1 Corinthians 6:11

“And such were some of you, but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and by the Spirit of our God.”

Paul has been addressing the feeling of fear; he now appeals to the higher motive, that of Christian honour. He thus returns to the feeling which had dictated the first word of the passage, τολμᾷ τις, has any one the courage? The vices he has just enumerated belong to a past from which a series of Divine facts have separated them for ever. These facts are, first, baptism, then the consecration and reconciliation to God of which baptism is the symbol. Such a fathomless depth of grace is not to be recrossed!

Καί, and it is true.

There is in the verb ἦτε, ye were, more than the recalling of polluting acts; the term identifies their person with the pollutions to which they gave themselves up.

But, by the τινές, some, the apostle restricts the application of his saying, not only in the sense which Reuss ascribes to the words (one who was guilty of one of those vices, another of another), but so as to bring out that there was, after all, among them a goodly number of men who before their conversion had lived exempt from all those external pollutions. Billroth has made τινές an attribute, and connected it as such with ταῦτα in the contemptuous sense, “such a set of men!” This would have needed ταῦτά τινα, or τοῖοὶ τινες (Meyer).

The following verbs denote the three acts which constituted the entrance of believers into their new state. They are joined together by the ἀλλά of gradation: but moreover (2 Corinthians 7:11); from which it does not follow that the order in which these acts are placed is necessarily one of chronological succession, it may equally be one of moral gradation. For the apostle's intention is to bring out by each stroke, with more and more marked emphasis, the contrast between the former state of believers and the new state into which these acts had brought them.

All are at one in applying the first of the three verbs to baptism. In fact, outwardly speaking, it was the act which had transferred them from the state of heathens to that of Christians, from the condition of beings polluted and condemned to that of beings pardoned and purified. The Middle form of the verb ἀπελούσασθε, ye washed yourselves, expresses the freedom and spontaneity with which they had done the deed; comp. the ἐβαπτίσαντο, 1 Corinthians 10:2 (in the reading of the Vatic.); Edwards also compares Acts 22:16.

The term bathe, wash, is explained by the two following terms. Baptism, when it is done in faith, is not a pure symbol; two purifying graces are connected with it, sanctification and justification. The verbs which express these two facts are in the passive; for they signify two Divine acts, of which the baptized are the subjects. The two verbs in the aorist can only refer both of them to a deed done once for all, and not to a continuous state. This is what prevents us from applying the term sanctify to the growing work of Christian sanctification. This word here can only designate the initial act whereby the believer passed from his previous state of corruption to that of holiness, that is to say, the believer's consecration to God in consequence of the gift of the Spirit bestowed on him in baptism; comp. Acts 2:38; 2 Corinthians 1:21-22; Ephesians 1:13. They entered thereby into the community of saints which is presided over by Jesus Christ, the Holy One of God.

The verb sanctify is placed before justify, because, as Edwards says: “Paul, wishing to contrast the present moral condition of believers with their former state, lays special emphasis on the characteristic of sanctification.” This is also the feature which most directly applies to the passage 1 Corinthians 6:7-10.

From the fact that the term justify is placed second, many, even Meyer, have concluded that it could not here have its ordinary Pauline meaning, and that instead of imputed righteousness it must denote exceptionally the internal righteousness which God infuses into the hearts of believers during the course of their life. But this meaning is, whatever Meyer may say, incompatible with the use of the aorist (ye were justified), a tense which necessarily denotes the initial moment of the new state of righteousness, the transition from the state of corruption to that of regeneration. Besides, it would be impossible to distinguish from this point of view the meaning of the two acts sanctifying and justifying, and to understand how they could be joined, or rather contrasted, with one another by an ἀλλά of gradation: but moreover. It is therefore, also, wholly mistaken when Catholic theologians, and even Protestants, like Beck, make use of this passage to deny the notion of justification as the imputation of righteousness in Paul's writings. When an entire dogmatic view is thus made to rest on the succession of two terms, it should be remembered that the inverse order is given in 1 Corinthians 1:30. We have already indicated the reason why Paul emphasizes sanctification in the first place: it is to point out clearly the contrast between the normal state of the Christian and the degrading vices which were invading the Church; comp. 1 Corinthians 1:2. But thereafter he feels the need of ascending to the hidden foundation of this sanctifying action of the gospel, to the state of justification in which the believer is put by it. The question at the outset of the passage was whether Christians did not possess in themselves the standard of righteousness, by means of which they might regulate their mutual differences. From this point of view Paul had called the heathen οἱ ἄδικοι, the unrighteous. By closing with the idea of the justification bestowed on believers, he points to them as the true possessors of righteousness, first in their relation to God, and thereby in all the relations of life.

But what is it that gives to baptism such efficacy, that, when it is celebrated with faith, it is accompanied with such graces, and draws a line of demarcation so profound between two states in the believer's life? The apostle indicates the answer in the last words of the verse: in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God. It seems to me that there is an unmistakable allusion in these words to the formula of baptism: “In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” In the two passages we find the three names whose invocation constitutes the peculiar characteristic of this institution.

The construction of the sentence does not allow us to apply the first of these clauses exclusively to the one of the last two verbs, the other to the other (Flatt). It seems to me equally impossible to connect them both with the last verb, as Rückert and Meyer propose. I think that both together apply to the first verb, ἀπελούσασθε, ye were washed, and therefore to the two following verbs, which, as we have seen, are merely epexegetical of the first. As this verb expressly points to the ceremony of baptism, these two subordinate clauses reproduce the formula of invocation which was pronounced when the rite was celebrated. The name of Jesus denotes the revelation of His person and work, which has been granted to the Church. It is because of this knowledge that the Church carries out this act of spiritual purification on those whom it receives as its members.

The Spirit of God is the creative breath which accomplishes the new birth in the heart of the man baptized, and thus separates him from the pollutions of his past life. I cannot possibly understand why Meyer alleges that this second clause cannot apply to the verb ἀπελούσασθε as well as the first. Is not the action of the Spirit in the heart of the baptized, whereby he deposits in it the principle of consecration, the purifying act by way of excellence? (Tit 3:5). By adding of our God, the apostle expresses the idea of the fatherly and filial relation formed by Christ between God and the Church, and in virtue of which He communicates to it His Spirit. The apostle never fails, while paying homage to the two Divine agents, Christ and the Spirit, to ascend to the supreme source of all this salvation, even God, who reveals Himself in Jesus, and gives Himself by the Spirit.

Hofmann has taken the strange fancy to connect these two clauses with 1 Corinthians 6:12: “In the name of Christ, and by the Holy Spirit, all things are lawful to me.” But if the maxim, All things are lawful to me, had been qualified from the first in this way, Paul would not have needed to limit its application afterwards, as he does on two successive occasions, and by two different restrictions in 1 Corinthians 6:12 (see Meyer).

The formula of baptism in the Apostolic Church.

The idea has often been expressed, that the formula of baptism in the Apostolic Church was not yet that which is mentioned Matthew 28:19: “In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” and that it was limited to the invocation of the name of Jesus (Acts 2:38; Acts 8:16; Acts 10:48; Acts 19:5). The passage which we have been studying does not appear to me to favour this view. For, as we have pointed out, the mention of the three Divine names contained in the formula Matthew 28:19, is supposed by the terms used by the Apostle Paul. The idea even of God as Father seems implied in the pronoun ἡμῶν, our God.

There is another fact which seems to me to confirm this result; that which is related Acts 19:1-6. Paul asks some disciples who have not yet heard speak of the Holy Spirit: “in what (εἰς τί) then (οὖν) they have been baptized?” The logical relation, expressed by then, between the ignorance of those persons in regard to the Holy Spirit and the apostle's question regarding the baptism which they have received, would not be intelligible if the mention of the Holy Spirit had not been usual in baptism as it was celebrated by the Apostolic Church. Now if the name of Jesus and that of the Holy Spirit were solemnly pronounced in baptism, that of God could not be wanting. Hence I conclude that the phrase: to baptize in the name of Jesus, frequently used in the Acts, is an abridged form to denote Christian baptism in general. This conclusion is confirmed by the fact that in the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles the Trinitarian formula found in Matthew is used side by side with the abridged form of the Acts; comp. 1 Corinthians 7:1 and 1 Corinthians 9:5.