1 Corinthians 10:1-13 Moreover, brothers, I would not that you should be ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the cloud… Reference had been made in the preceding chapter to the law of Moses respecting oxen, and to the priests of the temple, for whose support there was a special provision. But St. Paul had introduced a striking illustration from Grecian life to show the importance of earnest and exact discipline in matters pertaining to the soul's salvation. The body, with its infirmities and sins, was a very serious danger, and, unless kept under by the power of grace, would acquire mastery over the spirit. Even he, though an apostle, might become "a castaway." The terrible liability was before him as a personal thing, the idea lingered and demanded a fuller emphasis, and how could he contemplate himself without considering the hazardous exposure of his brethren? Every fibre of his private heart was a public tie that bound him to others, and hence he could not see his own peril and be blind to the peril of the Church. Under the pressure of this anxiety, his mind reverts to the history of the Jewish Church. Historical examples are very powerful, and where could he find them except in the Old Testament? Grecian games pass out of view, and the stately procession of wonders, beginning in the deliverance of the elect race from Egyptian bondage 'rod progressing through the events of the desert, moves before his eye. "Our fathers" indicates how true he was to ancestral blood, and this warmhearted sense of country, in which patriotism and piety interblended, exemplifies the origin and tenacity of the feeling that prompted him in the previous chapter to put in the foreground this fact, "Unto the Jews I became as a Jew." Let us remember that his peculiar state of mind at the moment took its colouring from one single thing, viz. the hazards of moral probation because of the body. How predominant this idea was appears in the instances enumerated to show the unfaithfulness of God's people to their covenanted engagements. Such words as "lust," "lusted," "eat and drink," "rose up to play," "commit fornication," are significant of his intense feeling, and they are as reverberations from what was to him an awful term "castaway," "rejected," "fail shamefully of the prize." According to his conception, brain and nerves, all the facts of the physical organism, had to be taken into account in looking at the practical side of Christianity. And it was a practical question, because it rested on a broad generalization of man's place, order, and destiny in the universe. No empiric was he, but a thinker of most penetrating insight, far in advance of his times, in advance too of our century; and while he was not a psychologist nor a physiologist in our sense of the terms, yet no man has ever seen so clearly, so deeply, into the principles underlying psychology and physiology in their relations to spiritual life. His own personal experience turned his thoughts to this study. Providence made him this sort of a student, and the Holy Ghost enlarged and sanctified his investigations. Such thinkers generally come as precursors to scientists and philosophers; but St. Paul was much more than a precursor, for we find in him, not merely a knowledge of facts, but of truths, and a facility in applying them altogether remarkable. What a volume on this subject lay open in his own consciousness! A temperament of singular impressionableness; a natural activity that sprang quite as much from the interaction of his mental faculties and their quick sympathy with one another as from the accesses of the outer world; feeble health, and yet that kind of weakness in certain functions which is sometimes connected with other organs of great strength, and is consistent with astonishing power of endurance; the "thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet" him; add to all this the manner of life he led, and the physical sufferings that enemies inflicted on him; - and how could he help being reminded what a factor the body was in his manhood and apostleship? Think of the effect on the associating and suggestive faculty, on the imagination, on his use of language both for thought and expression, that this mass of disturbed sensibility must have produced, and for which there was no earthly anodyne. Observe, moreover, how the wisdom of God manifests itself in the temperament of this man and its specific discipline. Probably temperament is the secret of individuality, but whether so or not, it must be reckoned as of no little significance as to the influence of the books we read, the teachers that instruct, and the other countless agencies which make up the total of educative forces. Now, in this particular, mark the contrast between St. Peter and St. Paul. The fisherman of Galilee, healthy, robust, abounding in the instinctive joyousness of natural sensations, trustful to an extreme of his emotions, pliant towards himself, singularly impulsive; what a problem was in that temperament and its physiological laws, when the Lord Jesus began to educate his nerves, arteries, brains, for discipleship, and through the disciple to develop the apostle of the "Rock and the Keys! Yet it was done, and done thoroughly, so that the changed body of St. Peter is quite as noteworthy as the changed mind, the same body but functionally subdued to a well-governed organism. During the forty days between the Lord's resurrection and ascension, the man and the apostle emerged from the chrysalis. At Pentecost, what a commanding figure he presents! No haste, no spasmodic action, now, but equipoise and cool wisdom and the courage of repose. In temperament, no less than in official position, St. Peter is the antecedent of St. Paul. And their difference herein, according to providential ordination, was carried out in their training and culture, so that diversity, jealous of its rights in all things, is only self insistent for the sake of prospective unity. Now, St. Paul wishes to put this subject of danger on the bodily side of human life in the strongest possible light for his own benefit and that of the Corinthians. What then? A nation rises before him. By the arm of Jehovah, Egypt has been smitten, the Red Sea has opened a pathway to their triumphant march, and waves and winds have chanted the anthem of a victory in which they had no share. And this nation passed through the sea," and "were all baptized ante Moses," as their mediatorial leader, "in the cloud and in the sea." Nay, more; the typical idea is still further wrought out, and baptism and the Lord's Supper are conjoined. "All did eat the same spiritual meat; all did drink the same spiritual drink;" the meat and drink were from above; the Holy Ghost was present as the source of the miracles and the Divine Agent of blessing; the "spiritual" is insisted on, for "that Rock was Christ." There was a revelation to the senses and there was a revelation to the spirit. To deny the supersensuous element is to destroy the force of the analogy, since it is not a resemblance to the imagination alone, but a real likeness to the reason, Christianity and its sacraments being prominent in St. Paul's view. It was not, then, a mere miracle to the body and for the body. It was likewise a supernatural demonstration, a gracious influence from the Holy Ghost, a prelusive blessedness brought within reach of experience in that dispensation of types and shadows. It was not our spirituality; nevertheless, it was spiritual, since "that Rock was Christ." Our Lord said in his Capernaum discourse, just after his great miracle that fed thousands, "Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead. This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die." Did not the miracle, wrought so lavishly for the public, wrought without solicitation, seem to the excited multitude a sign that Christ was the national Messiah their hearts craved to have? Next day, he disenchanted them by sweeping away the secular illusion and telling them plainly, "I am that Bread of life." The contrast between the manna of the wilderness and the bread of life was stated and enforced at a time, in a way, under circumstances, calculated to secure its object. It did not effect its purpose. "From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him;" and henceforth the popular expectation of a worldly Messiah was a waning moon in a darkening night. And this contrast was recognized by St. Paul even while adhering most closely to the parallelism. On the ground of the parallelism, he argues the eminent privileges of the Jews, the opportunities enjoyed, the Divine manifestation, the spiritual influence secured to the nation in the desert. They failed to understand and appreciate their position. Appetite, lust, idolatry, overcame them; "they were overthrown in the wilderness," and so swift was God's wrath and so overwhelming, that there "fell in one day three and twenty thousand." Here was a supernatural economy; here was a religion that provided for bodily necessities, and even gave "angels' food;" here, at the same time that the claims of a true and proper sensuousness were divinely met, a "spiritual" agency was established and administered - here, in the solitudes of sand and rock, where the chosen people were alone with God, and where neither day nor night was allowed to wear its accustomed face because of the presence of the pillar cloud of glory; and yet amid such displays of the providence and Spirit of God, men fell into idolatry, murmured against God, tempted him, and perished under miraculous judgments. It is not simply a lesson from individuals to individuals. It is a warning from a community to a community. Vice as personal, vice as social, vice as an epidemic in the air, - this is the vice of bodily degradation as it exhibits its raging enormity in lust, fornication, and idol worship. "These things were our examples," "for ensamples," "written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come," the coalescence of the ages in the grand demonstration of Christianity as the completed revelation to mankind of God in Christ. "Wherefore... take heed." We have more light; larger privileges, nobler opportunities, but there is no mechanical security in these things. The crisis age has come, the crisis trial has come with it. "Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall." To encourage their holy endeavours, he assures them that there is no fatality in temptation. Oftentimes it happens that men are morally disabled before the struggle, before an incitement to do evil has fairly set in. By this proneness to believe in fate, they surrender in advance. Remote causes are frequently more potent than proximate causes, and many a man has been the victim of a false philosophy of morals long before he has fallen as an actual prey to Satan. Bodily sins have something in them which renders their subjects uncommonly liable to this destructive belief, and "I could not help it; I cannot help it," are words that easily rise to their lips. But the doctrine of St. Paul is a protest against such a demoralizing idea. "No trial has come upon you beyond man's power to bear" (Conybeare and Howson). "God is faithful." The laws of the universe and their administration, the presence of the Spirit as the universal Helper, and the glory of Christianity as the consummation of the ages, are so many Divine assurances that no man is doomed beforehand to fall into the snare of the devil. Satan himself is only Satan, man's adversary, within certain limits. God holds him in check. At first, the influence of evil takes effect on the involuntary nature, sensations are awakened, passions excited, but it becomes a temptation when these lower instruments are brought to bear on the consent of the will. "God is faithful" to the human will. There is nothing in man which is so constantly quickened and energized as a defensive force. And, furthermore, as a positive and aggressive force, what resources are at its command! If temptation is subtle and insinuating, who knows the number and Variety of the Spirit's secret avenues to the will? There is always "a way to escape," and this way is provided by our heavenly Father, who is evermore answering the prayer, "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil." - L. Parallel Verses KJV: Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; |
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