why would we let the old adamic nature try and rise up and run the show?
That’s who we used to be. The past is in the past.
We have new life in Christ—a life that is to be used in pursuit of Him and obedience to God.
Will we live like it?
[1] Clinton E. Arnold, Acts, ed. Clinton E. Arnold, vol. 2B of Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2002), 180.