Cleaning Out My Closet- UKnown pt2

Here is last Sunday's talk. What's in your closet?

1 Cor 6:9-11
9Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders 10nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. 11And 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.
Cleaning Out My Closet

The Sins of the Past

This letter from Paul to the people of Corinth is very personal. Paul loved the Corinthians very much even though he knew what they had been like. He had lived there for 18 months, far longer than he stayed in most cities. He knew well the excesses of Corinth. The city of Corinth was as hedonistic and pagan as any city in our world today. The Temple of Aphrodite housed over 1000 sacred prostitutes. It was the capital of Rome in Greece. Money was plentiful. The city was home to over 300,000 people as well as 450,000 slaves at the time Paul wrote to the church. As you imagine, a city of a thousand vices produced a city with thousands of people with pasts. You’ll notice in the first two verses of our passage this morning that many of the sins listed were of a sexual nature. In fact, much of what Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians concerns sexual sin because it was such a problem in Corinth.

I imagine the people of the church in Corinth ducked their heads as this letter was read aloud in the gathering of believers. Yes, that’s right, this letter was read out loud. Just so you know, this letter called out a situation of incest in the church, called the people of the church infants, and exposed factions in the church based on who certain people allied themselves to apart from Christ. This was not a happy letter. The reminder of the past had to be painful.

This morning I am sure as we read these first two verses many of you are inwardly cringing remembering things you have done in the past. Things you wish had never happened. Things you wish you could undo. Some of you looked in the mirror this morning and thought to yourself, “I should just stay home. One day I am going to say too much or hear too much and what I have done is going to come spilling out.” The past keeps you in fear and guilt keeps you from committing yourself to the one person who can set you free from the past.

See Paul reminds the Corinthians of the past so that they can also remember their current condition. Paul did not go to Corinth, talk about Jesus, and leave before anyone believed. In fact, he left behind a group of people who had been redeemed, set free, transformed by Jesus. This was not a change of philosophy or of action, this was a supernatural occurrence that literally moved people from a life of death into a life of life.

New Beginning

2 Corinthians 5:16-19
16So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. 17Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! 18All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.

In fact, in his next letter to the Corinthians Paul expands on this subject. He talks about being a new creation. Now we’ll be looking at this passage next week as well as we talk about how we relate to one another as believers’ with pasts, but for this week we’ll look at that one verse that says we are a new creation. You may ask how does that happen?

Well Paul spells that out in the last verse of our passage this morning. 11And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified (separated), you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
First he says we are washed. Now when I think about washing I think about taking a shower after a hard day working in the yard. Now my yard may not look like I work in it very much, cause I don’t, so when I do it’s an all day, disgusting job. I wind up covered with dirt, dog, and debris. I do not look like much when I’m done. Now we don’t look like much covered with our pasts either. We have scars, and debris, and junk hanging all over us. This is part of entering into a relationship with Jesus. He cleans us from our pasts. He literally puts the past to death. It no longer counts in His eyes. Now you may say, “Well it matters to other people.” And that may be true, but in the eyes of God it’s like starting over. And the good news is, starting over with God provides the strength, the love, the endurance to start over with other people. So part of being a new creation is getting clean, being washed with God’s shower.

Now not only does God clean you up, but He separates you from that old life. That is what the word sanctify means, to be separated from the profane. Now the word profane is not a word we like to think about in our day and time, but it is a good word to describe a lot of our pasts. We have given ourselves over to a lot of things that were less than good or holy. God’s best, other people’s best was not on our minds. In fact the definition of profane, contempt, irreverence, vulgar, coarse, degrading is a good description of a lot of our activity- sometimes out of ignorance but sometimes out of intent. God separates us from our past. He drives a void between us and our sin that no one can cross. The past literally has no hold on our future. God has seen it, dealt with it, and dismissed it.

Finally, Paul says we have been justified. Now this bothers a lot of people, because we live in a world where we have a criminal justice system where you “do the crime you do the time.” That is not the way God works. He operates in grace and mercy. So God, as Christ becomes a part of your life, declares you righteous. What does it mean to be righteous? It means you are right with God. It means you are clean. It means you are free. Last week we talked about a person who is either a slave to sin or a slave to God. Well, these people Paul is writing to know about this first hand. They used to be slaves of sin in the city of sin, but now they are free.

What Now?

This information is all well and good for the Corinthians, because they had been cleansed from their pasts. What about you? What’s in your past? Do you crack the door open to past years and cringe? Do you hide, lie, and justify to get through life? Let me remind you, this letter was written to a group of people, but the truth is universal. God is still mending lives. You can still be cleansed, you can still have your past broken off from your life, and you can still be called a righteous friend of God. You do not have to be bound to the past. In fact, Jesus death and resurrection was for you and your past.

A few weeks ago Carl talked about inviting people to a relationship with Jesus. I know people who go to church talk about this a lot without giving a lot of explanation. It seems strange to talk about having a relationship with someone you can’t see and who you learn from in some crazy ways. So I want to take a few moments in closing this morning to try to explain what it means to begin a relationship with Jesus and how this changes a person’s life. First, it means you ask God to count Jesus’ death for you. It’s a leap of faith to go from believing you are responsible for fixing your past to allowing God to deal with it in His way. The Bible tells us that is why Christ died, so that we would not have to be held responsible for our pasts. All our punishment, judgment, wrath was put on Him so that we would not have to face it. (Romans 5- particularly vs 6-9)
6 When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners. 7 Now, no one is likely to die for a good person, though someone might be willing to die for a person who is especially good. 8 But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. 9 And since we have been made right in God’s sight by the blood of Christ, he will certainly save us from God’s judgment. (NLT)

Second, it means choosing to follow Christ. This is not paying Him lip or hip service- not saying you go to church or giving money to a church. This is a lifestyle change. It means you allow God to guide your life through the Bible, learning to make decisions based upon God’s wisdom and principle rather than using the standards of everyone else to make judgments, through living in community with other Christ followers, and through listening for and heeding the voice of God in your life.