1st Corinthians Chapter 6 verse 9 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 9. - Know ye not; rather, Or know ye not, as before. Are you defying God, or does your sin arise from mere ignorance? The unrighteous; better, that wrong doers, the verb being the same as "ye do wrong" in ver. 8. Perhaps the Corinthians thought that they would be saved by the mere fact of having been admitted into God's kingdom (the Christian Church in all its highest privileges) by baptism. St. Paul here lays down, as distinctly as St. James does, that faith without works is dead, and privileges without holiness are abrogated. The spirit of his warning is the same as that of Jeremiah 7:4, "Trust ye not in lying words, saying, The temple of the Lord... are these;" or that of St. John the Baptist, "Say not unto yourselves, We be Abraham's sons." Christians have often been liable to the temptation of underrating the peril which results from the falling asunder of action from knowledge. There can be no greater danger than that of talking slightingly of "mere morality." Religion is not an outward service, but a spiritual life manifested by a holy living. Be not deceived. So our Lord says," Let no man deceive you" (Mark 13:5; comp. 1 John 3:7). St. Paul uses the warning very solemnly again in 1 Corinthians 15:33 and Galatians 6:7, and St. James in James 1:16. The self deception of merely verbal orthodoxy is the most dangerous of all. Neither fornicators. The first four classes of sinners were specially prevalent at Corinth, where, indeed, impurity formed part of the recognized cult of the local Aphrodite (comp. 2 Corinthians 12:21). Lists of these "works of the flesh," which were the all but universal curse and stain of heathendom, occur also in Galatians 5:19-21; 1 Timothy 1:10, etc.; Colossians 3:5-7.

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(9) Know ye not that the unrighteous . . .?--The force of this question comes out more strikingly in the original, where the word rendered "unrighteous" is the same as "ye do wrong" of 1Corinthians 6:8. "You do wrong, apparently forgetting that no wrongdoers shall inherit God's kingdom."Be not deceived.--There was great danger of their being led to think lightly of sins which were daily committed by those amongst whom they lived, hence these words of warning with which the sentence opens, as in 1Corinthians 15:33. The mention of gross sensual sins in connection with idolaters points to the fact that they were practically associated in the ritual of the heathen, which, of course, intensified the danger against which the Apostle warns the Corinthians. The prevalence of such scandalous crimes in the heathen world is constantly referred to in the Epistles to Gentile churches (Romans 13:13; Galatians 5:19-20; 1Timothy 1:9-10; Titus 1:12). . . .