Or 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 effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. 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. (1 Cor 6:9-11 NASB)
Commenting on the verbs used in 1 Cor 6:11 and how they teach baptismal regeneration (not a merely symbolic understanding of water baptism), the Lutheran scholar Lenski wrote:
All three verbs are aorists and not perfects. It has been said that there are sermons in tenses, and there is a sermon in these. Perfects would mean that the activity expressed by these three verbs as definite past acts still continues into the present as an unchanged condition, and that it remains unchanged. The three aorists state only what occurred in the past (historical aorists) and stop there. These aorists thus leave open the question as to whether the present still fully agrees with what took place so blessedly in the past. Yes, there is a sermon in these tenses.
While all three verbs are aorists, only the last two are passives, and the first is most significantly a middle. This middle ἀπελούσασθε does not mean: “you were washed” (passive), R. V.; nor: “you are washed” (perfect), A. V.; nor: “you washed yourselves” (ordinary reflexive middle) R. V. margin and R. 807; but: “you let yourselves be washed” (causative or permissive middle), R. 809, “you had yourselves washed,” as we translate. Paul is, of course, speaking about baptism, but when he uses ἀπολούειν he at once names the effect of baptism, the spiritual washing away of all sin and guilt, the cleansing by pardon and justification. This causative or permissive middle, which is exactly like the same middle ἐβαπτίσαντο used in 10:2, adds what the passive would omit, namely that with their own hearts the Corinthians themselves desired and accepted this washing and cleansing. In their case baptism was not a mere outward, formal, or only symbolical act. And what they desired they obtained: they were cleansed of sin and guilt.
The two passives that follow: “but you were sanctified, but you were justified,” are different as far as their voice is concerned. Considered by themselves, both state only what God, the agent behind these passives, did and no more. And yet the force of this first middle in this series of three acts affects also the two passives. This does not mean that the passives are changed and now receive a middle tinge; they remain what they are. But the Corinthians could not also be sanctified and justified by God (passive) if they had not in their own hearts desired and accepted the true cleansing of baptism. The moment they accepted that in true faith they were also at that moment sanctified and justified. Thus, not only in tenses but also in voices there are real sermons.
“You were sanctified,” separated from sin unto God, and were thus made holy. “That he (Christ) might sanctify it (the church), having cleansed it by the washing of water with the Word,” Eph. 5:26. This is total sanctification, the removal of all sin and guilt; it makes us ἅγιοι, “saints,” and ἡγιασμένοι, “people sanctified,” two of the standard terms employed in the New Testament to designate Christians. This sanctification is not total in the sense that we shall not and cannot sin, are perfect in this respect, need no more forgiveness of sins, need no longer pray the Fifth Petition of the Lord’s Prayer. 1 John 1:8. But this sanctification drives out sin more and more, we grow in grace, 2 Pet. 3:18, and by daily contrition and faith continue constantly and totally cleansed, 1 John 1:9.
Paul might have stopped after mentioning the verb in the middle voice or after the first verb in the passive. Paul adds another passive; so important is all that occurred when the Corinthians were made Christians: “you were justified.” The word δικαιοῦν and its passive δικαιωθῆναι always have a forensic force: “ye were declared just” by God, the Judge, by a verdict pronounced from his judgment seat. See C.-K. regarding this vital term and regarding its derivatives. God justifies the sinner for Christ’s sake the instant that God brings that sinner to contrition and faith: “My son, thy sins are forgiven thee!”
In these three verbs there lies much more than the verbs themselves express, namely this that these Corinthians, who were once thus washed, made holy, and declared righteous in God’s sight, ought to remain so and be so still. It would be monstrous if by open pollution they should now revert to their former state, to what they once “were,” and again become ἄδικοι, “unrighteous.” (R. C. H. Lenski, The Interpretation of St. Paul’s First and Second Epistle to the Corinthians [Minneapolis, Minn: Augsburg Publishing House, 1963], 250–252, emphasis added
