Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers-- none of these will inherit the kingdom of God. And this is what some of you used to be. 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. (1 Cor 6:9-11 | NRSV)
I have discussed this pericope before on this blog, discussing how it refutes the common Ordo Salutis one finds within much of historical and modern Protestantism (Justification, Sanctification, and 1 Corinthians 6:9-11) as well as showing that the text does condemn homosexuality, contra some who claim the Bible does not condemn such (David Bartosiewicz's anti-biblical teaching on Homosexuality). It should also be noted, related to the issue of this passage’s condemnation of homosexuality, there is a legitimate warning from the apostle Paul that a true Christian can lose their salvation. As one Reformed scholar wrote on this pericope and similar warning texts:
Paul was clearly concerned that believers might return to former patterns of sinful practices, including same-sex intercourse, practices that could lead to loss of salvation. In Rom 6:19, he writes “just as you (formerly) presented members as slaves to uncleanness and to lawlessness for the purpose of (living in) lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness for the purpose of (living in) holiness.” The reference to “uncleanness” identified with “sin” in 6:16-18, 20, 22-23 and shameful practices in 6:21 and leading to “death” according to 6:16, 21, 23, is a clear allusion to the range of sinful behaviors enumerated in 1:24-31, particularly the description of same-sex intercourse in 1:24-27. The entire discussion of 6:1-8:17, including the section of the argument in 6:15-23, is aimed at establishing that gentile believers who return to the pattern of sinful activity that characterized their former pre-Christian existence will not inherit eternal life (8:12-13). There would be no point to the discussion unless there was a realistic possibility in Paul’s mind that gentile Christian could once more succumb to and come under the sway of the same sinful impulse operating in the “flesh” in manifold forms. (Robert A. J. Gagnon, The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts and Hermeneutics [Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2001], 288; emphasis added)
This pericope is just one of many that serve as a death knell to Evangelical Protestant soteriology.
