Inheriting the Kingdom
Romans 8:13-17
We are in Romans, chapter
8. I just want to remind you of a little thing I did last week. I
pointed out some of the rather odd errors of translations that have cropped up
in some different Bibles over the years. One was the Unrighteous bible
which I mentioned last time from 1 Corinthians 6:9. We're going to look at
this passage in depth so this is why I want to remind you. It was called
the Unrighteous bible.
It should be translated, “Do you not
know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?” This was a
King James Version published by Cambridge Press in 1653. They left out the
word “not” so it read, “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall inherit the
kingdom of God?” Now that wouldn't actually be a surprise because we tend
to expect that the unrighteous, because they're unbelievers, won't inherit
the kingdom. Now why would that be something Paul would point out to
people? This is to the Corinthians and this is a difficult
passage. People think that inheriting the kingdom means to be
saved. Don't you think people would understand that the unrighteous aren't
going to get to heaven? So if Paul meant the unrighteous aren't going to
be in heaven, why would he need to say that?
That's because, what he's actually
saying here, isn't something so obvious. The unrighteous is not a synonym
for unbeliever. It can refer to believers who are walking according to the
sin nature. Now as we were looking at our study in Romans 8, we came to
this verse in Romans 8: 16 and 17. “The Spirit Himself bears witness
[testifies] with our spirit that we are children of God and if children, then
heirs, heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ...” I pointed out that
there's an interpretation that's made in the translation of that verse that
impacts how most translations punctuate the verse. Most translations
punctuate it without putting a comma after “God” so that “heirs of God and
joint heirs with Christ” make it appear to be synonymous terms. In actuality,
they're not, as I pointed out last time, because if it were then it makes all
children heirs and heirship is qualified by suffering with Christ. That
would mean that inheritance would be a work. Inheritance would be based on
something you do, suffering for Christ. It wouldn't be based on faith; it
wouldn't be a gift.
This was the tenth point I made last
time. I went through a whole series of about thirteen or fourteen points
on inheritance. The tenth point was understanding
the problem that some passages speak of inheritance as a gift. We do
receive some inheritance as part of the salvation package the instant we're
saved. But there are other passages which speak
of inheritance as a reward. A gift is something that is freely
given. A reward is for something that is done; a reward is
earned. Someone does something well and they receive a reward or a
prize.
If it turns out that they have
cheated in the contest, then they run the risk of losing the award, which is
the case of Lance Armstrong, a sad case.
Interesting, I was listening to
someone on the radio the other day talking about this. I had always
wondered who should have gotten the prizes in all those Tour de France contests
that he raced in. He won. Why didn't we hear of the second place or
third place? Apparently, I may be wrong, I'm just repeating what I heard
on the radio, but most of the ones who got second or third place were also
doping. So everybody was doping so nobody wins.
So a gift is free but a prize or an
award for an inheritance is something that is earned. It's something that
is worked for. That's important to pay attention in the passage we're
going to look at tonight. So we see these passages like Ephesians
5:5. It says, “For this you know with certainty, that no immoral or impure
person or covetous man, who is an idolater, has an inheritance in the kingdom
of Christ and God.” That's an important passage because it adds the
concept of Christ or God to the kingdom concept which
specifically focuses on the Millennial kingdom. But that would mean that
to inherit the kingdom of God the inheritance is based on something you
do.
Just three chapters earlier in
Ephesians 2:8 and 9, Paul said, “For by grace you have been saved through faith
and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, lest any
man should boast.” So in Ephesians 2 he says salvation is a gift and it’s
free and it's not works. Then we get over to Ephesians 5:5 and inheritance
in the kingdom is based on behavior, it's based on character, it's based on
something other than grace. So we have a conflict here if inheriting the
kingdom is a synonym for entering the kingdom or in other words, entering
heaven.
Galatians 5:19 is another of those
passages that gives us a grocery list of sins, “Now the deeds of the flesh are
evident...” The flesh is a term for our sin nature. It's the Greek
word sarx. Now there are
adverbs and adjectives built on that such as sarkikos,
which means fleshly, also translated carnal or carnality. “Now the deeds
of the flesh are evident.” Then we have this list. It involves
fornication, uncleanness, lewdness. The first
four are all related to some sort of sexual sins. Then we have sins
related to God: idolatry, sorcery or pharmakeia
which had to do with using various hallucinogenic drugs to create an encounter
through some sort of mystical experience with a false god, so that relates to
idolatry in a way.
Then we have interpersonal sins,
which I want you to pay attention to these; we're going to hit them again in a
few minutes. They are hatred, contentions, always bickering and fussing with
each other in the context of a congregation. Jealousies. We don't
have this in this congregation that I'm aware of but there are some
congregations that are so loaded with cliques or groups or individuals that
really seek to have some sort of power base in a congregation. I don't
know why anybody thinks that having a position of power in a church is
something worth having but some people do. That's the idea of
contentiousness and jealousies, jockeying for position or power, approbation in
a local church.
Outbursts of wrath: This isn't
just someone who gets irritated or losing his temper on occasion. This is
a characteristic where a person is just always reacting in incredible anger, no
self-control whatsoever in terms of anger. Selfish ambitions: Dissensions
or always stirring up trouble. Heresies: always running after some new
doctrine. Envy, which is the counterpart of jealousy. Murder, revelries and the like. Paul says, “...just as
I told you beforehand that those who practice such things will not inherit the
kingdom of God.” It doesn't say in the Greek, “those who do such things”,
that would be the Greek word poieo,
but those who practice prasso.
So this refers to a lifestyle of
someone who has become a believer. This wouldn't make sense if these
people weren't really believers because you expect someone who lives this
lifestyle not to go to heaven because they're a sinner. So why would Paul
make an issue out of this? It's no big surprise if he's talking about
those who practice such things if he's saying those are unbelievers because we
know unbelievers aren't going to go into heaven. It only makes sense if believers
are committing these activities or sins. He's not talking about entering
into heaven. He's talking about something else, something beyond just
entry into heaven.
Colossians 3:24 says
if we are obedient and grow to maturity, that's the context, then we will
“receive the reward of the inheritance.” It's not a gift. Reward is
something that's earned through obedience, through serving the Lord Christ in
context, in that last phase. So what I concluded was that we see two
categories of inheritance in the Scripture: inheriting the kingdom and
inheriting salvation. Inheriting salvation is something that's true for
every believer and inheriting the kingdom is true for believers who pursue
spiritual growth and spiritual maturity and learn to serve the Lord in their
life.
This is what Romans 8:17 is talking
about, putting the comma after “heirs of God,” shows we have two categories of
heirship. Heirs of God is equivalent to
inheriting salvation, and being a “joint-heir or fellow heir with Christ” is
related to suffering. Now that doesn't mean martyrdom type of
suffering, it means when you're living the spiritual life, when you're
making a choice in your life between a) following your sin nature and following
the world and b) being obedient to Scripture and walking by the Spirit, we will
always encounter suffering. We will always face adversity, unjust
suffering because we're going against the grain. We're swimming upstream
against the culture. And the more the culture around us, and here in the
United States our culture is becoming progressively anti-Christian because the
foundation of Christian values, of course, is found in the Old Testament and
those emphasize personal responsibility, and volition, emphasize marriage
between a man and a woman, emphasize family where you have a father and a
mother and children. Those are all being attacked again and again in
subtle and overt ways in our culture. So whenever we're trying to counter
that and live our life according to the Scripture, we're going to face
opposition in the angelic conflict, opposition from the cosmic system.
And that's adversity. It may be
small adversity. It may be heavy adversity but it's suffering with Him
because we're obedient to Christ and the consequences aren't pleasant. Now
the twelfth point I said was that just as Christ inherits the kingdom because
of His obedience to the Father; he is resurrected from the dead and because of
His loyalty to the Father, He is elevated to kingship in His humanity. Not
His deity because His deity is eternal. This is talking about in His
humanity when He's resurrected from the dead and ascended to heaven, He is
given, on the basis of having lived His life righteously in obedience to God,
He's elevated and He's given the scepter of the kingdom as the son of
David.
So that's the Hebrews 1:8 and 9
passage, “But of the Son He says, “your throne, O God, is forever and ever, and
the righteous scepter is the scepter of His Kingdom. You have loved
righteousness and hated lawlessness. Therefore God, Your God, has anointed You with the oil of gladness above your companions.” The
scepter of righteousness is given because of behavior, because He lived His
life in obedience to God.
That took us to the 13th
point, making the distinction between living and reigning with Christ as seen
in 2 Timothy 2: 11-13. Reigning is based on endurance. “If we
endure, we shall reign with Him.” Reigning is based on doing
something. Doing something is a work. When we're saved, it's by
grace, not works. So reigning is distinct from the salvation
package.
Then the 14th point is
that inheriting the kingdom is promised to those who love God. Not all
believers love God. Loving God is indicated by obedience to God which means spiritual growth. Those who are
disobedient don't love God. I don't care how you feel about God. And
the Bible doesn't care about how you feel about God and the Bible because over
and over again it says that if you love God, you obey Him. If you disobey
Him, that means you don't love God. So it doesn't matter how we feel or
how much we say, “Oh, how I love Jesus.” If we're not obedient, we're
lying.
The 15th point is about
Esau. Esau thought that his inheritance wasn't worth much so he was so
hungry that he traded a bowl of red lentils for his inheritance. The
warning there to believers is, This inheritance issue is so important that you
must not squander it in this life by putting your focus or priorities on
something that's insignificant and temporal. Esau was saved, I believe,
but he lost his inheritance, which was related to the Abrahamic
blessing. Now all of that is sort of a lead-in to bring us back to where
we were when we finished a week ago because I wanted to look at these “inherit
the kingdom” passages and I think the best way to do that is by going to 1
Corinthians 6.
There are several other
passages. We've already looked at one: Galatians 5:19 and
following. There is the one in Ephesians that I've talked about.
There's one at the end of Revelation that we'll also bring in in Revelation 21: 7 and 8. “He who overcomes shall
inherit all things and I will be His God and He shall be my son but the
cowardly...” So the contrast is between the one who is an overcomer and the one who is cowardly, the one who will
inherit all things, and the one who won’t inherit all things. It's not a
contrast between believer and unbeliever because that was already made at the
Great White Throne Judgment at the end of chapter 20 so this is a reward
passage. It talks about the cowardly unbelieving abominable murderer,
sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars
shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire.
Most people who read that say that
means people who are cowardly, unbelieving murderers, sexually immoral, if they
do all those things then they end up in the lake of fire. That is not what
that is saying at all. It's a misunderstanding of that word
'part'. So let's start with 1 Corinthians 6: 9-11.“Or do you not
know...” See when Paul says that he is assuming that they should know this
because he's taught them in the past. He says, “Or do you not know that
the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?” So right away we see
that one of the key words we have to study here and understand is that word
'unrighteous'.
A lot of people look at this passage
because of something that's said in the first two verses and they think that
unrighteous equals unbeliever. So let's read it that way, “Do you not know
that the unbeliever will not inherit the kingdom of God?” Sure, that's
kind of obvious, isn't it? We all know that. Unbelievers aren't
going to inherit the kingdom. They're not going to be in heaven. So
why would Paul bring this up? That's a blinding flash of the
obvious. So that's just one way we see this is reduced to absurdity, a
sort of reductio ad absurdum argument there. Paul
goes on to say. “Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters,
nor adulterers, nor effeminates [homosexuals], nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor
the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers [extortioners],
will inherit the kingdom of God.”
Verse 11 says, “Such were some of
you, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name
of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.” Now the way verse
11 is usually read by people is that the congregation, made up mostly of
believers, had all previously been fornicators, idolaters, covetous, etc., but
now they're all believers. They're washed, sanctified, and
justified. But that's not how this should be read because that misses the
point. Let's go back and first of all let's address this issue of
unrighteous. The way we ought to translate that word 'unrighteous' is
based on the first two verses, the context. Remember, if you take
the text out of context, you're left with a con job. That's what happens
in a lot of theology. You get conned. So we have to keep it in the
context.
There's a broad context and a narrow
context. Context is like the real estate law of location, location, location. You really have to pay attention to
it. But there's a lot of different context here. We have the context
of chapter 6. We have a narrower context of chapter 6, verses
7-11. In chapter 6, verse 7, you have the word 'wrong' which is a form of
the same word for unrighteous. It shows up again in verse 8. “Know
you, yourselves, do wrong...” You commit adikia,
unrighteousness. So it's the same word. That's the more immediate
context and you have a different meaning there. You have a broader
context, which is the first five chapters of First
Corinthians. You have to take all that into account so it's not quite as
simple as some people think it is.
Paul starts off with the bickering,
fussing, and divisiveness going on within the congregation in
Corinth. It's gotten so bad that when someone does something to somebody
else, or just does something living their life, like in our culture, somebody
else sees it and they just take offense. They don't like the fact that
someone else did that so they take offense and they're just going to sue the
person. So they were taking litigiousness to a whole new level. They
were taking each other to court and suing one another.
This is an important passage because
I've heard a lot of Christians talk about the fact we should never sue
anyone. That's not what this passage is saying. This passage is
talking about believers who know each other who are taking advantage of each
other and then suing each other and going to unbelievers for
resolution. It's not talking about when someone has legitimately been
wronged for any number of reasons by a corporation, a company, or something of
that nature. Those are other kinds of lawsuits. This is not a blanket
prohibition of lawsuits. It doesn't say that.
It's talking about believers who
know each other, who are taking advantage of each other, rather than going to
leaders in the church to resolve personal conflicts. So he says “Dare any
one of you, when he has a case against his neighbor, dare to go to law before
the unrighteous and not before the saints?” So when we look at that first
verse it's obvious that unrighteous is used in context in contrast with the saints. So
the saints are clearly believers in the congregation.
So that would indicate that the
judges possibly are unrighteous. But there's going to be another meaning
to that term. So we have to be careful with it. It looks, though,
that that indicates they're unbelievers. Then verse 2 says, “Or do you not
know that the saints will judge the world?” See immediately Paul puts this
context of answering the question of whether you should sue a person.
I don't know if any of y'all have
ever asked that question or been in a position where you've been wronged and
someone has been negligent and you've suffered financial loss and you have to
contemplate whether you should bring a lawsuit. How does Paul answer that
question? Now he doesn't do what most people do and deal with the
immediate consequences. He goes to eschatology. How many Christians
in this world think, “Well, I don't care what happens in the future. I'm
not an amil, premil...I'm a
pan mil meaning it'll all pan out in the end.” They're just intellectually
lazy. They don't want to figure out the future, thinking the future will
take care of itself.
Paul says, “Wait a minute. We
have to understand important things about the future.” In verse 2 he asks,
“Don't you know that the saints will judge the world?” See, the saints,
which is hagios, the sanctified
ones. It's not talking about some special class. It's always used for
Christians who are positionally set apart to Christ. In the future,
believers are going to be in a position to judge the world. They're going
to have that oversight. Part of what's happening now and the reason you
need to develop wisdom, you need to develop discernment from the Word, is
because this is preparing us so that in the future we can fulfill that
responsibility because when you die, God is not going to blast you with a bunch
of knowledge of doctrine between the time you die and the time you end up at
the judgment seat of Christ and you get your responsibility distributed for the
future kingdom.
What you have in your soul when you
die is the capacity you're going to have at the judgment seat of Christ. So
the Lord is going to look at us and say, “Well, you've got about ten percent
capacity here, so you're going to be a clerk in the lowest justice of the peace
court.” He's going to look at someone else you didn't really think too
much of here on earth and they're going to have always been at Bible class
listening to Bible studies, always applying, very quiet, and the Lord's going
to say, “You have 95 percent capacity; you're going to be a Supreme Court
judge.” That's how it's going to work. So there's going to be these
distinctions based upon the capacity and the maturity we develop now.
Paul is saying, “Why are you going
to unbelievers for this when believers are going to be judging the world in the
future?” That's a much greater responsibility than what these temporal
magistrates have. Then he says, “If the world is judged by you, are you
not worthy to judge the smallest matters?” In other words, why are you
doing this when this is your future destiny? So let's look at this word
unrighteous. The Greek word is adikos. In
the plural it's adikoi and it's an
adjective that's used as a noun. It stands in the place of a noun.
So we talk about red states and blue states. That's an adjectival
description of a state. The state is Texas, which is a red state, Connecticut,
which is a blue state. That kind of thing. Those
are just adjectival descriptions and we use the adjective in place of the
proper noun. This is the same kind of thing here. Unrighteous is an
adjective as in unrighteous people or unrighteous men but it just uses the
adjective to stand for the class.
((CHART)). Now in the box on the right side I've listed
definitions from three of the most respected Greek lexicons that are
available. The top one is Thayer. Any dictionary lists meanings in
order of their priority of use. So just because the first meaning is one
thing doesn't mean it always means that. It means that more than it's used
to mean the second category. The second category of meaning is used more
than the third category. So you look up things in the dictionary that have
19 meanings, well, the 15th, 16th, 17th
meanings are very rare usages. They're used that way now and then but not
all the time.
I want you to notice the agreement
here in these three lexicons. They all list unjust as the first meaning,
not unrighteous. Now if we look at the word adikos; the a is a prefix, like in English. It's the negative. The
core part of the word is dikos
from dike, meaning
righteous. So “a” means un so it means unrighteous or unjust. So the primary
usage is of that which is unjust.
We look at this and there does seem
to be a contrast in those first two verses in chapter 6. Then it goes on
if you read the context in your Bible, “Do you not know that we shall judge
angels? How much more matters of this life?” So by verse 6 we see
that brother goes to law against brother and that before unbelievers. Now
that's a different word there; it's the word apistos. pistos
is the word for believer or belief and its used for the faithful
one, or the believer. apistos
means an unbeliever. apistoi is
not what's used in the first two verses. Up there, it's adikos, the unrighteous.
Paul seems to expand the issue in
verse 6, “…brother goes to law with brother and that before
unbelievers.” It seems like those unbelievers could be the judges. He
doesn't really say the judges are unbelievers. That's an implication and
it may be right. But it could be that everyone who is sitting there and
watching the judicial procedures are a lot of unbelievers. So “before
unbelievers” doesn't necessarily mean “before unbelieving judges”. It
could mean unbelievers who are watching the whole procedure and the judges that
are here are just unjust judges, easily corrupt.
There are some problems with
understanding this. The word 'unrighteous' can refer to unrighteous
unbelievers and it can refer to unrighteous believers, Christians. Just
because the word adikos is used
doesn't mean we are justified in jumping to the conclusion that these judges
are unbelievers. Now that's a broader immediate context but there's a
little bit narrower context, and that's down in verses 7, 8, and 9 where we
have 'wrong' which has to do also with a form of this word adikos, the adjective. “Now you
yourselves do wrong things and cheat and you do these things to your
brethren. So doing activities classified as adikos is an activity of these Corinthians who are clearly
believers. They're clearly believers, but they do adikos, which is wrong or unjust actions and they cheat
their brethren. Immediately after saying you're doing these unjust things
to your brethren, he says, “Do you not know that the unjust [the wrongdoers]
will not inherit the kingdom of God?” So verse 8 is a much more focused
verse and it’s the immediate context for verse 9. Not verse
one.
Take a look at verses 9 and 10, you
have this whole grocery list of sins: fornicators, idolaters, adulterers,
homosexuals, sodomites, thieves, covetous, drunkards, revilers, extortioners. Unfortunately a
lot of Christendom has taken this verse and others similar to it, that people
who do these things all the time are not going to go into heaven. But it
seems to me that would pretty much negate most prison ministries. Most of
the prisoners in there have had a lifestyle of these things and some of them
were believers. I know, unfortunately, a couple of pastors and a couple of
seminary students who ended up committing various felonious crimes and ending
up in prison for a length of time. So they were believers but they got out
of fellowship, started walking according to the sin nature and ended up in
criminality.
Let's consider the question: does
unrighteous indicate they're unbelievers? Well, Paul addresses Corinthians
in light of their committing all these acts. Just turn back with me a
couple of pages to the first chapter. In the first chapter Paul starts off
in verse 3 saying, “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord
Jesus Christ. He uses “our”, a plural pronoun. He's addressing the
congregation as a whole and he's talking to everybody in the congregation as a
group and he's assuming they're all believers and that God is the Father of all
of them as believers. From the very beginning he's addressing them and
assuming that everyone there in the church at Corinth is a believer. He
says in verse 4, “I thank my God always concerning you for the grace of God
which was given you in Christ Jesus, that in everything you were enriched in
Him, in all speech and all knowledge, even as the testimony of Christ was
confirmed in you so that you are not lacking in any gift...” He's assuming
they're all believers.
So, not only are they all believers,
and not only does he give them compliments in these first nine verses but
starting in verse 10, he starts hammering them for all of their extreme
sinfulness. It's not that they just committed these sins a little bit here
and a little bit there. This was arguably the worst, most sinful, most
self-absorbed, most narcissistic, divisive congregation in the ancient
world. Look at verse 10. He tells them, “Now I exhort you, brethren,
by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all agree and that there be no
divisions among you...” They're said to be contentious in verse 11. If
you turn over to the next page, they're filled with intellectual
arrogance. In 1:29, they were said to be boastful. This runs all
through this section with arrogance, intellectual arrogance, which is the whole
problem in the second chapter. They're exalting human wisdom as opposed to
the wisdom of the word of God.
Look at chapter 3:1-3. He says,
“I brethren, I couldn't speak to you as to spiritual men [pneumatikos which is from the root pneuma meaning spirit] but as to
carnal.” There's that word built on sarx, which means of the flesh
which I talked about in Galatians 5. They're fleshly; their
lifestyle is produced by the sin nature, the flesh. He has to talk to them
as those who live according to the sin nature, in essence. Then, in verse
3 he says, “For you are still fleshly...” Are they believers? Sure,
he said you all are believers, all those things related to them back in the
first chapter. They were enriched in everything by God, in all knowledge,
the testimony of Christ was confirmed in them, they were denied no gift; all of that. They're clearly believers but they
are disobedient; they are egregiously disobedient.
And he says in verse 3, “for you are still fleshly. For since there is jealousy
and strife among you...” They're characterized by envy. Envy was
listed in Galatians 5:20 as one of the works of the flesh. They're
characterized by strife. Strife was also listed in Galatians 5:20 as one
of the works of the flesh. There are divisions among them. Now that's a
textual problem but it's probably there based on the Majority Text and that,
too, is listed in Galatians 5:20 as a work of the flesh. So here are these
Christians, clearly Christians, and they're characterized by
the works of the flesh. They're clearly living like unbelievers and
that's why Paul says at the end of verse 3 that they're behaving like mere men.
Then he goes from that in the
context of 1 Corinthians 1:3 to talking about the fact that they've been trying
to align themselves up with different leaders. In verse 12, “Now I
mean this, that each one of you is saying, “I am of Paul,” and “I of Apollos,” and “I of Cephas”. Now
in 3:6 Paul tells them that everybody had a different role in an agricultural
analogy. Then he goes to a building analogy and talks about the fact that
every one of us builds in our life with various things. We have gold, silver, precious stones and we have wood, hay and
straw. He says we all build but once our work is complete it will be
manifest at the Day of Judgment. That's verse 13, Each
man’s work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be
revealed with fire.” That's the picture here. What's revealed by fire
is the gold, silver, precious stones.
The wood, hay, and straw is burned off and so he says in verse 14, “If anyone's work
which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward.” How do you
get a reward? You work for a reward. Is salvation a reward? No,
salvation is not earned. So you work for a reward. What we do in our
Christian life as we grow? We develop capacity for righteous living, we
develop a capacity for wise living, and as a result of that, God, the Holy
Spirit, produces in us the character of Christ, and that's the gold, silver,
and precious stones that is left. It's the Divine
good that's produced in our life by the Holy Spirit rather than human good,
which is produced by our own morality and our own sin nature. So we're
rewarded for what is produced in our life by the Holy Spirit.
If anyone's work is burned, he will
suffer loss. So he's going to lose something. But he doesn't lose
salvation because the next clause in verse 15 says, “he will suffer loss but he
himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.” So he may lose everything
but he still is saved and enters the kingdom but he doesn't have a reward,
which is the inheritance of the kingdom. Then he says, and this is really
important, “Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit
of God dwells in you?” Now I talked about this a few lessons back in terms
of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Some people take the “you” here as
corporate and that the corporate body of believers is the temple of
God. But all the way up to this first those plural pronouns have been used
to refer to the corporate body of the church to address things that are true
for every individual. So it's not talking about the congregation as the
temple of God but all of you, as believers, each individual, is a temple of God
for the Holy Spirit.
And then there's a warning in verse
17 of divine discipline. “If any man destroys [defiles] the temple of
God...” That means corruption. The word there is phtheiro, and it means
corruption. It's the same word that's translated destroy in the next
phrase. “If anyone defiles or corrupts the temple of God [that's basically
carnality], God will phtheiro
him. If you phtheiro God, God's going to phtheiro you. That basically means
to do physical harm, and every single example of that word being used in the
New Testament refers to judgment in time, not judgment in eternity, but judgment
in time. So if someone disobeys God then God brings discipline in his
life, that's phtheiro. It's
judgment here and now, not judgment in the future, so it refers to a temporal
judgment.
If you look down later on in the
chapter, they're boastful again. Verse 21, “Therefore let no one boast in
men. For all things belong to you.” Skipping down to 4:6, it says
they're puffed up. In verse 7, they're boasting and they're full of
themselves. Then we get over into 1 Corinthians 5, it says, “It's actually
been reported that among you there is sexual immorality among you.” That's
listed in Galatians 5:19. They're arrogant; they're sexually
immoral. Then if you go over to chapter 7 it talks again about sexual
immorality. You get into chapter 11 and they're coming to the Lord's Table
and getting drunk. In chapter 10 they're warned not to give into idolatry
in 10:14, “Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry.” Idolatry is one of
the sins listed in Galatians 5:19.
The point I'm making and the reason
you need to understand this is because you're going to run into people again
and again and again who are going to say, “Look, 1 Corinthians 6 says that if
you do these things, you're not going to go to heaven.” But that's not
what Paul is saying at all. He's already said the Corinthians
are believers, and the Corinthians are doing all of these things. This is
characterizing their lives. It doesn't mean God approves it. He
doesn't but they are disobedient children who get cut off from the
inheritance. The inheritance goes to the obedient children who grow to
maturity but the inheritance we're talking about isn't eternal life and it
isn't eternal judgment.
So Paul is saying here, “Don't you
know the unrighteous [the wrongdoers in context] will not inherit the kingdom
of God?” He's not talking about unbelievers because it's obvious that
unbelievers don't go to heaven. He's talking about believers who continue
to live in carnality. Then he lists the type of sins that characterizes
them. He says in 1 Corinthians 6:11, “Such were some of you; but you were
washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord
Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.” It's a very clear
statement. Every one of them is justified.
Wait a minute. That's not how
most people look at it. ((CHART)) So I drew these three charts
to help explain this. The first chart in the upper left depicts this as
referring to the believers who were there. It's a small group. In
contrast “you' then refers to the rest of the church. They weren't really
believers. They were just professing believers. This is how some
interpret this. This is not correct. It contradicts the second part
of the verse, which says: “all of you were sanctified, justified, cleansed.” So
that doesn't work.
The second way this is sometimes
interpreted is that the some is just a rhetorical word that is used and all the
people are viewed as positionally saved. That's really
kind of an odd view and it doesn't make a lot of sense either. The best
view is what we see in the right. The “some” is part of a larger
group: “some of you.” So if I were to pick the people who were on this front two rows here, they would be “some of
you.” You being the whole group, “some” referring to the five over here
who are sitting on the first two rows. That's what I'm depicting
here. The “some” is a subset of the larger group. The whole group is
made up of believers. But some of them used to be characterized by this
behavior. They're not any more but the rest of them are still characterized
by that behavior. Does that make sense?
Most of this congregation is full of
divisiveness and immorality. They're called carnal. Paul has to talk
to them like spiritual babies because they're still living like unbelievers
although they're believers. So ninety percent of them are spiritual
failure. But some of them, ten percent, have seen a change and
transformation in their life because they're walking by the Holy Spirit and
they're obeying the Word of God. So when Paul says “such were some of
you,” the some have broken out of the carnal behavior pattern and are growing
to maturity. But all of them were saved. So the ones who've broken
out are the ones who are moving toward inheritance and the ones who haven't are
still trying to go to court and being divisive and causing all kinds of
problems.
In Colossians 3:23-24, Paul says,
“Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord, rather than for men,
knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance for
you serve the Lord Christ.” So the reward is something given for
service. Inheritance is something that is given for service. This
connects the idea of reward and inheritance together. A reward is for
serving. If you don't serve there is no reward. You still get into heaven,
but no rewards.
Okay, now I think that makes that
point clear. I want to go back and look at one thing I mentioned earlier
from the Revelation passage that some will have their part in the lake of
fire. I want you to turn with me. We've gone over it
before. I've covered it numerous times but I just want to remind you in
John, chapter 13. Similar circumstance in that there is a group before the
Lord Jesus Christ of His disciples. All of them are viewed as saved, but
there's one there who is not: Judas Iscariot. Look down to John chapter
13. Look at verse 5. This is a picture of Christ pouring water into a
basin to wash their feet and he starts washing the feet with the disciples and
toweling them dry. “So he came to Simon Peter. He said to Him, “Lord,
do you wash my feet?” Jesus answered and said to him, “What I do you do
not realize now, but you will understand hereafter.” Jesus is saying
you'll understand this later because it has a symbolic value. “
“Peter said to Him, “Never shall you
wash my feet!" Jesus answered him, "If I do not wash you, you
shall have no part with Me.” Now that's the same
word 'part' used over in Revelation 21. It's a Greek word meros, which is used in a legal context
in a will to indicate a share of the inheritance that would go to
somebody. You get this part; that person gets that part; this other person
gets this other part. That's the idea but the way we use the word part in
English it indicates also a role, such as, “I'm going to try out for this part
in the play.” So people read this as saying that well Peter won't get a
part in the kingdom, or in other words, he won't be there, he won't go to
heaven.
That's not what Jesus is
saying. Jesus is saying that if you don't let me wash your feet, which is
a picture of ongoing cleansing through confession and if you don't cleanse your
sins through confession, there can't be any spiritual growth; you'll just be
spiritually stunted. If you don't confess your sins and have regular
cleaning of sin, then you won't have an inheritance in the kingdom. You
won't have a share in the inheritance. Peter understood that. He
understood that and said, “Lord, don't just wash my feet. Give me a
complete bath.” Put me in the shower.
Then Jesus replied in verse 10, “He,
who is bathed, [this word indicates a complete total bath from the word louo versus the word nipto, which means to partially cleanse
his feet] and you all are clean, but not all of you.” And then John tells
us that what Jesus meant by that is that one of them in verse 11, “For He knew
the one who was betraying Him.”
So having understood that, that
'part' means a share of the inheritance, when we go to that passage in
Revelation 21 where we read this statement related to the future judgment, the
future role of believers in the eternal state, “He who overcomes [the one who
has earned the victor's wreath] will inherit these things. I will be His
God and He will be My son. But for the cowardly
unbelieving and abominable and murderers and immoral persons and sorcerers and
idolaters and all liars, their meros, their part, their share, their
inheritance will be in the lake that burns with fire.”
Its not that they go to the lake of
fire but that these rewards that would have been given them, their share of the
inheritance is thrown into the lake of fire where it's destroyed. Not
them. It's their inheritance that's destroyed. They go in to heaven,
yet as through fire, just like at the judgment seat of Christ. So those
who fail to be victors lose something. They lose their rewards and they're
destroyed in the lake of fire but those who are victors, those who are
overcomers, they will have rewards at the judgment seat of Christ and their
maturity determines their role, their responsibility, in the eternal
kingdom.
When we take that back to Romans 8,
just to wrap this up, the heirs of God are all believers but the joint-heirs
with Christ are those who persevere and endure through suffering so they will
be glorified together with Christ in the kingdom. Now Romans 8:18 is going to introduce the topic of suffering, and we will
come back and get into that next time.