Inheriting the Kingdom and Pauline Vice Lists
Question: What is your opinion of Zane Hodges, Jody Dillow, Charles Stanley, etc., their view of inheriting the kingdom, and how it helps to interpret the vice lists found in 1 Corinthians 6:9-11? You can also find these vice lists in Galatians 5:19-21 and Ephesians 5:3-5.
Zane Hodges, Jody Dillow, Charles Stanley, and others in the Free Grace movement usually handle the “vice lists” of 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, Galatians 5:19-21, and Ephesians 5:3-5 by connecting them to the idea of “inheriting the kingdom.” They are correct in insisting that salvation is by grace through faith, not of works. However, in my view they go wrong by assuming these inheritance texts are directly about the body of Christ in this dispensation.
1 Corinthians 6:9-11 states:
"Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. 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, and by the Spirit of our God.’’
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Similar vice lists appear in Galatians 5:19-21:
"Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.’’
These passages are especially difficult if you assume every Pauline statement about “the kingdom of God” must describe the destiny of the body of Christ. I do not hold that assumption. The kingdom of God, as defined in places like Daniel 2, is the messianic kingdom on earth: a real, geopolitical rule centered in Jerusalem, crushing the world’s empires and ruling in righteousness. That kingdom belongs to Israel and is received as an inheritance, a legal matter tied to covenant and law.
Inheritance, by nature, is a legal category. It presupposes a covenantal framework. Israel under the law and under the kingdom promises has such a framework; the body of Christ, under the mystery revealed to Paul, does not stand under that legal structure. We are not promised the earthly Jewish kingdom as our inheritance.
The Free Grace teachers you mention, while strong on grace in justification, still tend to read these vice lists as though they directly govern the church’s relationship to a spiritualized or generalized “kingdom.” Because they do not consistently rightly divide Israel’s kingdom program from the body of Christ, they are compelled to construct complex schemes explaining how believers can be eternally secure, yet in some sense “not inherit the kingdom,” and then use those schemes to interpret the vice lists.
My understanding is simpler: these texts, including 1 Corinthians 6 and Galatians 5, speak either to Jews under the kingdom offer or about Jews still related to the covenantal promises at that time. They describe who will and will not inherit Israel’s promised kingdom, not the standing or rewards of the body of Christ in the present dispensation.
So, while I appreciate much of what Hodges, Dillow, and Stanley contributed in defending free grace, I would not follow their view of inheriting the kingdom as a guide to interpreting the vice lists. I see those lists as functioning within Israel’s legal and kingdom framework, not as direct instruction for the church regarding our destiny in Christ.
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