The Promise of the Gospel Part 3

3) Those who will call upon the Name of the Lord Must Understand that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God

Paul, in his letter to the church of God that is in Corinth, poses a question that causes the unrighteous to tremble in so far as the call to the promise of the gospel in concerned. He asks in 1 Cor. 6:9, “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? [emphasis mine]. He goes on to enumerate some of the many ways in which unrighteousness manifests in v. 10 when he says “Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.” (1 Cor. 6:9-10). He adds, elsewhere in Galatians 5:19-21, some of the manifestations of unrighteousness as follows, “Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness,  idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies,  envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.” [emphasis mine]. The idea of failing to inherit the kingdom of God is something that Paul repeats in other places other than the passages we have considered. In Eph. 5:5 for example, he further corroborates this fact in these words “For this you know, that no fornicator, unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.”  On the contrary, the righteous will enjoy the presence of the Lord in all eternity (1 Thess. 4:17).