We need to talk about some of the imagery Paul uses in verses 1-5 because it is both interesting and helpful. The matter of baptism in verse 2 has led to a number of interpretations by commentators. The root word for “baptism,” which is bapto, means “to immerse.” And from that came the word baptizo, which gives us our word, “baptize.” But as is often the case in the Greek language, when you have a simple word and then you have a word that is related to it but slightly more complex, usually the more complex word involves a slight change of emphasis. Or it involves an overtone that is not present in the simpler word. Baptizo has to do with what happens when you immerse something, but not strictly through immersion. For example, what happens when you immerse a piece of white cloth in dye? You change the color of it, and in a sense change something of its nature. It becomes identified with the color of the dye by the immersion. This is what I think is involved. Baptism involves a question of identity and a change that comes about because of that identity.
Now, it may be—and Baptists would certainly argue this—that the proper and very symbolic way of doing a baptism is by immersion. And I think that does teach certain important things. Others would argue that there are other ways of doing it. I would defend sprinkling on the basis of the Old Testament forms. But in a certain sense, those are secondary matters because what happens in our baptism is not that we are sprinkled or immersed, but rather that we are identified with Jesus Christ by our testimony or, in the case of infants, by the testimony of our parents who commit them into the hands of the Lord.
It is that theme of identification which Paul is talking about here. He is saying that when the Israelites passed through the sea and were defended and overshadowed by the cloud, they were identified with Moses in the exodus. From that time on they were separated unto him. There was no going back because they were part of the new people. In the same way, when he talks about spiritual food and spiritual drink, he is alluding in certain overtones to the sacraments within the Christian Church. When the Israelites were in the wilderness, they all had the same experience, and that included in a symbolic way participation in the communion by the spiritual food that God provided. And yet, although every one of them had that experience, some fell and fell irretrievably. As Paul will go on to say in verse 12, “So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall!” You are not one of the Lord’s simply because you have been baptized. You are not one of God’s people simply because you participate in the communion service. You are the Lord’s if you are born again, and whether you are born again shows up in the way you handle the temptations that come into your life.
In the next paragraph he gives four illustrations of that from Israel’s history. In verse 7 he tells the Corinthians not to be idolaters, as some of the Israelites were. In verse 8 Paul writes that we should not commit sexual immorality, as some of the Israelites did. Verse 9 admonishes the Corinthians not to test the Lord, nor should they grumble, as it says in verse 10. In each case, Paul is thinking of a particular failing of the people during those years of their wandering.
The context of the mentioning of idolatry is probably a reference to Exodus 32. In this chapter Moses was up on the mountain receiving the law, which began with the opening command in the Decalogue, “You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below” (Ex. 20:3-4). The reason for this, as the Lord declares in Exodus 20:5-6, is that He is “a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to thousands who love me and keep my commandments.”
