“Some of you were once like that. But you were cleansed; you were made holy; you were made right with God by calling on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”
1 Corinthians 6:11 (NLT)
Paul says some of you were like that—not all. That means even in the church, not everyone had truly changed. Earlier in the chapter, he rebukes believers for cheating each other and dragging their disputes before unbelievers. The problem wasn’t just legal—it was spiritual. They were still living like the world.
In verses 9–10, Paul lists patterns of sin—sexual immorality, adultery, greed, cheating, drunkenness—and says those who persist in these ways won’t inherit the Kingdom of God. At first, all sin is grouped together, but later Paul singles out sexual sin as uniquely damaging. Still, the warning stands: sin is sin, and when tolerated in the church, it destroys our witness.
Verse 11 is the lifeline: “Some of you were like that.” Were. Past tense. Real change comes by calling on Jesus AND yielding to the Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit doesn’t just help us behave better—He gives us new desires, supernatural power, and the strength to do God’s will. But only if we let Him, by yielding.