23:1
We now come to various groups of people who are to be “excluded from the assembly”, this means they are not part of God’s people. Some of it seems arbitrary, some seems heartless, and some seems to be contradicted elsewhere in the Bible if we take a rigidly literalistic interpretation. So how are we to read this? The approach I take is that it is setting out principles on what the kingdom of heaven will be like. None of us are qualified on our own merits, and through Christ anyone who believes can become a citizen of God’s kingdom. The first group are those who have been emasculated, i.e. have suffered severe damage to their genitals. This could either be through accident, or via deliberate act. Elsewhere in the Bible we see eunuchs told they can enter the kingdom (Is 56:3,4; Acts 8:27). So the general principle is that we will be whole in God’s kingdom.
23:2
“No one born of a forbidden marriage”. In Christ all sorts of people come into the kingdom, but we do not stay as we are. 1 Cor 6:9,10 gives a list of people who will not inherit the kingdom, and this is then followed in 1 Cor 6:11 by the words “and this is what some of you were”. The mention of “not even in the tenth generation”, may mean “never” if “ten” is taken as representing completeness. It is only through Christ that we can enter.
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