# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1855_S362
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

362 Exposition of 1 Corinthians etc.

it applied to God either; idols, to whom they thought they were sacrificing, there were none — to whom, then, were they sacrificing? Certainly to him whose seduction brought them to idol-worship, to him whose will they did in that they carried out their own self-will, and into whose power they fell more deeply with every fulfillment of his will — to the devil. The Greek, for example, feared that Zeus was angry with him; who aroused this fear? not Zeus, for he was nothing, but rather the devils; the Greek therefore brought Zeus a sin-offering, but did he thereby make Zeus his friend? oh no, Zeus was nothing; but the devils he did indeed make his friends, so that they sank him only the more deeply into error and damnation. Hence Paul could assert that what the heathen, in their own opinion, sacrificed to their idols, that they sacrificed to the devils. Those, then, who consumed such sacrifices, whether they called themselves Christians or heathen, had a fellowship of the devils among themselves, that is, had in common with one another the disgrace and damnation of standing under the dominion of the devils, of being exposed to their seduction, of belonging to the fellowship of the heathen — and all this while they perhaps considered themselves the best and freest of Christians. Having arrived at this explanation, Paul could now conclude: to be a guest at the sacrificial meals of idols is to be a guest at the table of devils; but the thought that Christians in Corinth had let themselves be seduced into such an abomination filled his heart with horror and drives him to add at once: but I would not "that you should have communion with devils"; the drawing of the conclusion itself he leaves to his readers. He has shown that to be a guest at the sacrificial meals of idols is to be a guest at the table of devils; he has shown earlier what it means to sit with Christendom at the Holy Supper, the table of the Lord — it means to have the body and blood of Christ in common with Christendom: from this it follows that

III. Christians may not take part in the sacrificial meals of idols.

Verse 21. "You cannot drink both the cup of the Lord and the cup of devils; you cannot be partakers both of the table of the Lord and of the table of devils."

Powerfully and convincingly the Apostle sums up in this final conclusion the content of his discourse, and then, in a question, shows the seduced Christians in Corinth how they themselves must judge their own conduct:

Verse 22. "Or do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? are we stronger than he?"

The Corinthians are to recognize that by their wantonness and abuse of Christian liberty they provoke the Lord to chastise them, and thus act as though they were stronger than the Lord. But, as throughout the whole discourse, Paul here too lays before them this judgment on their conduct in the form of a question, so that in the "yes" that he may expect from them, they might pronounce the judgment upon themselves. He also says not "you" but "we," not "are you" but "are we," so that the Corinthians might perceive and judge that they were not acting in agreement with Paul and the other