By Kerwin Holmes, Jr.

Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.
1 Corinthians 16:13

Now I write specifically to address the Church alone:

The Cornerstone
There are several passages in the Bible that I will begin dismantling this year. This is a fitting place to start. No, I do not mean “dismantling” in the sense that I will be breaking them down and validating their traditional exegesis. I mean that I will be destroying them by breaking them down and explaining their exegesis. And no, I don’t mean that I will be doing the rather impossible and fruitless action of trying to destroy a jot or tittle of God’s word. Oh heavens no! What I plan on doing here is simply destroying a traditional reading of 1 Corinthians 6:9, which for many amounts to destroying the actual thing. The above verse, from the English Standard Version that did such a good job there, in the introduction will be a support text. If you notice, both verses come from the same Pauline letter. Keep that firmly in your grasp because after I am done with this part the pivot will be all the weightier.

There are some sins that serve as identities which prohibit men and women from entering into God’s kingdom. Paul lists several of them in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, and then goes on to state that some of these identities used to apply to the ancient Christian inhabitants of Corinth he addressed. But Christ sanctified and renewed them so that they became new people. They became those who live for Christ and became partisans of His order, citizens of His kingdom, obedient unto His laws down to the very wills of their hearts. In short, they became Christians.
Now, clicking the usual hyperlink right after I reference a Bible verse, you may find that I used a translation other than the usuals. I did not provide the text from the Christian Standard Bible, the Holman Christian Standard Bible, nor even the English Standard Version that I just esteemed for 1 Corinthians 16:13 (whoops, did it again).

This is because thanks to the long run of Christian Greek-speaking tradition, starting about 100 years or so after Paul, and the quirky nature of evangelical culture today in the United States, whose scholars have had overbearing influences upon these translations, the contextual meaning for Paul that the term μαλακός had in society has been obscured. Christian society has maintained that obscurity precisely because much of the Church in the West is being led by μαλακοί who are long accustomed to simply coasting through life with the pedestrian benefits: the world considering them slightly more holy than the average joe and their congregants following their every word– like prissy elites.

Now, I say much of the Church in the West is so led– and thank God above not all of the Church in the West.

But I get ahead of myself.

The text fully says this as written in one of the erroneous translations, let’s choose the CSB:

⁹ Don’t you know that the unrighteous will not inherit God’s kingdom? Do not be deceived: No sexually immoral people, idolaters, adulterers, or males who have sex with males, ¹⁰ no thieves, greedy people, drunkards, verbally abusive people, or swindlers will inherit God’s kingdom. ¹¹ And some of you used to be like this. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
_{1 Corinthians 6:9-11 in the Christian Standard Bible (CSB)}

The problem in this translation is with verse 9 where a word has totally been excised in the belief that Paul was suddenly being redundant. Here, for good measure I will provide the Greek text. Let’s go with the new Tyndale House Greek text:

9 ἢ οὐκ οἴδατε ὅτι ἄδικοι θεοῦ βασιλείαν οὐ κληρονομήσουσιν; Μὴ πλανᾶσθε· οὔτε πόρνοι οὔτε εἰδωλολάτραι οὔτε μοιχοὶ οὔτε μαλακοὶ οὔτε ἀρσενοκοῖται
_{1 Corinthians 6:9 in the Tyndale House Greek New Testament, with the bold being the omitted word from the Greek}

For those who cannot read Ancient Greek (including the punctuation) the bold word sits between the Greek word for “neither,” which is οὔτε. The Greek word for adulterer is moichos aka μοιχός (the “ch” sound is like a hard K for English transliteration). The Greek word for homosexual, which we will delve into now, is arsenokoites aka ἀρσενοκοῖτης. Now, this word arsenokoites is not found in earlier sources than this letter from Paul. It, in fact, is taken by many to be a word that Paul may have invented on his own.

The Liddell & Scott’s English-Greek Lexicon (LSJ), which I argue is the lexicon most useful for reading Greek Biblical texts, lists that the first occurrence of arsenokoites in all of our Ancient Greek material (which is pretty vast and spans several centuries) is right here in 1 Corinthians 6:9. The reason for why I say this is because the New Testament writers, unlike the many Christian writers into present who followed them, wrote within the context of a Greco-Roman world that was largely not only un-Christian but not-Jewish…and definitely not Jewish in the sense of all of the cultural sensitivities of Judean-inhabiting Jews, though Greek was generally common to all within the Roman Empire. There were some things shared in common across the Mediterranean world spanning the millennia of cross-exposure that these cultures had from even the Early Bronze Age. Concepts of valor, honor, and responsibility even down to cultic expectations carried widespread across Mediterranean cultures (and proves to be largely the case today, in the year of our Lord 2021).

But the question then becomes whence Paul coined this term “arsenokoites.” The short answer for that, as far as scholars have deduced, is that Paul got this from the Jewish Greek translation of the Torah, particularly Leviticus 18:22. This commandment is generic, far-reaching, and very clear: “You are not to lie with a man as with a woman, it is an abomination.” For another crash-course on the word “abomination” in the Bible, particularly when it relates to what is abominable to God, see this post that is parallel and symmetrical to this post. See also Leviticus 18:1-5 and 18:24-30 to see what category this abomination is squarely within. The Jewish Greek translation of the Torah, otherwise known as the Septuagint, could not be a less-than-clear inspirational passage for Paul’s (assumed) coined term. It reads:

22 καὶ μετὰ ἄρσενος οὐ κοιμηθήσῃ κοίτην γυναικός· βδέλυγμα γάρ ἐστιν.
_{Leviticus 18:22, with the words for “man” and “do not lie in bed” in bold}

In case you were wondering, the word βδέλυγμα, or bdelugma, is the Greek word for “abomination” (as you learned in the last post the Hebrew word for the same). Because the Greek language was by far the lingua franca of the ancient world going from Spain to Persia, thanks in large function to Alexander the Great, Greek had become the most common language among the Jewish people (especially those within the Roman realms that were once ruled by Greeks for hundreds of years– and that includes Judea proper). The word for bed, κοίτην, has the same root lexeme as the verb used for “lie down” in the Greek, κοιμηθήσῃ. What Paul did was take this very generic and principled passage (as it was and still is taken to also forbid lesbianism) to mean that anyone engaging in homosexual practices was wrong and in direct opposition to the nature of God. Therefore, they could not inherit God’s kingdom while clinging to/by participating within such an identity.

You may be wondering “Dadgum, Kerwin. You have spent so much time on this first part that it seems you have forgotten that you have a point to make.”
To that I say: I have done this for good reason because of the flood of badly reasoned, traditional, and (sometimes) just plain nonsensical arguments against what I am going to say.

A malakos/μαλακός IS NOT the passive partner of a homosexual relationship. It was not such for the mainstream of Paul’s day, and it is not at all what Paul meant when he listed it as a sin in 1 Corinthians 6:9.

Paul went out of his way in all likelihood to invent a term for any generic homosexual person, and atop that he drew from the Torah passage that outlaws all homosexual activity in toto. To read the generic term arsenokoites to not mean any and all homosexuals is to read that understanding back into the Levitical commandment, which is utter nonsense. It is no wonder, with such horrendous translation decisions and arguments as leaving off an entire word from the Greek to promote the above now-debunked reading, that we are in a sorry state of Christian apologetics surrounding this issue.
And now that you have seen how generic and universal the commandment is from Leviticus 18:22 which Paul cited and drew from, it makes zero sense for Paul to use a redundant and even more specific word just after it.

No, we must consult Paul’s immediate context to see what “malakos” meant in relation to people, and when we use the LSJ for that we get:
faint-hearted and cowardly, morally weak, lacking in self-control, soft, effeminate, feeble, weakly, and sickly.

The opposite of such a one would be a person who was courageous, and the Greeks had several words for courageous. But one of the most common words from that time was the word for “a man,” so much so that the term was often withheld from men in history (such as Thucydides never using the term for Kleon) who were taken to be morally repugnant and worthless. In fact, that same Thucydides did use the term malakos/μαλακός to mean “faint-hearted and cowardly,” per the LSJ.

What was the Greek word for “man” used for such a person who was a noble character?
It was the word ἀνήρ.
And guess what? The word ἀνήρ has a verb-form (ἀνδρίζομαι/andrizomai) that means to be brave.
And you know what?

Paul used that exact verb-form later on in the exact same letter at 1 Corinthians 16:13.

Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.
_{1 Corinthians 16:13 with the bold being the verb-form for ἀνήρ}

Paul could not be clearer. Cowards, those emasculated men and morally-weak women who could not stand on honest scales and do rightly, standing firm in the faith and being strong and stern when the wiles of evil and onslaught of oppression arrive, do not inherit God’s kingdom.

⁹ Don’t you know that the unrighteous will not inherit God’s kingdom? Do not be deceived: No sexually immoral people, idolaters, adulterers, morally-weak, or homosexuals, ¹⁰ no thieves, greedy people, drunkards, verbally abusive people, or swindlers will inherit God’s kingdom. ¹¹ And some of you used to be like this. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
_{1 Corinthians 6:9-11 in the CSB, with my proposed correction in bold.}

You may say that such a standard is “not loving” or even not nice.

Oh it certainly is not nice. But it is very loving and true.

Cowards do not inherit God’s kingdom and that is maintained throughout the Bible. Let’s go shotgun style to wrap this part up:

Hebrews 10:38-39
³⁸ But my righteous one will live by faith;
and if he draws back,
I have no pleasure in him.
³⁹ But we are not those who draw back and are destroyed, but those who have faith and are saved.
_{[The bold here is original to the CSB formatted translation and shows the original author’s citation from the Septuagint’s Isaiah 26:20 and Habakkuk 2:3-4]}

Revelation 21:6-8
⁶ Then he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I will freely give to the thirsty from the spring of the water of life. ⁷ The one who conquers will inherit these things, and I will be his God, and he will be my son. ⁸ But the cowards, faithless, detestable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars—their share will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”
_{[I put the word cowards in bold so that you can clearly see how this sin (in a similar list to Paul’s) actually is considered heinous. In fact, for whatever reason, it is listed first here.]}

2 Timothy 1:7
⁷ For God has not given us a spirit of cowardice, but one of power, love, and sound judgment.
_{[The italics here reflects my translation, which is closer to Paul’s words than the CSB’s translation for this verse. If you want to have fun, compare the word found here with the word above for “coward” in the original Greek textual witness and see what you find.]}

The Edifice
Now, some may say that the list above was dealing explicitly and specifically with sexual sins. To that I say that such an explanation would be great comfort for Emanuel Cleaver to hear, since he could then pray to Brahma, Kali, and to whomever the devil else he wants as long as he isn’t doing naughty things with their images in his private life. Idolaters, you see, are listed within that same first group.

Miss me with that nonsense.

In fact, the term malakos held in Paul’s day the same connotation in Modern English that the word “cuck” has among memesters. “Cuck” comes from the English word cuckhold. In fact, the ancient word can be compared to the term “wanker” in Modern English for UK residents.
…Oh, in fact, the term malakos has coincidentally actually come to mean the term “wanker” in Modern Greek. Such a degenerate and useless person, such a coward and morally abhorrent leader, such a wuss, or “cuck,” or “wanker,” is exactly what Paul meant in the passage of 1 Corinthians 6:9. They are that abominable to God, akin to those who use dishonest scales in their judgements.

God abhors those who use dishonest scales. God also abhors those who live their lives as malakoi. Both are all too easy for the Christian to become.

And Christendom in the West is chock-full of malakoi.

Take Russell Moore, for instance (and yes, I am naming names).

This man (the word doesn’t have the same meaning as it did in the Ancient Greek– though it should) went about talking about his favorite books to read while his spiritual compatriots were being jailed for attending in-person Church worship services. Let that sink in. Here, I’ll provide a hyperlink to his own shameless self-promotion during that time even though it pains me now to promote such a malakos.
This same man told us to “Listen” and “Lament” with the protestors who had a lot more not-peaceful people spaced around in their midst. Yes, while the intellectuals (never to be confused with the intelligent) and activists were trying hard to convince us that stealing was moral if done by the right (Leftist) people, and while government officials put on their Nero caps, Russell Moore was bravely sticking his nonexistent chest out and pining away about what books folks should be reading “in exile.”

Oh, oh, but he has now come out so strongly against the riot in Washington D.C. that occurred last week. He has such a…unique…scale to weigh the morality of the world upon.

What a malakos. Slow claps for him.

And then there is the rather “unashamed” rapper Lecrae, who in his own words “happens to be a Christian.” Well, in his defense of being a malakos, he did shy away from the name of Christ around the same time he began to act like a paradigm of ignorance on social media and in interviews. The same man who somehow cannot be clear on passages like Leviticus 18:22, see here for the impressive show of shucking and jiving, he is all of a sudden sure that Christians can support morbidly pro-abortion candidates who blaspheme God (ahem, excuse me) while gathered within a “church” building at the same time when his spiritual compatriots were imprisoned for doing the same! But he has decried those Christians who simply vote by skin color and culture…while turning around and doing the exact same thing but worse in that his chosen candidates of Christian morality blatantly blaspheme God openly and support baby-murder, along with just about every sin that Paul listed in 1 Corinthians 6:9-11.

What a malakos. But he is unashamed about it, you know, 116 Clique and all that. No claps for him though because he already has them, and his malakoi fanbase would drown you out anyways.

And what about these false prophets of our president? Ah yes, those who are not malakoi long knew that Paula White, and Kenneth (blow hard) Copeland, and the many others who were ardent sycophants of all that President Trump did, also did some of their best work last year. To be fair, they, like the men above, were exposed long before this president took office. But boy have they come for the show. They need some sort of political enabler to operate, and they need some sort of monetary fleecing expedition to make it in this world. But no, these are not malakoi in the sense that Paul used the word, although Joel Osteen stands firmly in their camp. These are just liars and blasphemers who are wolves in sheep clothing.

There are others I could mention who simply had malakos moments last year, such as Jonathan Leeman of IX Marks who tried in vain to convince those Protestants who actually read their Bibles and live by them that assembling for worship was less important than conserving some sort of “social capital” with the world (and ironically so, now that a heretical minister has become one of the most powerful politicians in the world). The Church has long surrendered to a culture of cowardice and passivity and somehow labeled that “holiness” and “longsuffering.” It is a widespread issue in the Christian West.
With such a long-standing bait-and-switch inundating the Church, it is very difficult to detect when a malakos spirit is in our midst. We need some solid and clear standard with which to measure our own judgements and the judgements of our leaders to avoid the sinful malakos lifestyle.
If you need a working measurement, I’ll give you a starting tool: if your pastors can somehow never find a moment in time where you can emulate Jesus in John 2 but somehow find it not only the immovable standard but instantly find an indefinite number of contexts with which to emulate Jesus in John 19:1-3, then your pastor suffers under the influence of the malakoi.
Hell, I myself am bound to attract the ire of many unrepentant malakoi rushing to the defense of their own because of this same blog post. A hit dog will holler.

Look, I observed and gave all of these people their whole year in 2020– with good Christian patience.
Play time is over– for all of us.

But what are we to do? What are we godly and courageous ones to do now that many of our leaders stand exposed in all of their malakia? What do we repentant sinners (even former malakoi) in need of courageous leadership do when many of our leaders have for so long lulled us to the echo chambers of the chambermaid’s closet instead of ushering us onto the ramparts of our King’s battlefield?
(…And shoot, not even chambermaids stay in their closets.)

The answer is very clear and it is found when we read the entirety of 1 Corinthians in the correct context of Paul’s day, right even through to verse 16:13 and the rest of his letter.
The answer is very clear when we begin to read the Bible anew, with the messiness of the lives of the saints in their correct context comparative to our own.
The answer is very clear when we stop trying to be nice and begin growing to be more like Jesus.

Be watchful.
Stand firm in the faith.
Act like men.
Be strong.