§ 5
We shall perhaps best follow him first in the interim discussion of the ninth chapter, as the conclusion of the eighth chapter, verses 3–9, although placed at the beginning, is actually nothing less than the preparation for that confession (10, 25 et seq.) which, apart from the concluding words, crowns the whole. The discussion, in the ninth chapter, of apostolic freedom, is first (9:12) abruptly interrupted by the sentence, “Nevertheless we have not used this power!” He repeats himself at the commencement of verse 15, and, after that somewhat obscure intermediate sentence, in 9:16, lays down the foundation: the preaching of the gospel yields me nothing, not even glory, let alone the reward that might at least be reserved to a voluntary worker. Constraint, necessity, is imposed on me: woe to me if I do not preach the gospel! If I did it on my own deliberation, I should expect a reward, I should have the right to make use of that freedom: but if I do it in despite of my own resolve, then I am only entrusted with a dispensation (9:17). My reward consists in having no reward (9:18). That is the limitation which Paul sees drawn around him as an apostle. He hears himself called to do what he (6:19) calls upon others: “Ye are not your own.” Thou livest not in thine own business: thou dost not bear the tidings, but the tidings bear thee; it does not need thee, but thou needest it; here thou hast no right to enforce, but here right is enforced against thee. Or, to put it in the words of 8:1–3: “Not thou has known God, but God knows thee.” That, as we saw in 1:1, he is an apostle by the will of God, and not by virtue of his religious talent; that he did not find God, but God found him and set him on his path, took him captive, entrusted him with his stewardship, without making any covenant with him, without making him promises for his person, simply as the Lord who can command, as a compelling necessity (9:16)—this fact now finds expression in the fact that while in possession of his freedom he is bound, while in possession of the fullest power he is obliged to abstain. It is, in fact, the freedom and power of the apostle—that is, the freedom and power bestowed upon him by God, and not his personal freedom and power. 9:19–23 describes what this means for him: it means that as the holder of his office he must everywhere and always be just what he is not as a man. Why? Because he has to discharge his office towards other men. And, because they are other men, whether he likes it or not, they are always just what he himself is not. If he wanted to assert himself, he could not discharge his office. Constraint is upon him. God is in the scheme with His right. Upon this is shattered his human right to self-assertion, as thus: to become a servant, to become a Jew, to become a man under the law, perhaps even to become a man without the law, to become a weak man, to become all things—wherefore? In order to win, in order to save, in order to carry out the office committed to me, which is more important than my person and its justifiable claim upon life, in order not to lose my own share in the gospel (9:23), in order that, while I may be preaching to others, I may not wear myself out and become a castaway (9:27). The metaphor of the runner in the race (9:24–26) illustrates what he means. A victorious contest is impossible without self-discipline! Consequently, because Paul is such a runner in the stadium, not by his own, but by God’s will, not for a corruptible, but for an incorruptible crown, limits are set to his freedom, and hence he will not do everything he is undoubtedly permitted to do.
The tenth chapter is obviously connected with 9:27, where Paul threatened himself: “What if I, although an apostle, and as an apostle, should come to grief?” This would happen, he opines, if, perchance, I should exercise any other freedom than the freedom of God which imposes limits to my freedom. If that be done, if you Christians of Corinth, with your human knowledge and the laxer practice that goes with it, perhaps do this, then you will become like the people of Israel in the wilderness (10:1 et seq.) who, in spite of the most wondrous proofs of divine grace, found only the slightest portion of God’s favour. What, then, was their case? They lusted after evil things; they ate and drank; they whored and tempted the Lord and prayed to idols, and, instead of favour upon favour, punishment upon punishment began to assail them. But that is not the meaning! Might not the meaning of freedom have been something like this: That in face of this purer, deeper insight that God alone is God, the idols in the world are again invested in their rights, quite harmlessly and in the joyful consciousness that they are not dangerous, that to the pure all things are pure, that all things are lawful? Might not this have been the meaning of, and the way in which we are to interpret, the wonderful Pauline doctrine of the sovereignty of God—of the unconstraint in which His children may and will serve Him in the midst of the world, of the free and self-confident flexibility of the Christian conscience? Might it not be possible to discover an excellent Pauline foundation for the despised service of the world and idolatry, and then, at any rate, to be “free” and call oneself a Christian, but as a “free” Christian to come to grief most ignominiously? Paul does not say that this is the case with the Corinthians, but he warns them: “All … were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; and were baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea,” he says, with a happy allegorical touch, in 10:1–2, and we are reminded of 8:1: “We all have knowledge.” Christ, with His spiritual meat and drink, was in their midst, 10:2–4 states bluntly—but 10:5: With many of them God was not well pleased … and they were destroyed of the destroyer (10:10). Therefore: “Let him that thinketh he stand take heed lest he fall” (10:12). Obviously, what temptation is, the claim to dominion of a world hostile to God, offered, not to its own children, but to God’s elect, with all the awfulness of backsliding and getting lost that lurks behind it, they do not yet know. God’s faithfulness alone is a match for the force of this claim. It is above the secular power, and, when temptation comes, it provides a way of escape for its own, so that they are able to endure and conquer it (10:13). It is just God! Therefore, flee idolatry! (10:14). The word was uttered in 10:7. Paul does not spare his readers hearing it again. Only by virtue of God’s faithfulness is it true that the pagan-sacramental sphere, which they enter when they buy and eat flesh that has been offered to idols, is not dangerous to them because it is profane. Merely by virtue of their human knowledge this is not true. What the Corinthians are thinking of, their consciousness of freedom and superiority, does not protect them from idolatry, from the reality of temptation, to which only the quite other reality of God is superior. Paul appeals to the reader’s intelligence, to his discriminating capacity (10:5). The Lord’s Supper which Christians celebrate or, more strictly, the reality of God which is designated by the Lord’s Supper, or, according to 11:26, announced thereby, is living communion with Christ (10:16), (and, as 10:17 shows, Paul immediately identifies this with their living communion with one another), just as the sacrifice in Israel designated, preached, and guaranteed “the communion of the altar” (what is meant is the community of those sacrificing upon the altar) with God. What, however, is the communion into which they enter who sacrifice to idols, or even only sojourn in the whole sphere of this sacrifice, in the incense of