Dear friends,
Idolatry is as ancient and universal as slavery. Paul moves in his discussion of food offered to idols (chapter 8) to his enslaving himself for others’ salvation (chapter 9) to now address idolatry itself (chapter 10). Here we have the clear command, “flee from idolatry”, with the terrifying examples of God’s anger poured out on Israel whenever they engaged in idolatry.
This passage not only gives us clear Bible teachings on the sin of idolatry, but in the process it raises the issue of the Old Testament’s importance for Christians.
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Yours,
Phillip
Phillip Jensen: In this episode, we are heading to the conclusion of 1 Corinthians 8–10 which talks about the subject of idolatry. The discussion starts off in chapter 8 with the question of whether Christians may eat or may not eat the food that is offered to idols. But that simple question has 3 different contexts:
Going into the idol temple and eating in the feasts.
Buying food that had been offered to the idols but is now sold at the butchers’ shop.
Attending a private dinner and eating meat which has been offered to idols.
So there are different contexts in which food offered to idols would present a problem for the Christians. Where are we up to so far in Paul’s answers to this question?
Peter Jensen: Before I answer that, I will read from 1 Corinthians 10:1–13
For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptised into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ. Nevertheless, with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness.
Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did. 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.” We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in a single day. We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did and were destroyed by serpents, nor grumble, as some of them did and were destroyed by the Destroyer. Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come. Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall. No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.
In 1 Corinthians 8, Paul says that idols are simply manufactured by human hands, and there is only one true God, the creator of all material things. So food offered to idols is just food and may be eaten. But the abiding theme is that love bids us to take care of our fellow believer who may have a weak conscience about this matter, therefore we may perhaps abstain from such food for that person.
In 1 Corinthians 9, Paul becomes rather autobiographical, saying that his love for others drives him beyond mere law-keeping or the exercise of his own authority. For example, he was entitled to receiving payment for his preaching, but he waived it. Thus he goes to great lengths to save others. In this, he is adopting the attitude of Christ who laid down his life to bring salvation.
It sounds as though idolatry is nothing because the idols themselves are nothing. The one true God rules over all, and he has created all things. So as far as we’re concerned, we are asked to embrace the fundamentals of there being one God and being driven by love for others. We continue to apply this to our situation 2000 years later. But we find that strangely, idols still matter because, as he says, we may be tempted into idolatry. As he says in 10:12, “Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.”
This is a word addressed to our own hearts, even though we may have given physical idols up many years ago. Is idolatry a modern problem?
Phillip: Of course. The world is covered with idols, and filled with people worshipping what the statues represent or misrepresent. Around our part of Sydney, seeing statues of Buddha and Hindu idols in people’s gardens is common. The eating houses in the suburb I live in frequently display idols. But idolatry is even bigger than that, and more dangerous. Paul said that the idols don’t matter, that the food offered to idols is just food. Yet suddenly in chapter 10, there’s this seeming twist. 1 Corinthians 10:6–7
Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did. 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.”
There is an evil in idolatry that we need to avoid. So, having laid the ground that there’s only one God and all the food is his, now it seems that Paul is going back on that. He seems to be saying that idolatry does matter. This is a very important passage, because it helps us to understand the Old Testament whilst getting to the heart of what is wrong with idolatry.
First, we notice the way this passage teaches us about the Bible as a whole. It uses what we call ‘typology’, for Paul picks up events in the Old Testament and shows us their application to the New Testament. There are types in the Old Testament—priests, temples, sacrifices—which are necessary for us to understand the New Testament. Jesus comes as the priest, as the mediator, as the sacrifice, and as the king; all of these are applications of Old Testament examples which help us to understand what Jesus came to do. Typology is there in the scriptures, but it can be very dangerous, because imagination can run riot. We may end up saying things such as, “Moses had seventy elders, therefore our church should have seventy elders; Moses killed an Egyptian, therefore our leaders must be men of action; Moses spent forty years preparing himself to be a shepherd, therefore we should have forty years in our theological college.”
You can’t just jump from these events into the New Testament, but the New Testament often quarries the events of the Old Testament to explain what’s happening now. It’s more than simple illustrations, because the events of the Old Testament happened in order to explain and prepare the way for the New Testament. So as 10:6 says, “Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did.” The reason why these things happened, and the reason they’re written in the scriptures, is not for the Old Testament people, but for the Christians. That is, the Old Testament is a Christian book.
10:11 says, “They were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come.” This is extraordinary. In academic circles these days, people often refer to the Old Testament as the ‘Hebrew Scriptures’, and the New Testament as the ‘Christian Scriptures’. But that is an anti-Christian view, because the Christian view is that the Old Testament is also the Christian Scriptures. It was written not for the Jews, but for the Christians. So as we read of the spiritual wilderness events, we’re supposed to understand that it relates to our events as Christians.
The Israelites were rescued out of Egypt by the great Passover sacrificial lamb, just as we become Christians by Christ, our Passover lamb who has been sacrificed. The Israelites continued in this long walk to the Promised Land as we continue in this long walk to the promised land of God’s kingdom. On their way, having been baptised into Moses, having eaten spiritual food, (manna), having drunk from the rock, Christ was there the whole time. Christ had not been incarnated as man at that stage, but Christ is eternal, and he was nourishing them in the wilderness. So the Israelites were receiving spiritual food and spiritual drink. I don’t think it refers to the Lord’s Supper at this point, especially as it’s the rock that we’re talking of.
But just as the events of the Old Testament are picked up in the prophets and in the Psalms, Paul does the same, and highlights the eternal significance of these events for Christians in 10:1–4. He reminds them that having been rescued out of Egypt, they had been rescued out of sin, yet they fell in the wilderness because God was not pleased with them.
Peter: These are odd phrases, ‘spiritual drink’, ‘spiritual rock’ and so forth. The idea turns up also in 1 Corinthians 15, where Paul says that you have a natural body and a spiritual body. But does that mean we’re able to poke holes in our resurrection body? What’s the impact of it?
Phillip: It’s there in 1 Corinthians 12:1, where it says Now concerning the spirituals… He’s referring to the supernatural. He’s not talking about the spirit of inanimate things like manna or water, for there is only one, who is Christ. What he’s saying is that you can see physical things without seeing that there is a spiritual activity that lies behind it; that there is a supernaturalism about what is taking place here. That supernaturalism broke through clearly in the provision of manna and the provision of the water out of a rock. You couldn’t help but see it was supernatural.
Peter: The word ‘spiritual’ to me sounds like something with no body, or no material element to it. But what you’re saying is that the spiritual shows itself, in this case, as manna. It’s important to clarify this, otherwise we may spiritualise things like the spiritual body and the resurrection, failing to realise that the resurrection is also physical.
Phillip: 1 Peter 3:18 uses that terminology, but it refers to the supernatural. The word ‘spiritual’ means ‘the other world’; in other words, the supernatural world. Because 1 Peter 3:18 says that Jesus was “put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit,” even though we know that Jesus was raised physically. The New Testament is so emphatic that his resurrection was a physical one, so what is Peter talking about there? He’s talking about the fact that Jesus was put to death in this world and raised in the next world.
Peter: Indeed. Can you explain what idolatry is? Is it something that I should worry about?
Phillip: Yes, especially when you use the word ‘I’, because it’s the activity of the eye. When Paul recounts the early chapters of Deuteronomy, he tells them that when the Israelites went to Mount Sinai, they heard the voice of God but didn’t see anything. There’s this emphatic point that he’s driving home, which is so true of the scriptures: God is not a matter of vision, but a matter of hearing. You come into relationship with God through his Word—through hearing, believing, and acting upon his Word—not by visualising him. One key element of idolatry is that it’s a visual misrepresentation of God.
Peter: Can a 21st century atheist be an idolater?
Phillip: Of course, but that’s for another reason, because the atheist lives as if there is no supernatural. So he turns the things of this world into his gods. He lives for his pleasures. He thinks that his possessions, the things of this world, are the things that matter. Greed is idolatry, and greed is an inevitability. If you’re a philosophical materialist, you’ll become an economic materialist. The two flow together, so if there’s nothing other than this world, then you’ll live to gain as much of this world as you can.
Peter: The other thing, just before we pass on from what you were saying, is the phrase, “on whom the end of the ages has come.” As a ‘doctrine person’, I grasp that phrase particularly, because it connects with the reality of eschatology. That is, the idea of the end of everything, which breaks into present history in the person of Jesus in his resurrection from the dead. Because of this, that which was to come has now come, but not completely; he will come again. So we are in the last age, with only one great thing left: the return of Christ.
Phillip: It’s why Muhammad’s not right, and why Joseph Smith’s not right, because they both claimed that God had yet one more age to come with another prophet. They say that what Jesus did was great, and turned people’s hearts, but that’s not the end of the ages; there’s the Islamic age, or the last age brought about in 19th century America. Both Muslims and Mormons deny the finality of Jesus’ death and resurrection.
Peter: Yes, and this is so significant for all of us here as we wait and long for his return. But we are between the ages. We have received many of the blessings now, but there’ll be even greater blessings ahead.
Phillip: The contrast is spoken of in Hebrews 1. In various ways, God spoke by the prophets of old, but in these last days he has spoken by his Son, who is more than a prophet.
Peter: So the idea of these things being written for us shows that idolatry is an evil which remains a temptation for us all. As he says in 1 Corinthians 10:11–13
Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come. Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall. No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.
‘Temptation’ here can mean the desire to do the wrong thing, but it also can mean the testing that comes upon us. The two things overlap. Nevertheless, “He will also provide the way of escape that you may be able to endure it.” Here are these extraordinary people, set free, ransomed, brought out from Egypt and on the way to the Promised Land. If we’re thinking of the typology of what happened, it was in many ways a disaster. Moses was in the mountains receiving revelation from God, and the Israelites created a golden calf to worship—which is a misrepresentation of the true God. In other words, they thought they were worshipping the God who released them from Egypt. They didn’t think they were inventing a new God, which shows us that idolatry can also refer to the wrong worship of the true God. But it is something that we are prone to doing, for we too are sinners, and we sometimes worship the God we want, rather than the God who is real.
Later on in the wilderness, referred to in Numbers 25, there was widespread adultery with the people of Moab; again, this is true worship of a false God. In Numbers 21, there was further testing as they weren’t trusting God. In Numbers 16, they were grumbling and rebelling against the true God who had taken them out of Egypt. They also grumbled against the leadership of Moses, in whom they were baptised in the sense that they accepted his leadership. So 10:12 says, “Let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall,” as did the people of Israel in the wilderness.
Phillip: They fell because of their evil. Some of these things are caught up in literal idolatry, like the adultery with the people of Moab, where idolatry is related to sexual adultery because Canaanite worship was highly sexualised. They worshipped fertility gods by participating in fertility activities; that’s why it is a true worship of false gods. But other things, like not trusting Yahweh, or grumbling and rebelling against the people that God has appointed, are desiring evil, but they are not idolatry itself.
Peter: No. But as Jeremiah 17:9 reminds us, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?”
Phillip: These are examples for us of desiring evil, one aspect of which is idolatry; but your point is, given that we are sinful people, we mustn’t think we stand. Because just as they fell, we can fall. But that raises certain problems about the preservation of the saints. “None shall pluck them from my hand,” says Jesus. There is also the question of the genuineness of the warning. The people of Israel could fall, but can the regenerated, reborn Christian fall away? There’s Paul’s example in 9:27, “I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.” Paul is saying that it could happen. You mustn’t think you can stand. I remember preaching on this passage once, and afterwards, a man came to me very upset. He said, “Once saved, always saved.” That was what he’d been taught.
Peter: It’s an unhelpful aphorism.
Phillip: It’s terribly unhelpful, because with that logic, there’s no reason to do anything more as a Christian. You could say, “I’ve been saved now that I’ve signed a decision card at a crusade somewhere. Once saved, always saved. I need never bother with God again.” It’s a terrible aphorism, trying to capture the importance of the preservation of the saints. It seems more like a mathematical equation than a personal relationship.
Peter: If this seems strange or contradictory, just think of repentance. Jesus calls us to repent and believe in the gospel. These are things that you are supposed to do. Then when you’ve done it, you realise that you couldn’t have done it; it’s a gift of God.
Phillip: Yes, but it also means I’ve got to do it again and again. In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus tells us to take up the cross; in Luke’s Gospel, he tells us to take up the cross daily. If you take up the cross, you’ll continue to do so.
Every now and then, my wife asks me whether I love her. I do not say to her, “22 August 1969, I told you I did, in front of all those people. You need never ask again, and I need never tell you again.” No, I continue to tell her I love her. Daily I will do that. Hourly I will do that. Because I have decided to do that.
Some will say, “Falling away couldn’t happen to me.” Others say, “Of course it could happen to me. I can’t help myself; I just keep sinning, and so I’ve got no chance of ever being cared for.” But 10:13 talks about God’s great promise to us. “No temptation will come without the way of escape for us.” Nothing is so powerful as to take us away from him, but nothing is so harmless that it couldn’t happen to us. It’s a very delicate balance. Many ask, “Can a Christian fall away?” The answer is very simple, though irritating: make sure you don’t. We want to stand back in judgement on the idea, when the Scriptures are talking of the reality of the person. Make sure you don’t. It’s not a question of whether I can or can’t fall away; it’s a question of “don’t.”
Peter: Back to the earlier question about idolatry being nothing: the material presentations of idols may be nothing, but it’s clear here that idolatry is real and can come upon any one of us. Hence, do not desire evil. 10:14, “Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry,” is addressed to Christians who live in this world, in this present age. What are some of the idols that we can see in our world?
Phillip: The materialistic world is a great danger to Christian people, especially for those of us living in Western economic comfort. It becomes a distraction from all things of God. But the visual idolatry is still there. We keep making churches into something more than sunshades and rain shelters. There’s nothing wrong with having a nice building; good architecture is always more pleasant than ugly architecture. But taken too far, it suddenly turns into some form of idolatrous representation: statues, stained glass windows, all forms of presenting God in a physical, visual form that is through our churches. It’s a problem with art.
For instance, there is the question of the difference between a cross and a crucifix. The crucifix has the body of Jesus on it, but the cross doesn’t. There are certain denominations which require there to be a crucifix to represent Jesus’ death, and others which say that there must be a cross, otherwise you don’t believe in the resurrection. But why do you have to have a cross at all? The mark of the Christian church is not the cross, but the love for one another. Jesus says, John 13:35, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” I’m not going to go too much into the issue. As the big M’s tell you where a McDonald’s can be found, so the cross on the building tells you where the church is. But the imposition of religious art inside our buildings continues to be a problem. The Reformation made big changes in this very area.
Peter: Yes, the Reformation churches put the Ten Commandments and the Apostles’ Creed on the wall, and put the Beatitudes and other bits of the Bible onto the walls and the windows. So the stained glass was no longer pictorial. This is a matter of controversy.
Phillip: I met a man in England who spoke of his time in Victoria, where he was the rector of a church. Once, they were discussing moving the cross out of the building during renovations. He said he was fairly neutral about it, but he heard the parishioners saying, “If the cross is not there, I am unable to pray.” At that point, he decided it needed to be moved.
Again, I saw a church the other day. It had been wonderfully renovated, but above the table was a cross. The minister said to me, “It was a fight that I wasn’t willing to take on at this stage. I didn’t like it, but people really wanted to have the cross there above the table as the focus of their attention.” I said, “Why didn’t you put a Bible verse there?” to which he responded, “I didn’t think of that. That would have been good.”
One more point I would like to make is about the idea that you can celebrate God in the relativism of different gods all being the same. There’s one God, and that God is not to be worshipped visually, but by hearing his Word, which is the point that Moses makes in Deuteronomy. The true and living God must be worshipped that way and not in the falsehood of idolatry. But when you have false gods, they nearly always are represented visually. That’s the true worship of false gods, which you mustn’t mingle with the true God. So the interfaith services, as they’re called, are another form of idolatry.
Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Links & Recommendations
For more on this topic, check out this talk given at Moore College Chapel on 1 Corinthians 10 called Freedom of Flight.
We also recommend these talks from the Queen’s Birthday Conference 2019. Talk 1 is called The Idols; Talk 2 is called The Eyes.
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