Exhortation to professors continues from chapter 1:9 to chapter 10:14. There were such in Corinth in that day as well as in our day, a mixed multitude, real and false, mixed together, as in the day of Moses, baptized in the cloud and in the sea. They were all identified with Moses. Today there are in Christendom myriads who are identified outwardly with Christ.
They all drank the same spiritual drink and ate the same spiritual meat. "They drank of that spiritual Rock... Christ." Those with whom God was not well pleased were overthrown in the wilderness. They were merely professors, not believers. There were idolaters, fornicators, those who tempted Christ, murmurers, but bound up in the same company with believers. Such is Christendom.
These Old Testament examples are "written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come."
If you stand, it must be by grace, otherwise you may fall. Every temptation that besets us is common to man, that is, it is in the capacity of man, not something beyond him. "God is faithful." You will not have temptation beyond your measure. There will be a way to bear it.
The following comments upon the truth of the one body continue through chapter 14.
The cup of blessing is communion of the blood of Christ. The blood of Christ is the foundation of all blessing for man, so it is mentioned first. "Without shedding of blood is no remission." Heb. 9:2222And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission. (Hebrews 9:22).
We are one body, all partakers of the one bread. In Israel, those who ate of the sacrifices were partakers of the altar. Thus we have the communion of the blood and of the body of Christ. This is the basis of our blessings.
The Gentiles sacrifice to idols, to demons. We cannot eat of the table of demons and at the same time of the table of the Lord. We cannot apply this scripture to other tables of Christendom such as Baptist, Methodist, etc., which are not tables of demons but tables set up largely in earnest as seeking to remember the Lord.
If I am bid by an unbeliever to a feast, I eat what is set before me, asking no questions for conscience' sake. If I am told that it was offered to an idol, I would not eat for the sake of the conscience of the man who spoke to me.
Whatever we do should be for the glory of God. We are to give no offense to the Jew, Gentile, or Church of God.