Neither be ye idolaters, as some of them; as it is written, The people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play.
Paul warns the Corinthians about idolatry by pointing back to the golden calf Israel made while Moses was away with God. The line he quotes — about eating, drinking, and playing — raises the question the chapter turns on: what makes someone an idolater?
The words come from the day Israel made the calf. What makes the story so unsettling is the mood of it. Nobody thought they were leaving God.
Aaron announced, "Tomorrow is a feast to Jehovah." How subtle sin is! ... He himself had no idolatrous object in what he did, and idolatry was not the intention of the people either. Aaron's announcement, "Tomorrow is a feast to Jehovah," did no good. The calf, and not Jehovah, had the worship of their hearts.
Paul does not quote the making of the calf. He quotes the meal and the play that followed, and that is where his argument rests.
The real character of what followed comes out in Exodus 32:6: the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play. Paul quotes this in 1 Corinthians 10:7 as proof that they were idolaters, and a later verse shows how such idolatry at once sinks into loose living and indecency.
The verse traces a downward path. Paul sets it against the dangers the Corinthians faced.
The warning before this one is general. Then Paul names one by one the things that were dangerous to the Corinthians. "Do not be idolaters as some of them were; as it is written, 'The people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.'" First came a giving in to bodily appetite. Then came the excitement of pleasure. That brought the result you see in the verse quoted — the judgment. Were the Corinthians not in danger?
The verse says "some of them" were idolaters, though the sin spread through the whole nation. At its root the sin was a swap: Israel had lost sight of Moses, their mediator, and wanted something they could see.
Only some were idolaters, but "the people" were drawn along after their example. The sin became national when Aaron, acting as Jehovah's priest, recognized the calf. Look at the true character of this idolatry, and its essence is not a formal rejection of the living God. It is putting human inventions in the place of the one mediator God chose. The people who had been "baptized unto Moses" now asked for other "gods who should go before them." They had lost Moses, because Moses was with God. Their hearts had too little faith to follow him there, though it was for their sakes that he was hidden from their eyes.
Paul aims this command at Christians. That alone tells us something about ourselves, and it stretches the word "idolatry" well past statues.
We know that the Spirit of God does not warn us against things we are not in danger of. He would not say to us, "Do not be idolaters," if we were not capable of being such. Idolatry takes various shapes. So it is not a question of the shape of the thing, but of the thing itself; not the outward form, but the root or principle of it. We read that "covetousness is idolatry," and that a covetous man is an idolater. That is, a man who wants more than God has given him is an idolater. He is guilty of the very sin Israel committed when they made the golden calf and worshipped it. ... Whatever commands the heart is the heart's idol, whether money, pleasure, power or anything else.
If the danger is permanent, the protection cannot be a rule against images. It has to be a rival attraction strong enough to hold the heart.
"Do not be idolaters as some of them were." It is a standing warning, not a temporary one. Let us give it its proper place in our souls. There is only one safeguard: the soul taken up with Him "who is the image of the invisible God." Does the person of Christ have its rightful place in our hearts? Has He no rival there? ... Even service that looks like it is done for Him may draw our souls away from Him.
- Substitution. Idolatry did not start with denying God. It started with a human invention put in the place of the true mediator. The calf got the heart; God kept the name.
- Disguise. Aaron said over the calf, "Tomorrow is a feast to Jehovah." A religious label does not change what the heart bows to.
- Sequence. Appetite first, excitement next, judgment last. Paul quotes the meal and the play, not the making of the calf, because that is where the idolatry showed.
- Reach. This warning is for Christians, and it covers every shape idolatry takes. Wanting more than God has given is the same sin as the golden calf.
- Safeguard. The danger stands, and so does the answer. Keep the heart taken up with Christ Himself, with no rival — not even a religious one.
Neither let us commit fornication, as some of them committed fornication, and fell in one day three and twenty thousand.
Paul's warnings in this chapter walk through Israel's desert history one failure at a time. The third is the sin at Baal-Peor, a god of Moab. How did people God had blessed fall so fast? And what keeps us from the same fall?
It happened near the end of Israel's forty years in the desert. Balak, the king of Moab, hired the prophet Balaam to curse Israel. The curses failed.
This scheme failed because God guarded His people. So, on the advice of the wicked prophet, other ways of harming Israel were tried. The people were led "to join themselves" to Baal-Peor and to share in the sensual rites of the gods of Moab. Thousands of them died from the plague that followed. This was a dark page in Israel's history, and Scripture warns about it often.
What curses could not do, seduction did.
The five failures Paul lists are not in the order they happened. They are in the order the heart travels.
The order in which these evils are stated is clearly moral and not historical. Lust heads the list, for, as the Apostle James tells us, "when desire has conceived it gives birth to sin" (James 1:15). It leads to idolatry, because whatever we lust after becomes an idol between the soul and God. Then, through the idol, an unholy alliance is formed with the world. That alliance destroys all sense of God's presence with His people. It leads on to murmuring or rebellion against the ways of God.
This verse names the step that follows the idol.
Commentators differ here. Some take Paul to mean plain immorality — the danger sitting on the Corinthians' doorstep:
Our warning is not the events as pictures for us, but the judgments that came from them.
Others see a picture of the church's compromise with the world. They point to the letter to Pergamum and to the image of the church as a bride:
An unlawful union with the world follows. The message to Pergamum in Revelation 2:13 puts this in striking words. The church had shaken hands with the world, so to speak: "I know where you dwell, where Satan's throne is." The church, "betrothed to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ" (2 Corinthians 11:2), had given herself to another.
The two readings do not compete. One warns the person; the other warns the church.
The account in Numbers gives twenty-four thousand dead. Paul gives twenty-three thousand, and adds something Numbers does not: they fell in a single day.
In the history, twenty-four thousand are said to have died in the plague. But there it is not said "in one day," as it is here, where we hear of a thousand less. To me such a difference implies the greatest accuracy.
Writers explain the missing thousand in different ways. One says "the other 1,000 died on a different day" (Leslie M. Grant). Another points to the ringleaders put to death earlier in the same chapter (Arno C. Gaebelein). Either way, the two accounts count different things. Neither is wrong.
Paul writes "we must not," not "they must not." That is the sting of the whole passage for anyone who feels secure.
The Apostle, in searching words, goes on to apply these warnings to professing Christians. He warns us against the natural self-confidence of the flesh: "Let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall." We have taken part in the Lord's Supper. Let us not think that this makes us safe from falling into the grossest sins. But, we are reminded, God is our resource... God never allows us to be tempted without making a way of escape, though, sadly, we may neglect the way.
The same watchfulness applies to what people excuse as harmless fun:
It shocks those who tremble at God's word, and the pure in heart who see Him by faith, to watch the sinful liberties too often excused as "play." So it is play — but remember, "the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play." The saints need to watch against the flesh in the very things their own spiritual judgment and conscience condemn.
- Lust starts it. Wanting what God forbids is the first step on a road that ends in judgment. Every later failure in Paul's list grows out of it.
- The idol invites it. Whatever we crave stands between the soul and God, and the idol at Peor came with immorality attached.
- Alliance seals it. Israel joined itself to Moab's gods. The church at Pergamum shook hands with the world in the same way.
- Judgment ends it. Twenty-three thousand fell in a single day. Paul's wording differs from Numbers because it counts something different, not because it is wrong.
- Escape survives it. No privilege, not even the Lord's Supper, keeps a person from falling. God always gives a way out — but we have to take it.