and all ate the same spiritual food,
Paul warns the Corinthians by pointing back to Israel in the desert. If God Himself fed that whole crowd, why did most of them never reach the promised land?
The word "spiritual" is doing real work here.
Thirdly, Paul writes, they ate spiritual food. This stresses two things: the manna came from a supernatural source (Psalm 78:25), and it carries a spiritual meaning. As the Lord Jesus explains in John chapter 6, He is the Bread of Life, and only those who feed on Him have life (John 6:31-32).
If the manna stands for Christ, which Christ does it show?
The manna, I need not say, is Christ, the bread of God from heaven, to be our food. It is Christ come down, Christ in all the circumstances of an earthly life, to sustain the life of His people... So here we do not have a Christ in glory, but a Christ humbled. In His blessed person there is everything needed to support and nourish us on our wilderness journey.
Notice what the verse does not tell us about the people who ate.
The subject of 1 Corinthians 10 is privilege, and the responsibility that comes with it for everyone who shares in it, whoever they are. So the words "all ate the same spiritual food" and "all drank the same spiritual drink" say something about the food and the drink. They say nothing about the people who took them, except that they did take them... Yet in the end many of them proved to be unworthy partakers, and we are to take warning from them.
Some have read "the same" as putting Israel's manna on a level with the Lord's Supper. Kelly reads the grammar differently, and the argument with it.
As a question of interpretation, it is clear that when Paul says they all ate the same spiritual food, he is speaking of the fathers, not of the Corinthians or other Christians. His point of warning and instruction is that God took no pleasure in most of them, for they were overthrown in the wilderness. So in these verses he speaks only of Israel. He is in no way saying that their manna and water were the same as our signs of Christ's death, or what men call the sacraments... They held the title of God's people, and they shared in sacred privileges — the very privileges Paul plainly likens to the two institutions so familiar to us in the Christian world. Yet none of this saved the mass of them from being overthrown by God's judgments in the wilderness.
Smith names the mistake this passage rules out: treating religious rites as a guarantee.
Now he warns those who profess faith that it is possible to be baptised, to share in the Lord's Supper, and yet be lost. He does not say that we can have part in the death of Christ and perish. He says it is possible to have part in the symbols of His death and perish. So he exposes the trap that most of the Christian world has fallen into: a sacramental system that makes salvation depend on having part in baptism and the Lord's Supper.
That distinction is what keeps the passage from unsettling a believer's confidence.
This passage is not a warning against having a thing and in any way perishing, but against having the signs of the thing and then perishing.
Israel gathered this food morning by morning. Mackintosh carries that habit straight over to us.
The manna was so pure and delicate that it could not bear contact with earth. It fell upon the dew (see Numbers 11:9) and had to be gathered before the sun was up. Each one, therefore, had to rise early and seek his daily portion. So it is with the people of God now. The heavenly manna must be gathered fresh every morning. Yesterday's manna will not do for today, nor today's for tomorrow. We must feed upon Christ every day, with fresh energy of the Spirit, or else we shall cease to grow.
- Gift — The manna came from a supernatural source, and it meant more than food. It pictures Christ come down from heaven, humbled, to sustain His people on the road.
- Given to all — The verse describes the food, not the faith of the eaters. Everyone in the camp received it; that fact alone proves nothing about them.
- Sign — Kelly holds that "the same" compares Israelites with each other, not their manna with the Lord's Supper. Paul likens the two only as privileges that did not save.
- Snare — You can share in the symbols of Christ's death and still be lost. The danger is holding the sign without the reality, not losing the reality.
- Sustenance — You must eat what the sign points to, and eat it today. Yesterday's portion feeds no one this morning.
and all drank the same spiritual drink, for they drank of a spiritual rock which followed [them] (now the rock was the Christ;)
Paul looks back at Israel's years in the desert. He tells the Corinthians that everything they drank there came from one source — and that source was a Person. So the verse raises two questions. How could a rock "be" Christ? And what does it mean that it followed them?
The food and the drink in the desert were real, yet Paul calls both "spiritual." One writer gives two reasons for that word:
They are probably called "spiritual food" and "spiritual drink" because God gave them both. They were the direct gift of His grace, and in no sense natural products. But there is another reason: what they picture. The food speaks of Christ meeting the needs of His people on their journey. The drink speaks of life in the power of the Holy Spirit, and without that the journey could not be made.
We are not left guessing at the meaning of the desert water. The rock was not divine in itself. It stood for a Person, and the order of events pointed to Him:
The words "and the Rock was Christ" work the same way — that is, the rock represented Christ. The rock was struck before the water flowed out. In the same way, Christ was struck on the cross before the Holy Spirit was given.
No water came out until the rod struck. That blow is the heart of the picture:
Some explain the rod as a symbol of God's power. So when it strikes, it shows His judicial power at work. In this striking of the rock, then, we see the stroke of His judgment falling on Christ at the cross. The struck rock is a crucified Christ. And it was the people's sin, remember, that led to the striking of the rock. It is a vivid illustration of the truth that "He was pierced for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities."
Israel's history holds two rock scenes, many years apart:
Paul treats the rock of Israel's history as one rock, though many years passed between the two episodes, and it pictured Christ. Christ did not need to be struck twice. Once was enough, and rivers of life-giving water flowed to us.
Did the stone itself travel? One writer answers that the water, not the rock, is what followed:
Wherever they went, the overflowing streams followed them. I do not think the rock moved, but that what came from the rock followed them. Behind, in their track, that shining river came right along. Morning by morning down came the bread, and day by day the water followed them.
The supply never failed, and there was nothing else to drink:
Whatever they needed, it was there — a drink, water for cooking, for washing, for all kinds of uses. It kept flowing, ready for every call and every camp. And there was no other resource in the wilderness. No other stream fed that river, and it never ran dry.
The Rock was more than a picture. Christ Himself was there in the desert, long before His birth in Bethlehem.
It was Christ who followed, as the Rock, His redeemed people in the wilderness, and whom they tempted by their unbelief. It was the holy Person whom we know as the Christ of God, who was there with them in Egypt and through all their wanderings. It was God, God the Son, who was there with them — not shutting out the presence of the Father and the Spirit, but giving prominence here to the Eternal Son.
The word "all" runs through this passage. Paul uses it as a warning, not a comfort:
The sense is not that they were in the very same condition as we are, or had the same sacraments as we have. It is that they all shared the same spiritual food and drink, and yet God had no pleasure in most of them. They held the title of God's people, and they shared in sacred privileges — the very ones Paul here likens to the two practices so familiar to us. That did not save most of them. God's judgments still struck them down in the wilderness.
- Struck once. The rock gave nothing until the rod of judgment fell on it. That blow pictures the cross, and it never needed repeating.
- Then flowing. Water came from the struck Rock — a picture of the Spirit given, life for people who had no other source.
- Always following. The supply was not a single day's mercy. It was a stream that tracked them through every camp of the journey.
- Christ Himself. The rock represented Christ. He was there with them in the desert — the same Person they tempted.
- Yet not enough alone. All drank; most fell. Carrying the title of God's people did not save them from His judgment.