There are passages of Scripture that are easier to read when we imagine they’re talking about someone else. Today's chapter doesn’t give us much room for that...

Paul begins with believers dragging one another into court, publicly fighting over their grievances. He moves into a sobering list of sins that stand opposed to the life of God’s kingdom. Then he turns specifically to sexual immorality and what Christians do with their bodies. Different sins. Different circumstances. But one concern runs through the entire chapter: Does the way we live reflect who we have become in Christ?

Paul is writing to people who have received grace but are still learning how to live like people transformed by grace. After naming greed, idolatry, adultery, sexual sin, theft, drunkenness, abusive speech, and exploitation, Paul says: “And this is what some of you used to be. But you were washed. You were made holy. You were made righteous in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God” (1 Corinthians 6:11 CEB).

Paul doesn’t pretend the Corinthians have spotless histories. Apparently, they don’t. Neither does he tell them their histories no longer matter because grace has arrived. He tells them that grace has changed what their past gets to say about their future.

You were washed. You were made holy. You were made righteous. Those are things God has done. And because God has acted, the Corinthians can no longer shrug at sin and say, “That’s just who I am.”

I don’t read a chapter like this from a pedestal. I’m grateful for that, because I don’t think Paul gives any of us one to stand on. Christian holiness is never the achievement of people who can look down upon everyone who hasn’t gotten their lives together. It is the testimony of people who know what it means to need cleansing, forgiveness, restoration, and transforming grace.

But grace does more than forgive where we have been. Grace leads us somewhere new. That’s why Paul challenges another Corinthian slogan: “I’m allowed to do anything.” His answer is essentially: perhaps—but does it help? And is it beginning to control you?

Christian freedom isn’t the freedom to follow every appetite. It’s freedom from being ruled by them. Paul eventually brings the discussion directly to the body: “Don’t you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you? … You have been bought and paid for, so honor God with your body” (v19–20 CEB).

Our bodies matter to God. What we do sexually matters. What we do financially matters. How we speak to one another matters. How we resolve conflict matters. What we allow to master our desires matters. Not because God is searching for reasons to reject us, but because Jesus gave himself to redeem the whole person.

The gospel doesn’t save a religious corner of our lives while leaving the rest untouched. Christ claims all of us. And that means Paul’s teaching about sexual holiness cannot faithfully become ammunition for Christians to aim primarily at other people. Before these words are ever useful for judging the culture around us, they must be allowed to examine the Church—and each of us within it.

Where have I allowed desire to become master? Where have I renamed something harmless because I don’t want to surrender it? Where am I living in a way that contradicts the new life Christ has given me? Those questions can be uncomfortable. They can also be full of hope.

Paul doesn’t say, “This is what some of you were, and you’d better spend the rest of your life being ashamed of it.” He says: You were washed. Your worst sin does not have to become your permanent identity. Your past does not get to veto God’s sanctifying work. Forgiveness is not permission to make peace with what Christ died to free us from.

This is responsible grace: God acts first, cleansing and making holy through Christ and the Spirit, and then calls us to live faithfully within the life we have received. Holiness therefore requires honesty. Sometimes repentance. Sometimes accountability. Sometimes running from a temptation instead of negotiating with it. Sometimes repairing damage we have caused. But every one of those responses begins with grace.

We belong to Jesus now. So, by the Spirit’s power, we keep learning to live like people who do.

Read 1 Corinthians 6:11 and 19–20 again today. Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal one area of your life that needs to come more fully under Christ’s gracious authority. Name it honestly before God, and take one concrete step of obedience today.