The modern church has a strong grace message that a Christian cannot go to hell. However, Jesus said that a person who does not invest his talents goes to hell. He also said that goats do not go to heaven, nor do the five foolish virgins, nor people without fruit (John 15). Now Paul has here a list of people who, if they are still practicing this lifestyle when they die, will not get into heaven. It is sobering writing.
1 Corinthians 6:9-10 in the New King James Version of the Bible says:
9 Don’t you know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be disappointed. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, 10 nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor thieves will inherit the kingdom of God.
The modern church says that once a person is saved, they become righteous and stay that way until they die no matter what they do. When I became a Salvation Army soldier, he pleased me that one of the principles we had to accept was to remain continually upright in our walk to inherit the kingdom of God.
Pablo warned us not to be disappointed by what has happened. There are fornicators in the church, people who live together outside of marriage who are not corrected in love and told to get married or leave the church. There are many idolaters in the church and no one tells them to change.
Let me go through them one by one.
fornicators
These are people who are in a sexual relationship but are not married. If these people die in this state, say in a car accident, they will not go to heaven, but they will go to hell.
idolaters
The online dictionary says they are:
- The one who worships idols.
- One who blindly or excessively admires or adore another.
A person can worship money and go out of his way to get as much as he can. People enter the lottery for this reason because they think that if they had a million dollars, all their problems would go away. This can also be a man who idolizes her wife or a wife who idolizes her husband. Many couples love each other more than God and this can be a serious mistake.
adulterers
Jesus said this in Mark 10:11-12:
11 Then he said to them, Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her. 12 And if the woman repudiates her husband and marries another, he commits adultery.
Jesus says very clearly here that second marriages are adultery. But 98% of the people I share this with want to argue with me about it. But you may also be committing spiritual adultery against Jesus.
James 4:2-4 says,
2 Greed and you don’t have. You murder and you covet and you cannot obtain. You fight and make war. However, you don’t have because you don’t ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask friends, to spend he in your pleasures 4 Adulterers and adulteresses! Don’t you know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Anyone, then, who wants to be a friend of the world, makes himself an enemy of God.
James says here that the person who covets the best things in the world is an adulterer and an enemy of God.
How many enemies of God will make it to heaven I have to ask you?
Are you an enemy of God?
homosexual
It seems that much of the church still thinks that an unrepentant homosexual who is still practicing will go to hell. It is the one lifestyle that most Christians will condemn to hell. Christians are very eloquent about this, but not about the rest of the sins.
sodomites
(lower case) a person who engages in sodomy. Sodomy (IPA: /ÈsRdYmi/) is a term used efficiently in law today (derived from traditional Christian usage) to describe the act of anal intercourse, oral intercourse, as well as bestiality. When used in a religious context, it has a negative connotation.
Now, I wasn’t aware of oral sex, but both a man having anal sex with a man and a man and a woman having anal sex are in danger of hell if they don’t eliminate this from their sex life.
Thieves
These are people who keep stealing what they should be paying for. This can include teenagers downloading free music for which they should be paying the artist and parents buying cheap DVDs that are recorded in an Asian country. It is also a person who receives copies of DVDs from friends who rented them from a video store.
Greedy
The dictionary says the meaning is: “excessive or unfair desire for wealth or possessions; greedy.” Many of the people who hear and love the prosperity doctrine, and its teachers, are greedy. If they die without repentance, they will go to hell.
revilers
The dictionary says, “to speak abusively.” This is what the psalm says: they are mockers and also gossipers. There are many of these who need to repent.
extortionists
The dictionary says: “Right. The crime of obtaining money or something else of value by abuse of office or authority. Oppressive or illegal exaction, such as excessive price or interest: the extortion of usurers.” Police in foreign countries do this a lot.
I hope this has given you something to think about. If you are one of these people, you must learn to repent and remove these major sins from your life before you die unrepentant.
Bless you, Matthew Robert Payne
PS Try to spread this message far and wide.
