Original Meaning

THE DANGER OF failing to exercise strict self-control in the Christian life (9:24–27) is now illustrated. First Corinthians 10:1–13 uses numerous examples of the sins of the Israelites during their wilderness wanderings to warn against Corinthian participation in idolatrous idol feasts (10:14–22). The parallels prove particularly intriguing, not least because the Israelites demanded meat from Moses (Exod. 16:3; Num. 11:4). Verses 1–5 describe four privileges the Israelites received which did not guarantee subsequent blessings: (a) guidance by God in the cloud, (b) crossing the Red Sea, (c) eating manna and quail in the desert, and (d) supernaturally provided water. Verses 7–10 recall four ways in which many of those same Israelites proved faithless and suffered for their sins: idolatry, immorality, testing the Lord, and grumbling. Verses 6 and 11 punctuate these two sections with parallel reminders that the Israelites’ experience should caution the Corinthians against behaving similarly. Verses 12–13 close off this section by balancing a summary warning (v. 12) with a promise that history need not repeat itself (v. 13).

In verse 1, Paul casts perhaps another subtle aspersion at the Corinthians’ claims to gnosis (knowledge) by suggesting that they may in fact be “ignorant” after all. To correct this oversight, he reminds them of the behavior of their spiritual predecessors. After Israel departed from Egypt, God led them with a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night (Ex. 13:21–22). He parted the waters of the Red Sea, enabling the people to walk across on dry ground (14:22–29). The association of water with both cloud and sea prompts Paul to conceive of this deliverance as a kind of baptism “into Moses” (v. 2). Obviously the Israelites were not immersed in literal water; baptism here suggests identification with and allegiance to the leader of a spiritual community. Paul uses the preposition “into” to match the idea of baptism “into Christ” (Gal. 3:27; Rom. 6:3), a reminder of the fact that both “baptisms” initiated people into the fellowship of a body of believers.

The Israelites experienced further supernatural blessing when God gave them manna from heaven to eat (e.g., Ex. 16:4, 35) and water from a cleft rock to drink (Ex. 17:6; Num. 20:11) on occasions in which they otherwise would have died from hunger and thirst. From a Christian perspective, Paul recognizes Christ as the pre-existent Son of God, active with God the Father in creation and redemption, and hence the agent of both physical and spiritual nourishment for his people in the desert (v. 4b).1 Yet none of these miracles guaranteed that the children of Israel would reach the Promised Land. In fact, of the adults only Joshua and Caleb ever did. Disobedience caused people to forfeit the promise and die in the wilderness (v. 5).

In verse 6 Paul exhorts the Corinthians to learn from this example. “To keep us from settings our hearts on evil things” reads literally “to keep us from lusting after evil.” The four additional examples of verses 7–10 illustrate more specific forms of this improper lust. First, Paul cites Exodus 32:6, part of the story of the Israelites’ idolatrous worship of the golden calf while Moses was receiving the Law on Mt. Sinai (v. 7). Second, he refers to the episode in Numbers 25:1–9, in which Israelite men engaged in immoral sexual activity with Moabite women (v. 8).2 Third, he alludes to Numbers 21:4–9, when the people complained against Moses and God about the hardships of the desert (v. 9).3 Fourth, he recalls the characteristic grumblings and murmurings of the people, most notably in Numbers 16:41–50, when their opposition to God’s judgment of Korah’s rebellion led to an additional 14,700 deaths (v. 10). But Numbers 14:26–35 may also be in view, because there the grumbling leads to the prediction of the death of almost everyone over the age of twenty during the wilderness wanderings. No “destroying angel” is mentioned in either passage, but Paul’s inference is natural, given the language of Exodus 12:23 in which God struck down the firstborn of the Egyptians.4

Verse 11 repeats the warning of verse 6, all the more crucial since Christians live in the climactic era of human history for which all previous ages were preparing.

Verse 12 summarizes the significance of these warnings for the Corinthians—even those who think they stand securely should take care, like Paul in 9:27, lest they fall and be disqualified. After all, the pagan temple feasts in Corinth involved similar idolatry, sexual sin, and trying God’s patience. And the Corinthian quarrels could certainly qualify as grumbling against one another. Nevertheless, verses 1–12 are all balanced by the marvelous promise of verse 13. The circumstances that tempt us to sin are never qualitatively different from those which God’s people of every era have experienced, and we never have to give in to them. There is always an escape-hatch, which is defined as a way to persevere without sinning in whatever difficult situation we find ourselves.5

Verses 14–22 now return explicitly to the topic of idol meat in Corinth, with which chapter 8 began. Although the food itself is morally neutral, Paul does make one absolute prohibition: eating it in the context of explicitly pagan worship services is always wrong. In such cases eating is idolatry (v. 14). Sexual immorality often accompanied such worship, making the parallel with verse 7 even clearer. Paul appeals to the Corinthian Christians to come to the same conclusion. Notwithstanding their divisions, he trusts that common sense will win out in this instance (v. 15).

To cement his position, Paul offers two further analogies, from the sacred meals of Christianity (vv. 16–17) and Judaism (v. 18). Partaking of the elements of the Lord’s Supper—the bread and the wine—involves a “participation” (Gk. koinonia—“fellowship”) with the risen Lord and an appropriation of the benefits of his shed blood and broken body. “Participation” in verses 15–16 includes both communion with fellow believers and partnership in Christ. The common loaf reminds the Corinthians of their unity in Christ, which should also separate them from false religion. So too in ancient Judaism, those who ate sacrificial meat in the temple communed with Yahweh and appropriated the temporary forgiveness associated with those animal sacrifices.6

The application to religious temple feasts in Corinth follows naturally (vv. 19–22). Pagans too commune with the spiritual beings they worship, in ways that make it ghastly to think of Christians participating. In drawing this parallel, Paul anticipates an objection. He is not now contradicting his earlier claims that idols have no objective, spiritual existence (8:4). But he knows from the Law that demons—fallen angels—are the true objects of pagan ritual, however unwittingly they may be worshiped (cf. Deut. 32:17). As with the Old Testament examples previously cited, Christian involvement in this kind of idolatry risks incurring God’s severe judgment.7

Bridging Contexts

FIRST CORINTHIANS 10:1–22 is the passage from which Protestants derive the idea that baptism and the Lord’s Supper are the two distinctive “sacraments” or “ordinances” of Christian worship. Incidental evidence appears for the corporate meaning and practice of these two rites. Baptism is fundamentally an initiatory rite into a covenant community, based on one’s allegiance to Christ.8 Early Christians followed Jesus’ practices of breaking pieces of bread off a common loaf and passing around a common cup to stress the corporate significance of Communion as well, though no text anywhere commands that it must always be so. But in general, 10:1–22 is not about the sacraments or ordinances at all. Paul is not arguing from Jewish and pagan practices to draw conclusions about these Christian rituals, but from the aspect of fellowship inherent in the Christian and Jewish rites to demonstrate the communion with demons that takes place in the pagan idol feasts.9

Doctrinal conclusions about the significance of the Lord’s Supper, therefore, must be derived from 11:17–34 or from the three texts in the Synoptic Gospels that describe Jesus’ Last Supper (Matt. 26:17–30; Mark 14:12–26; and Luke 22:7–38). What probably can be inferred from verses 1–22 here is something of the nature of the Corinthians’ misguided beliefs about the Lord’s Supper and baptism. Most likely, the “strong” Christians among them maintained that participation in these rituals guaranteed them immunity from spiritual danger so that they could freely partake in idol feasts. Quite the opposite, Paul declares, by his elaborate Old Testament analogies: “Participation in spectacular spiritual experiences does not relieve the people of God from ethical responsibility.”10

Nor does it guarantee freedom from grave moral failure and God’s judgment. The meaning of disqualification in 9:27 should probably determine the nature of falling in verse 12.11 There it seemed unlikely that Paul feared loss of salvation. The Old Testament examples in verses 1–11 confirm this suspicion. No passage of Scripture ever teaches that Joshua and Caleb were the only Israelites for forty years who were ever “saved,” spiritually speaking.

Rather, physical death and loss of blessing in this life are consistently in view. So too chapter 11 will describe how some Corinthians have become sick or have died from profaning the Lord’s Supper (v. 30), without necessarily implying they were damned. At the same time, 3:16–17 reminds us that Paul does not take for granted that everyone in his church is necessarily saved, so some who fall under God’s temporal judgment may incur his eternal wrath as well.

Verses 6 and 11 point to one of the key functions of Old Testament narrative (cf. Rom. 15:14). Although “character studies” can be abused by squeezing too much doctrine out of minor actions and incidental details, one of the important purposes of all of the stories of the Bible is to illustrate desirable and undesirable behavior. Most of the principal characters in major narratives can be classified in literary terms as heroic or tragic—examples to be imitated or to be avoided.12 Because the word translated “example” in these two verses could also mean “type,” some have understood Paul to be employing a kind of typology that sees Old Testament events as deliberately designed to foreshadow corresponding New Testament events. But that would imply a kind of fatalism that the Corinthians had to fall into these same errors, whereas verse 13 specifically promises them that they need not. So “exemplary warnings” remains a better way to describe the analogies.

Readers have long puzzled over Paul’s meaning in verse 4. Is he using some kind of Jewish hermeneutic that we do not readily accept? Does he believe extracanonical legendary material? In light of the uncertainty, it is best to err on the side of caution. New Testament writers regularly use the Old Testament in “creative ways.” One of the most common is to see Christ at work where the Old Testament speaks only of God. But once one believes that Christ formed part of the Godhead from all eternity past, this equation becomes natural, particularly in contexts where God provides salvation for his people, which was precisely the heart of Jesus’ first-century mission. Paul himself regularly responds to and revises common Jewish interpretive methods and traditions. Here he may well be turning some story of a literal “traveling rock” (or stream or well) into an affirmation of the spiritual power behind God’s miraculous provision.13

Verse 7 is particularly well known from its renderings in the KJV, “sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play,” and in the Living Bible, where instead of “play” we find “dance.” The NIV has better captured the sense: “indulge in pagan revelry.” Neither playing nor dancing is inherently immoral, anymore than eating or drinking is, but all are wrong in the context of idolatrous worship services.

Though short compared to the more immediately needed warnings of verses 1–12, verse 13 provides a crucial balance to the previous verses, especially for those who fear they will be unfaithful during tough times. Given the severity and general nature of the preceding examples, this verse too should be applied universally. No matter how unique our temptations seem externally, we face the same spiritual struggles God’s people have endured throughout history. God won’t give us anything we can’t handle, so long as we rely on his strength, yielding ourselves to the power of his indwelling Holy Spirit, rather than trying to resist temptation on our own.

Tolerance to temptation varies widely from one person to the next. Clearly we can also choose to reject the “way out” and yield to temptation, but it is precisely that freedom which makes us accountable before God when we do sin. And it is important to stress that the way out is not necessarily the removal of the difficult circumstances but the ability to “stand up under” them. Other key theological truths are reflected here as well. God tempts no one (James 1:13), but he does allow trials and temptations (Luke 4:1) in order to help us to mature (James 1:2–4), even as he encourages us to pray for the strength not to give in and sin (Matt. 6:13).

In view of verses 1–13, verses 14–22 then express the one central truth that Christian and pagan worship are fundamentally incompatible with each other because of the diametrically opposite spiritual beings worshiped in each setting. “Strong” Christians who defiantly ignore this truth risk God’s harsh punishment. Weaker believers who feel unable to resist the lure of the pagan can count on God to help them overcome temptation. The world of demons is best known in the New Testament from Jesus’ exorcisms of demon-possessed individuals. Yet here is a second and perhaps more characteristic example of demonic influence, which is the true spiritual force behind all anti-Christian religions (cf. 2 Cor. 4:4, in which Satan as “the god of this world” has blinded the hearts of all unbelievers).

Contemporary Significance

FIRST CORINTHIANS 10:2 IS one of the most crucial verses in Scripture to combat the persistent heresy of baptismal regeneration; that is, the view that baptism into a religious community is a requirement of or guarantees salvation. In evangelical circles, this view persists in certain branches of the Church of Christ and various independent Baptist groups. In mainline Roman Catholic, Episcopal, and Lutheran churches, official dogma usually maintains that subsequent confirmation is necessary to make one’s baptism as an infant effective, but less precise language in such circles often equates “baptized” with “Christian.”

Questions about the salvation of children too young to be confirmed often hinge on whether or not they have been baptized. And confirmation itself can at times become a meaningless ritual that adolescents are expected to go through to please their parents, but without genuinely experiencing saving faith. In baptistic circles, some churches offer prebaptismal instruction classes for children in ways that put subtle pressure on them to go ahead with the rite whether or not they are ready to be serious about professions of faith. Even baby dedications have sometimes arisen as a kind of baptist alternative to infant baptism to placate family members who think some kind of ceremony is what counts the most. Care must be exercised in each branch of the church to insure that baptism or confirmation is undertaken voluntarily as a public affirmation of genuine, saving faith in Christ, which those undergoing the rite have sincerely professed.14

The Lord’s Supper has also come to be viewed as quasi-magical in numerous Christian traditions, so that members of liturgical churches often stress the need to partake frequently, especially as one is dying, to appropriate forgiveness for the most recent round of sins in one’s life.

Nominalism in Christianity can aptly be characterized by the priority of church over Christ, of ritual over a relationship with the living Jesus. Millions of Americans weekly attend worship services in buildings with the label Christian attached to them, thinking that in so doing they are or are becoming right with God, without ever having been truly born again. Some share a spirituality more akin to paganism, particularly in the New Age movement and in the fascination with the afterlife, that is devoid of anything like the biblical doctrine of hell.

Against all of these practices, 1 Corinthians 10:1–22 speaks worlds. What counts are inward spiritual realities. External rituals or even experiences of the supernatural prove no guarantee either of salvation or of Christian maturity (vv. 3–5). Compare the growing number of near-death or out-of-the-body experiences “demonstrating” the pleasant nature of the world to come irrespective of one’s decisions in this life.15

Our discussion of 5:10–11 has already focused on numerous contemporary idolatries that are similar to the Old Testament examples in verses 7–10 here. These practices reject God’s unique revelation to humanity in favor of sexually oriented substitutes. And, as with the Israelites worshipping the golden calf, they continue to revolve around materialism and tenets of false religion.

Contemporary idolatries infiltrate the church as well as the world, as large numbers of Christians buy into each of the latest secular fads for church growth, fund-raising, marketing, and so on. Polls of Americans, including American Christians, have shown that the two things we long for the most are more money and better bodies, precisely what the counterfeit “health-wealth” gospel claims to be able to deliver.16 If only more people could pray with the apostle John for friends’ physical health to match their spiritual health, knowing that the latter has a higher priority in their lives (3 John 2).

We can scarcely read verse 12 without thinking of the fallen leaders that dot the Christian landscape today, particularly as a result of sexual sin. But Paul’s warning extends far more broadly. A smug complacency and ethnocentric arrogance tends to characterize middle-class Western Christianity. Yet urban poor and Third-World congregations at times exhibit much deeper loyalty and devotion to Christ, even if their external circumstances make them more impoverished. We must guard against the formula-mentality to sanctification, as if filling in the blanks in a booklet of Bible studies on “Ten Basic Steps to Christian Maturity” will somehow enable us to arrive quickly at our spiritual destination.

Yet lest we become too cynical, verse 13 should offer great hope for those painfully aware of their fragile spiritual status. We live in an age with unparalleled developments of technology, unprecedented amounts of information, new physical and emotional diseases, natural disasters, and human warfare. When we realize that these factors cause suffering on a scale never before known in human history, it is reassuring to know that the temptations believers face are not new. The external circumstances may differ, but the spiritual dynamics remain unchanged. The human propensity to see “my problem” as different or worse than what anyone else has experienced is decisively debunked. The contemporary trend to blame the way I am on God, parents, society, or the devil, rather than acknowledging that our own sinful natures are the most direct causes of our disobedience (James 1:14), also runs counter to this text.

We never have to give in to temptation; no one “makes” us sin. Certain factors may generate greater temptations for some individuals than for others, as with the exponential increase in dysfunctional families in our day, but ultimately we are accountable for our own free choices. And for believers, one of those choices remains to accept God’s escape-hatch from sin. Our culture would rewrite the end of verse 13 so that it said, “But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you don’t have to stand up under it any longer,” but that of course is the opposite of what God actually inspired Paul to write.

It is ironic too that the very meal intended to demonstrate the unity of believers (vv. 16–17) has become one of the most divisive ceremonies of the Christian church throughout its history.17 The irony increases when we recognize that even when congregations can agree to put aside doctrinal differences so fundamental that unbelievers (though church members) can partake of the Lord’s Supper, still genuine Christians in other denominations may be excluded (cf. further, below, pp. 236–39).

If the Lord’s table symbolizes and promotes fellowship and unity with the risen Christ, then it should be open to all believers but to believers only. Where hygiene permits, the practice of sharing a common loaf and common cup should probably be preserved as an important symbol of the unity the church can offer, especially in our fractured, compartmentalized, individualistic society. Where health concerns make this risky, having all participants partake simultaneously can preserve some of the symbolism. Least helpful of all are services in which each person eats and drinks separately, in splendid isolation, at best communing solely with God, and with no thought for fellow-Christians present.

Paul’s absolute prohibition in verses 19–22 against that which is inherently idolatrous finds contemporary analogies for virtually every one of the otherwise neutral practices discussed under chapter 8 (see above, pp. 167–71). Of course, overtly pagan rituals remain off-limits to believers, as do other practices that are inherently immoral, illegal, or destructive.

Yet even that which is amoral can often give way to the immoral. Indeed those links usually account for why even morally neutral practices were first forbidden. Drinking can turn into drunkenness, working long hours can lead to workaholism, association with gang members can tend to make one join in their criminal activities or be victimized by them, respect for one’s parents can border on ancestor worship, excessive patriotism can produce idolatry of the state, watching television can displace more meaningful activities, a desire for material goods can lead to materialism, taking medication can result in addiction, and on and on. Situation ethics must not prevail at these points. At the same time, we must keep the emphases of 8:1–13 and 10:23–11:1 close at hand, so that the legalism that banned all drinking, movies, card games, and so on, does not return.

The syncretism reflected in verse 21 finds parallels in numerous contemporary contexts. Some entire faiths have been spawned, most notably the Ba’hai, by trying to combine together the “best” of all the world’s ideologies. More pervasive is the belief that all or most religions contain at least some salvific truth, in other words, that it is possible to know the true God of the universe and experience eternity with him through many different religious paths.18 Both of these approaches fail to observe that fundamentally incompatible or logically contradictory claims lay at the very foundation of most any two major world religions when they are compared side-by-side. If the Qu’ran is a true revelation from God, then the transmission of the New Testament has been so corrupted that Jesus has been transformed from a prophet into the Son of God and Allah from an indivisible oneness into a Trinity. If Hinduism or Buddhism is true, then perfect bliss involves dissolution into nothingness rather than personal, conscious existence for eternity. To hold a coherent worldview, one must choose among conflicting claims.

Verses 14–22 also challenge the popular view in modern culture that we must recover the devalued spiritualities of ancient paganism—Native American religions, goddess worship, earth worship, white witchcraft, and the like. Though it would be politically incorrect, were Paul alive today he would say that these spiritualities had been properly devalued. Whereas we admire ancient civilizations for their culture and cultural artifacts (large percentages of which were overtly religious) and devote countless museums and exhibitions to honor them, Paul went to Athens and grieved over the monuments to false gods he saw everywhere (Acts 17:16). While seeking points of common ground, he clearly felt responsible to move the Athenians far beyond their polytheistic beliefs into a knowledge of the one true and living God uniquely revealed in Jesus Christ (vv. 21–33).19