Ask someone who grew up in Black churches which sins the congregation talked about most, and the list is usually short. Same-sex relationships tend to be near the top, treated with a severity that other sins in the same pews never received. The question that follows is fair: is that what the Bible is actually doing? Dr. Esau McCaulley, a New Testament scholar who teaches at Wheaton College, says no. When you read the passages people cite most often, the text does not do what many churches have done with it. And the church, he says plainly, has some repenting to do.
The Church Has Singled It Out. The Text Has Not.
McCaulley starts by validating what many people feel before they even get to the theology. The question has a pastoral reality behind it, not just an academic one.
It does feel like the church has singled out same-sex relationships as being uniquely sinful. I’m a pastor, and I know more people who struggle with addiction to pornography or who don’t keep their marital vows. The church has some repenting to do for how they’ve spoken about and to people who are same-sex attracted.
— Esau McCaulley
That is not a soft concession before he gets to the real point. That is the real point. The inconsistency in how the church applies its own moral framework is not a minor pastoral problem. It is a credibility problem, and it is also a faithfulness problem. A reading of Scripture that reserves its most intense concern for one category of sexual sin while looking past pornography addiction in the next pew, or serial adultery, or the exploitation of the poor, is not following the text. It is following preference.
Sherelle Ducksworth, who has studied how communities read the Bible when it has been weaponized against them, identifies exactly this dynamic. When any group treats its own reading as obviously correct and applies standards selectively, it has stopped doing honest interpretation and started defending a cultural position. McCaulley is saying the same thing from inside the tradition.
What Does 1 Corinthians 6 Actually Say?
The passage most often cited in these conversations is 1 Corinthians 6:9–10, where Paul lists people who will not inherit the kingdom of God. McCaulley reads that list carefully.
It refers to the sexually immoral, idolaters, men who have sex with men, then it goes to thieves, the greedy, drunkards, slanderers, and swindlers. The Bible doesn’t single out same-sex attracted people as uniquely excluded. There’s a variety of sins.
— Esau McCaulley
The list is not organized by severity or by how much attention deserves to be paid to each item. It runs through sexual immorality, religious unfaithfulness, same-sex sexual activity, theft, greed, drunkenness, slander and fraud. If the text were singling one of those out as uniquely disqualifying, you would expect some structural indicator of that. There is none. Paul lists them together.
The practical consequence is that any reading which takes 1 Corinthians 6 as specifically targeting gay people, with a severity not applied to greedy people or slanderers, is importing something the text does not say. You cannot get selective emphasis out of a list that gives none.
What Does “Inheriting the Kingdom” Actually Mean?
McCaulley also addresses the phrase itself. People hear “will not inherit the kingdom of God” and read it as “these people are damned.” He argues that is not quite right.
The language of inheriting the kingdom is God presenting a moral vision for the kind of people who are part of his family. It’s not saying that if you ever swindle someone, you’re not going to be in the kingdom.
— Esau McCaulley
This is the difference between a moral vision and a checklist of single acts that permanently disqualify. The passage describes the character of the community God is forming, not a ledger of individual acts that automatically close the door. That distinction matters enormously for how people read themselves into or out of the picture.
Jerome Gay’s reading of the book of Ruth makes a related point from a different angle. Ruth, a Moabite with no standing in Israel, is welcomed and redeemed by Boaz. What she brings to that encounter is only her need. The kinsman-redeemer does not require her to have earned inclusion before he steps in. That picture of redemption running toward the outsider shapes how the New Testament imagines the kingdom too.
Grace Meets Everyone Who Falls Short
McCaulley does not read the kingdom language in 1 Corinthians 6 as a final verdict against anyone. He places it alongside the picture of Jesus with the woman caught in adultery (John 8:1–11), where two things are held together at the same time.
He says, “There is no one to condemn you. Neither do I. But also go and sin no more.” When you fail to be the kind of person God calls us to be, his answer is not condemnation. It’s grace.
— Esau McCaulley
That structure, grace and a call in the same breath, is how McCaulley holds the whole Bible at once. There is a call to holiness. It is real and it is universal. And alongside it, for every person who falls short of it, the answer is not condemnation. It is grace that meets the failure and calls toward something better.
He frames this as true for everyone.
I see in the Bible a call that I can strive for, that I may fail to obtain, but also in my failure I can rely upon God’s grace.
— Esau McCaulley
This is not a loophole. It is the consistent shape of the biblical story: a God who calls, whose calls are worth taking seriously, and who does not abandon people when they fall short of them.
The Deeper Question Under This One
McCaulley says the deepest issue underneath the question of same-sex relationships is not really about a particular verse. It is about whether God is allowed to tell us no, and whether we are willing to hear that as something good.
Is it possible for God to sometimes tell us what we don’t want to hear? Is God allowed to tell me no, and am I allowed to see that no as something that’s possibly good? The call to holiness is universal, not for only one community.
— Esau McCaulley
That question opens in every direction. It applies to same-sex attracted people. It also applies to straight people whose desires regularly run ahead of what Scripture permits, to anyone whose financial practices look more like the greedy than the generous, and to anyone whose speech looks more like the slanderer than the truth-teller. The call to holiness is universal. If it is not, it is not holiness at all. It is just a list of things other people need to fix.
Where Does This Leave the Question?
McCaulley’s conclusion is clear.
It is simply not the case that the Bible is uniquely calling out sexual sin as uniquely excluding people from the kingdom of God. It’s not what the Bible says.
— Esau McCaulley
The text presents a moral vision for the people of God that runs across many categories of behavior. It does not reserve special condemnation for one. The church that has acted as if it does has gotten this wrong, and McCaulley says so directly. That does not mean the call to holiness disappears. It means the call is extended equally, with grace equally available for everyone who falls short.
Quick Answers
Does the Bible say gay people can’t be saved? McCaulley argues no. The passages people cite, like 1 Corinthians 6, list many sins together and present a moral vision of God’s community, not a verdict that one category of person is uniquely excluded.
Has the church treated this fairly? McCaulley says no. He believes the church owes repentance for how it has spoken about and to same-sex attracted people, applying a standard it does not apply to other sins.
What does “inheriting the kingdom” mean? According to McCaulley, it describes the kind of people God is forming, a moral vision, rather than a checklist of single acts that automatically close the door.
Where does grace fit? McCaulley points to the woman caught in adultery. Jesus offers both grace and a call to go and sin no more. Grace is God’s answer when anyone falls short of the call.
Is the call to holiness only for some people? McCaulley says no. It is universal. If it applies only to one community, it is not holiness. It is preference.
Listen to the Full Conversation
This answer comes from the Jude 3 Project’s Problematic Passages event at the Museum of the Bible, where scholars take on the hardest questions in Scripture. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or on the Jude 3 Project YouTube channel.
Dr. Esau McCaulley is an associate professor of New Testament at Wheaton College, a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times and pastor of All Saints Anglican Church in Naperville. He is the author of Reading While Black and How Far to the Promised Land.