When we moved to Highland County, Virginia, and our children entered the public school there, they quickly learned that they had to choose a team… Ford or Chevy.
You see, Highland County young people were too far away from any major sports team to identify with them. They were country folk and what was important to them were things like tractor pulls and demolition derbies. So naturally, in public school, rather than identifying with a sports team, they identified with automobile manufacturers. And what else is there when you grow up in rural America other than Ford or Chevy?
Likewise, in 1 Corinthians 10, the Apostle Paul invites us to choose between two teams, but they aren’t Ford and Chevy. Let’s read our passage for today and find out who these two rival teams are. Listen for God’s word to you from 1 Corinthians 10:14-22…
Therefore, my dear friends, flee from idolatry. 15 I speak to sensible people; judge for yourselves what I say. 16 Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ? 17 Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all share the one loaf.
18 Consider the people of Israel: Do not those who eat the sacrifices participate in the altar? 19 Do I mean then that food sacrificed to an idol is anything, or that an idol is anything? 20 No, but the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God, and I do not want you to be participants with demons. 21 You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons too; you cannot have a part in both the Lord’s table and the table of demons. 22 Are we trying to arouse the Lord’s jealousy? Are we stronger than he?
Christ’s Team
Paul continues in this part of his letter to ask some very important questions of the Corinthians. First, he asks: “Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ?”
“The cup of thanksgiving” that Paul speaks of here is a reference to the third cup at the Passover meal, also called the cup of blessing or the cup of redemption. Over this cup the following prayer is spoken: “Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, who gives us the fruit of the vine.”
There are four cups drunk as part of the Passover meal:
1. The Cup of Sanctification—based on God’s statement, “I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians”
2. The Cup of Judgment or Deliverance—based on God’s statement, “I will deliver you from slavery to them”
3. The Cup of Redemption—based on God’s statement, “I will redeem you with an outstretched arm”
4. The Cup of Praise or Consummation—based on God’s statement, “I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God”
After asking about the cup of thanksgiving, Paul asks a question about the bread: “And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ?”
The word for bread here literally means a “loaf”. This unleavened loaf was like a flat, round, thick pancake.
Paul makes the point: “Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all share the one loaf.”
Drinking of the cup unites us with the blood of Christ shed for our sins. Eating of the one loaf unites us with the body of Christ that was broken for us on the cross. Eating of the one loaf also unites us with the body of Christ here on earth, the Church. The “participation” brought about through partaking of Holy Communion is cruciform in shape; we are united vertically with Christ and horizontally with one another.
Paul says that participating in Holy Communion establishes a transcendental connection or “κοινωνία” between us and Christ and one another. This word, “κοινωνία”, is the same word translated elsewhere in the New Testament as “fellowship”.
Down through church history, over the course of the past 2000 years, there have been at least four different views of what happens in what we call the Lord’s Supper, Holy Communion, the Eucharist, or the Mass.
The Roman Catholic view since the Fourth Council of the Lateran in 1215 has been called “transubstantiation”. The Roman Catholic Church believes that the bread and wine literally become the body and blood of Christ, when the priest says the proper words over the elements, though the outward appearance of the elements remains the same.
The Lutheran view since the time of Martin Luther in the 1500s has been “consubstantiation”. Luther did not agree with the Aristotelian logic involved in the Roman Catholic view. But he did believe that when Jesus said of the bread at the Last Supper, “This is my body,” he meant it quite literally. So, Luther developed the view that the body of Christ is present in the Lord’s Supper “in, with and under” the elements. That is what the word “con” means in “consubstantiation”.
Others, at the time of the Reformation, didn’t think Luther went far enough. They said, basically, that Christ was not physically present in the Lord’s Supper at all, but that the meal was simply a memorial. They said that all we are doing is remembering what Christ did and said 2000 years ago. This is the view held by many Baptists and Evangelicals today.
But then, John Calvin came along. He basically said, a pox on all your houses; I don’t agree with the Roman Catholic Church, or with Luther, or with the memorial view. I believe Christ is spiritually present in the Lord’s Supper when we partake of Holy Communion in faith. This spiritual view is the one I hold to, along with many Presbyterians, Anglicans, and other Protestants.
So, the first team that Paul talks about in this passage is the Christ team. We are united to Christ’s team by our participation in Holy Communion, among other things.
The Demons’ Team
The second team Paul talks about is the demons’ team. 1 Corinthians 10 is a continuation of Paul’s earlier discussion about idolatry and eating meat sacrificed to idols. Paul’s contention is that participating in pagan worship establishes a transcendental connection or “κοινωνία”with demons.
To convince his readers of this point Paul asks them whether participation in the Eucharist is not participation in Christ and is not participation in the sacrifices of the Jewish Temple participation in the altar which represents God? These are rhetorical questions to which Paul’s readers would almost certainly answer: “yes”. In the same way, Paul says, if you participate in a pagan feast you are communing with demons.
As we saw earlier in our study of 1 Corinthians, animals were sacrificed in pagan temples, just as they were in the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. Pagan worshipers who offered an animal for sacrifice were able to take home some of the meat to share with their family and friends, or to have a party within the temple precincts. The cup of demons may refer to a drink poured at the end of such a meal in honor of the sponsoring deity.
Now, as Paul has said earlier in this letter, these pagan idols are not real. Nonetheless, he believes that demons may use these pagan feasts and worship services to infiltrate the lives of people, even supposed followers of Christ.
You may say, “But I have never participated in a pagan worship service or a pagan feast like that.”
Well, maybe not, but let us consider what Michael Green has written about this:
Whether or not they realized it, idolatry did make people vulnerable to forces that do not come from God; it still does. Playing with some form or other of the occult has made enormous inroads into Western society, including church people. Ouija boards, tarot cards, palm reading, spiritualism, not to mention white and black magic—these are more common among us than they have been for centuries. The demonic is not dead. It is active and dynamic.
Now, I realize that is not the way the world looks at many so called “spiritual activities”. The world looks at these activities as merely making a “spiritual” connection. And spirituality is good, right? What never seems to occur to some people is that there might be good and evil powers or presences or beings in the universe, and that when we try to make spiritual connections, we might be connecting with the evil side rather than the good.
The popular belief today is that all roads lead to God and heaven. But this ignores the facts about various religions that make them distinct. I think C. S. Lewis was correct when he said in his book, The Great Divorce…
We are not living in a world where all roads are radii of a circle and where all, if followed long enough, will therefore draw gradually nearer and finally meet at the centre: rather in a world where every road, after a few miles, forks into two, and each of those into two again, and at each fork you must make a decision.
Satan and his demons loom large in the New Testament. One cannot read the Gospels or the letters of the New Testament without encountering them. Is this just mythology, or are demons real?
The teaching of the Bible, as far as I can tell, is that demons are real. The Bible speaks of them as fallen angels. Personally, I believe in the reality of demons for two reasons. First, because I accept the teaching of the Bible as authoritative on this subject. Second, because I have encountered certain phenomenon in my life and ministry that I cannot explain in any other way except to say that it is the work of the demonic.
Psychologist M. Scott Peck wrote a fascinating book all about this entitled, People of the Lie. Peck encountered problems in certain clients of his as a psychologist that he could not explain using the normal terminology of psychology. And so, he began to document his experiences just as he would in his usual counseling work. The result was a book that I felt compelled to read with the light on.
C. S. Lewis also writes about this in his book, The Screwtape Letters, which contains fictitious letters from a senior devil to a junior tempter all about how to tempt his human patient toward sin. In his Preface to The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis wrote,
The commonest question is whether I really “believe in the Devil.”
Now, if by “the Devil” you mean a power opposite to God and, like God, self-existent from all eternity, the answer is certainly No. There is no uncreated being except God. God has no opposite. No being could attain a “perfect badness” opposite to the perfect goodness of God; for when you have taken away every kind of good thing (intelligence, will, memory, energy, and existence itself) there would be none of him left.
The proper question is whether I believe in devils. I do. That is to say, I believe in angels, and I believe that some of these, by the abuse of their free will, have become enemies to God and, as a corollary, to us. These we may call devils. They do not differ in nature from good angels, but their nature is depraved. Devil is the opposite of angel only as Bad Man is the opposite of Good Man. Satan, the leader or dictator of devils, is the opposite, not of God, but of Michael.
I believe this not in the sense that it is part of my creed, but in the sense that it is one of my opinions. My religion would not be in ruins if this opinion were shown to be false. Till that happens—and proofs of a negative are hard to come by—I shall retain it. It seems to me to explain a good many facts. It agrees with the plain sense of Scripture, the tradition of Christendom, and the beliefs of most men at most times. And it conflicts with nothing that any of the sciences has shown to be true.
Lewis goes on to say that…
There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.
Which team are you going to choose?
Paul urges his first century readers and us to flee idolatry. While demons are real and powerful the good news is that Christ is more real and powerful still. And Holy Communion is a powerful tool of Christ that he can use to connect us to himself, to nourish us spiritually and help us grow in our relationship with him. Paul will have much more to say about the Lord’s Supper in 1 Corinthians 11. But for now, he invites us to make a choice, and it is a more serious choice than choosing Ford or Chevy. Paul calls on us to choose our spiritual team. Will it be the team of the demons, or will it be the team of Christ? Paul says we cannot be members of both teams at the same time; we must choose.
I remember long ago when I was in school one of my most dreaded experiences was choosing teams in gym class. The teacher would usually pick two team captains and then the captains would each choose their team for whatever sport we were learning to play. It always worked the same way. First, they would pick the most athletic boys. Then they would pick the most athletic girls. And then they would pick the students who were maybe not stellar athletes, but they were good enough. Finally, it got down to me and one other fat kid from the other side of town. Sometimes I didn’t even get picked. Whichever team captain got to pick first usually picked the other fat kid before me, then I simply got taken by the other captain because he had to take me—the kid who was fat and uncoordinated.
Imagine my surprise years later when I read these words of Jesus in John 15:16,
You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you.
Could it be that Jesus was choosing me for his team just as he chose his first disciples? Could it be that I was chosen, special, not just taken as the leftover, nonathletic, fat kid?
Paul confirms this same truth in Ephesians 1…
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.
Wow! Yes! I believe Jesus has chosen me. And I believe Jesus has chosen you. You are special to him. You are not a leftover, “have-to” kind of choice as far as Jesus is concerned. God chose you and me in Christ before the foundation of the world. He chose us first! He wants us. We are desired, beloved.
And Jesus’ choice of us enables us to choose him…
Joshua 24:15 says, “Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve…”
Deuteronomy 30:19 says, “I have set before you: life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life…”
In 2 Corinthians 6:2 Paul quotes Isaiah 49:8…
As God’s co-workers we urge you not to receive God’s grace in vain. For he says,
“In the time of my favor I heard you,
and in the day of salvation I helped you.”
I tell you, now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation.
Choose the Christ who has chosen you and you won’t be disappointed.
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