1 Corinthians 11:30-32 For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep.… I. THE PUNISHMENT. Here are three steps to the grave: weakness, sickness, temporal death. 1. Learn that God inflieteth not the same punishment for all, but hath variety of correction. And the reason is, because there are divers degrees of men's sins. God therefore doth not, like the unskilful empiries, prescribe the same for all, but wisely varieth His physic. 2. Let us, then, endeavour to amend, when God layeth His least judgment upon us. Let us humble ourselves under His hand when He layeth but His "little finger" upon us; for light punishments, neglected, will draw heavier upon us. 3. Let magistrates and men in authority mitigate or increase the punishment, according to the nature of the offence. For probable it is that those who were least offenders here were punished with weakness; the greater, with sickness; the greatest of all, with death temporal. II. THE CAUSE. 1. All sicknesses of the body proceed from the sin of the soul. I am not ignorant of second causes; but the fountain of all these fountains is sin. And not only the sins which we have lately committed, but those which we have committed long ago (Job 13:26). Job being grey was punished for Job being green; Job in his autumn smarts for what he hath done in his spring. Do we, then, desire to lead our old age in health. I know of no better preservative than in our youth to keep our souls from sin. 2. But how came St. Paul to know that this sickness proceeded from the irreverent receiving of the sacrament, especially since they were guilty of four other grand sins? Since they were guilty of factious affecting of their ministers, going to law under pagan judges, suffering an incestuous person to live amongst them unpunished, denying of the resurrection of the body, why might not St. Paul think that any one or all of these might be the causes of this disease? (1) Because this sin was the sin paramount. The others were felony, robbing God of His glory; this was high treason against the person of Christ, and so against God Himself. Learn we, then, though God of His goodness may be pleased graciously to pardon sins of an inferior nature and meaner alloy, yet He will not let him escape unpunished who irreverently receive the body and blood of His Son. (2) Because the apostle perceived some resemblance betwixt the sin committed and the punishment inflicted. For, as a physician, when a disease puzzles all his rules of art to trace it to some natural cause, will be ready to put it down to poison, so St. Paul, seeing the Corinthians to be punished with a strange and unusual sickness, suspected that they had eaten some poisonous thing, and on inquiry he finds that it was the sacrament irreverently received: it being just with God to turn that which was appointed to be preservative for the soul, to prove poison to the body, being not received with due preparation. (T. Fuller, D.D.) Parallel Verses KJV: For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep.WEB: For this cause many among you are weak and sickly, and not a few sleep. |
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