1 Corinthians 10:19

The command in verse 14 rests on everything before it. Dióper, “wherefore”, means “on which very account”, and the account is the history Paul has just told in 1 Corinthians 10:1–13. Israel was baptized in the cloud and the sea and ate spiritual food and drank spiritual drink, yet the people fell in the wilderness through idolatry, sexual immorality, tempting Christ and grumbling, and God judged them. Paul sets their story before the Corinthians as a warning, and because it happened, they are to flee.

He gives the command tenderly. “My dearly beloved” joins moû, “of me, my”, to agapētós, “beloved, dear”, one who is loved. Paul writes as a spiritual father to children he loves, and his love is the reason for the urgency.

Pheúgō means to run away, flee, shun or escape, and with apó, “from”, it speaks of leaving a danger behind. Paul gives it as a present imperative, which carries the sense of a standing habit: keep fleeing. People ask why he uses so strong a word. He uses the word for escaping danger because idolatry had brought death to Israel and was a matter of spiritual life and death in Corinth too, and the only safe distance from it is a wide one.

Eidōlolatreía, idolatry, joins the word for an idol to the word for worship or service, so it means idol-worship. Corinth was a wealthy port city with temples to gods such as Aphrodite, Apollo, Poseidon and Asclepius, and its religious festivals, civic banquets and guild dinners often served meat that had been sacrificed to an idol. For new converts these meals were bound up with friendship, business and standing in the city, and the pressure to keep going to them was strong. Paul had already written about such food in 1 Corinthians 8, where his concern was the conscience of the weaker brother, and in 1 Corinthians 9 he showed how he gives up his own rights for the gospel. In 1 Corinthians 10 he speaks of the danger in the worship itself. The whole of 1 Corinthians 8–10 is one argument about these meals.

Behind the command stands the first commandment (Exodus 20:3–5) and the call to love the LORD our God, who is one (Deuteronomy 6:4–5): God alone is to be worshipped. So idolatry also reaches anything that takes God’s place in our trust and devotion, such as money, career, comfort, status or self. Paul names covetousness as idolatry in Colossians 3:5, and John gives the same charge as Paul when he writes, “keep yourselves from idols” (1 John 5:21).

Before he makes his case, Paul asks for their verdict: “I speak as to wise men; judge ye what I say.” Légō, speak, means to relate in words, and here it opens a reasoned argument. Phrónimos, wise, means thoughtful, sensible or discreet. Greek has other words for learned wisdom (sophos) and for intelligence (synetos), and Paul uses this one, the wisdom of practical understanding that makes sound choices in real situations. Krínō, judge, means to distinguish and so to decide. Paul asks them to weigh his words and reach a right conclusion, confident that if they do, they will agree with him.

This is striking in a letter that has rebuked the Corinthians for worldly wisdom and for their divisions (1 Corinthians 1:18–31, 1 Corinthians 3:1–4). Paul calls them wise because of what they should be as believers, who have received the Spirit that searches the deep things of God (1 Corinthians 2:10–16). The word is a compliment and a challenge at once, and it tells us that what follows is plain enough for anyone with spiritual sense to see.

Scripture asks this discernment of every believer. The mature are trained to discern good and evil (Hebrews 5:14), Paul prays that love may abound in knowledge and discernment (Philippians 1:9–10), and John tells us to try the spirits (1 John 4:1). Our wisdom comes from Christ, who is “the power of God, and the wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 1:24) and in whom “are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3), and the Spirit is the Spirit of wisdom and revelation (Ephesians 1:17). The same wisdom governs how we use our liberty, so that it never becomes a stumblingblock to a weaker brother (1 Corinthians 8:9).

Paul begins from something the Corinthians already know, the Lord’s Supper, and asks two questions that expect the answer yes. “The cup of blessing which we bless” is the cup over which thanks and blessing are spoken. Eulogía, blessing, comes from the same root as the verb to bless and means fine speaking or praise, and so a blessing or consecration. The phrase echoes the Passover meal, at which a cup was blessed, often reckoned as the third cup. On the night he was betrayed, Jesus took bread and called it his body and took the cup and called it his blood of the covenant (Matthew 26:26–28). Luke records his words, “This cup is the new testament in my blood” (Luke 22:19–20).

Koinōnía, communion, means partnership, participation, fellowship and sharing. The cup is a sharing in the blood of Christ, and the bread is a sharing in his body. When we drink and eat, we take part in his sacrifice and receive what it won: forgiveness, reconciliation with God and a place in the new covenant made in his blood. Among the Gentiles of Corinth a common meal also marked a shared bond with a god or a group, so the Corinthians understood the word, and Paul builds the rest of his argument on it.

Kláō is the verb used for breaking bread. “The bread which we break” repeats what Jesus did when he gave the bread to his disciples, and the broken loaf sets his body, given for us, before our eyes. Jesus spoke of eating his flesh and drinking his blood as the way to life (John 6:53–56). The Supper looks back to the cross, it looks up to the risen Christ at the right hand of God, who intercedes for us (Romans 8:34), and it looks forward to the marriage supper of the Lamb (Revelation 19:9). Because it is a real sharing in Christ, Paul later warns against eating and drinking unworthily (1 Corinthians 11:27–32).

Verse 17 gives the second gift of the Supper: “For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread.” Ártos is bread, a loaf, here the one loaf of the Supper. Heîs, one, is the simple numeral, and Paul sets it beside both the bread and the body. Metéchō, partake, is made from “with” and “to have”, and means to share or take part, and by implication to eat or drink. Since we all share the one loaf, we who are many are one body, and the words “one bread” stand twice in the verse to press the point.

A loaf is made from many grains of wheat ground and baked together, and the picture fits the church: many people from many backgrounds made one in Christ. The unity comes from sharing in him, so it is his work, and the Supper both shows it and strengthens it.

This is Paul’s teaching on the church as the body of Christ, which he sets out at length in 1 Corinthians 12 and in Romans 12.

The body has many members and one life (Romans 12:4–5), and by one Spirit we are all baptized into it, whether Jews or Gentiles, bond or free (1 Corinthians 12:12–27). There is one body and one Spirit, one Lord, one faith, one baptism (Ephesians 4:4–6), and in Christ, Jew and Greek, bond and free, male and female are all one (Galatians 3:28). Christ is the bread of life (John 6:35), who gave his flesh for the life of the world (John 6:51) and broke down the wall that divided people from one another (Ephesians 2:14).

The Corinthians needed this badly. They had split into factions behind different leaders (1 Corinthians 1:10–13), and they were divided by social rank even at the Supper (1 Corinthians 11:17–22). The Lord’s table made them one, and the idol’s table offered a fellowship of its own that could only pull them apart.

Paul turns next to Israel. “Israel after the flesh” means the nation by natural descent from Jacob, and sárx, flesh, speaks here of that physical lineage. When an Israelite brought a peace offering, part of the animal was burned on the altar for God, part went to the priests, and the worshipper and his family ate the rest (Leviticus 7:11–34). Esthíō is the plain verb “to eat”. Thysiastḗrion is the altar, the place of sacrifice, and koinōnós, partaker, means a sharer, an associate or a companion.

So those who ate the sacrifice shared in the altar, and through it in fellowship with the LORD, who received his portion there. The question expects the answer yes, and it lays down the principle for the verses that follow: a sacrificial meal joins the one who eats it to the one to whom the sacrifice is offered. That holds at the Lord’s table, and it holds at a pagan altar.

Israel’s sacrifices were offered again and again. Christ, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29), offered himself once for all (Hebrews 9:26–28), and he is both the sacrifice and our great High Priest (Hebrews 4:14–16). At his table we share in him.

An idol is an image made by hands, and Paul still holds what he wrote in 1 Corinthians 8:4, that “an idol is nothing in the world”. Eídōlon means an image made for worship, and so a heathen god or idol. Eidōlóthyton, “that which is offered in sacrifice to idols”, is a compound meaning something sacrificed to an image, the meat or other food from a pagan offering. “What say I then?” opens a clarification, and the question asks whether either one estí tìs, “is any thing”. Tìs is the indefinite pronoun “some” or “any”, and estí is simply “is”. The expected answer is that the image and the meat have no power or godhead of their own.

People ask whether Paul now contradicts what he wrote in chapter 8. He holds two truths together: the image is a lifeless object, and the worship offered to it is real worship that reaches real spirits. Verse 20 says where it goes: “the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God.”

Éthnos means a nation or people, and in its extended sense the Gentiles, the nations outside Israel who worshipped many gods. Thýō, sacrifice, means to slaughter or offer in sacrifice, often by fire, the central act of their worship. The word the KJV renders “devils” is daimónion, a demon. In form it is a neuter word drawn from daimōn, and the pagans could use it of a lesser god. Scripture uses it of the many evil spirits, a word set apart from diabolos, the devil himself. Behind the carved gods of Corinth stood real spiritual powers hostile to God.

Moses said the same of Israel: “They sacrificed unto devils, not to God; to gods whom they knew not, to new gods that came newly up, whom your fathers feared not” (Deuteronomy 32:17). The psalmist says that Israel “sacrificed their sons and their daughters unto devils” (Psalm 106:37), and Revelation joins the worship of devils with “idols of gold, and silver, and of brass, and stone, and of wood: which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk” (Revelation 9:20).

Then Paul says, “and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils.” The word for fellowship is koinōnós again, the sharer or partner of verse 18. Since a sacrifice joins those who eat it to the one who receives it, the pagan feast made its guests partners of devils, and Paul wants his beloved kept far from that.

Verse 21 states the conclusion, first of the cup and then of the table. Dýnamai means to be able, and with the negative ou it says “you are not able”. Paul describes a real impossibility. Whoever drinks the cup of the Lord shares in Christ’s blood, whoever drinks at the idol’s feast shares with devils, and those two fellowships exclude each other. In Scripture a cup can stand for a person’s portion, and the cup of devils was the wine poured out and drunk at the pagan sacrificial meal. “The Lord’s table” is the Supper, and “the table of devils” is the meal eaten in a temple or a home in honour of an idol. Metéchō, partake, is the verb of verse 17 again, to share and to have a part.

Jesus said, “No man can serve two masters” (Matthew 6:24). Joshua told Israel, “choose you this day whom ye will serve” (Joshua 24:15), and Paul warns the Corinthians in his second letter against being unequally yoked with unbelievers (2 Corinthians 6:14–16). Israel tried to keep both at the golden calf (1 Corinthians 10:7), and it ended in judgment. The Lord’s Supper marks our covenant with God, and that covenant is exclusive.

Paul closes with two questions that answer themselves. Parazēlóō means to stir to jealousy or rivalry, and to provoke the Lord to jealousy is to give to another the worship that belongs to him alone. His jealousy is holy zeal for his own glory and for the whole devotion of his people, and idolatry among them is spiritual adultery, a betrayal of the covenant. Moses speaks of this jealousy in Deuteronomy 32:21, a few verses after the sacrifices to devils. The LORD is a jealous God (Deuteronomy 6:15), Israel provoked him to jealousy (Psalm 78:58), and Nahum says that God is jealous and avenging (Nahum 1:2).

Kýrios, Lord, is the title of one supreme in authority, a master, and in this passage it is the Lord whose cup and table Paul has just named, the Lord Jesus Christ. To provoke the Son is to provoke the Father, for Jesus said, “I and my Father are one” (John 10:30).

Ischyrós, stronger, means strong, mighty or powerful. “Are we stronger than he?” exposes the presumption behind every compromise, as if we could keep company with idols and still stand against God’s judgment. Israel’s fall in the wilderness has already shown the answer. Christ was declared to be the Son of God with power by his resurrection (Romans 1:4), and all power in heaven and in earth is given to him (Matthew 28:18).

The Lord of this table is the one who makes the flight from idols possible. He is “the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15), by whom “all things were created” and in whom all things hold together (Colossians 1:16–17). At the cross he triumphed over the principalities and powers (Colossians 2:15), and by his death he overcame the devil and freed those who were held in bondage (Hebrews 2:14–15). God has raised him above every rule and power (Ephesians 1:20–22). He is the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6), and through him we have fellowship with the Father and with his Son (1 John 1:3). We are bought with a price (1 Corinthians 6:20), redeemed with the precious blood of Christ (1 Peter 1:18–19), so that we belong to him. Fleeing from idols is also running to him, as the Thessalonians turned to God from idols “to serve the living and true God” (1 Thessalonians 1:9–10).

The Lord’s Supper gives us a real share in the blood and body of Christ, and with it a place in one body with every believer who eats the one bread. That is why Paul can speak so plainly about the idol’s feast: we already have a table, and the Lord himself is its host. His command to flee comes from an apostle who calls us dearly beloved, and it rests on a God who is jealous for us because we are his. In these verses God shows himself as the one Lord who will share his people with no rival, and as stronger than every power that hides behind an idol. Each time the cup is blessed and the bread is broken, his people are shown again whose they are.