1 Corinthians 6:9-11

The context

First Corinthians 6 opens with a rebuke of believers taking one another to pagan courts. Verses 1 to 8 scold the Corinthians for litigating before the unrighteous instead of settling matters within the assembly.

Verse 9 turns the same word against them: do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? A vice list follows, and then the reversal of verse 11: and such were some of you.

The words

Adikoi, "the unrighteous," is the negative of the dikaios word-group, and it sets up a play later in the paragraph: the unrighteous will not inherit, but edikaiōthēte, "you were justified." The same root carries the accusation and the answer.

Mē planasthe is a present imperative of planaō, "do not go on being deceived" — a warning about a teaching in circulation, suggesting someone in Corinth argued that conduct did not affect inheritance.

The three verbs of verse 11 are aorists with different voices. Apelousasthe, from apolouō, "wash," is middle, which may mean "you had yourselves washed," most likely a reference to baptism. Hēgiasthēte and edikaiōthēte, from hagiazō and dikaioō, are passive: God is the agent.

Two terms, malakoi ("soft") and arsenokoitai, are the most disputed. The second appears formed from the Greek words for "male" and "bed" and echoes the Greek of Leviticus 18 and 20. Their precise reference is genuinely contested.

What this passage establishes

The passage establishes a boundary and then a change. A catalogue of conduct marks the outside of the kingdom, and the past tense of verse 11 places the Corinthian believers on the other side of it: they were these things, and they are not. The weight falls on the reversal, attributed to God's action rather than their effort.

What it does not establish

It does not rank sins or exhaust the list. The catalogue is a vice list of a familiar Greco-Roman type, and its function is identification, not legislation.

It does not describe a uniform experience. "Some of you" is deliberately partial. The verse does not claim every convert has a dramatic break with the past.

It does not settle the modern dispute over the two contested terms. Readers differ honestly about their referents, and the passage is narrower than either side usually needs it to be. What the text says plainly is that the Corinthians were these things and were washed.

How the church has read it

Patristic homilies, including Chrysostom's on this letter, treat the list as a description of the unconverted life and verse 11 as the effect of baptism. The verse has been central in modern debates about sexual ethics, cited on one side as a boundary and on the other as evidence of transformation. Both uses fasten on real features of the text; neither is the whole of it.

First pass, written October 2026. Corrections welcome.

Cited in these answers

• I am homosexual and I was born homosexual – don't homosexuals have the right NOT to be hated and persecuted by the church?
• God can't make up his inspirational mind. Is justification by faith (Paul) or by works (James)?
• So you believe in a book full of contradictions, one that endorses slavery, incest, murder, drowning babies, genocide and stoning homosexuals?

Part of Scripture, Opened — the exegetical layer behind every citation on this site. Scripture quotations are from the ESV.