What Does Paul Mean by "Such Were Some of You" in 1 Corinthians 6:11?

It is usually read as a before-and-after: you used to be those things, now you are not. That reading cannot survive the letter it appears in.

Start with the verbs. Paul says the Corinthians were washed, were sanctified, were justified — three passives in a row — and he names the agent: in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. Nobody in that sentence does anything to himself. This is baptismal language, the same water Paul elsewhere calls a washing of regeneration and a burial into Christ’s death. It is an account of something done to the Corinthians from outside them, not a report on their moral progress.

Then read the rest of the letter. A man in that congregation is sleeping with his father’s wife, and the church is proud of its tolerance. They are dragging one another before pagan judges. They are getting drunk at the Lord’s Supper while the poor go hungry. Paul writes “such were some of you” to these people. If the phrase meant the sinner had been eliminated, the remaining ten chapters would have nothing to correct.

So what has changed? Everything, but not what the popular reading assumes. What changed is their standing — washed, set apart, declared righteous, all of it accomplished in baptism and belonging to Christ rather than to them. That verdict is complete. Their behavior is not, which is exactly why Paul immediately reasons from the indicative to the imperative: because you are His, do not live as though you were not. The Formula calls this the law’s continuing work among the baptized, and it is necessary precisely because the old Adam survives the ceremony.

The past tense in verse 11 is real. It refers to the kingdom-exclusion of the unwashed, which no longer stands over them. It does not mean that the flesh has been retired, that temptation has ended, or that a Christian who still recognizes himself in the list has failed to be converted.

The comfort runs the other direction from how the verse is usually preached. Paul is not telling the Corinthians to look at their improvement for assurance. He is telling them to look at their baptism.