Hebrews Lesson 152 March 19, 2009
NKJ Proverbs 3:6 In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall
direct your paths.
In our series now on Thursday nights
going through Hebrews, we’re focusing on Hebrews 9. We came to a key phrase
related to the Doctrine of Inheritance. So you don’t need to turn there because
we’re sort of stepping off from this one particular verse, which deals with
inheritance and the role of Christ’s work in terms of inheritance. In verse 15
of Hebrews 9 we read:
NKJ Hebrews 9:15 And for this reason He is the Mediator of the new covenant, by means of
death, for the redemption of the transgressions under the first covenant, that
those who are called
That is, those who are believers in
the Lord Jesus Christ.
may receive
the promise of the eternal inheritance.
So we’re looking at this Doctrine of
Inheritance because it is a concept, a doctrine that runs all the way through
Hebrews. That is because the primary message in the book of Hebrews is to
challenge these Jewish believers, and we believe that most of them were priests
(Levites who came out of the priestly ministry). They have been under
persecution, rejection and were threatening to fade back into living like they
did before they were saved. The pressure was too much. Christians face that
same pressure all the time; pressure to go with the flow, to fit in with the
culture around them, to fit in with everyone that they work with and not to
stand out in a distinct manner as being a believer in the Lord Jesus
Christ.
The more our culture drifts into
overt paganism, the more Christians will stand out because we are different.
That is going to be obvious. It’ll be obvious to them than you realize. So it’s
incumbent upon us to be steadfast and to persevere and not to give up, and not
to fade out just because things get a little bit difficult or it seems like
we’re under rejection or persecution. People think we’re strange or odd. “There’s
that Jesus person over there,” or whatever it may be.
We all face different kinds of
negative attacks on Christianity; and we’re going to
see that more and more. So there is a tremendous parallel there.
What the writer of Hebrews is doing
to motivate them is to focus their attention on the end game, which is that
inheritance that we’re engaged in spiritual growth today in our lives not just
for the sake of having a happier life today or a more meaningful life today. The
20th century gospel became so psychologized. You hear this so much
when people present Christianity: come to Jesus so that your problems will be
solved, come to Jesus so that you can have a happier life, come to Jesus to
solve the problems in your marriage. But the problem is that a lot of people
get saved and their marriage problems don’t get solved. They’re not any happier
in some sense because of decisions they have made in life. Their circumstances
don’t change.
Many things like that don’t change
because Jesus isn’t a cure all in that sense. He’s not a psychological fixit
man. He is the one who died on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins and so
only by trusting in Him can we have eternal life - number 1. And number 2, only
by growing as a believer afterwards can we have the mental tools, the mental
discipline, the mental ammunition, the spiritual ammunition as it were to
handle the pressures of the spiritual warfare that we’re engaged in.
If we don’t keep our minds on the
endgame at times (living today in the light of eternity) then it’s easy to just
let the circumstances of life roll over us. So as we’ve gone through the
Doctrine of Inheritance talking about what it is, what the words mean, what
inheriting means.
Before the conference I was looking
at the different phrases that we have in the New Testament. Inheriting eternal
life, which is a phrase that refers I believe to phase one justification, phase
one salvation.
Then we have this other term that we
find in the New Testament “inheriting the kingdom.” There’s a problem with this
phrase because a lot of people want to read this as meaning the same thing as
“inheriting eternal life”: that inheriting the kingdom means entering the
kingdom or going to heaven. This has caused some tremendous problems.
Now last week when I first came down
with this staff infection, or whatever it was and couldn’t make it in, it was a
tremendous opportunity because Dan Ingram was here. Dan did a tremendous job
last week, a very well organized presentation on 1 Corinthians 6. He had done a
paper on that last year at the Chafer Conference. This actually grew out of a
paper that he wrote. I think it was his 3rd year in seminary back
almost 10 years ago. Maybe it was ten years ago. It was the first year or two
that I was in Connecticut and mentoring him as he was going through the
seminary classes. He was needing to write a paper on a
problem passage in Corinthians.
I said, “Hey Dan, this would be a
great passage for you to write a paper on.”
And he did. I thought he did a
tremendous job on it. He got a good grade on it even though the professor didn’t
agree with his position. That’s the objectivity you have to have as a good
seminary professor. You grade on how well a student argues their position,
documents their position (footnotes, research) writes that kind of a thing even
though you may not agree with where they go with certain things or how they
handle certain things. But he did a great job with it. I had wanted him and encouraged him to
tighten it up and really improve it. Hopefully he can get that published in the
Chafer Journal. So he did a great job last time, but he didn’t quite put some
extra things in there that he didn’t quite get to last time, especially related
to verse 11.
So I want to go back and pick up
that part and tie some loose ends together. So if you will, open your Bibles to
1 Corinthians 6:9-11.
If you weren’t here last time, let
me just read the verses for you. This is one of those set of verses. There is a
similar statement in Galatians 5 that we’ll also look at tonight that seems to
say and that many people interpret, many pastors, theologians. Some of your
study Bibles will interpret it that way in their study notes and seem to say
that if Christians practice these things or these sins they’re not saved.
So the verses read like this:
NKJ 1 Corinthians 6:9 Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit
the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor
adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites,
10 nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners
will inherit the kingdom of God.
11 And
such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit
of our God.
So Dan did a great job getting
through verses 9 and 10 and down into but I don’t think he quite nailed 11. He
may have, but I want to review that a little bit.
So what does it mean to "inherit
the kingdom?" In terms of inheritance, we’ve seen that there’s this word
group of inheritance related to the Greek word kleronomos. We asked the question: what does it mean to be an heir?
An heir is someone who’s designated as an heir who receives something as a
possession or beneficiary. It’s not necessary we’ve seen for a person to die
for someone to receive an inheritance. That’s how we normally think of as
inheritance. Somebody dies. In their will they’ve left certain amount of money
or property, valuables to their children or grandchildren. So that’s the
designated heir.
But in the Bible, the concept, the
core idea in inheritance is possession. God gives Israel the land as an
inheritance. Now nobody dies so that they can receive it. That’s the point I’m
getting to here. The core meaning isn’t death and passing on something. The
core idea is ownership and possession.
So an heir is one who receives the
allotted possession also by right of sonship. Now that enters into one category
of heirship in relationship to Christ’s heirship as the Son of God. It’s used
of those who as sons of God, those who are born again, adopted into the royal
family of God inherit the privileges of the Messianic Kingdom. So that’s the
idea in the noun "heir".
Then we have the term inheritance. Inheritance
again emphasizes possession, property received by a possession. When it relates
to the Messianic Kingdom, the idea of the possession of the Messianic Kingdom
and its blessings so that has an inheritance in the kingdom has ownership in
the kingdom not just being present in the kingdom. In the Old Testament if you
look at how these words are used in relation to the Promised Land, every Israelite
had an ownership in the land. They had land that they would pass on from
generation to generation, land that would stay within the tribal allotment. So
they had that ownership.
But there were certain groups of
people who lived in the land who did not have ownership of land. The Levites
had no inheritance in the land, yet they lived in the cities and they were
responsible for ministering to everybody in the nation. Aliens (That is
non-Jews, Gentiles) who came into the land did not have inheritance rights in
the land. They could not own the land. But they could benefit from the
blessings of living in Israel, blessing by association. So these are ideas that
we have to keep in mind when we read inheritance terminology in the New
Testament.
Passages such as Ephesians 5:5:
KJ Ephesians 5:5 For this you know, that no fornicator, unclean person, nor covetous man,
who is an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.
See that’s that same idea that we
have in the 1 Corinthians 6 passage that sin really does have consequences. As
believers, sin is dealt with. It’s forgiven at the cross. We’ve studied that;
that it’s wiped out. The debt is cancelled for every single person at the
instant that Christ died on the cross. It wiped out the sin penalty in terms of
that legal objective penalty accessed by the Supreme Court of Heaven.
But in terms of the consequences of
the sin penalty as it was enacted in Adam back when Adam first fell. When that
sin penalty was enacted in him the result was that he died spiritually. He was separated
from God and as a result all of his posterity, all the descendents of Adam, are
born spiritually dead. He received a sin nature at the time that he died. At
the time that he sinned, he died spiritually and received the sin nature. That
sin nature is passed on to each subsequent generation so we not only have the
problem of a legal penalty that was paid for by Christ on the cross, but we
have two problems that are related to how we’re born. One is that we’re born
with a sin nature and we’re born spiritually dead, therefore unrighteous, and
we’re spiritually dead. Those two problems are only resolved when we trust
Christ as our Savior.
The imputation of His righteousness
solves the problem of our lack of righteousness. Then we are made alive again
in Christ. We’re regenerated. That solves the second problem. This is the way
in which salvation is applied to all of us.
So we all have certain things held
equally as believers. We’ll all die. We will receive a resurrection body. We’ll
spend eternity with the Lord with no more sorrow, no more tears, no more pain. The old things have passed away.
But there are also going to be some
differences. Those differences indicate that we’re all given the same
opportunities. (This is a great application for capitalism) We’re all given the
same opportunities at the point of salvation. We’re all given the same
spiritual assets. Every one of us is blessed with every spiritual blessing in
the heavenlies. We are given the completed canon of Scripture, the indwelling
Holy Spirit, the filling of the Holy Spirit, spiritual gifts. We’re given all of these assets. But it
is up to us to decide how we’re going to use them.
So God gives us equal opportunity,
but what we choose to do with it means that there are going to be different
results. There are some who are going to come to the Judgment Seat of Christ;
and because they have walked by the Spirit, been obedient to the Lord, studied
the Word, applied the Word, God the Holy Spirit is going to produce tremendous
works in them and they are going to reap tremendous rewards. Others are not
going to use their volition to study the Word and to grow spiritually and
they’re going to have different results. There are some that are going to
appear at the Judgment Seat of Christ, according to 1 Corinthians 3, and they
are going to lose rewards. These rewards are not going to be distributed. They’re
not going to be given to them. So they’re not going to have those rewards. Eventually
as we’ll see those rewards that are not distributed are going to be destroyed. God
gives everybody equal opportunity, but your volition determines what the
outcome is going to be.
See that’s what’s true of a free
enterprise system. In capitalism the idea is that everybody under law should
have the freedom not being restrained by government interference so that they
have the freedom to make the most out of everything that they’ve been given.
But there are always going to be inequalities in terms of results. Now when
people come in and try to guarantee equality of results, which is what happens
in Marxism and socialism, you end up destroying individual responsibility and
individual accountability and individual incentive to do anything. That is what
is so evil about socialism and Marxism is it destroys motivation and it
destroys incentive.
When you come to the Scriptures and
look at the whole doctrine of rewards and inheritance, you realize that what
God is laying out here is a tremendous incentive plan for us.
Don’t just sit back and say, “Oh,
I’m just glad that I’m going to end up in heaven.”
And I’ve heard people say that, and I
just cringe. They say, “I’d rather be in the ghettos of heaven - as long as I’m
there.”
No, that’s not how you’re going to
feel if you end up with nothing at the Judgment Seat of Christ and you’re just
living down in the ghettos of heaven. That’s not going to work. You’ll be there.
That’s right. But there will be differences because you failed to utilize the
assets that God gave you.
Colossian 3:23-5 states the same
kind of principle.
NKJ Colossians 3:23 And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men,
See, the command is addressed to our
volition. It’s based on knowledge of something – because you know. Most
your English translations will translate that as a participle – just
knowing. But it is a causal adverbial participle there.
NKJ Colossians 3:24 knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward
of the inheritance;
See it’s a reward. A reward is given
for what you do. A gift is given that is unrelated to what you do. Salvation is
a gift, but inheritance is a reward.
for you
serve the Lord Christ.
NKJ Colossians 3:25 But he who does wrong will be repaid for what he has
done, and there is no partiality.
There’s that word adikeo. I picked up the last part of
Dan’s slides, and he didn’t have the English in here. That word adikeo is a key word for understanding 1
Corinthians 6. We’ll go back and review that in just a minute. Remember it’s
those who practice…
NKJ 1 Corinthians 6:9 Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit
the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor
adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites,
The noun unrighteous is adike. The verb form is adikeo. So it’s important. That’s a key
word for understanding 1 Corinthians 6. So the one who is doing wrong is the
same as the unrighteous. It’s an unrighteous believer. As he explained last
week, that is an adjective over there in 1 Corinthians 6 whereas here we have
the verb form.
NKJ Colossians 3:25 But he who does wrong will be repaid for what he has
done, and there is no partiality.
See there will be consequences at
the Judgment Seat of Christ for sin in the life of the believer. Now this
really helps us understand something that has plagued Christianity ever since
the beginning, probably from the Day of Pentecost. Christians haven’t known
what to do with sin after they’re saved. We get this idealism that comes in
that somehow if you were really regenerated, you wouldn’t act like that. And
we’ve all run into people like that. We’ve maybe even said stuff like that: “How
in the world can that person be a Christian? Look at what they’ve done.”
What’s implicit in that kind of a
statement is the idea that somehow if we’re born again or regenerated that does
something to limit the production of the sin nature so Christians just can’t do
certain things after salvation that unbelievers do. But that’s just not true. The
Scripture is filled with examples of that. We looked at David and his adultery
and murder. We go to Saul and all of his deceptiveness. We looked at his
attempts to murder David. We looked at Abraham and the way he lied and many of the other sins committed in Abraham’s life.
We see that believers throughout the ages are presented in Scripture warts and
all. We still sin. So there has been this problem. The
solution has been, as we’ll see in a minute, is we either say that somebody is
not really saved (because if they were, they wouldn’t act like that) or they
lost their salvation. The third option is the one we hold to and that is you
can still act like an unbeliever; but if you do there are consequences both in
time (God will discipline you.) or in eternity there will be a loss of rewards
at the Judgment Seat of Christ.
Now Paul uses inheritance in 5
different passages in the New Testament. Three of these refer to salvation. In
Galatians 3:18 and Ephesians 1:14, 18 where he talks about the Holy Spirit
being given to us as a pledge or seal of our salvation. Then two of these refer
to rewards. These are 5 other passages than the Corinthian one - Ephesians 5:5
and Colossians 3:24 where it’s based on the actions of the individual.
Now when we get to the concept of
inheriting the kingdom. Notice that we haven’t found any where in any of these
descriptions of the verb that has definition to enter. Nowhere does inheriting
mean to enter. It means possession. It means to acquire. It means to own, but
it doesn’t mean to enter or to receive.
The phrase inheriting the kingdom is
used 4 times in the New Testament and we’ll look at these – Galatians 5:
16-21, I Corinthians 15:50 and I Corinthians 6:9-11 where it’s used twice.
In I Corinthians 15:35, 50 we read:
NKJ 1 Corinthians 15:35 But someone will say, "How are the dead raised up? And with what
body do they come?"
The answer is given in verse 50.
NKJ 1 Corinthians 15:50 Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot
inherit the kingdom of God; nor does corruption inherit incorruption.
In this passage it’s talking about
the fact that mortal life (mortal bodies) cannot have ownership in the kingdom
of God. So there has to be a resurrection body before there’s going to be that
inheritance of the kingdom.
In 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, the adjective
adikos refers to unrighteous
believers. Now I’ve got some slides I’m going to go to in a minute that are
mine that are going to make this a little more clear in terms of our review.
But this is really important to understand. This is an adjective.
Now an adjective does what? It describes
the quality of a noun. Actually originally adjectives were nouns. Sometimes
these get misidentified as nouns and they have the same ending. The Greeks
originated our categories for understanding grammar by the way. Their
definition was an adjective was a noun that described the quality of another
noun. So when we look at this passage in 1 Corinthians 6:1 where Paul writes:
NKJ 1 Corinthians 6:1 Dare any of you, having a matter against another, go
to law before the unrighteous, and not before the saints?
That’s an adjective again. The
unrighteous what? Unrighteous judges, unrighteous leaders of
the community, unrighteous believers, unrighteous unbelievers? What are
they? It just says unrighteous. It doesn’t give a noun that it modifies. There
it becomes obvious that the unrighteous are unbelievers because of what is
stated down in verse 6.
NKJ 1 Corinthians 6:6 But brother goes to law against brother, and that before unbelievers!
There you use the term apistoi, which is the word that Paul
always uses for unbelievers. So unrighteous is not a term that necessarily
means unbelievers.
Then when you get down in verse 9:
NKJ 1 Corinthians 6:9 Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit
the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor
adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites,
The unrighteous what? There you also
have a problem with the article. I’ll get to that in a minute. So to inherit
one must be an heir. That means there has to be sonship there, adoption. Inheritance
is a possession received as a share or an allotment.
Last, to inherit means to receive a
portion or allotment. It’s just summarizing what said so far. We also know:
Now the problem that we run into in
all these passages is simply the problem of post-salvation sin.
People handle this passage by
saying, “Well, he’s talking about unbelievers here who aren’t saved.” Actually
what is here is that these would describe people who thought they were
believers; but it’s obvious because they continue in these sins that they’re
not really saved. So it’s not that they loose salvation; they just never had
it.
Then the second position that’s
taken is the Arminian position, the position that you can loose your salvation
if you commit certain sins. To me the basic logic problem with that is that
this is saying that God’s grace is not big enough to handle certain sins or
that God didn’t know that your were going to commit certain sins so Christ
wasn’t judged for them. Somehow He didn’t pay it all on the cross; He only paid
some of it. There are a number of passages that we can go to on eternal
security, but we can do that another time.
The third position is that of
believers loosing rewards in eternity. Then there are some people that come
along and try to say that this passage is written to believers about
unbelievers, but that really doesn’t work.
Now I’m going to skip ahead here to get
into the passage directly. “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not
inherit the kingdom of God?” We have to identify the unrighteous before we can
understand the concept of inheriting the kingdom. So who are the unrighteous?
That’s the first question. The second question is going to be “to inherit the
kingdom.”
Now we have to remember the Paul is
writing to the Corinthians. There’s a map showing you where Corinth was located
– right there on the Isthmus of Corinth going from the Peloponnese to
Achaia in Greece. This was a major seaport city so it had all of the detritus
from the Greek and Roman Empires ending up there. It was a place of retirement for soldiers. You could find
almost every kind of perverted fertility religion in the neighborhood: for
example, just north in Delphi across the peninsula and much other behavior. So
the people who were saved there came out of a pretty rank, immoral context
where the virtues of the Christian life were not embedded within the culture at
all. There’s a picture taken from Corinth looking north, across the isthmus
over toward Achaia. You can see these mountain over
here. This is where the Oracle of Delphi was located.
Even within the epistle we see that
the Corinthians were divisive; they were fractious – 1 Corinthians 1. They
are totally enthralled by Greek pagan philosophers rather than the wisdom of the
Word of God. Paul talks to them as carnal. They are filled with jealousy and
strife – 1 Corinthians 3. They were filled with their own self-importance
in chapter 4. He accused them of boasting in chapter 1, chapter 3, and chapter
4. They are arrogant in chapter 3, chapter 4. They are licentious and morally
permissive. They are sexually immoral - chapter 7. They are gluttonous
drunkards in chapter 11. They are self-absorbed and pagan in view of the
spiritual gifts in chapters 12 through 14. This is a lovely lot of people.
Okay? This is the poster church for doing everything wrong.
We have to understand that because
when Paul talks to them about this kind of behavior, it’s there in the church. That’s
what he’s talking to them about. He’s going to tell them that if they continue,
then they’re going to forfeit their inheritance. So the concept of adikos as we’ll see doesn’t mean unsaved
which is what some people want it to mean. It simply means unrighteousness, not
behaving according to the righteous standard of God.
Now we looked at this word. This is
critical to understand the passage. Dan did a great job with this last
week.
NKJ 1 Corinthians 6:1 Dare any of you, having a matter against another, go
to law before the unrighteous, and not before the saints?
The article is there in the Greek. Now
that’s an important point to understand because when you get to verse 9 we
read:
NKJ 1 Corinthians 6:9 Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit
the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor
adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites,
Notice how I italicized the “the”
– because the article’s not there in the original. Now in Greek the
article doesn’t function like an English article does. When you take out the article,
it doesn’t mean the noun’s not definite. But it means you are emphasizing the
quality of the noun. So what we’re emphasizing here is quality and
behavior.
When you look at verse 9 in context,
what Paul is saying is, “Do you not know that unrighteous something will not
inherit the kingdom of God?” Unrighteous behavior, unrighteous acts –
something like that is what he is talking about, not unsaved people, but people
who continue in unrighteous deeds.
You have to interpret verse 9 in
light of its preceding verse where Paul says:
NKJ 1 Corinthians 6:8 No, you yourselves do wrong and cheat,
This is the verb form adikeo, which is the cognate to the
adjective unrighteous, adikos.
and you do these things to your brethren!
So, that’s showing that Paul is
accusing them all of doing this. That’s a plural "you" there. Now
that’s another thing that’s important here. He’s talking to the congregation as
a whole. When he does, he uses that plural.
Now Jody Dillow in his work The Reign of the Servant Kings (which is
one of the best thorough studies on inheritance) writes concerning this:
The phrase in verse 9 is not the
same as the term “the wicked” in verse 1. In verse 1 the adjective has the
article and it is definite, referring to a class. But in verse 9, it’s without
the article. The articular construction emphasizes identity that the anarthrous
construction emphasizes character.
…which is
what I’ve just said. I’m just putting this up here because every now and then
someone says, “Well, are you just making this up?” No, I’m not the only one out
there teaching this.
Because the
same word is used twice (he says) once with the article and once without it, it
may be justifiable to press for this standard grammatical distinction here. If so, then the adikos of verse 9 are not the wicked or the unsaved or wicked
unbelievers of verse 1. They are
not of the definite class of people who are non-Christians. Rather as to their
behavior traits; they are behaving in an unrighteous
manner or character.
In other words the use of the wicked
in verse 1 signifies being; but the use of wicked in verse 9 (unrighteous) signifies
not being, but doing. And that was their problem.
Christians who are who are born into
the family of God can still be disobedient children. If you’re disobedient
children, it’s going to have an impact and a consequence on inheritance.
So what Paul is saying is (to give a
corrected translation):
Do you not know that unrighteous behavior will not inherit the kingdom
of God? Don’t be deceived, neither fornicators nor idolaters nor adulterers nor
homosexuals…
That’s like the big 4 overt sins.
Nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous.
Now you get down to thieves and a
lot of people sit rather smugly in church thinking, “Well I’m not doing any of
those.”
But covetous is a different matter. Remember
it was that Tenth Commandment (Thou shalt not covet) that is what really
convicted the Apostle Paul. Here he was trying so hard to keep al the Mosaic
Law and in Romans 7 he describes the fact that when he came to the particular
Tenth Commandment (Thou shall not covet.), he realized he could not stop
coveting on his own. It was impossible. This mental attitude sin of wanting
that which is not ours, wanting something that’s not our right to have is just
something that runs through every single one of us. He knew at that point that
he could never completely fulfill the Mosaic Law.
NKJ 1 Corinthians 6:10 nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor
revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.
Then verse 11:
NKJ 1 Corinthians 6:11 And such were some of you.
Now I like this passage because this
is a fun verse to deal with. Most people mistranslate this. The way you’ve been
taught to read this verse is wrong. So when I get into this you might have to
turn your head sideways to reorient your thinking just a little bit.
But you were
washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in
the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.
Now the way most people read verse
11 is they say, “Paul is saying to this group of Corinthians, ‘Such were some
of you.’” What he’s saying is: Some of you were good people, but some of you
were pretty perverse in behavior. So some of you were perverse in your
behavior, but some of you were fairly moral. But remember what he said about
all these Corinthians? What he said about all these Corinthians is they’re all
perverted and immoral and arrogant and boastful and carnal. He’s not saying
that some of them are bad and the rest of them are really good. He’s saying,
“No, they were all carnal.”
Now he says:
NKJ 1 Corinthians 6:11 And such were some of you.
Past tense on
the verb.
But you were
washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in
the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.
Now it’s important to look at this
phrase “some of you.” Now you don’t see this in the English, but that “you” is
a plural. Paul was from south Turkey down there in Tarsus so he liked to use
y’all. He’s talking to you all: such were some of you all. So “you all”
includes the whole congregation all the way through 1 Corinthians. From chapter
1 up through this point he talks to the congregation with a plural
pronoun.
He says, “You all are the temple of
God.”
That’s not saying that the congregation
as a whole is a temple. He’s talking about individuals, but he addressing every
individual within the corporate body. So the "you all" always refers
to all the individuals within the corporate body. But then he says there are
some. “Some of you” describes a subset. Some of you
were like this – past tense. The rest of you still are. Isn’t that what
he said in verse 8? No.
NKJ 1 Corinthians 6:8 No, you yourselves do wrong
…present
tense
and cheat,
and you do these things to your brethren!
… present
tense. See, what he’s saying is some of you were perverted, the rest of you
still are perverted. He not saying, “Some of you were good, and some of you
were bad. Most you were pretty moral.”
He’s saying, “No, you are all immoral
or you are all perverse. But some of you have grown spiritually out of that. But
most of you are still acting just like you did when you were an
unbeliever.”
Now the way most people look at this
is that “you all” are the unbelievers and some simply refers to believers. But
what I’m saying is the “you all” are the believers and the some are the
spiritually growing believers.
So we can translate it this
way.
Such were some of you all, but you all were washed.
See some of you got passed it, and
you’re beginning to grow spiritually. The rest of you are a bunch of perverted
arrogant carnal Christians. But all of you were washed, positional cleansing at
phase 1 salvation. All of you were sanctified: positional sanctification
– phase 1. You all were justified. He’s addressing the whole congregation
as a congregation of believers. They’re all saved; they’re all justified; but
only some of them are living differently than they did before they were saved.
So in summary, the adikos in verse 9 doesn’t refer to an
unbeliever. Unrighteous doesn’t mean unbeliever. It’s an adjective referring to
behavior. It’s linked to wrong doing in verse 8. The
context is addressing believers all the way through. Since only believers are
heirs of God verses 9 through 10 the inheritance is based on human action. In
other words after you’re saved, you have a decision to make. Are you going to
pursue spiritual growth and maturity so that you can have a reward at the
Judgment Seat of Christ and be the kind of person the Lord saved you to be, so
that you can rule and reign with Him in the coming kingdom? That provides our
motivation.
Now this isn’t the only place that
we have this kind of teaching in the New Testament. We have places such as
Titus 3:7.
NKJ Titus 3:7 that having been justified
What kind of a tense is that? That’s
past tense – phase 1 salvation.
by His
grace we should become
Process!
heirs
according to the hope of eternal life.
So “heirs according to the hope of
eternal life” means that we have eternal life; but we are heirs in accordance
with that confident expectation of a future life. To put it in the phrase I use
all the time – living today in the light of eternity so that’s potential
there. The subjunctive voice there indicates potentiality. That potential is
going to be activated only by your volition.
NKJ Galatians 3:18 For if the inheritance is of the
law, it is no longer of promise; but
God gave it to Abraham by promise.
A passage I used earlier:
NKJ Ephesians 5:5 For this you know, that no fornicator, unclean person, nor covetous man,
who is an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.
NKJ Colossians 3:23 And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men,
NKJ Colossians 3:24 knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the
inheritance; for you serve the Lord Christ.
Then verse 25:
NKJ Colossians 3:25 But he who does wrong
Adikeo - there’s that same terminology
again that we have back in 1 Corinthians 6.
The wrongdoer, the one who lives unrighteously…
will be
repaid for what he has done, and there is no partiality.
This isn’t Lake of Fire. This is
loss of rewards at the Judgment Seat of Christ.
What is the solution? The solution
is to walk by means of the Spirit. Walk by means of the Spirit Paul says in
Galatians 5:16:
NKJ Galatians 5:16 I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not
fulfill
Or bring to completion
the lust of the flesh.
These are mutually exclusive ways of
living – either by means of the Spirit or by means of the sin nature. The
way this is expressed in the Greek, the “you shall not fulfill” is the
strongest way to make a negative statement. What Paul is saying is it’s
impossible when you’re walking by the Spirit to fulfill the lusts of the flesh.
If you were hindered in some way where you couldn’t walk on your own, you had
to use a walker or a cane. As long as you’re walking with a cane, walking by the
walker, you wouldn’t fall down. But if you stop depending, focusing on that
walker or that cane, what’s going to happen? You’re going to fall down as a
result of that. The sin comes after you take your focus off of Christ.
Peter could walk on the water as
long as he focused on Christ. But when he took his eyes off of Christ, when he
quit walking by means of focusing on Christ, what happened? The result was he
began to sink. That’s the idea. The default position for everyone of us is the
sin nature. If we quit conscientiously focusing on Christ, then the sin nature
takes over.
Now the results of that are obvious
in verses 19 and 20.
NKJ Galatians 5:19 Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication,
uncleanness, lewdness,
NKJ Galatians 5:20 idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies,
outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies,
Have you seen a list like that
before? Same thing we had in
Ephesians 5, same thing we had in 1 Corinthians 6.
NKJ Galatians 5:21 envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like;
of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who
What?
practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
It doesn’t say they’re not saved. It
says that if you practice these things (prasso)
– it’s not just if you do them: if you lied, if you got angry, if you
went out and had an incident where you got drunk, or you were jealous or lost
your temper. It’s not talking about individual actions. It’s talking about if
you’ve never as a believer focusing on growing and applying doctrine in your
areas of weakness and your sin nature and you continue to practice and justify
that sin and not deal with it; then you will not inherit the kingdom of God.
Now we have another place in the New
Testament where we have a very similar list. This is over in Revelation 21:8.
NKJ Revelation 21:8 "But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually
immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake
which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death."
Now the way most people read that
verse is to say, “Well, this is a listing of adjectives (adverbs, adjectives)
describing unbelievers and unbelievers will have their role, their destiny in
the lake that burns with fire which is the second death.”
That’s how that’s read. That’s not
what it’s saying. That’s not what that means. It’s the same list we’ve been
looking at already, isn’t it? So it’s saying that those who practice these
things. To look at the context you have to go back to verse 6.
NKJ Revelation 20:6 Blessed and holy is
he who has part in the first resurrection. Over such the second death has
no power,
Now what’s the second death? The
second death is eternity in the Lake of Fire.
but they
shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand
years.
Who are they? Those
who have a part in the first resurrection. Now we have to figure out
what the word “part” means,
It’s talking about ruling and
reigning as priest-kings with the Lord Jesus Christ in the Millennial
Kingdom.
Well, what does that word “part”
mean? See we think of that word part like getting a part in a play, getting a
part in some sort of production, having a role. But that’s not what this Greek word means. The Greek word is meros. Meros is a technical term for a share or portion of an inheritance.
It was used in a will to show that share or portion that went to the heir. So
when the prodigal son wants to get his inheritance and take off and spend it on
whatever he wanted to spend it on, he came to his father and said, “Give me my meros. Give me my portion. Give me my
inheritance. Give me my share of inheritance.”
So what Revelation 20:6 says if we
retranslate it:
Blessed and holy is he who has an inheritance in the first resurrection.
When do you get that? Judgment Seat of Christ
Over such
That is over those who have an
inheritance,
The second death has no power.
Wait a minute! If we’re believers,
what kind of power can the Lake of Fire have over us anyway? Am I still threatened
by the Lake of Fire? No. You have to pay very close attention here.
The second death is not something
someone (an heir) should worry about.
But
they
That is the heirs.
Shall
be priests of God shall reign with Him a thousand years.
So what are we talking about in
verse 6? I didn’t put the slide in here for verse 7, so I’m going to turn there
and read it to you because it sets the context. It is very important to make sure we
have the context.
NKJ Revelation 20:6 Blessed and holy is he who
has part in the first resurrection. Over such the second death has no power,
but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a
thousand years.
Then when you go to 21 we read:
NKJ Revelation 21:8 "But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually
immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake
which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death."
But if you look at 21:7, 21:7 says:
NKJ Revelation 21:7 "He who overcomes shall inherit all things, and I will be his God
and he shall be My son
If you notice in your English Bible
there is probably a period at the end of verse 7. Verse 7 and verse 8 are one
sentence in the Greek.
NKJ Revelation 21:8 "But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable,
murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have
their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second
death."
What we see is those who are not
overcomers (the cowardly, unbelieving, etc.) Their inheritance goes to the Lake
of Fire. That’s what those two verses are saying.
So verse 7 makes it clear we’re talking
about inheritance here. We’re not talking about salvation. Verse 7 says:
NKJ Revelation 21:7 "He who overcomes shall inherit all things, and I will be his God
and he shall be My son
NKJ Revelation 21:8 "But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable,
murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have
their part
…their inheritance. Think of
that word part. It’s not their role. It’s not their destiny. It’s their
inheritance, that which God would have given them at the Judgment Seat of
Christ is not going to be given to them; but it’s just sitting there. So what’s
God going to do? Well, God is going to flush it into the cosmic furnace and
destroy it according to this verse. Their part, their inheritance, their share
of the inheritance is…
in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which
is the second death."
That’s how the Lake of Fire can have
power over a failed believer’s life because that’s where his inheritance will
end up. He won’t end up there, but his inheritance will end up there. He
sacrifices it forever because of living today on the basis of temporal pleasure
rather than living in light of eternity. Revelation 20:8 talks about the loss
of that inheritance portion. It goes to the Lake of Fire, which is the second
death.
So the inheritance is lost. But the
promise that we have in Revelation 21:4:
NKJ Revelation 21:4 "And God will wipe away every tear from their
eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no
more pain, for the former things have passed away."
There will be shame at the Judgment
Seat of Christ for those who lose rewards, but they will get passed that and be
in the kingdom but not have ownership in the kingdom.
Now, what else does the Bible say
about this thing called inheritance, this meros?
We’ll have to come back to that next time because that is very important. We’ll get into a very crucial passage
that is also misunderstood and then we’ll kind of wrap this up and then apply
it to what the writer of Hebrews is saying in Hebrews 9.
Let’s bow our heads in closing
prayer.