Who Will Not Inherit the Kingdom

Paul asks a question in 1 Corinthians 6:9 that he expects the Corinthians to answer wrongly:

ἢ οὐκ οἴδατε ὅτι ἄδικοι θεοῦ βασιλείαν οὐ κληρονομήσουσιν; μὴ πλανᾶσθε· οὔτε πόρνοι οὔτε εἰδωλολάτραι οὔτε μοιχοὶ οὔτε μαλακοὶ οὔτε ἀρσενοκοῖται οὔτε κλέπται οὔτε πλεονέκται, οὐ μέθυσοι, οὐ λοίδοροι, οὐχ ἅρπαγες βασιλείαν θεοῦ κληρονομήσουσιν.

e ouk oidate hoti adikoi theou basileian ou kleronomesousin? me planasthe: oute pornoi oute eidololatrai oute moichoi oute malakoi oute arsenokoitai oute kleptai oute pleonektai, ou methusoi, ou loidoroi, ouch harpages basileian theou kleronomesousin.

"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 the effeminate, nor those who lie with males, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God." — 1 Corinthians 6:9-10

The opening words — e ouk oidate (ἢ οὐκ οἴδατε, "or do you not know") — are a rebuke disguised as a question. Paul uses this formula ten times in 1 Corinthians alone (1 Cor 3:16, 5:6, 6:2, 6:3, 6:9, 6:15, 6:16, 6:19, 9:13, 9:24). Each time, it means: you should know this, and the fact that you are acting otherwise tells me you have forgotten or never understood.

Then comes the warning: me planasthe (μὴ πλανᾶσθε, "do not be deceived"). Present passive imperative — stop being led astray, stop deceiving yourselves. The Corinthians were tolerating in their assembly the very behaviors that exclude people from the kingdom. Paul is not giving them new information. He is reminding them of what they already know and have chosen to ignore.

What follows is a list of ten categories of people who will not inherit the kingdom of God. The list is specific. It uses Greek words with defined semantic ranges. And it ends — this is the part most people skip — with the most important verse in the passage: "And such were some of you" (1 Cor 6:11).

This is Part 1 of a series on the kingdom of heaven. The question here is the threshold question: who is excluded, and on what basis? Later studies will examine what the kingdom is, how it comes, and what it means to live as an heir.

The Umbrella: Unrighteousness

The list does not begin with any specific sin. It begins with a category: adikoi (ἄδικοι, G94, "the unrighteous"). This is the umbrella under which every item on the list falls. The word is the negation of dikaios (δίκαιος, G1342, "righteous, just") — the a- prefix (alpha privative) negates it. An adikos is someone who is not right, not just, not aligned with God's standard.

Paul's logic: the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom. Then he defines what unrighteousness looks like in practice. The ten items that follow are not an exhaustive catalog of every possible sin. They are representative categories — the kinds of life-defining behaviors that reveal a person to be adikos. The question is not "have you ever committed one of these acts?" but "does this describe who you are?"

The parallel in Galatians makes this explicit. After his own list of "works of the flesh," Paul adds: ta homoia toutois (τὰ ὅμοια τούτοις, "and things like these," Gal 5:21). The list is illustrative, not exhaustive.

Sexual Sins

The first cluster is sexual: four terms in sequence.

πόρνοι (G4205) — the sexually immoral. The word appears 10 times in the New Testament and shows up in every exclusion list Paul writes and in both of John's in Revelation (Rev 21:8, 22:15). It derives from pernemi (πέρνημι, "to sell"), and its original sense was a male prostitute — one who sells sexual access. But by the first century, the semantic range had broadened to cover all sexual immorality outside the marriage covenant.

The semantic range is broad. Paul does not restrict it to professional sex work; the cognate noun porneia (πορνεία, G4202) in Galatians 5:19 covers the full range of illicit sexual activity. In modern application, this would include prostitution, casual sex, cohabitation, and pornography consumption — any sexual union outside the marriage covenant. A reader examining their own life should ask: is there sexual activity in my life that falls outside the covenant of marriage?

μοιχοί (G3432) — adulterers. Four New Testament occurrences (Luke 18:11, 1 Cor 6:9, Heb 13:4, James 4:4). The distinction from pornos is specific: the moichos violates an existing marriage covenant. The pornos may be unmarried and sleeping around; the moichos is breaking a vow — his own or someone else's. James 4:4 uses the word figuratively for spiritual unfaithfulness — the same metaphor the prophets use (Hosea 1-3, Ezekiel 16).

The core meaning is sexual intercourse with someone who is married to another person, or by a married person with someone other than their spouse. The moichos is the covenant-breaker. Elsewhere in the canon, Jesus extends the principle: "Everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart" (Mat 5:28) — but that is a canonical application of the concept, not the lexical content of the word μοιχός itself.

μαλακοί (G3120) — the soft or effeminate. This word appears four times in the New Testament: twice in Matthew 11:8, once in Luke 7:25 — all three for literal softness of clothing — and once here, in a moral sense. The exact nuance is debated. In Greco-Roman usage, malakos in a sexual context could denote the passive partner in male homosexual intercourse. Some scholars read it more broadly as "morally soft" or "self-indulgent." The immediate pairing with arsenokoitai — a word whose sexual sense is much clearer — makes a sexual reading the most probable, but honesty requires noting that malakos itself has a wider semantic range than the context alone can narrow with certainty.

ἀρσενοκοῖται (G733) — those who lie with males. This word appears only twice in the New Testament: here and in 1 Timothy 1:10. It very likely refers to male homosexual intercourse and is probably coined from the wording of the Septuagint — the Greek Old Testament that Paul and his readers used. The LXX translates Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 with the words arsen (ἄρσεν, G730, "male") and koite (κοίτη, G2845, "bed/lying") in close proximity:

LXX Leviticus 18:22: μετὰ ἄρσενος οὐ κοιμηθήσῃ κοίτην γυναικός — βδέλυγμα ἐστίν. "With a male you shall not lie the lying of a woman — it is an abomination."

LXX Leviticus 20:13: ὃς ἂν κοιμηθῇ μετὰ ἄρσενος κοίτην γυναικός — βδέλυγμα ἐποίησαν. "Whoever lies with a male the lying of a woman — they have committed an abomination."

The compound arsenokoites very likely echoes this LXX wording — the two key words fused into a single term. The compound describes a man who goes to bed with a male. Both Levitical passages label the act bdelugma (βδέλυγμα, G946, "abomination, detestable thing"). The same root appears in Revelation 21:8 (ebdelugmenois, ἐβδελυγμένοις, G948) — a supporting lexical connection between the Levitical prohibition and the eschatological exclusion, though a shared root does not by itself establish a tight conceptual bridge.

In application: a man who engages in sexual intercourse with another man. The compound describes the act itself — it is behavioral, not dispositional. Paul's list concerns patterns of life, not isolated temptations.

The pairing of malakoi and arsenokoitai likely covers the act from both sides. Together with pornoi and moichoi, the four sexual terms address: all sex outside marriage, marital infidelity, and homosexual intercourse. The coverage is broad.

Idolatry and Its Disguises

εἰδωλολάτραι (G1496) — idolaters. The word appears 7 times in the New Testament, and like pornos, it shows up in every exclusion list: 1 Corinthians 5:10-11, 6:9, Galatians 5:20 (cognate eidololatria, G1495), Ephesians 5:5, Revelation 21:8, and 22:15.

The compound is transparent: eidolon (εἴδωλον, G1497, "image, idol") + latreuo (λατρεύω, G3000, "to serve, worship"). An idolater is someone who gives worship-level devotion to something that is not God.

In Corinth, this was not abstract. The city had temples to Aphrodite, Apollo, Poseidon, and the imperial cult. Meat sacrificed to idols was a live controversy in the Corinthian church (1 Cor 8-10). Some believers were still attending temple meals (1 Cor 10:14-22). Paul's inclusion of eidololatrai in the exclusion list was pointed.

But Paul extends idolatry beyond the temple. In Ephesians 5:5, he writes:

τοῦτο γὰρ ἴστε γινώσκοντες, ὅτι πᾶς πόρνος ἢ ἀκάθαρτος ἢ πλεονέκτης, ὅ ἐστιν εἰδωλολάτρης, οὐκ ἔχει κληρονομίαν ἐν τῇ βασιλείᾳ τοῦ Χριστοῦ καὶ θεοῦ.

"For know this with certainty: every sexually immoral person or impure person or covetous person — who is an idolater — has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God." — Ephesians 5:5

The relative clause ho estin eidololatres ("who is an idolater") is an equation: the covetous person is an idolater. Greed is not merely like idolatry. It is idolatry. The object of desire has displaced God as the functional center of a person's life.

This pairing of sexual sin and idolatry is not Paul's invention. The prophets established it. Hosea's entire book is built on the metaphor: Israel's idolatry is spiritual adultery. God is the husband; the idols are the lovers (Hos 1-3). Ezekiel 16 and 23 develop the same image at length — Jerusalem and Samaria as unfaithful wives who prostituted themselves to the nations and their gods. The twin sins of pornos and eidololatres appearing in every exclusion list is the New Testament echo of this prophetic pairing. They are the two fundamental covenant-breaking categories: infidelity to God (idolatry) and infidelity in the body (sexual sin).

What idolatry looks like today: anything that receives the trust, devotion, time, or obedience that belongs to God — career, money, political identity, romantic relationship, self-image, comfort, or the approval of others. If the loss of it would devastate you more than the loss of God's presence, it may be functioning as an idol.

Economic Sins

Three terms describe different ways of taking what does not belong to you.

κλέπται (G2812) — thieves. Sixteen New Testament occurrences, from Jesus' warning about "thieves who break in and steal" (Mat 6:19) to his cleansing of the temple: "you have made it a den of robbers" (Mat 21:13). The kleptes operates by stealth — the defining feature is secrecy.

The lexical core is taking what does not belong to you by stealth — the thief does not want to be seen. In modern application, this extends to embezzlement, wage theft, tax fraud, and any form of secretly taking what is not yours. The stealth is the point.

πλεονέκται (G4123) — the greedy, the covetous. Four New Testament occurrences (1 Cor 5:10, 5:11, 6:10, Eph 5:5). The compound is from pleon (πλέον, "more") + echo (ἔχω, "to have"). A pleonektes is literally "one who wants to have more."

This is the sin Paul equates with idolatry in Ephesians 5:5. It is also the sin most likely to go undetected, because modern culture rewards it. The person who always wants more — more money, more status, more influence, more control — is often admired rather than confronted.

What this looks like: not just the wealthy hoarder, but anyone whose desire for material gain, status, or control over others has become the organizing principle of their life. The person who cannot be content. The person who measures every relationship by what they can extract from it. The person for whom enough is never enough. Paul says this person is an idolater (Eph 5:5), because the craving has replaced God as the functional center of their existence.

ἅρπαγες (G727) — swindlers, the rapacious. Five New Testament occurrences. The word comes from harpazo (ἁρπάζω, G726, "to seize, snatch"), and it describes someone who takes by force or exploitation rather than by stealth. Jesus uses the cognate in Matthew 7:15, warning of false prophets who are inwardly harpages — "ravenous wolves."

The harpax does not hide like the thief. He takes openly, using force or the threat of it. The lexical sense is rapacious seizure — robbery, extortion, plundering. In modern application, this extends to any use of power to take what belongs to others, whether by physical force or by systems designed to exploit.

The three economic terms form a spectrum. The kleptes steals in secret. The pleonektes craves without limit. The harpax seizes by force. Together they cover the full range of economic sin: deception, insatiable desire, and violent taking.

Sins of the Mouth and the Bottle

The final two terms on the list are unique to the Corinthian letters — they appear nowhere else in the New Testament exclusion lists. This tells us something about Corinth.

μέθυσοι (G3183) — drunkards. The word appears only at 1 Corinthians 5:11 and 6:10 in the New Testament. The cognate verb methuo (μεθύω, G3184, "to be drunk") appears more broadly, including Paul's rebuke in 1 Corinthians 11:21, where some Corinthians were getting drunk at the Lord's Supper itself. Corinth was a port city, a commercial hub, and a place where wine flowed freely. The church reflected its city.

What this looks like: not someone who has ever been drunk, but someone for whom drunkenness is a pattern of life — the habitual drunkard whose substance use defines them. The word describes a lifestyle, not a single incident. By reasonable extension, this covers habitual intoxication by any substance — the principle is the surrender of self-control to a chemical, not the specific chemical itself. The person should ask: does substance use characterize my life? Am I controlled by it?

λοίδοροι (G3060) — revilers. Also only at 1 Corinthians 5:11 and 6:10. The cognate verb loidoreo (λοιδορέω, G3058) appears in John 9:28 (the Pharisees "reviled" the man born blind) and 1 Peter 2:23 (Christ "did not revile in return"). The loidoros is someone who uses speech as a weapon — not the person who disagrees strongly, but the person who tears others down with their words.

What this looks like: verbal abuse, character assassination, persistent cruelty in speech, berating, mockery designed to wound, and destroying others with the tongue. James 3:6-8 describes the tongue as "a fire, a world of unrighteousness... a restless evil, full of deadly poison." The loidoros has made that fire a way of life.

That these two terms are unique to the Corinthian letters suggests Paul was addressing specific problems in that congregation. The Corinthians were getting drunk at communion (1 Cor 11:21) and apparently verbally abusing each other — a community where speech had become weaponized. Paul includes these on the exclusion list not because they are worse than the other sins but because the Corinthians needed to hear that these, too, bar people from the kingdom.

The Parallel Lists

Paul is not the only New Testament author to compile an exclusion list. The same pattern — a catalog of sins followed by a statement of exclusion from the kingdom — appears in multiple passages. The two terms that appear in every list are pornos (G4205) and eidololatres (G1496): the sexually immoral and the idolater.

The exclusion formula varies — "will not inherit the kingdom of God" (1 Cor 6:9, Gal 5:21), "has no inheritance in the kingdom" (Eph 5:5), "their portion in the lake of fire" (Rev 21:8), "outside" (Rev 22:15) — but the consequence is the same. And the two constants are always present: the sexually immoral and the idolater. These are the twin covenant-breaking sins, and they have been paired since the prophets.

Revelation 21:8 adds a word that ties back to Leviticus. The term ebdelugmenois (ἐβδελυγμένοις, G948, "the abominable") shares the same root as bdelugma (βδέλυγμα, G946), which is the very word the Septuagint uses in Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 to label the act Paul coined arsenokoites to describe. The Levitical "abomination" and the Revelation "abominable" are lexically connected. John's final exclusion list reaches back through Paul to Moses.

The Turn: "Such Were Some of You"

Everything changes in verse 11. The exclusion list has done its work. The reader has been confronted with categories of unrighteousness that bar people from the kingdom. And then:

καὶ ταῦτά τινες ἦτε· ἀλλ᾽ ἀπελούσασθε ἀλλ᾽ ἡγιάσθητε ἀλλ᾽ ἐδικαιώθητε ἐν τῷ ὀνόματι τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ καὶ ἐν τῷ πνεύματι τοῦ θεοῦ ἡμῶν.

kai tauta tines ete: all' apelouasasthe all' hegiasthete all' edikaiothete en to onomati tou kuriou hemon Iesou Christou kai en to pneumati tou theou hemon.

"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 Christ and by the Spirit of our God." — 1 Corinthians 6:11

Three features of this verse demand attention.

First, the past tense. Tauta tines ete (ταῦτά τινες ἦτε) — "such were some of you." The verb ete is imperfect indicative of eimi (εἰμί, "to be"). Paul does not say "such are some of you." He says "such were." The exclusion list described who they used to be. The past tense is the hinge of the entire passage: what was true is no longer true.

Second, the triple alla. The conjunction alla (ἀλλά, "but") appears three times in sequence — a rhetorical hammer. Each alla introduces a verb that undoes the previous condition. The repetition is not accidental. Paul is piling up the contrast: but... but... but. The force is cumulative. Whatever you were, look at what has happened to you.

Third, the three aorist verbs. Each verb is aorist — a completed action, viewed as a whole, not as an ongoing process. But the voices differ, and the difference matters:

The voice progression — middle, passive, passive — reveals a theology of conversion. The washing involves human participation: you came, you submitted, you were baptized. But sanctification and justification are acts of God performed upon the believer. You do not sanctify yourself. You do not justify yourself. God does both.

The phrase that follows — en to onomati tou kuriou hemon Iesou Christou kai en to pneumati tou theou hemon ("in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God") — has what many interpreters read as a Trinitarian structure. The Lord Jesus Christ is named. The Spirit of God is named. And "our God" — the Father — is the one whose Spirit is at work. Whether Paul intends a deliberate Trinitarian formula here or simply names the agents of salvation is a matter of inference, but the text does place all three persons in the same redemptive act.

Note the verbal reversal. The umbrella term in verse 9 was adikoi (ἄδικοι, G94, "the unrighteous"). The final verb in verse 11 is edikaiothete (ἐδικαιώθητε, from dikaioo, G1344, "to justify, declare righteous"). The a- prefix is removed. The unrighteous (a-dikoi) have been made righteous (e-dikaio-thete). The exclusion has been reversed by the verdict of God.

The Titus Mirror

Paul writes the same structure again in Titus 3:3-7 — a passage that reads like a theological twin of 1 Corinthians 6:11:

ἦμεν γάρ ποτε καὶ ἡμεῖς ἀνόητοι, ἀπειθεῖς, πλανώμενοι, δουλεύοντες ἐπιθυμίαις καὶ ἡδοναῖς ποικίλαις... ὅτε δὲ ἡ χρηστότης καὶ ἡ φιλανθρωπία ἐπεφάνη τοῦ σωτῆρος ἡμῶν θεοῦ, οὐκ ἐξ ἔργων τῶν ἐν δικαιοσύνῃ... ἀλλὰ κατὰ τὸ αὐτοῦ ἔλεος ἔσωσεν ἡμᾶς διὰ λουτροῦ παλιγγενεσίας καὶ ἀνακαινώσεως πνεύματος ἁγίου... ἵνα δικαιωθέντες τῇ ἐκείνου χάριτι κληρονόμοι γενηθῶμεν κατ' ἐλπίδα ζωῆς αἰωνίου.

"For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures... But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit... so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life." — Titus 3:3-7

The structural parallel is exact:

The sequence is the same: past sinful state, adversative turn (alla), washing, Spirit, justification. But Titus adds something 1 Corinthians only implies. In 1 Corinthians 6:9, the word is kleronomesousin (κληρονομήσουσιν, G2816, "will inherit") — used negatively: the unrighteous will not inherit. In Titus 3:7, the word is kleronomoi (κληρονόμοι, G2818, "heirs") — used positively: the justified become heirs. Titus completes the sentence that 1 Corinthians leaves open. The excluded have become the included. The disinherited have been made heirs.

The Old Testament background for the washing-Spirit sequence is Ezekiel 36:25-27: "I will sprinkle clean water on you... I will put my Spirit within you." The lexical overlap between Ezekiel 36 and 1 Corinthians 6:11 is minimal — they share the concepts but not the specific Greek vocabulary. This is a conceptual echo, not a vocabulary pattern. But the theological sequence — cleansing, Spirit, new obedience — is the same, and Paul, saturated in the prophets, would have known it.

What Does "Inherit" Mean?

The word that controls the entire passage is kleronomeo (κληρονομέω, G2816, "to inherit"). It appears in both the negative (6:9, "will not inherit") and, through its cognate kleronomos (G2818, "heir"), in the positive resolution (Tit 3:7). But what does it mean to "inherit the kingdom of God"?

The Septuagint uses kleronomeo to translate two Hebrew verbs: yarash (יָרַשׁ, H3423, "to possess, dispossess," 232 Old Testament occurrences) and nachal (נָחַל, H5157, "to inherit, take as a possession," 59 occurrences). Both are tied to the land promise. God told Abraham: "To your offspring I will give this land" (Gen 12:7). Moses told Israel: "Go in and possess the land" (Deut 1:8, using yarash). The inheritance was concrete — a piece of geography, the land of Canaan — and it was conditional on covenant faithfulness. Israel could be dispossessed for unfaithfulness (Deut 28:63), and they were.

The trajectory of the word moves from land to kingdom. In Matthew 25:34, Jesus says: "Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit (kleronomesate, G2816) the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world." The inheritance is no longer a strip of land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. It is the kingdom itself — the full reign of God.

But there is a further dimension. In 1 Corinthians 15:50, Paul writes: "Flesh and blood cannot inherit (kleronomesai, G2816) the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable." This is the same verb, the same kingdom — but the exclusion is no longer moral. It is ontological. Even a justified, sanctified believer in a mortal body cannot inherit the kingdom in that body. The resolution comes in the next verses: "We shall all be changed" (1 Cor 15:51). The resurrection body inherits what flesh and blood cannot.

Two kinds of exclusion, then, run through 1 Corinthians. The moral exclusion of 6:9-10 is resolved by conversion — washing, sanctification, justification (6:11). The ontological exclusion of 15:50 is resolved by resurrection — transformation from perishable to imperishable (15:51-53). Both use the identical formula: basileian theou... kleronomeo. Both require an act of God to overcome.

What the Text Says and What We Infer

Per the principle of distinguishing direct statement from inference and speculation, here is what this passage states, what it necessarily implies, and what remains open.

What the text directly states:

• The unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor 6:9).
• Ten categories of sin characterize the unrighteous: sexual immorality, idolatry, adultery, passive homosexual activity, active homosexual activity, theft, greed, drunkenness, verbal abuse, and violent taking (1 Cor 6:9-10).
• Some Corinthian believers formerly belonged to these categories (1 Cor 6:11a).
• They were washed, sanctified, and justified in the name of Christ and by the Spirit (1 Cor 6:11b).
• The sexually immoral, the idolater, and the covetous person have no inheritance in the kingdom (Eph 5:5).
• The covetous person is an idolater (Eph 5:5).
• Those justified by grace become heirs of eternal life (Tit 3:7).

What the text necessarily implies:

• The list describes defining patterns of life, not isolated acts. Paul's past tense ("such were some of you") indicates that conversion produces a real change in behavior, not merely a change in legal status. The people described in the list are those for whom these sins are characteristic — the present tense of their lives.
• The three verbs of verse 11 describe a completed transformation. The aorist tense views the action as a whole. These are not ongoing processes here (though sanctification is progressive elsewhere in Paul); they are decisive events that changed the Corinthians' identity.
• The washing-Spirit-justification triad is Trinitarian in structure. Paul names the Son ("in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ"), the Spirit ("by the Spirit"), and the Father ("our God"). The transformation is a work of the triune God.

What remains open:

• Whether malakos in this context is strictly limited to the passive partner in homosexual intercourse or carries a broader sense of moral weakness. The immediate context (paired with arsenokoitai) favors the sexual sense, but the word has a wider semantic range in other contexts.
• The precise relationship between the three verbs — whether they describe a chronological sequence (washed, then sanctified, then justified) or three aspects of a single event viewed from different angles. Paul's order here (washing before justification) differs from the typical Protestant ordo salutis. This may indicate that Paul is not prescribing a sequence but describing a single reality from three perspectives.
• How to define the boundary between "someone who has committed this sin" and "someone who is characterized by this sin." The text uses substantival adjectives and nouns — pornoi, moichoi, kleptai — not verbal forms. These are identity words: "fornicators," "adulterers," "thieves." They describe what a person is, not merely what a person has done. But the exact threshold between a sin committed and a sin that defines is not spelled out. The text assumes the reader can tell the difference. The past tense of verse 11 ("such were some of you") confirms that the defining condition can end — that people who were genuinely characterized by these sins were genuinely transformed.

The passage is not a threat. It is a diagnosis and a cure. The diagnosis is specific: here is what unrighteousness looks like. The cure is complete: washed, sanctified, justified. And the evidence that the cure has worked is the past tense — "such were some of you." The Corinthians who once were fornicators, idolaters, thieves, and drunkards had become something else entirely. Not by their own effort, but in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.