Paul’s Teaching on the Reality of Temptation in 1 Corinthians 10:12–13

As a believer in Jesus, are you confident that you have already been saved, and will never lose your salvation? The perseverance of the saints is a biblical doctrine, but at the same time Paul teaches in 1 Cor 10:12 that “the person who thinks he stands” should “be careful lest he fall.”

The biblical doctrine of the salvation of the elect needs to be held together with the biblical doctrine of the need for the perseverance of individual Christians in the faith. Saving faith is not a once-off transaction. Saving faith is an ongoing positive orientation to the word of God that needs to be defended and developed in the midst of daily temptations throughout one’s life. It is good to be confident in our salvation, as long as our faith is genuine. But we need to be careful not to allow such confidence to lead to spiritual arrogance or spiritual laziness.

There were many people in the Corinthian church in Paul’s day who were spiritually arrogant. They emphasized their privileges and authority that they had in Christ. They emphasized how they had authority to rule over creation (1 Cor 4:8), and how they had been blessed with powerful spiritual gifts (see 1 Cor 1:5, 7; 12; 14). But Paul’s message to them was that they should not start to think that were beyond the possibility of falling into temptation and missing out on salvation.

No one in this world (including Christians) is beyond being tempted. This is why Paul states: “let the person who thinks he stands beware lest he fall” (1 Cor 10:12). According to Paul, the faith that saves is a faith that overcomes temptation. In 1 Cor 10:13 Paul reminds us that all human beings are subject to temptation. If Jesus, who was perfectly dedicated to God, was subjected to temptation, then everyone else will be tempted too. In this world temptation is an ever-present reality, and none of us is beyond its power.

However, Paul also says in 1 Cor 10:13 that no temptation has overtaken us except what is common to all of humanity. The good news is that God controls Satan’s attempts at temptation. “God is faithful, who will not let you be tempted beyond what you are able, but will also provide with the temptation an exit to be able to bear it” (1 Cor 10:13).

God’s plan in creating this world was for this world to experience his blessing. As part of this plan, many human beings would know what it is to live in such a world. Because God’s plan is ultimately for the blessing of this world, he will not allow Satan to take too many of people down to hell. Therefore, God does not allow us human beings to be tempted beyond what we can bear, for otherwise we would all be doomed. In his faithfulness, God always provides (in the midst of the temptations that come) a way by which we can escape those temptations.

The way of escape from temptation, as it was for Jesus, is faith in the word of God (see Matt 4:4, 7, 10). We need, therefore, to model ourselves on Jesus, take God at his word, and simply trust in God to provide everything that we need for life and blessedness. If we are confident in God’s love and provision for us, then there is no reason to give into temptation.

By way of analogy, just imagine that you are a hungry fish living not in the ocean but in a fishing pond. You have been told by the builder and owner of the pond (because you are one of his favorite fish) that all of the food that does not come from the owner’s hand is dangerous. It might look like food, and smell like food; but it is not food, unless it comes from the pond owner’s hand. Any other food is either chum or bait, a type of food that has been designed to attract your attention, to get you to strike at the bait, get caught, and lose your life. If that then is the case, as a hungry little fish, what do you need to do? You might be very hungry. You might be starving. You might see all the other fish going after food or what looks like food, but to be safe what do you need to do? You need to constantly remind yourself: “Don’t go for the bait. Don’t go for the bait. I need to wait for owner’s provision!”

On a spiritual plane, we need to control our desires, and not allow ourselves to be baited by the enemy. But that is not to say that Christians will always make use of the way of escape that God provides in every single instance, but a way of escape is always there, and Paul’s words in 1 Cor 10:13 encourage every Christian to make use of the escape route that God provides.

Therefore, when it comes to the question of the state of our salvation in the future, the Bible encourages us not to worry about what the future might hold, but to be confident in the faithfulness of God to us both now and in the future. Christians can be totally confident that those whom God has chosen for salvation will indeed be saved, and that God will make sure that no temptation will arise that will necessarily result in our destruction. But at the same time as being confident in the faithfulness of God, we also need to avoid becoming spiritually arrogant to the point that we start to think that the victory is ours already without the need for endurance in the future.

True saving faith needs to be an ongoing reality in life of every Christian. The faith that God has given us must always be defended and developed in the midst of daily temptations. So be confident! But at the same time, if you think that you stand, just be careful you do not crash and burn.

Salvation in Jesus: A Summary of the Christian Gospel

God is the Supreme Being in all of reality. He is eternal and all-powerful. He created everything in the universe, including us human beings. The first human beings originally lived in a holy garden in the presence of God, but they were responsible to obey God’s commandments in order to continue in the blessing of life until the fullness of eternal life came upon them.

But the first human beings rebelled against God, and fell into sin. God, who is holy and pure, expelled sinful humanity from his presence. The consequence of this is that the human race lost the blessing of life, and must now live in a chaotic and dangerous world that is under God’s curse.

But God, because of his love for the world that he has made, had a plan to restore the blessing of life to the world and to save sinful humanity. According to this plan, just over 2,000 years ago God himself entered into the world in the person of the Lord Jesus. While in the world, the Lord Jesus taught the truth and accomplished salvation, rescuing humanity from sin and eternal death. Jesus accomplished this salvation by sacrificing his sinless life through his death on the cross, in order to pay for our sins. On the third day after his death, the Lord Jesus came back to life from the dead, and appeared to his disciples during forty days, after which he ascended into heaven. Thanks to his ascension into heaven, humanity, with Jesus as our leader, is finally able to return into the presence of God and to experience the blessing of eternal life.

In the light of what God has done through Jesus, God now calls upon every person to receive salvation by submitting to the lordship of Jesus. Those who submit to Jesus receive the gift of God’s Holy Spirit, who enables them to experience the blessing of eternal life.

God has appointed a day when the Lord Jesus will return to earth in order to judge every person. Those among Jesus’ disciples who have been faithful will then enter into the fullness of the blessing of eternal life, whereas those disciples who have been unfaithful to Jesus, along with everyone else who has been in rebellion against God, will experience eternal punishment in hell.

In order to avoid eternal punishment, we need to receive salvation by submitting to the lordship of Jesus. Submitting to Jesus’ lordship can be summarized as involving three things: faith, repentance, and baptism.

(1) Faith is accepting the truth about Jesus in God’s plan of salvation as revealed in God’s word, the Bible (as summarized above).

(2) Repentance is acknowledging our sins before God, and endeavoring in his strength to abandon our sinful way of life, in order to live in a way that pleases God through obedience to his commandments.

(3) Baptism is the Christian rite of initiation. Through baptism, a person confesses one’s belief that Jesus is the King of the universe, and receives the salvation that Jesus has come to give. Through baptism, a person officially becomes a disciple of the Lord Jesus and a member of the Christian church. Baptism is ordinarily performed by a designated leader in the Christian community. After confessing one’s faith in Jesus as Lord, the person being baptized is immersed in water, or has water poured or sprinkled over one’s head, as a symbol of cleansing from sin, of the reception of the Holy Spirit, and new life.

Having submitted to Jesus as Lord through faith, repentance, and baptism, all Christians need to live as faithful disciples of Jesus. This involves persevering in faith and repentance until the end of one’s life. On the day of judgment those who have lived as faithful disciples of the Lord Jesus will receive their eternal resurrection bodies, and experience the fullness of life in the presence of God forever.

The Theme of Flooding in the Old Testament

In considering the theme of flooding in the Old Testament, it is best to view the initial period that the earth was covered by water after God created the world as being the first instance of flooding recorded in the Bible (Gen 1:2). God dealt with the “problem” of the formlessness and emptiness of the intial creation by creating form and filling the domains so delineated. God did this through the power of his word. As part of this, God spoke such that the waters upon the earth might be gathered to one place, in order that dry land might appear (Gen 1:9). In this way, God divided the land from the seas (Gen 1:10). The original flooded state of the world could not continue on if animal and human forms of life were to exist and flourish.

The work of God separating the dry land from the seas at the time of creation established a dichotomy between the dry land and the sea, a dichotomy that is reflected in a number of places in the Old Testament (e.g., Exod 14:16, 22, 29; Neh 9:11; Ps 66:6; 95:5; Jon 1:9, 13; Hag 2:6). Proverbs 8:29 describes this work of separation as involving a divine command, reflecting divine wisdom, by means of which God assigned a limit to the sea, a command that the sea could not ordinarily “transgress.” Just as Gen 1 implies, it is God who controls the boundary between the land and the waters of the rivers and the seas. Thus, the psalmist could say that God “puts the deeps in storehouses” (Ps 33:7).

Yet ever since this first separation, the waters have always threatened to overcome the land; nevertheless the word of God has maintained the boundary between the land and the sea, preventing the flooding of the land by the waters on a worldwide scale, apart from the time of the great flood of Noah (see “The Theme of Flooding in the Bible: Noah’s Flood”). The role of the word of God in this matter is important. If it was the word of God that brought order out of chaos in the beginning, then without the word of God the world would revert to its default state with the waters overcoming the land. This is what happened at the time of Noah: “all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened” (Gen 7:11). Through that event, God showed the human race the consequences of disobedience. Human disobedience results in a reversion to the default state, which is chaos.

The theme of flooding also occurs in the account of the exodus. The water of the Reed Sea stood as a symbol of the impending death of Israel at the hands of the pursuing army. But God “divided the sea, and let [Israel] pass through it … he made the waters stand like a heap” (Ps 78:13). Or as the Song of Moses puts it: “At the blast of your nostrils the waters piled up; the floods stood up in a heap; the deeps congealed in the heart of the sea” (Exod 15:8). Conversely, the destruction of the Egyptian army was as a result of flooding. As the Song of Moses celebrated: “The floods covered them; they went down into the depths like a stone” (Exod 15:5). See also Ps 106:9–11.

The relationship between water, chaos, and death on the one side, and dry land, salvation, and life on the other, as developed in Gen 1, the Noah narrative, and the incident of the Reed Sea, provides the conceptual framework for the biblical metaphor of being overcome by water as an image of death, and also for the related metaphor of being rescued through or from water as an image of salvation from death.

In Psalm 18, for example, David pictures the threat of death from the opposition of enemies as being like a torrential flood dragging him down to Sheol (Ps 18:4–5). But in response to the psalmist’s cry for salvation, God acted to “lay bare” “the channels of the sea” through his word of rebuke (Ps 18:15). “He sent from on high, he took me; he drew me out of many waters … He brought me out into a broad place; he rescued me, because he delighted in me” (Ps 18:16, 19).

Psalm 69 is another example:

Save me, O God! For the waters have come up to my neck. I sink in deep mire, where there is no foothold; I have come into deep waters, and the flood sweeps over me … Deliver me from sinking in the mire; let me be delivered from my enemies and from the deep waters. Let not the flood sweep over me, or the deep swallow me up, or the pit close its mouth over me (Ps 69:1–2, 14–15).

Flood imagery also appears in Ps 88:

You have put me in the depths of the pit, in the regions dark and deep. Your wrath lies heavy upon me, and you overwhelm me with all your waves … Your wrath has swept over me; your dreadful assaults destroy me. They surround me like a flood all day long; they close in on me together (Ps 88:6–7, 16–17).

Similarly Ps 124:

If it had not been Yahweh who was on our side when people rose up against us, then they would have swallowed us up alive, when their anger was kindled against us; then the flood would have swept us away, the torrent would have gone over us; then over us would have gone the raging waters (Ps 124:2–5).

Flood imagery also occurs in Ps 32:6; 42:7; and Jonah describes his experience in the stormy sea in terms of flooding (Jon 2:3, 5–6).

Finally, it should be noted that the power of floodwaters is also used as an image of the power of God. The floodwaters surge and roar, but “mightier than the thunders of many waters, mightier than the waves of the sea, Yahweh on high is mighty!” (Ps 93:3–4). “Yahweh sits enthroned over the flood; Yahweh sits enthroned as king forever!” (Ps 29:10).

The Significance of Eschatological Torah according to the Old Testament

In my post entitled “The Importance of the Old Testament Concept of Eschatological Torah for Understanding Paul’s View of the Law” I listed six Old Testament texts that speak of eschatological torah. I also suggested that the concept of eschatological torah is a key idea for understanding Paul’s teaching on the law. But before doing a post or two more specifically on the idea of eschatological torah in Paul, we need to understand what the Old Testament actually teaches concerning eschatological torah.

Deuteronomy 30:11-14 needs to be read together with Deut 30:1-10. This passage is a Mosaic prophecy that concerns the time after the exile of Israel (Deut 30:1), when God would circumcise the hearts of his people Israel (Deut 30:6), moving them to keep torah (Deut 30:2, 6, 8, 10). As they returned to the way of obedience to torah, the promised covenant blessings would flow (Deut 30:3-7, 9). Deuteronomy 30:1-14 says in effect that Israel keeping torah is necessary for the fullness of the blessing of life to be experienced. Furthermore, because keeping torah is essential to salvation under the terms of the covenant, God will actually ensure that (in the end) Israel will turn to keep covenant with him.

But the new covenant is not just about Israel keeping torah. Isaiah 2:1-4 and the parallel passage in Mic 4:1-4 prophesy of how Gentiles would seek God in Jerusalem with the express purpose of learning torah in order that they might obey it (Isa 2:2-3). As a result of the nations learning torah, there would be universal peace (Isa 2:4).

Isaiah 42:1-4 speaks of how the coastlands (which is a synecdoche for the nations) wait for the torah of the Spirit-filled Servant of God (Isa 42:1), the one who would bring justice to the nations (Isa 42:2, 4). A similar idea is put forward in Isa 51:4-5. Salvation for Israel and the nations is connected with torah going out to the peoples like a light shining in the darkness.

The heart of the new covenant, according to the famous prophecy of Jer 31:31-33, is Yahweh’s writing of torah on the hearts of his people. Torah is not abandoned in the crossover from the old covenant to the new. Rather, what we get is a more comprehensive internalization of torah in the hearts of God’s people. No longer is torah written on the hearts of merely a small minority of Israelites; instead, all Israel will be regenerate and able to respond positively to God as a result. With torah written on their hearts, they will naturally keep covenant with God. Since the heart is the control center of the human psyche, if torah is written on the heart, obedience naturally follows.

It needs to be recognized that the work of God writing torah on the hearts of his people is not merely a by-product of salvation, but an essential part of the process of salvation. For, without the internalization of torah, Israel will not be able to keep covenant with God; and if Israel does not keep covenant with God, then the promise of the blessing of life will not be realized. This is evident in the use of the modal perfect verb והייתי (and I will be) in v. 33. God being Israel’s God in a positive and experiential way, and Israel being truly God’s people (i.e., a people consecrated and obedient to God), is sequential to torah being in Israel’s heart. There is a causal connection here. The fruition of the covenant blessing of full communion between God and his people (v. 33: “and I will be their God, and they shall be my people”) is conditional upon Israel having torah in the heart. The blessings of the new covenant cannot come without God’s people being moved to keep torah.

Ezekiel 36:26-27 speaks of this necessary covenant obedience as the product of a new heart and a new spirit. God would remove the lifeless, unresponsive heart of stone from his people, and provide them with a living, beating, responsive heart of flesh. This regeneration is associated with God sending his Spirit to dwell in the hearts of his people, such that they would be caused to walk in God’s statutes and to do God’s judgments. In other words, the Spirit would be given to God’s people to empower them to keep torah, so that the blessings of the covenant might be realized. This is clear by virtue of the string of modal perfect clauses in Ezek 36:28-30 that speak of the realization of the blessings of the covenant. The blessings of Ezek 36:28-30 are conditional upon the regeneration of God’s people in Ezek 36:26-27.

To summarize what we have seen above, the Old Testament views torah as lying at the heart of God’s new covenant purposes. Far from being something merely negative, the Old Testament views torah as being the key to life. Torah is so important that the Spirit-filled Servant of God will teach eschatological torah to Israel and the nations. Likewise, doing torah is so important in God’s plan of salvation that God will conduct a Spiritual heart circumcision and transplant on his people to enable them to do torah. As far as Moses, Isaiah, Micah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel were concerned, there is no salvation apart from obedience to torah. But whenever Paul is interpreted as saying that divine law is impotent to save, it seems to me that we are effectively suggesting that these Old Testament heavyweights got it wrong about torah and its role in the divine economy of salvation. When Paul spoke negatively about the law, was he talking about law in general, or was his focus more specifically on the primarily negative role of the Mosaic law in God’s plan of redemption? My suggestion to the world of Pauline scholarship is that Paul needs to be interpreted in a manner that is more consistent with what the Old Testament prophets have prophesied.

The Significance of Psalm 98 for Understanding the Righteousness of God in Romans 1:17

Paul understood that the gospel brings salvation (Rom 1:16) because it is a revelation of the righteousness of God (Rom 1:17). Paul’s understanding of the righteousness of God is explicated in greater detail in Rom 3:24–26, where he identifies how God’s righteous character is revealed in two particular ways: the death of Christ as an atoning sacrifice reveals God’s righteousness character in punishing sin (3:25), and it also allows God to justify justly those who believe (3:26).

But it is also important to keep in mind the Old Testament background to the use of the phrase the righteousness of God, for the Old Testament is the source of Paul’s knowledge of this concept.

The key Old Testament passage underlying Paul’s usage of the righteousness of God is Ps 98:1–3:

Oh sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous things! His right hand and his holy arm have worked salvation for him. The Lord has made known his salvation; he has revealed his righteousness in the sight of the nations. He has remembered his steadfast love and faithfulness to the house of Israel. All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.

In Ps 98 the righteousness of God is the eschatological salvation event that God would accomplish in the future to save his people (vv. 1, 3), to liberate all creation (vv. 4–8), and to judge the whole world (v. 9), all in faithfulness to his covenant promises to Israel (v. 3), which event would be revealed in the sight of all the nations (v. 2).

Paul understood that this prophetic expectation had been fulfilled in Jesus, and that the gospel (as the message proclaiming this event) was now revealing this salvation/judgment to all the nations of the world. The righteousness of God is God’s saving action in Jesus which reveals God’s righteous character in that he has brought vindication to his people and his world, and judgment against his enemies, all in faithfulness to what he has promised.

I suggest that the content of Ps 98:1–3 was clearly in Paul’s mind when he dictated Rom 1:16–17 to Tertius. Paul mentions power in Rom 1:16 under the influence of the phrase his right hand in Ps 98:1b. God’s right hand is a classic Old Testament symbol of God's power (e.g., Exod 15:6; Ps 20:6; 89:13). Paul also mentions salvation in Rom 1:16 under the influence of Ps 98:1b-2a where the root ישע (conveying the idea of salvation) appears twice. His mention of to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek is an exposition of the phrase in the sight of the nations, which occurs first in the clause in Ps 98:2b. This then leads naturally into his reference to the righteousness of God in Rom 1:17, which comes straight from the wording he has revealed his righteousness in Ps 98:2b.

The intertextuality evident between Rom 1:16–17 and Ps 98:1–3 strongly suggests that Ps 98 was a key psalm for Paul in terms of making sense of the Christ event from a biblical perspective.

The Saving Power of the Gospel in Romans 1:16

Romans 1:16-17 states the fundamental theme of the book of Romans that undergirds the rest of Paul's teaching in this epistle. In v. 16 Paul states that he was not ashamed of the gospel. Implied within this statement is that Paul’s opponents, the Christian Judaizers, were ashamed of the gospel. By insisting on circumcision and keeping the law of Moses as part of the gospel (such as we see in Acts 15:1, 5), the Judaizers were effectively trying to make the gospel kosher by Judaizing it, by trying to force Jesus and the gospel into the traditional framework of the Mosaic covenant. Their motivation in doing this was to try and make Christianity look acceptable to orthodox Jewish sensibilities. The Judaizers compromised the gospel in the face of social pressure.

But Paul (after his conversion) would have none of that. He was not ashamed of the gospel, because he understood that it is the powerful word of God that brings the fullness of salvation “to everyone who believes, both to the Jew first and to the Greek.” This verse contains the first use in Romans of the pan-ethnic all (translated here as everyone), which is derived from the phrase all the nations in Rom 1:5.

Paul understood that the gospel has a pan-ethnic relevance and application. By making the point that the gospel brings salvation to everyone who believes, Paul was opposing the position of the Judaizers, whose understanding of the gospel limited salvation to one nation (i.e., the nation of Israel), whose national boundary was marked by circumcision, and whose way of life was the law of Moses. Paul understood that the gospel had opened the door of salvation to all nations. This was a truth of which he was not ashamed, a truth that he was prepared to defend no matter what the personal cost.