1. Here is a very earnest admonition, a message as severe as Paul
ever indited, although he is writing to baptized Christians, who
always compose the true Church of Christ. He confronts them with
several awful examples selected from the very Church, from Israel the
chosen people of God.
2. Paul's occasion and meaning in writing this epistle was the
security of the Corinthians. Conscious of their privileged enjoyment
of Christ, of baptism and the Sacrament, they thought they lacked
nothing and fell to creating sects and schisms among themselves.
Forgetting charity, they despised one another. So far from reforming
in life, and retrieving their works of iniquity, they became more and
more secure, and followed their own inclinations, even allowing a man
to have his father's wife. At the same time they desired to be
regarded Christians, and boastfully prided themselves on having
received the Gospel from the great apostles. So Paul was impelled to
write them a stern letter, dealing them severity such as he nowhere
else employs. In fact, it seems almost as if it were going too far to
so address Christians; the rebuke might easily have struck weak and
tender consciences with intolerable harshness. But, as in the second
epistle, seeing how his sternness has startled the Corinthians, he
modifies it to some extent, and deals tenderly with the repentant.
3. However, in the striking Scripture examples of the text here, he
sufficiently shows the need for such admonition to them who would,
after having received grace, become carnally secure and abandon the
repentant life.
4. The text should properly include the beginning of this tenth
chapter, which is read in the passage for Third Sunday before Lent.
He begins with: "I would not, brethren, have you ignorant, that our
fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; and
were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea; and did all
eat the same spiritual food; and did all drink the same spiritual
drink.... Howbeit with most of them God was not well pleased: for
they were overthrown in the wilderness." Then follows our text
here--"Now these things were our examples."
5. As we said, the admonition is to those already Christians. Paul
would have them know that although they are baptized unto Christ, and
have received and still enjoy his blessing through grace alone,
without their own merit, yet they are under obligation ever to obey
him; they are not to be proud and boastful, nor to misuse his grace.
Christ desires obedience on our part, though obedience does not
justify us in his sight nor merit his grace. For instance, a bride's
fidelity to her husband cannot be the merit that purchased his favor
when he chose her. She is the bridegroom's own because it pleased him
to make her so, even had she been a harlot. But now that he has
honored her, he would have her maintain that honor henceforth by her
purity; if she fails therein, the bridegroom has the right and power
to put her away.
Again, a poor, wretched orphan, a bastard, a foundling, may be
adopted as a son by some godly man and made his heir, though not
meriting the honor. Now, if in return for such kindness the child
becomes disobedient and refractory, he justly may be cut off from the
inheritance. Not by the merit of their devotion, as Moses often
hinted, did the Jews become the people of God; they were ever
stiff-necked and continually rebelled against him. God, having chosen
them and led them out of Egypt, urgently commanded them to serve him
and obey his Word. But when they failed to fulfil the commandments,
they had to feel the terrific force of his punishment.