Wednesday, September 15, 2021

R.C.H. Lenski on 1 Corinthians 10:2 and being baptised "into Moses"

  

The phrase εἰς τὸν Μωϋσῆν may be patterned after the similar New Testament phrase εἰς τὸν Χριστόν, but it can never be taken in the sense of “into Moses” or Christ. No baptism nor anything else could in any conceivable sense carry the Israelites “into” Moses. The idea expressed is one of union: “to,” “unto,” or “for Moses.” This symbolical baptism united the Israelites to Moses as God’s representative to them, the Old Testament mediator, in whom was foreshadowed Christ, the New Testament eternal Mediator, Deut. 18:18. The deliverance from the Egyptian bondage through Moses by this symbolical baptism through the cloud and the sea likewise typifies our deliverance from the bondage of sin and of death through Christ by means of Christian baptism. (R. C. H. Lenski, The Interpretation of St. Paul’s First and Second Epistle to the Corinthians [Minneapolis, Minn.: Augsburg Publishing House, 1963], 391)