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‘I would not that ye should be ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; … But with many of them God was not well pleased: for they were overthrown in the wilderness.’
1Co_10:1-5
I. How are they affecting your life?—How various are the lives of such a congregation as this! Yet all in the main equally privileged. How is it with you? Is it not strange that there should be this difference, that some of us should be so impervious to the influences that are all around us? This matter of the influences of life, who can penetrate it? You hear the voices, your hearts are stirred more or less, you know that you have these privileges, and yet how often does the life run to waste because we enjoy these privileges in the wrong spirit, we are proud of them, or we take them as a matter of course, and we give our minds to other things, and so the privileges are overlading us; some other element of our nature, that should have been rooted out of us, grows to be the strong element, and it destroys the gift of the Christian life.
II. It must be good that we should contemplate how men have wasted their privileges and how God punishes.—We are apt sometimes to think only of the mercy and the love of God; we should not forget that He does not withhold His hand to punish. It is very significant that the Apostle who preaches always and everywhere the free gift of God’s grace, should himself have lived and laboured in that spirit of fear and trembling which he has described in the ninth chapter of this Epistle; that he should utter such warnings as he utters here to these Corinthians to show them the danger lest the promised grace and the gifts of God should be nothing to them. Of all the multitude of Israel, only two; of all a congregation like this, how many at the last?
III. These things are for our admonition.—If we do not use the present moment, if we do not enjoy our privileges in humility, if we do not think less of privileges and more of duties, if we do not go on our knees day by day for more of the saving Spirit of God, why, then, it is very likely that it will be written of us also, ‘With many of them God was not well pleased,’ and our fate will be as the fate of Israel. The gifts of God are all gifts under conditions, and the conditions are what we should be often thinking of.
Bishop Percival.
Illustration‘If we are to understand the Apostle’s argument clearly we should go back to the earlier part of this Epistle. We find as we read the earlier chapters that the Christians of Corinth were much enamoured of their liberty; the one Christian privilege which seems to have laid hold of their imagination was their Christian liberty. Corinth, as some of you know doubtless, was a maritime city of great licence; it was one of the most dangerous places in Greece, as maritime cities are sometimes apt to be very dangerous; and this atmosphere of licence in the midst of which this small Christian Church was living seems to have affected them in this way, that they thought far more of their liberties than of their duties. Thus we find that very soon this Christian Church of Corinth became a divided Church; they exercised their liberty in following some this teacher, some that teacher; they became very critical. But worse than all, it very soon became an immoral Church, as we see from St. Paul’s earlier chapters in this Epistle. And part of the root of the mischief, it would seem, was this exaggerated notion of their privilege of liberty as Christians. And how does St. Paul meet it? He meets it by considering his own case. Yes, he says, liberty is the foundation of the Christian life. He always claims liberty for himself, he always inculcates that every Christian man is a free man. You remember how he emphasises it in the Epistle to the Romans: “To his own master every man must stand or fall.” And so he says, “I myself am free; all things are lawful for me.” But immediately there follows the condition: “All things are not expedient.” Taking his own case, he claimed his liberty, but we see how all through his life, in directing his action, in denying himself, in doing his Master’s work, he was not thinking of his liberty, but of his personal responsibility.’