Transcription
The real reason why they will not inherit the kingdom of God. Paul named seven types of people who will not inherit the kingdom of God. And before you think this is just another sermon about morality, let me show you something almost nobody notices when reading this passage.
The Apostle Paul, writing from a city called Ephesus around the year 55 after Christ, sent a letter to the church in Corinth. A church full of people who believed themselves saved. People who attended worship every week, people who celebrated the Lord's supper. And Paul wrote something that if he had said it today would get him cancelled within hours. He wrote this: "Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived."
"Do not be deceived." That phrase in Greek is *me plannister*, and it means literally, "stop straying. Stop being wrong. Stop believing you are on the right path when you are not." And after that warning, Paul names the people who will not inherit the kingdom.
And here is the first thing almost nobody notices. When you study the list, you discover that they are not 10 separate groups. There are seven categories that repeat in at least three different passages of the New Testament. Paul says it in 1 Corinthians chapter 6. He repeats it with different words in Galatians chapter 5. And John, the beloved disciple, confirms it in Revelation 21. Three witnesses, three independent passages, seven types of people.
And before this video ends, I am going to show you something even more disturbing. I'm going to show you that the seventh type is not what you are imagining. It is not a murderer. It is not an adulterer. It is not a sorcerer. The seventh type is someone who probably goes to church. Someone who considers himself a good person. Someone who never imagined the Bible was talking about him.
But before reaching the seventh, we need to understand the previous six because each of them hides a historical truth that completely changes how we understand salvation. And let me make something clear from the start because I know what you are thinking. God can save anyone. Anyone. The thief on the cross was saved minutes before dying. Mary Magdalene had seven demons and was the first to see the risen Christ. Paul, the same Paul who wrote this list, was a murderer of Christians before his conversion.
So what is Paul talking about when he says these people will not inherit the kingdom? He is talking about something very specific. He is not talking about whom God cannot save because God is all-powerful. He is talking about those who die clinging to that condition without repenting. Those who make that sin their identity, their way of life, their banner. Those who until their last breath tell God, "Do not change me. I do not need you. I will not repent."
And that, according to Paul, according to John, according to Jesus himself, leaves the person outside the kingdom. Not because God does not want them, but because the person did not want. Imagine, for a moment, that a doctor has the cure for a terminal illness. The cure is ready. The doctor offers it for free. But the patient, in his pride, in his blindness, in his distrust, says, "I will not take it. I do not need it. I do not believe I am sick." Whose fault is it when the patient dies?
And here is the chilling part. Paul was not speaking to pagans. Paul was writing to a church, to believers, to people who called themselves Christians. That is why he wrote that harsh phrase, "Do not be deceived." Because there were people in the church of Corinth who thought their way of life was not a problem. That they were already saved. That grace covered them no matter what they did. And Paul cuts them off at the root.
I'm going to teach you the seven types one by one, with the original Greek text, with the historical context of first-century Corinth, and with the connection each of those groups has with the world of today because you're going to discover something few preachers dare to say: five of those seven types are socially accepted today. Some are even celebrated. And that is exactly what Paul predicted would happen.
Let us begin with the first. The first type of person who will not inherit the kingdom of God is the idolater. And before you think you are free from this group because you do not have a clay statue in your house, let me show you what this word means in the original Greek. The word Paul uses is *eidolatres*. It comes from two roots: *eidolon*, which means image or idol, and *latres*, which means servant or worshipper. Literally, servant of an image, worshipper of something that takes the place of God.
And here comes the detail that changes everything. In the first century, when Paul writes this, Corinth was a city full of temples. In the forum of Roman Corinth and on the slopes of the Acrocorinth, archaeologists have excavated temples dedicated to Aphrodite, to Apollo, to Poseidon, to Athena, to Tyche, to Helios, to Asclepius, and to several other gods in a city that housed hundreds of thousands of people. And the problem was not the statues. The problem was what the statues represented. Each idol in Corinth represented a value. Aphrodite represented sexual pleasure without limits. Pluto represented wealth obtained at any cost. Mars represented power through force. And people did not worship the stone. They worshipped the value that the stone represented.
That is why when Paul says idolater, he is not only speaking of someone who kneels before an image. He is speaking of someone who hands over his life, his time, his energy, and his heart to something that takes the place of God. And what takes the place of God today? Think of a person who gets up at 6:00 in the morning, checks the phone before praying, works 12 hours to get a promotion. He promised his boss he would get it even if he had to sacrifice his family. Arrives home exhausted, has no time for his children, has not opened the Bible in months, and on Sunday falls asleep because he is exhausted. Whose servant is that person? Not of a statue, but of his career, of his image, of his success, of his money. And that, in biblical terms, is idolatry.
Jesus said it with words almost nobody quotes in Matthew 6:4. He said, "No one can serve two masters. You cannot serve God and riches." The word translated as riches in Greek is *mamonas*. And *mamonas* was not just money. It was a personified entity, a false god of wealth. Jesus, the carpenter of Nazareth, 2,000 years ago, named one of the most worshipped idols of the 21st century.
And here is the question you have to ask yourself, and it is not to condemn you. It is so that you truly examine yourself. If God took from you today what you love most, what you seek most, what you pursue most, could you still believe in him? Or would your faith collapse because your faith is not really in God, but in that other thing? That question separates the worshipper from the idolater.
There is a historical detail few people know. In the Greco-Roman world, important commercial agreements were sealed with oaths by the gods. Do you know why? Because swearing by a deity gave religious and social weight to the agreement. If you broke an oath made before Aphrodite or before Apollo, you not only lost the trust of your partners, you also exposed yourself to divine vengeance. According to the belief of the time, false gods were so real to that culture that their name regulated the economy. It regulated marriages. It regulated war.
And Paul enters that city and says something scandalous. He says those gods do not exist, that the statues are stone, and that the Corinthian Christians cannot continue eating from temple sacrifices because although the idols do not exist, the demons behind the idols do. He writes this in the same book, 1 Corinthians 10:20. He says, and this is an exact quote: "What the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God." That is, according to Paul, behind every false worship, there is a real spiritual force trying to take the place of God in the person's life.
And if that was true in the year 55 after Christ, what makes you think it is no longer true? Today, there are no temples of Aphrodite on every corner. But there is something worse. There are screens in every pocket. There are influences that millions follow as if they were prophets. There are economic systems that promise happiness in exchange for your soul. There are relationships, there are careers, there are goals that people pursue with more devotion than any monk in the desert pursued God.
And the question remains the same one Paul asked Corinth: "Whom do you truly serve?" Because you can go to church on Sunday and be an idolater the rest of the week. You can know verses by heart and have your heart occupied by something else. You can call yourself a Christian and, without realizing it, have replaced God with an idol that does not even have a name.
And here is the most disturbing part. Here is the line almost nobody underlines in their Bible. When Paul lists those who will not inherit the kingdom, he places the idolater in second place. After the fornicator, before the adulterer, before the thief, before the murderer. Why would Paul put an idolater before a murderer? Because for Paul, idolatry is the mother of all other sins. When a person puts something in the place of God, everything else falls out of order. If your god is pleasure, you will violate whoever it takes to obtain it. If your god is money, you will steal and lie and betray. If your god is power, you will destroy whoever it takes to maintain it. All the other sins on Paul's list are symptoms. Idolatry is the disease. And that is why it is the first.
However, there is another type on that list directly connected to idolatry. A type that the modern world has completely redefined. A type that almost nobody dares to speak of today without being cancelled. And that is the second group. The second type of person who will not inherit the kingdom of God, according to Paul, is the sexually immoral.
And here I need to be very careful because this is the group that has been most redefined in the last 50 years and because almost nobody dares to truly explain what the original Greek text says. Paul uses several different words to describe this group, and each word points to a different behavior. We are going to see them one by one.
The first word is *pornos*. *Pornos* in Greek is where the modern word pornography comes from, and it referred in the first century to any person who practiced sexuality outside the original design of marriage between a man and a woman. In Greco-Roman culture, that included sex with prostitutes, extramarital sex, sex between unmarried persons, and basically any sexual expression detached from the marriage covenant.
The second word Paul uses is *moichos*. This word is translated as adulterer. And in the first century, it specifically referred to the married person who had sexual relations with someone who was not their spouse. In Jewish law, this was punishable by death, by stoning. In Roman law, it was legal grounds for immediate divorce.
The third word is *malakos*. And here we enter polemical territory because this word has been the subject of hundreds of doctoral theses. Literally, *malakos* means soft, smooth, effeminate. In the context of the first century, it referred to the man who played the passive role in a homosexual relationship. We know this because we have letters, contracts, poems, and theatrical works from the period that use exactly that word in that context.
The fourth word is the most explicit: *arsenokoites*. This word is a construction that Paul himself seems to have coined, joining two words from the book of Leviticus 18:22 in the Greek translation of the Old Testament. *Arsen* means male. *Koites* means bed or couch. Literally, "he who lies with males." And Paul uses it in exactly the same context as Leviticus used it.
Now, before anyone accuses me of anything, let me be brutally clear. Paul was not teaching anyone to hate. The same Paul, in the next verse, verse 11, says something devastating. He says, "And such were some of you." Read that phrase carefully: "And such were some of you." That is, some members of the church of Corinth came from those lifestyles. They had been *pornos*. They had been *moichos*. They had been *malakos*. They had been *arsenokoites*. And Paul did not expel them. He did not humiliate them. He did not cancel them. He embraced them as brothers.
But, and here is the "but" that changes everything, he embraced them as brothers because they had changed. Because they had understood that lifestyle was not compatible with the kingdom of God. Because they had stopped making their sexuality their identity and had started making Christ their identity. Paul did not say to the church of Corinth, "Continue as you are. God accepts you this way." Paul said to the church of Corinth, "You have been washed. You have been sanctified. You have been justified." Washed. Sanctified. Justified. Three words that imply a change.
And here is the uncomfortable question few preachers dare to ask today. Why does modern culture celebrate exactly the behaviors Paul listed as obstacles to entering the kingdom? Is it coincidence, or is it exactly what the Bible predicted would happen? 2 Timothy 3:1-5. Paul writes to Timothy and tells him, exact quote: "In the last days perilous times will come. For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection." That last phrase, "without natural affection," in Greek is *astorgos*. It means literally, "without the love that is natural among members of a family." It means a culture where parents do not love their children, where siblings do not look after each other, where what is natural is inverted. Paul described the culture of the year 2026 with a precision that is frightening.
And look, I am not telling you this so you look at others with contempt. I am telling you this so that you look at yourself. Because sexual immorality is not only what a person does with their body. It is what a person does with their mind. Jesus said it in Matthew 5:28. He said, "Whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart." Read it again: "has already committed adultery with her in his heart." According to Jesus, sexual immorality does not begin in bed. It begins in the eyes. It begins on the screen. It begins in the thought you cultivate when no one sees you.
And the question you have to ask yourself is not whether you have committed this sin in the body. The question is whether you live submitting your mind, your desire, and your eyes to the lordship of Christ, or whether you live doing whatever you want because "no one gets hurt." Because someone does get hurt. You.
And here is the historical fact almost nobody knows. In ancient Corinth, there was a temple dedicated to the goddess Aphrodite on top of a hill called Acrocorinth. The Greek geographer Strabo wrote that in ancient times, that temple had had more than a thousand slaves dedicated to the goddess, described as courtesans. Some modern scholars, like Jerome Murphy O'Connor, question whether sacred prostitution as a religious rite was really a documented practice in the Corinth of Paul's time, or whether Strabo was referring to a much earlier period. What is beyond doubt is that Corinth in the first century was famous throughout the Roman Empire for open and commercialized sexual immorality. Sexuality was an industry.
When Paul wrote to the Corinthians and told them that sexual immorality would not inherit the kingdom, he did so in a city where sexuality without limits was part of the local economy. It was part of the culture. It was part of the religion. And even so, Paul dared to say what he said. Why? Because he did not care about being liked by Corinth. He cared about telling the truth, even if it cost him friendships, even if it cost him approval, even if it cost him, eventually, his life. And if Paul dared to say that to a culture that celebrated sexuality without limits, someone has to have the courage to repeat it today. Not with hatred, not with contempt, with love, but with the truth. Because love without truth is sentimentalism, and truth without love is cruelty. But truth spoken with love, that is exactly what Paul offered Corinth. And that is what the church must offer the world today.
Let us go to the third type. The third type of person who will not inherit the kingdom of God is the murderer. And before you think you are free from this group because you have never killed anyone, let me show you something Jesus said that is going to shake you. In Matthew 5:22, Jesus is preaching the Sermon on the Mount, and he says, textual quote: "Whoever is angry with his brother will be in danger of judgment." Wait, whoever is angry. Jesus goes further. He says, "Whoever says to his brother, 'Raca,' shall be in danger of the council, but whoever says, 'You fool,' shall be in danger of hellfire."
What is Jesus talking about? He is saying something scandalous. He is saying that murder does not begin with a weapon. It begins with a feeling, and that the root of murder is contempt for the human being in front of you. John, the beloved disciple, repeats it in his first epistle 3:15. He says, "Whoever hates his brother is a murderer. And you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him." Read it again: "Whoever hates his brother is a murderer." For John, there is no spiritual difference between someone who plunges a knife and someone who holds hatred. The root is the same. The fruit may not appear, but the seed is in the heart.
And here is what you have to understand. The Bible does not define murder only as the physical action of killing. It defines it as the internal disposition to destroy the other. And that includes hatred, resentment, vengeance accumulated for years, the silent desire that someone suffer. Do you have someone in your life like that? Someone you have never forgiven? Someone whose name, when you hear it, fills your chest with something dark. According to John, that is spiritual murder. And the murderer, according to Revelation 21:8, does not enter the new Jerusalem.
And now we are going to talk about physical murder because it also exists, and the Bible is clear about it. In the first century, Rome had brutal laws against common murder, but paradoxically, it celebrated mass murder. The games of the Colosseum in Rome were spectacles where thousands of people died each year to entertain crowds, and Roman society accepted it as something normal. Even the emperors funded it.
And here is the chilling connection. In the book of Matthew 2:16-18, it is written that King Herod, upon learning of the birth of Jesus, ordered the killing of all children under 2 years old in Bethlehem. Considering the actual size of Bethlehem in that period, a small village, historians estimate the decree could have taken between six and 20 lives, depending on the exact population of the place. And the spiritual principle behind that act was the same one that moves the great murderers of history: the fear of losing power, the will to destroy what stands in the way, the capacity to eliminate innocence in order to maintain a position.
And here is the question few dare to ask. If Herod had had the technologies of the 21st century, how many more children would he have killed? If the civilizations that celebrate death today had had the power of the Roman emperors, what additional horrors would we have seen? The capacity of the human being to destroy human life has not diminished in 2,000 years. It has only found new ways to do it. And the Bible is clear: the murderer does not inherit the kingdom of God.
But again, Paul in verse 11 says, "And such were some of you." Some in the church of Corinth had killed. They had been in the Roman army. They had participated in violence. They had hated to death. And Christ washed them, sanctified them, justified them. How? Because they repented. Because they handed over their hearts. Because they understood that the gospel is not for the good. It is for the sick who recognize that they are sick. Paul himself, before his conversion, had approved the stoning of Stephen, the first Christian martyr, and God saved him, changed him, used him to write 13 letters of the New Testament. If God could change Paul, he can change anyone. However, the change has to occur.
And there is the detail. Salvation is not a label you put on top of you. It is an open-heart operation where God replaces the heart of stone with a heart of flesh. As Ezekiel 36:26 says, if your heart remains stone after years of calling yourself a Christian, something is wrong.
And that brings us to the fourth type. The fourth type of person who will not inherit the kingdom of God is the thief and the covetous. And this is one of the most misunderstood groups because most people, when they read "thief," think of someone who enters through a window with a ski mask. And when they read "covetous," they think of a tight-fisted old man counting coins with contempt.
But the word Paul uses in Greek for thief is *kleptes*. From there comes the modern word kleptomaniac. And *kleptes* in the first century referred to any person who took something that did not belong to them. That included the swindler, the dishonest merchant, the tax collector who kept part of the collection, the employee who stole small objects from the employer, the one who lied in a sale to get more money.
And here is the detail. Paul does not mention only the thief. He also mentions the *pleonectes*. That is the Greek word translated as covetous. But *pleonectes* has a deeper sense. It literally means "the one who wants to have more." The one who never has enough. The one who is always looking to increase what he already has, not out of necessity, but out of greed. In ancient Corinth, the *pleonectai* were socially hated. They were the merchants who took advantage of famines to raise prices. They were the landowners who expelled peasants from their lands to expand their properties. They were the lenders who charged interest so high that they left entire families in debt slavery. Does that sound familiar? Because today we call it something else. We call it success. We call it healthy ambition. We call it building an empire. However, the Bible does not change its name. It still calls it greed.
And here comes another word Paul adds: *harpax*. This word was translated as swindler in the KJV. But it literally means rapacious, like a bird of prey that swoops down from the air to snatch. And who is a *harpax* today? It is the company that designs a contract with fine print so the client does not understand what he is signing. It is the politician who gets rich with the taxes of the people. It is the person who takes advantage of another's vulnerability to gain economic advantage. It is the one who sells a course promising miraculous wealth and charges a fortune, knowing the promise is a lie.
And the Bible is chillingly clear. In 1 Timothy 6:10, Paul writes to his disciple Timothy and tells him a phrase that has become famous, but that almost nobody quotes correctly. It goes like this, textual quote: "The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil." Read it carefully. It does not say that money is the root of all evil. It says that the love of money is. The difference is enormous. Money is a tool. The love of money is idolatry.
And here we return to the first group, to the idolater. Because when a person begins to steal, begins to covet, begins to swindle, he does it because he has enthroned money as his god. And that god demands sacrifices. It demands honesty. It demands integrity. It demands relationships. It demands, eventually, the soul.
And here is a historical detail almost nobody knows. In ancient Corinth, there existed a practice called patronage. The rich supported the poor but demanded political loyalty and personal services in exchange. It was a legal form of economic slavery, and the Corinthian Christians were involved in that system. Paul had to write several times about how to handle money in the church, precisely for this reason. In 1 Corinthians 11:17-22, Paul reprimands the church of Corinth because at the Lord's supper, the rich arrived first, ate everything good, and got drunk, while the poor arrived later and were left with the leftovers. Paul describes it as a scandal, a shame, a betrayal of the gospel.
And here is the hard question. How different is our culture today? Today, a person can accumulate fortunes while millions go hungry. Today, corporations generate astronomical profits while workers cannot pay rent. Today, a person can be successful by the standards of the world and be, in biblical terms, a *pleonectes*. And Paul, clear and direct, says that type of person, if he does not repent, does not inherit the kingdom of God.
Jesus taught it with a story almost everyone knows but few understand: the story of the rich fool in Luke 12:16-21. A man accumulated so much harvest that he decided to build bigger barns to store everything. And when he had finally accumulated enough, he said, "Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years. Take your ease. Eat, drink, be merry." And God said to him, textual quote, "Fool, this night your soul will be required of you." That night, after a whole life of accumulating, that same night, and everything he had stored was left for others. Jesus ended the story with a single phrase, a phrase that is the harshest sentence in the New Testament against greed. He said, "So is he who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God." Read it again: "and is not rich toward God." Less because spiritual wealth has nothing to do with how much you accumulated in the bank. It has to do with how much you invested in the kingdom.
And here is the question you have to ask yourself, and it is not to condemn you. It is so that you examine yourself. When you reach the end of your life, when you are in your bed that last night, what will you have accumulated? Goods that remain, or a name written in the book of life?
And now comes the fifth, and this one, believe me, is one of the most subtle on the list. The fifth type of person who will not inherit the kingdom of God is the liar. And here I need you to pay attention because most people, when they read the word "liar," think of someone who tells great lies, novel lies, scandalous lies. However, the Greek that Paul and John use for liar is *pseustes*. And *pseustes* does not refer only to the great lie. It refers to any falsehood, to any word that distorts reality, to any false representation of the facts.
In Revelation 21:8, John writes this: "But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death." Read it again: "All liars." It does not say the great liars. It does not say the professional liars. It says all liars. And that should shake anyone because, let us be honest, who has not lied?
And here is the difference. The Bible is not talking about an occasional slip. The Bible is talking about a life built on lies, about a person whose identity is made of masks, about someone who has made falsehood his way of existing in the world. Jesus, in John 8:44, says to the religious leaders of his time a brutal phrase. He tells them, "You are of your father, the devil. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it." Father of lies. According to Jesus, Satan has a spiritual fatherhood over those who live in falsehood. It is a direct connection. Every time someone builds his life on deceptions, he is, in spiritual terms, choosing whom he wants to resemble.
And here is something historically fascinating. In the first century, Greco-Roman culture had specific gods for deceit. Hermes, for example, was the god of merchants, but also of thieves and liars. Apate was the personified goddess of deceit, and the Greeks did not see lying as a moral sin. They saw it as a valuable skill. When Paul and John say that no liar enters the kingdom of God, they are directly challenging that entire culture.
And the culture of the 21st century resembles Greco-Roman culture dangerously in this. Think about it. How many times do you hear someone say that truth is subjective? That everyone has their own truth? That lying is fine if it is for a good reason? White lies, pious lies, courtesy lies, lies to avoid conflicts, lies to get what you want. And here is what is disturbing. The Bible does not make those distinctions. For God, a lie is a lie, and the truth is the truth.
And here enters a specific lie that destroyed empires and still destroys families today. The lie of the one who promises and does not fulfill. The lie of the one who says, "I love you," without feeling it. The lie of the one who promises fidelity at one altar and breaks it in another bed. The lie of the one who says, "I am a Christian," but lives like an atheist. That lie, according to the Bible, is the worst of all because it dishonors the name of Christ in front of a watching world.
And there is a fact almost nobody knows. In the book of Proverbs 6:16-19, Solomon writes that there are six things the Lord hates and seven are an abomination to him. The Hebrew word Solomon uses for abomination is *tow'ebah*, and it is used for the most serious sins of the Old Testament. And what is on that list? Three of the seven things have to do with the lie: "a lying tongue, a false witness who speaks lies, one who sows discord among brethren." Three of seven. Almost half the list of God's abominations has to do with the word, with the tongue, with falsehood. And that should give us pause every time we are about to speak.
James, the brother of Jesus, wrote an entire letter where he dedicates a complete chapter, chapter 3, to speak of the power of the tongue. He says, textual quote: "The tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity. The tongue is so set among our members that it defiles the whole body and sets on fire the course of nature, and it is set on fire by hell." Set on fire by hell. James says that when a person lives lying, slandering, speaking ill of others, his tongue is literally connected to the fire of hell. Imagine a person who spends all day on social media destroying reputations, spreading rumors, inventing gossip. That person may believe she is doing something harmless, but according to James, her tongue is being used by the adversary.
And the question is this: Are you a person of your word? Do you fulfill what you promise? Is your "yes" a "yes" and your "no" a "no"? When you tell something, do you tell it as it happened, or do you adorn it to look better? Because according to the Bible, no liar enters the kingdom. And that is an uncomfortable sentence. But uncomfortable truth is better than a lie that makes you feel good.
And that brings us to the sixth group, a group that in modern culture has resurfaced with a force that chills anyone who knows its history. The sixth type of person who will not inherit the kingdom of God is the sorcerer. And this is the group that has most disguised itself in the modern world. Because the word "sorcerer" makes one think of an old woman with warts on her nose stirring a pot in a hut in the forest. And that is not what the Bible says.
The Greek word John uses in Revelation 21:8 is *pharmakos*. Read it carefully: *pharmakos*. From there comes the modern word pharmacy. From there comes the modern word pharmaceutical. And that is no coincidence. In the first century, *pharmakos* referred specifically to the practitioner of occult arts who used potions, drugs, hallucinogenic plants, incantations, and rituals to manipulate spiritual forces. The connection between drug and sorcery is not a modern invention. It is an ancient connection that the Bible clearly identifies.
And Paul, in Galatians 5:20, uses the word again, but this time when listing the works of the flesh, he says *pharmakeia*, almost the same word. And translators have rendered it as sorcery, but it could also be translated as witchcraft, occultism, magic, spiritism. And here is the chilling detail. In first-century culture, the *pharmakos* was not a marginal character. He was a respected professional. The upper classes paid fortunes to consult these specialists. They wanted to know the future. They wanted to cast curses on enemies. They wanted potions to obtain love. They wanted rituals to accumulate wealth. Does that sound familiar?
Because in the 21st century, the occult industry is more alive than ever. On social media alone, there are millions of people who follow tarot readers, astrologers, mediums, modern witches, aura readers, energy channelers. And this is not harmless entertainment. The Bible is explicit. In Deuteronomy 18:10-12, Moses writes this, and I am going to quote it word by word because the list is long and precise: "There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, or one who practices witchcraft, or a soothsayer, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, or one who conjures spells, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead. For all who do these things are an abomination to the Lord." Read it again: "Are an abomination." Abomination.
And here is the fascinating historical fact. In the ancient city of Ephesus, where Paul preached for 2 years, there was a gigantic industry of sorcery. Ephesus was so famous for its magic that there was an expression, the so-called *Ephesia grammata*, letters of Ephesus, that were engraved on amulets to protect from evil and attract favors. And the famous Greek magical papyri that archaeologists have found in Greco-Roman Egypt contain thousands of magical formulas, incantations, spells, and rituals very similar to those practiced in Ephesus to obtain everything from a job to the death of an enemy.
And in the book of Acts 19, Luke records something astonishing. After Paul preached in Ephesus, many believers who previously practiced these occult arts brought their books of sorcery and burned them publicly. Luke notes the value of those books: 50,000 pieces of silver. 50,000 pieces of silver. So you understand the value: a piece of silver was the daily wage of a common laborer. 50,000 pieces was equivalent to almost 150 years of wages. Those believers literally burned millions of dollars in books because they understood that they could not follow Christ and maintain a connection with the world of darkness at the same time.
And here is the hard question for today. Do you have books, apps, contacts, practices in your life that belong to that world and still call yourself a Christian? Do you read the horoscope every morning? Have you done a tarot reading just for fun? Do you have amulets, energy bracelets, crystals to attract luck? Have you consulted a medium, a fortune teller, a sorcerer because you did not really believe, but you just wanted to try? Because the Bible, without subtlety, says these practices open spiritual doors. And once the door is open, it is not easy to close it.
Paul wrote in Ephesians 6:12, textual quote: "For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places." Read it again: "Spiritual hosts of wickedness." Paul was not writing poetry. He was describing a reality. He had seen a reality the early church faced every day. A reality that exists just as alive today, though modern culture laughs at it.
And here is what is most disturbing. Modern culture has reopened the doors that Christianity closed for 1500 years. The practices that in Christian Europe were considered dangerous and forbidden are today sold as tools of self-knowledge and spirituality. And millions of people, including people who call themselves Christians, are practicing them without knowing what they are inviting into their lives. And the Bible is clear: the sorcerer does not inherit the kingdom. If you have touched this world, there is hope. But hope requires repentance. It requires burning the books, as the Ephesians did. It requires cutting the practices. It requires renouncing at the root any connection with those forces. And that is only possible under the lordship of Christ.
Let us go to the seventh. And here, get ready, because this is the group almost nobody expects. Paul does not mention it in 1 Corinthians 6. John mentions it in Revelation 21:8. And it is the first group on the list, not the last. Do you know who it is? The cowardly and the unbelieving. The cowardly and the unbelieving. Read it again. Revelation 21:8, textual quote: "But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death."
Why would John put the cowardly and the unbelieving before the murderers and the sorcerers? Because cowardice and unbelief, in the context of the book of Revelation, are the fundamental sin. Let me explain. The Greek word for cowardly that John uses is *deilos*. This word does not refer to someone who is afraid of a spider or of heights. It refers to someone who, in the face of persecution, denies his faith. In the face of threat, renounces. In the face of cost, retreats. When the gospel demands something serious of him, he does not deliver.
And the Greek word for unbelieving is *apistos*. And it does not refer only to the atheist who denies the existence of God. It refers to the person who does not trust. To the person who has heard the gospel, understood it, but has decided not to surrender. To the person who lives with one foot in and one foot out. To the person who calls herself a Christian but whose daily life shows no real surrender.
And here is what should shake you. These two groups, according to John, head the list of those who do not enter the kingdom, before the murderers, before the sexually immoral, before the sorcerers. Why? Because while the other sinners often know they are lost and therefore eventually cry out for help, the coward and the unbeliever live deceived. They live thinking they are fine. They live in the middle, in lukewarmness, in religious compliance without real surrender.
Jesus described it in Revelation 3:15-16 when he spoke to the church of Laodicea, textual quote: "I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or hot. So then, because you are lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of my mouth." Vomit. The Greek word is *emeo*, literally, "to expel violently from the stomach." Jesus did not use that word by accident. He used it because he wanted his message to be unforgettable. Spiritual lukewarmness nauseates the risen Christ.
And here is the chill. The cowardly and the unbelieving, according to John, are people who heard the call and did not respond. Who saw the evidence and did not believe. Who knew the truth and did not surrender. Not out of ignorance, but out of fear. Out of comfort. Out of love for what they had to leave behind.
Do you know what this means? It means it is perfectly possible to go to church your whole life, know the Bible, know how to sing all the hymns, and still be in this group. The group of the cowardly, the group of practical unbelievers, the group of those who call themselves Christians without ever having truly surrendered the heart. And that is what Paul was warning the church of Corinth about when he said, "Do not be deceived. Do not be confused. Do not think you are inside because you are sitting on a pew."
There is a terrible passage in Matthew 7:22-23. Jesus is ending the Sermon on the Mount and says something every Christian should read with trembling. He says, exact quote: "Many will say to me in that day, 'Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name? Cast out demons in your name and done many wonders in your name?'" And then I will declare to them, "I never knew you. Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness." Read it again: "I never knew you." These people had prophesied. They had cast out demons. They had performed miracles. And Jesus says he never knew them. That is, they made a whole life of religious activity without having a real relationship with him, and they are rejected.
What did they do wrong? It is not that they worshiped other gods. It is not that they murdered. It is not that they stole. Their problem was another. Their problem was faith without surrender. Religion without Christ. A life that looked spiritual on the outside but was hollow inside. And that is why the seventh group is the most disturbing because that group is not the obvious sinners. It is the comfortable religious. They are the ones who hear a video like this and say, "How good this is for my neighbor who does not go to church," without realizing the message is for them. They are the ones who have been on a pew for 20 years without ever having allowed the gospel to transform their lives. They are the ones who know the correct doctrine but have not bent the knee before the living Christ. And this is the most numerous group, the one in greatest danger, because it believes itself inside and is not.
And now comes the most important question of this entire video. Are you in any of these seven groups? I am not talking about doing a quick exam to calm your conscience. I am talking about looking at yourself in the mirror with honesty, without a mask, without the idealized version of yourself that you show on social media.
Is there something in your life that takes the place of God? Your work, your partner, your body, your reputation? That is idolatry.
Is there an area of your sexual life that you know is outside the biblical design and you have decided you will continue the same? That is sexual immorality.
Is there someone you hold a hatred against that has lasted for years? That, according to John, is spiritual murder.
Have you taken something that is not yours? Time at work, money in a transaction, an idea that belonged to someone else, a partner who belonged to another person? That is theft.
Do you build your public image with falsehoods? Do you adorn the stories you tell to look better? Do you promise and not fulfill? That is a lie.
Have you touched the world of the occult, even just out of curiosity? That is sorcery.
Have you heard the gospel a thousand times and never surrendered out of fear of what you would have to leave behind? That is spiritual cowardice.
I'm not telling you this to destroy you. I'm telling you this because if the Bible is true, and I believe it is, this exam is the most important one you will do in your life. Because Paul did not write these words to pagans. He wrote them to a church and specifically to people who considered themselves Christians. Paul told them in 2 Corinthians 13:5, textual quote: "Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Examine yourselves. Test yourselves. Do not wait for someone else to examine you. Do not wait for the day of judgment. Examine yourself today."
And here is the most beautiful part of this entire passage. Because if you stayed until here, it was not by accident. It was because something inside you pushed you to keep listening. And that, my friend, is the Holy Spirit. It is the soft voice of God telling you that there is still time.
Remember what Paul said. After the list, after the idolater, after the sexually immoral, after the murderer, after the thief, after the liar, after the sorcerer, after the coward, he said, and this is the most hopeful phrase a human being can read: "And such were some of you." Were in past tense. Because when Christ enters a life, what was is left behind. The identity changes. Paul was not saying that those people continued to be that. He was saying that they had been that, but they were no longer.
How did it happen? Paul explains it in verse 11 of 1 Corinthians 6. He says this word by word: "But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God." Three verbs in past tense. Three actions of God. Washed. The Greek is *apolouo*. It means to wash completely, not partially. Like when someone comes out of a pool and all the dust, all the sweat, all that was on him stays in the water. Christ does not wash on top. He washes to the
bottom. Sanctified. The Greek is hagazo. It means to set apart for a sacred purpose. Like when an Old Testament priest took a common utensil and separated it for the exclusive use of the temple, it ceased to be just any utensil. It became an instrument of God. That is what Christ does with every life that is surrendered to him.
Justified. The Greek is daou. [music] It means to declare just in legal terms. Like when a judge passes sentence and erases a complete criminal record. The person leaves the court without a record. [music] Christ does not forgive sins halfway. He erases them.
And here is the point you need to understand. These three things are not automatic. They do not come from being born into a Christian family. They do not come from being baptized as a baby. They do not come from going to church on Sundays. They come, says Paul, in the name of the Lord Jesus. That means surrendering. That means recognizing that you are a sinner. That means asking Christ to take control. That means renouncing the life you led and beginning a new life under his lordship. And that makes all the difference. The difference between being in one of the seven groups and having left forever. The difference between the second death and eternal life. The difference between the kingdom and the lake of fire.
Before closing this video, I want to ask you for something. If what you heard touched you, if you felt your heart tighten at some point, if any of the seven types described you in some way, do not let this moment pass without doing something. [music] Pause the video, close your eyes, and speak with God, not with beautiful words, with your words. Recognize where you are. Ask him to wash you, to sanctify you, to justify you, not by your merit, but because Christ already paid the price on the cross. And if you already know Christ and this video reminded you of areas where you had relaxed your faith, come back. Come back today. Not tomorrow. [music] Today. Because none of us has tomorrow guaranteed.
And before continuing, if this teaching is moving your heart, if you felt that every word reached you directly, help me make it reach more people by giving this video a like. The YouTube algorithm shows content to more people when they receive likes in the first minutes. Your like [music] could be the reason another person who needs to hear this message finds it this week. And if you are still not subscribed to the channel, subscribe so you do not miss the next teachings. We study the Bible in depth with historical context, with the original word in Hebrew and Greek, without sentimentalism and without cuts. Every video touches a topic most churches do not dare to touch.
Now, let me leave you with a final thought. Paul, when he was on the verge of death, wrote a letter to Timothy. He was imprisoned in Rome. He knew they were going to execute him. And in 2 Timothy 4:7 and 8, he left these words: "I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith." Finally, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness. That was Paul's final sentence about his own life. What sentence are you going to write about yours? Because when you reach the end, only one question will matter. Not how much you accumulated, not how many admired you, not what career you had. The only question will be whether your name is written in the book of life of the Lamb. If it is written, no group of the seven defines you. If it is not written, no human achievement will save you.
Paul wrote this list because he loved the Corinthians, not because he hated them. The uncomfortable truth was his greatest act of love. And this video is an act of the same love. Not to condemn you, to wake you up. While you decide what to do with what you just heard, there is an eternity waiting on the other side. And you make the decision now, not tomorrow. Now.