1 Corinthians 10:1-13

CONTINUANCE OF RESPONSE TOUCHING PAUL’S GENUINE APOSTOLICITY, 1 Corinthians 10:1-13.

The picture of the Grecian games closing the last chapter, (1 Corinthians 10:24-27,) and this picture of the wilderness history of Israel, (1 Corinthians 10:1-13,) are beautiful counterparts of each other. The former (applied by Paul specially to himself) draws from Grecian life, and the latter (which includes the Corinthians with himself) from Hebrew memories, a vivid illustration of the Christian life. The former would appeal to the feeling of Paul’s Gentile readers; the latter, more especially to the Jewish; but nevertheless assumes that the Gentile converts are becoming familiar with that dispensation which was specially preparatory to Christianity. Hence both classes recognise the Jewish ancestry as spiritual fathers. 1 Corinthians 10:1.

From all this parallelism the reason will appear why we consider this paragraph as a continuance of Paul’s response in regard to his own apostolicity, yet now including his Corinthian brethren as typified with himself. The race from starting-point to goal, and the pilgrimage from Egypt to Canaan, each furnishes an image of our transit through and from earth to heaven. The former, however, is upon a small scale, and is the immediate creation of the apostle’s own conception; the latter is extended, filled with symbolical details, and is not a mere momentary product of the apostle’s individual fancy, but an established type, recorded for the very purpose of admonition. The two passages should be read together as parallels, and as both lying in the line of thought illustrating the duty of Christian self-restriction. The general principle is undoubtedly true, that the Old Testament dispensation was, in its great structure, a type of the new. Under this general typism countless analogies and illustrations would arise in minute details of history. These minute resemblances, however, are rather illustrations than types. They are such as the conception of the individual author traces out, not organic and divinely fixed prefigurations.