Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

“I have the right to do anything,” you say—but not everything is beneficial. “I have the right to do anything”—but I will not be mastered by anything.

— 1 Corinthians 6:9–12

Deception

My favorite type of movie is the con artist genre. Probably the best known modern examples are the Ocean’s 11 series, if any of you have seen those. In these types of films, the good guys are trying to pull off some major feat, typically to get revenge on a really evil person. Maybe they need to rob a casino, steal something, or trap the bad person in the act of a crime. In any case, the whole plot revolves around them tricking the other person—deceiving them—into believing something that isn’t true. And usually with about 15 minutes to go it looks like the plan has completely fallen apart, but then a giant twist is revealed to show that things are actually going exactly as planned, and the whole thing was an elaborate deception. Tons of fun.

Deception is a common plot element in many books and movies.

Star Wars: Senator Palpatine deceives the Galactic Republic to gain their trust, putting himself in a place of power, and only later reveals himself to be a Sith Lord, ruling over the galaxy with terror.
Harry Potter: Tom Riddle deceives Harry into thinking he’s an honest, upright student, but in reality he’s He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.

Now in all these examples, the good guys end up winning, and everybody lives happily-ever-after, blah, blah, blah. But real life deception can have serious consequences.

Anybody here ever heard the term “Ponzi scheme”? That’s basically a financial deception that robs people of their life savings. Or especially in the past, many people were deceived about the dangers of smoking, and now are inflicted with lung cancer.

This passage is warning is against a specific deception. Look at verse 9 again: “Do not be deceived”. The Bible doesn’t want you to be deceived about something. And let me tell you: the specific deception that this passage is warning us against is alive and well today, both outside and inside the church. Believing in this deception can have disastrous consequences. Here is the deception: “Wrongdoers will inherit the kingdom of God”. Do you believe that wrongdoers will inherit in the kingdom of God? Then you are deceived, this passage says.

The Gospel

So I want to take a step back as we get started. I need a volunteer. Now before you volunteer, you need to know what you are volunteering for, because this is going to take a bit of courage. I would like someone to come up here and explain briefly to everyone what the Gospel is. Who is Jesus, what did he do, and how are we saved from the penalty for the bad things we do?

Have volunteer state the Gospel.

Great job! That is the most important message that you can hear and understand. The Gospel is the good news that God the Father sent God the Son to earth, that he lived a life of perfect obedience, and then died to pay the penalty for sin. Not his own sin, since he had none, but our sin. And if anyone believes in Christ, that person shall have eternal life.

So a few questions, and these are not trick questions:

Can we earn our salvation by doing enough good deeds? (No.)
Do we have to be “good enough” before God will forgive our sins? (No.)

All right, we’re off to a good start. Here’s a passage from another letter in the Bible, 1 Timothy:

Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst. (1 Timothy 1:15)

Whom did Christ come to save, according to this passage? (sinners)

Now, keep all of that in mind and look back at our passage for tonight. Do you feel the tension then between this passage and what we just talked about? This passage opens very plainly with, “wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God.” Which sounds very different than “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” How do we affirm both of these things to be true? That’s the challenge we want to consider tonight.

Disqualified

Paul lists a series of persons in this passage who are disqualified from entering the kingdom of God. But I don’t want to get too hung up on the specifics tonight. Because if you are like me, you probably tend to focus on the sins that describe others, but not maybe aren’t the things that describe you. That takes more courage.

To take just one example, we read there that “the greedy” will not inherit the kingdom of God. Don’t say anything out loud, but think in your mind of someone who is greedy….

Now, I don’t know who you thought of, but I bet is wasn’t yourself. Probably someone wealthier than you are. And guess who they are thinking of? Someone wealthier than they are. And so on and so on. By our own measurement, none of us are greedy.

Is that the right measuring stick to use? Here’s a good working definition of greed, from the dictionary: “a selfish and excessive desire for more of something than is needed”. More money than we need, more food than we need, more electronic devices than we need, more time in front of those electronic devices than we need. Hmm … how are we doing now?

If we allow ourselves some self-examination, we will find that we all fall into some of these things at times. Or take another similar passage, this one from Galatians 5:

The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God. (Galatians 5:19–21)

Same warning here: those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Try that list on for size. Not only sexual immorality, but impurity. What have you looked at on the internet? What do you talk about? Also: hatred and discord. Ever been jealous? Or had a fit of rage? Been involved in dissension (disagreement) or faction / cliques? How about selfish ambition? Here’s a test: are you always trying to put yourself in the middle of everything by how you act and speak? To make yourself the point. That’s selfish ambition.

The point is: none of us are complete strangers to these sins. And yet, the Bible here says that such people will not inherit the kingdom of God. So, are we all doomed? Is that the point of the message tonight? (That would be a downer of a youth group.)

The Gospel transforms

There is certainly gospel hope, and the distinction between those who are saved and those who are perishing is captured in a single word in our passage. Look again at verse 11. “And that is what some of you ….” What’s the next word? WERE. And quick English test: what tense is that? Past, present, or future? (Past.)

That’s the distinction. That is what some of you WERE, that’s that I WAS. But now, in Christ, verse 11 says, “you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified”. Something changed.

You see, there are two different ways we can misunderstand the gospel. You can fall off the horse in either direction. One error is to think we have to earn forgiveness. To think we have to clean ourselves up first before God can forgive us. That’s false. “God came to save sinners.” Your past sins don’t disqualify you from becoming a Christian; they are precisely the thing that does qualify you. So that’s one error we can fall into, and I want to be really clear tonight about what the gospel is so that, even as we discuss a tough passage tonight, none of us fall into that error.

But there’s another side we can err on, what has been called “easy believism”. This is the false idea—the deception—that it is possible for someone to become a Christian and then never have a shred of evidence of that faith. No change whatsoever. The idea that, “Hey, I can pray a prayer, or raise my hand, or whatever, and then I can live however I want to!”

And that’s a lie. When you come to faith in Christ, He always brings about change in your life. Not necessarily immediately, but the trajectory of your life changes. Those things no longer have mastery over you, they don’t get to define who you are. Over time, you are putting behind sinful patterns, even as you become more and more aware of how messed up you are.

So, suppose I was a greedy person before coming to Christ. That defined who I was. Greed didn’t bother me, I found it a good motivator to get ahead in my job, to make life more comfortable, to get what I want from others. And then God saves me. After that, will I still struggle with greed? Yeah, probably, even for a long time. But there will be increasing remorse when I give in to greed, because I recognize it as disobedience to Jesus my master. Over time greed should have less and less mastery over me. Christians struggle with sin, but it doesn’t define who we are.

The same would be true of whatever sinful pattern has a hold on us.

Are you an angry person? God desires to replace that with patience and self-control.
Are you a person given over to lust? God desires to replace that with purity, with honoring others instead of objectifying them.
Are you a person given over to selfish ambition, always wanting to draw attention to yourself? God wants to work in you humility.

I was trying to think of an illustration, and this one’s a little weird but hang with me; hopefully it works. Do you all remember tiny little rubber toys you may have had when you were little—or maybe last week, I’m not judging—that you place into water and they grow up to like 20 times their original size? Like you start out with this half-inch crab and then after it absorbs the water it’s like a foot long?

It grows because it is immersed in the water. It can’t really help itself, that’s what it does. That’s what saving faith is. The book of James will say, “What good is it … if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? … Faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.” That’s not really faith. If I have that little half-inch crab five years later and it is still a half-inch crab, it’s not going what it was meant to do.

You may have heard the motto in church, “Come as you are.” That’s fine as far as it goes. All are welcome to come to Christ. You don’t need to be (in fact, you can’t be) “good enough” before trusting in Jesus. So yes, “come as you are”.

But golly, don’t stay as you are. It is our hope that as you go through these middle school years, and then immerge as young adults into your high school years, that you will clearly hear God’s call on your life. Not only an initial belief to trust in Jesus to forgive your sins, but also the Holy Spirit working in each of you to put behind you patterns of disobedience and step into areas of maturity and growth.