1 Corinthians 10:14,15

“Wherefore, my dearly beloved, flee far from idolatry. 15. I speak as to wise men; judge ye what I say.”

The address so full of tenderness: my dearly beloved, expresses how much it costs him to be obliged to impose on them a sacrifice which he knows to be so painful.

Διόπερ, precisely on this account: because you can reckon on God's help in the temptations which He appoints to you Himself, but not in others.

The expression: flee far from, is certainly used designedly. In a similar passage, 1 Corinthians 6:18, Paul had used the verb flee simply with the substantive as its object. If he here interposes the preposition ἀπό, far from, it is to tell them, not only to flee idolatry itself (that would have been superfluous), but to flee far from all that approaches it or might lead them into it. The sacrificial feasts were not quite idolatry, but they bordered on it and might lead to a fall into it.

Vv. 15. Then he appeals to their own judgment. For he would have the decision to proceed from their conscience. The Corinthians boast of wisdom; he appeals to this very wisdom. The second proposition of this verse has sometimes been taken as the object of the verb of the first: “I pray you as intelligent people to judge what I say.” But it is much more natural to take as the object of the verb I say the whole argument which follows in the passage, 1 Corinthians 10:16-22: “I proceed to expound my thought to you; judge yourselves what I advance.” On the term φημί, see on 1 Corinthians 7:29. He would impose nothing on them; but he proceeds to submit to them certain premisses which they cannot gainsay, and from which there will follow a consequence, which they cannot refuse, without rejecting those premisses themselves.

The following passage rests on these principles: that any religious act whatever brings us into communication with the spiritual world, that this exercises a power, and that the nature of the influence thus exercised depends each time on the character of the invisible Being to which the worship is thus addressed. Thus the Holy Supper brings the believer under the influence of Christ (1 Corinthians 10:16-17); the Jewish sacrifice brings the Israelite into contact with the altar of Jehovah (1 Corinthians 10:18); and the heathen sacrificial feast brings man under the influence of the demons whose arts have given birth to idolatry.