Be not deceived evil communications corrupt good manners.
Paul is arguing for the resurrection when he breaks off with a blunt warning — a proverb his readers already knew. So why does a chapter about the dead being raised turn to the company we keep, and what was corrupting Corinth?
A Proverb Borrowed From Outside the Bible
The line Paul uses was not his own. One writer traces it to a poet the Corinthians would have known. The same writer explains why Paul was willing to use that line.
Paul quoted this striking five-word sentence from a Greek writer named Menander, who was well known at Corinth. That may well be true. Writers outside the faith sometimes say what is true enough. And it is easy to forget that evil teaching produces evil lives in those who take it in. Some at Corinth, and elsewhere, take up philosophical ideas that say there is no resurrection, or none that touches the body. Harmful results follow soon after.
The Company That Was Corrupting Corinth
The "bad company" here was not a circle of friends. It was a teaching spreading inside the church. One writer traces the letter's other troubles back to this one.
The Corinthian believers illustrate this. They had serious immorality among them and no one corrected it (1 Cor. 5); the church was split into rival groups (1 Cor. 1); and their meetings for the Lord's Supper were in disorder (1 Cor. 11); but only in 1 Cor. 15 do we find what lay at the root: some among them were questioning the resurrection, and even denying it. That was the "evil communication" that was corrupting their "good manners."
The sheer space Paul gives the subject is itself an argument:
Paul takes up the false teaching — that the dead are not raised — straight away, and gives it 58 verses. In chapter 5 he handled moral evil in 13 verses. That shows evil doctrine is, if anything, worse than evil conduct.
(Several of these writers quote an older translation, which reads "evil communications corrupt good manners.")
Bad Belief or Bad Behaviour
Commentators differ on the direction of the damage. One puts thinking first:
They were being deceived, and all evil teaching shows its effect in how people live. If we think wrong we cannot act right. This throws light on the immorality among them, denounced in 1 Cor. 5 and 1 Cor. 6. Because they questioned the resurrection of the body, they fell more easily into sins that abused the body.
Another reverses the order and finds the conduct underneath the creed:
When someone who has known the truth takes up serious error that denies a great basic truth of Christianity, we will usually find bad practice behind the bad doctrine. And behind that bad practice there will be worldly friendships that corrupt good manners.
Resurrection and a Clean Life
Deny that the body will rise, and there is no reason left to discipline it. One writer presses this against the popular idea that a purely spiritual hope is the more refined one.
To abandon resurrection is to give ourselves up to ease, pleasure, and indulgence. It is not the immortality of the soul, but faith in resurrection, that keeps a person from sinking to the level of an animal, and lower… Is it not more purifying to think of the soul apart from the body, and in heavenly glory? No. It is the hope of the body rising that moves us to deny ourselves and put the body's desires to death here and now.
The Principle Applied to Friendships
One illustration makes the point plain — influence runs downhill.
A lady's bird was a very fine singer, and one day she hung his cage in one of the trees of the garden. She did this for many days. Then she noticed that he barely sang any more. He just chirped, something like a sparrow. He had spent his days with the sparrows in the garden. By listening to their tuneless chirp and copying it, he had lost his lovely song. And when the lady went into the garden, did she see sparrows on the branches singing like canaries? Certainly not.
The Remedy Paul Names
The warning does not end in caution. It calls for action, and it is aimed at the whole church.
This is dreadful deception, and Paul warns the Corinthians against having anything to do with such evil. Good manners will very soon be corrupted by it. Bad company always leads to bad conduct… So this was the whole church's responsibility. They had to take a firm stand together against this hidden evil.
Summary
- Borrowed — Paul quotes a line from a Greek poet the Corinthians knew. Truth spoken outside Scripture can still answer error inside the church.
- Doctrine — the "bad company" at Corinth was a denial of resurrection. Paul gives it 58 verses, against 13 on the immorality of chapter 5.
- Direction — commentators differ. Some say wrong thinking leads to wrong living. Others say loose living lets the error in.
- Hope — the promise that the body will rise, not a vague spiritual survival, is what gives anyone a reason to deny themselves now.
- Response — influence runs one way. So the answer is not caution alone but a firm stand, taken together, against the thing that corrupts.