1 Corinthians 10:1-13 Commentary

In my experience, few verses of Scripture are more often misquoted than 1 Corinthians 10:13. Countless faithful Christians have paraphrased it as “God never gives us more than we can handle.” Yet while that’s largely true, it’s not what Paul and Sosthenes actually write to Corinth’s Christians in verse 13.

They, instead, insist God “will not let [easei*] you be tempted [peirasthenai] beyond [hyper] what you can bear [dynasthe].” So this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson’s apostles largely speak not first of all to the burdens Jesus’ friends bear, but to the challenges temptation poses.

So in this Lenten season, the Spirit may use 1 Corinthians 10 to summon God’s dearly beloved people to both confess our failure to resist temptation, and to place our hope in the only One who resisted all temptation. Yet 1 Corinthians 10:1’s preposition gar (“for”) reminds its readers that this Sunday’s Lesson follows chapter 9:24-27’s summons to imitate the apostle by running the race that is the following of Jesus. In verse 27 he writes, “I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.”

That’s the somewhat mysterious end of 1 Corinthians 9’s assertions of Paul’s rights and responsibilities as Jesus’ apostle. But, in fact, what the apostle goes on to write in 1 Corinthians 10 helps clear up some of chapter 9’s mystery. Paul asserts that he beats his body and makes it his slave in sharp contrast to the ways some of his ancestors lived with and before God.

In verses 1-4 the apostle describes some of the highlights of his ancestors’ Exodus. In verse 1 he fairly straightforwardly recounts how the Israelites were “under the cloud [hypo ten nephelen]” (cf. Exodus 13:21-22) and “passed [dielthon] through the sea.” (cf. Exodus 14:22 and 29).

However, Paul recalls much of the rest of the Exodus through a Messianic lens. So he speaks in verse 2 of how all of his ancestors were “baptized [ebaptisanto] into [eis] Moses in the cloud and in the sea.” This is, candidly, mysterious language. But perhaps preachers need to say little more than this about it: in the waters and under the cloud God used Moses to lead the Israelites who’d been “baptized” into Moses’ situation, much as God’s Spirit leads Jesus’ followers who are baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Yet in some ways verses 3 and 4 just get “curiouser and curiouser.” There, after all, Paul says all of his Israelite ancestors “ate the same spiritual food [pneumatikon broma] and drank the same spiritual drink [poma]; for they drank from the spiritual rock [pneumatikes petras] that accompanied [akolouthouses] them, and that rock was Christ.”

The apostle is basically asserting that while it was Moses who led Israel out of Egyptian slavery, through the wilderness and to the doorstep of the land of promise, God was working through him to lead God’s Israelite people. God’s Spirit spiritually nourished them for the journey. The source of their spiritual drink, writes Paul, was the second person of Trinity, Jesus the Christ.

As a colleague once noted, this seems to play a bit “fast and loose” with the Scriptures’ account of Israel’s Exodus. But the apostle asserts a fundamental truth about that Exodus: while Moses was Israel’s human leader, the Triune God was actively at work throughout the long journey. As certainly as God nourished God’s people with the physical gifts of food and drink, God also nourished them with God’s life-giving spiritual gifts of accompaniment and mercy.

That helps make what Paul further observes about the Exodus tragic. While God graced God’s Israelite people with everything they needed, both physically and spiritually, “God was not pleased [ouk eudokesen] with most [pleiosin] of them” (5). God, in fact, left their “bodies scattered [katestrothesan] in the wilderness [eremo].”

Israel’s failure to faithfully respond to God’s countless blessings left her corpses strewn across the path to Canaan. The Message paraphrases verse 5 as Paul’s lament that “Most of them were defeated by temptation during the hard times in the desert, and God was not pleased.”

The apostle describes Israel’s multiple failures to resist temptation in verses 7 and following. He cites four examples of Israelites’ failures to properly respond to God’s gracious generosity. While the Spirit might lead preachers to explore those sins individually, we might also point to some commonalities among them.

In each case God’s people were the beneficiaries of God’s good gifts. They, for example, “sat down [ekathisen] to eat [phagein] and drink [pein]” (7). Verse 8 alludes to God’s good gift of intimacy. Verse 9 alludes to God’s provision of everything the Israelite wanderers needed.

Yet in each case they responded badly to those graces. According to verse 7 after sitting down to spiritually and physically eat and drink, some Israelites got up to “indulge in” idolatrous “revelry [paizein].” Verse 8 grieves how others turned God’s good gift of intimacy into “sexual immorality [porneuomen].”

In verse 9 Paul says that some Israelites “tested [ekpeirazomen] Christ” when they complained God wasn’t being generous enough with them. Verse 10 reports that other Israelites “grumbled [gongyzete],” perhaps in response to God’s discipline of some of their rebellious leaders.

God’s punishment of such disobedience was swift, and, perhaps to us, harsh. Twenty-three thousand adulterers were killed in one day (8). What’s more, Israelites who tested Christ were killed by snakes (9). On top of that, grumblers were killed by the “destroying angel [olothreutou]” (10).

These difficult stories summon Jesus’ friends to humble gratitude for Christ graciously absorbing at the cross any punishment we deserve for similar giving in to temptation. Paul, however, also sees Israel’s wilderness failures to resist temptation as types of “object lessons.” “These things happened to them,” he writes in verse 11, “as examples [typikos] and were written down as warnings [nouthesian] for us.”

The apostle, in other words, recounts these examples of God’s Israelite people’s disobedience in order to warn Jesus’ friends against similar disobedience. “So,” the apostle continues in verses 12 and 13, “if you think you are standing firm [hestanai], be careful that you don’t fall [pese]. No temptation [peirasmos] has overtaken [eilephen] you except what is common to mankind [anthropinos].”

Paul implies that the Israelite refugees thought they were resisting temptation. They may even have assumed, as The Message paraphrases verse 12, they were “exempt” from caving in to temptation to sin against God by doing things like practicing idolatry. Yet, Paul grieves, God’s Israelite people did not stand firm, but, instead, wavered. They succumbed to the temptation to sin against God by practicing sexual immorality and grumbling against God.

In fact, to paraphrase Ecclesiastes wise poet, the apostle implies that there’s no new temptation under the sun. We, in fact, see many of the temptations to which Israel succumbed already in Genesis’ earliest accounts of our first parents. Even Jesus’ friends are vulnerable to the temptation to doubt and blame God, as well as blame each other for our sins.

But it’s as if Paul goes on to shout in verse 13, “God is faithful [pistos]; he will not let [eisai] you be tempted [peirsethenai] beyond what you can bear [dynasthe].” While even Jesus’ closest friends are naturally unfaithful, God is completely faithful. God, as it were, graciously places restrictions on the temptation God allows God’s people to endure. God won’t let us have to deal with any temptation we can’t resist. God, according to The Message’s lyrical paraphrase of verse 13, “will never let you be pushed past your limit.”

In fact, the apostle goes on to insist at the end of verse 13, “when you are tempted [peirasmo], he will also provide [poiesei] a way out [ekbasin] so that you can endure it [hypenenkein].” God, in other words, doesn’t just strictly limit both temptation and the Tempter. God also always graces Jesus’ friends with a way out of our temptation. God will always, says The Message, “be there to help you come through it.”

This is amazing grace for God’s adopted children. On this side of the new creation’s curtain, the Tempter is creative and persistent. He’s constantly looking for ways to entice us to sin against God and our neighbor. During our worship services, many churches offer times for corporate confession of the Church’s failure to resist temptation.

But this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson reminds Jesus’ followers in whom the Spirit lives that we don’t have to cave in to temptation. The Holy Spirit, in fact, fully empowers us to stay faithful to God and our neighbor by not letting the Tempter tempt us beyond what we can handle. One way the Spirit does that is by always giving Christians a way to resist, deal with and flee both the Tempter and temptation.

*I have here and elsewhere added in brackets the Greek words for the English words the NIV translation uses.

Illustration

In The Screwtape Letters C.S. Lewis recounts a conversation about temptation between Screwtape, the senior devil, and Wormwood, the junior devil who’s also Screwtape’s nephew. Screwtape says: “’You will say that these are very small sins; and doubtless like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness. But do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy [God].

“It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their accumulative effect is to edge the man away from the light and toward the Nothing. Murder is not better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one – the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”

[Note: In addition to these weekly sermon commentaries on the CEP website, we also have a resource page for Lent and Easter with more preaching and worship ideas as well as sample sermons on the Year C Lectionary texts.]