<p>10:11- see on Gal. 1:4.</p><p><em>Now these things happened to them as an example- </em>They were 'types of us'. Israel's sin was their fault, and the judgments for it were called forth by their behaviour. And yet as with all sin, God works through it. The whole process of their failures and judgments for that failure was for our sakes. We must sense the real possibility of spiritual failure, of the eternal future we may miss.</p><p>The ecclesia in the wilderness (Acts 7:38) were tempted to commit the same sins in principle as we are tempted to (1 Cor.10:1-10). Twice Paul hammers home the point: &quot;These things were our examples... now all these things happened unto them for ensamples; and are written (i.e. the process of inspiration became operative) for our admonition&quot; (v.6,11). Paul seems to read the minds of many Gentile Christians as they quietly reason 'But that was Israel- we Gentiles have been called because we shall do better'; he warns that such an attitude places us in grave spiritual danger: &quot;Let him that thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. There has no temptation taken you but such as is common to man&quot; (v.12,13). This could be paraphrased as follows: 'The Jews (&quot;man&quot;) had the same human nature as you; if you think that you can stand up to it better than they, then such spiritual arrogance will lead you to fall'. Such reasoning goes against the grain of what we would naturally like to hear, which is that we will certainly reach salvation just as we are, with no conditions, and without having to have any conflict with our sinful nature. Paul therefore concludes by saying that only the spiritually wise will grasp his line of argument here: &quot;I speak as to wise men; judge ye what I say&quot; (v.14).</p><p>I have noted that &quot;example&quot; is the Gk. <em>tupos</em>, types. The New Testament writers present things like the crossing of the Red Sea and the events in the wilderness as real historical events which were types of the work of Christ (1 Cor. 10:1-4; Hebrews 3 etc.). But by the second century, there was a shift away from reading these events as types, but rather they were seen as allegories- no longer were the events so importantly <em>real</em>, rather the characters and events were seen as allegorical. It was against this background of ever increasing abstraction that Christians likewise started to move away from the real Christ. Origen in the third century argued strongly that the historical sections of the Bible were to be taken as allegory and not as literally accurate history. He spoke of there being in the Bible &quot;spiritual truth in historical falsehood&quot;, and went on to use this as an excuse to explain why the Lord Jesus is presented as human rather than Divine in the Gospels. And so, as so often, an incorrect base attitude to God's word led to seriously misunderstanding it.</p><p><em>And they were written about for our instruction, upon whom the ends of the ages have come- </em>We are to imagine the inspired Moses or whoever writing these things down, with God having us in mind, hoping we would take instruction from them. As these things happened at the beginning of the Jewish age, they had particular relevance to those living at the end of that age. J. Milik argues that Paul&rsquo;s language here is alluding to Apocryphal Jewish writings, which speak of the &ldquo;ages&rdquo; as coming to an end in Satan&rsquo;s destruction at the last day. Paul&rsquo;s reasoning is that Christ&rsquo;s death has brought about the termination of the &ldquo;ages&rdquo; as the Jews understood them. Satan and his hordes &ndash; in the way the Jews understood them &ndash; are right <em>now</em> rendered powerless and non-existent. As ever, Paul&rsquo;s approach seems to be not to baldly state that a personal Satan doesn&rsquo;t exist, but rather to show that even if he once did, he is now powerless and dead. The way the Lord Jesus dealt with the demons issue is identical. Once we understand this background, we see Paul&rsquo;s writings are packed with allusions to the Jewish ideas about the &ldquo;ages&rdquo; ending in the Messianic Kingdom and the destruction of Satan. Paul was correcting their interpretations &ndash; by saying that the &ldquo;ages&rdquo; had ended in Christ&rsquo;s death, and the things the Jewish writings claimed for the future Messianic Kingdom were in fact already possible for those in Christ. Thus when 1 Enoch 5:7,8 speaks of &lsquo;freedom from sin&rsquo; coming then, Paul applies that phrase to the experience of the Christian believer <em>now</em> (Rom. 6:18&ndash;22; 8:2).</p>