# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1860_S277
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

A Scriptural Proof against the Union. 277

into these passages of Scripture. St. Paul, to be sure, speaks here first of all of the relation of the Christians at Corinth to the heathen there. With regard to this relation, and for its proper assessment, he states a general truth which everyone has daily before his eyes in the realm of nature, the truth: light has no fellowship with darkness; day and night are not intermingled but stand side by side; when day breaks, night withdraws, and when day departs, night and darkness break in. This is a divine order, a law of God, which holds true just as much, and even more, in the moral order of the world: there too the light, that is, the truth, has no fellowship with the darkness, that is, with the lie; just as little as Christ has fellowship with Belial; for all truth has its root and source in the Lord Christ, who is himself the truth; but every lie has its origin in Belial, in Satan, who is therefore called by the Lord also "a father of lies." This general truth the apostle Paul now applies to the dealings of the Corinthian Christians with the heathen there. Some of the former, namely, felt no scruple not only about dealing outwardly with the heathen in trade and commerce, but also about taking part in such heathen meals as were held in the "house of idols," at which flesh and blood from "idol sacrifices" were eaten. (Compare 1 Corinthians 8 and 10:14–28.) At this other Christians took offense and scandal; they turned to the apostle with a request for instruction. He gives this instruction by saying, in effect, something like this: an idol is nothing in itself; consequently no one can, by eating the flesh of an animal slaughtered as an idol-sacrifice, thereby enter into fellowship with an idol. If, then, when you go to such a meal where sacrificial meat is eaten, you wish to eat of this sacrificial meat, you may do so without inquiring and asking whether it is sacrificial meat or not (1 Corinthians 10:27). For in this case the fellowship you have there with the heathen at table is a purely external one, a fellowship of outward intercourse. But as soon as someone on such an occasion says, "This is meat offered to idols," then you should eat no more of it (verse 28). And why not? Because then your fellowship with the heathen no longer appears in people's eyes as an external one, but as a fellowship in their idol-sacrifice. So it was not even the case here that Christians actually took part in an idol-sacrifice; no, there was only the appearance of such a fellowship, and it is this mere appearance that the apostle already commands to be avoided, avoided precisely so that no offense be given to anyone. For real fellowship in an idol-sacrifice would be a fellowship — not with the idols, for they are nothing — but indeed a fellowship with the devils; for idolatry is devil-worship; for what someone sacrifices to idols, he sacrifices to devils, and whoever therefore has fellowship in idol-worship has fellowship with the devils (verse 14:20–21). Having thus grounded his judgment on the circumstances at Corinth