You can always find loopholes in language. But I don’t believe there is enough uncertainty to justify the NRSVue’s choice. Out of love for my homosexual neighbors, I must call the NRSVue’s rendering of 1 Corinthians 6 what it is: a removal of something Paul said by the inspiration of the Spirit.

I regularly roll my eyes at English Bible translation freak-outs. I have many times seen Christians hunt for the “errors” in contemporary translations such as the NIV or ESV. Often what they come up with can only be called errors if one views them through malicious eyes and ties them to some concocted narrative of doctrinal downgrade. Our major modern evangelical Bible translations are very good. Not perfect, but very good.
The truth is, our major modern mainline Bible translations are good, too. I think of the RSV from the 1950s, the NRSV of 1989, the CEB of 2011. Though I have less experience with these translations than with the evangelical ones, I feel confident saying they’re produced by serious people who aimed at faithful translation. When I check them, which I have done many times, I repeatedly encounter translation choices that are obviously responsible. I encounter God’s Word. The KJV translators tell us in their famous preface that even the “very meanest” translation of God’s Word is God’s Word. They also tell us to judge Bible translations by their predominant character. They say, “A man may be considered handsome, though he have some warts upon his hand” (my slightly updated translation of their archaic English). And if I make this kind of generous judgment, mainline English Bibles are good.
But sometimes warts can grow rather large. The Revised Standard Version had warts in several passages, especially Isaiah 7:14 (“Behold, a young woman shall conceive. . .”), that have caused most evangelicals to set it aside. Likewise, the freshly published “updated edition” of the New Revised Standard Version (NRSVue) will, I predict, be rejected by today’s evangelicals because of two warts: its renderings of 1 Timothy 1:10 and, especially, 1 Corinthians 6:9–10.
I work hard to make sober judgments about English Bibles, but I’m forced to conclude that the NRSVue has removed two Pauline condemnations of homosexuality—though it has kept other biblical prohibitions of the practice.
Translating 2 Key Greek Words
Here’s how that latter passage reads in the (usually literal and definitely evangelical) New American Standard Bible. I’ve bolded the key words to watch for:
Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor those habitually drunk, nor verbal abusers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. (1 Cor. 6:9–10)
Those two English words translate two Greek words. The word “effeminate” translates the word malakoi; the word “homosexuals” translates the word arsenokoitai (which appears also in 1 Tim. 1:10).
These two words almost certainly refer to the passive and active partners in a male homosexual pairing. But that doesn’t mean they’re easy to translate. Responsible translations go different ways.
The ESV, CSB, NIV, and NASB 2020 take the two Greek words and turn them into one thing expressed in one phrase: “men who have sex with men” (NIV; CSB has “males”) or “men who practice homosexuality” (ESV). Other translations are more like the NASB, assigning one-word equivalents to each of the two Greek words at issue.
I have studied these two Greek words carefully, and if I had to pick my favorite rendering, the award would go to the Berean Study Bible:
Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who submit to or perform homosexual acts . . .
This is a translation touchdown: accurate and readable.
But the NRSVue doesn’t just punt at 1 Corinthians 6:9; it lies on the field and forfeits the game. Here is its rendering of the passage:
Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! The sexually immoral, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, men who engage in illicit sex . . .
Paul says that active and passive partners in a homosexual pairing will not inherit the kingdom of God. The NRSVue does not say this. It first, in my judgment, obfuscates matters by including a footnote on malakoi and on arsenokoitai: “Meaning of Greek uncertain.” Then, despite their admitted uncertainty, the NRSVue translates malakoi as something too specific (“male prostitutes”) and arsenokoitai as something too general (“men who engage in illicit sex”). It does the same with arsenokoitai in the one other place it appears, 1 Timothy 1:10, where Paul lists among other sinners.
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Joni Eareckson Tada, herself no stranger to chronic pain, writes of Anne Steele, “Hers was a ministry of suffering.”5. She goes on to say, “Do you serve God in your suffering? We serve him when we imitate Jesus’s endurance in our suffering. Or his patience in the face of disappointment or his perseverance while shouldering our cross. . . . And when we choose contentment over complaining, we imitate his glad willingness to submit to the Father’s terrible yet wonderful will. All of it comprises a fragrant, sacrificial service to God.”6 

When John Rippon published his influential hymnal A Selection of Hymns in 1787, 101 of the texts were by the short-lived but prolific Philip Doddridge (1702–1751). The second-most-represented author, with 47 texts in the hymnal, was Baptist poet Anne Steele. For many years, Steele’s poems figured prominently in evangelical hymnals, but by the early 20th century, her works nearly disappeared. By 1950, hymnologist Albert Bailey could write that “all but one of her 144 hymns are now forgotten.”1
However, Steele wrote hymns worth remembering and learning, hymns born out of a life of disappointment, grief, and suffering. When she was three years old, her mother died. A hip injury at age nineteen led to chronic physical pain for Anne. She also dealt with symptoms of malaria throughout her life. Many accounts of her life state that she was engaged to one Robert Elscourt, who drowned the day before or the day of their wedding. This may be a romanticized addition to her life, though she did remain unmarried her whole life.2 Her father remarried, but his second wife died when Anne was forty-three. A sister-in-law died two years later. Anne’s father developed poor health late in his life, and Anne cared for him until he died in 1769.
Despite the suffering and difficulty, Anne’s faith and hope were in God. Her father, a well-to-do merchant, also served as a deacon and eventually pastor of a Baptist church in Broughton, England. Anne joined the church at age 14 and from an early age exhibited a faith that expressed itself through poetry. She began to write primarily for her own devotional use, but her father saw the value of his daughter’s poetry and introduced these hymns to his church. Anne was initially reluctant to show her work to a wider audience, but through the encouragement of her father and step-mother, as well as a small group of pastors who championed her work,3 she submitted poetry for publication when she was in her early forties. The resulting book, Poems on Subjects Chiefly Devotional and published under the pen name Theodosia, introduced people to a significant new voice in hymnody. Baptist hymnologists Harry Eskew and Hugh McElrath state, “Miss Steele was the foremost of a group of Baptist hymnists . . . who, because their hymns possess a quality unsurpassed before or since, constitue a ‘Golden Age of Baptist Hymnody.’”4
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We can see that God calls homosexual practices an abomination for two reasons. First, all sexual immorality violates the holiness of a human body. Second, homosexual practices violate that holiness even more specifically by overturning an especially significant part of human bodies, namely our sexual differences. If there is anything that we can all learn from this discussion, it’s that we should not approach the subject of sex with a casual or glib attitude.

You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination. (Lev. 18:22)
If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them (Lev. 20:13).

Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 are some of the most offensive texts in Scripture. Even for Christians who love the Bible, these verses are very awkward. But perhaps we can learn something important from the term abomination. Maybe our avoidance of awkwardness is one of the problems when it comes to the way we talk about sex. We would rather discuss issues that are more familiar and manageable. We argue about the law, health, each side’s rhetoric, and every possible category touching on human sexuality that does not touch that one, awkward term from Leviticus.
Abomination does not fit into our manageable categories because it concerns holiness, which itself concerns questions of ultimate importance. What are we willing to live for? To die for? What is a good human life? How can I live such a life? To truly answer these questions, we need to understand holiness. And that means things might get awkward.
Holiness can lurk in strange places. Just ask Moses. Managing sheep in the wilderness, he stumbled across a humble bush — and a flame that burned without fuel. The uncreated Creator spoke with a humble creature. This was not an easy encounter for Moses: shoes off, life changed, power granted, mission undertaken. Moses found God’s holiness uncomfortable. At the same time, it was life-giving.
Sex is another strange place to find holiness. Yet we do find it there, along with this word “abomination,” which simply means a violation of something holy or sacred. Idolatry is an abomination because it destroys true and holy worship (e.g. Deut. 7:25).
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