THESE two verses contain a direct and important challenge to all believers. Certainly they were to the believers in Corinth, but we must not imagine that we are immune from problems in our spiritual lives which may lead us to depart in some way or other from the truth. The problem for us may not be concerning the truth of resurrection through faith in Christ, but there are all sorts of other errors that Satan uses to turn the church away from the truth. It is incontrovertible that the church in our time is afflicted with all sorts of errors, and these errors are so embedded in the structure of the visible church, that they are not perceived. All error threatens the souls of those who claim to be Christians, in the same way the souls of the Corinthians were having their hope of everlasting life threatened by error.

So Paul urges the Corinthians not to be misled. Some false teaching had crept into the life of the Corinthian church which had caused members to doubt that there was any resurrection of the dead. They were being led astray to a place where there was no point to believing in Jesus. The faith of the church members was being destroyed. We are not immune from being led astray so we need to heed this exhortation � 'Do not be misled'. This calls all believers to continually examining their faith and practice by the pure word of God in the Bible, and resist all attempts of the world and the devil to turn us away from the truth, to doubt the truth, or twist the truth into error.

Paul speaks about the danger of 'bad company'. We need to ask ourselves what he means by bad company. He is not referring here to company that embraces known sin and evil. The problem of bad company that Paul is referring to is not being led astray to known sin, or even led astray to so embrace the world and its values that spiritual life is strangled. What Paul is referring to here is bad company that leads people to wrong religious practice or belief. This bad company may outwardly be upright and spiritual. It may appear to have deep spiritual life. It may also achieve in those who embrace it a measure of spiritual comfort. All false doctrine of one kind or another does this for those who follow or embrace it, but nonetheless it is destructive of true spiritual life, and endangers the eternal safety of the soul. In the case of the Corinthians they had been led astray by bad company to the extent that they had lost the very heart of the hope of eternal life in Christ. In fact they had been led away from salvation.

Bad company is able to lead a believer to a place where their spiritual life is being destroyed, and if this goes on then spiritual death may follow. It is true that those who are truly born again of the Holy Spirit, and been justified, can not finally fall away; but such people who are led astray by bad company will find their witness impaired, and even be the cause of harm to other people's souls. When the error of bad company is embraced in the church then the church is in danger of having their candle stick taken away altogether. There are examples of this in history. Churches which have been alive in Christ, then embracing error, have ceased to exist. In Revelation chapters 2 & 3 where Christ speaks to the seven churches, Christ warns of this terrible outcome.

Then in verse 34 Paul speaks of being misled as being sinful. He tells the Christians in Corinth that they must come back to their senses and stop sinning. He also speaks of people who are led astray as becoming ignorant of God.

These two verse speak to all believers to guard their souls, and make sure they are living by the truth as it is in Jesus, and as is revealed in the Bible when honest understanding of the Bible is engaged in. There will be so many devout people who find themselves in hell in the end because the faith that they held was not the truth of Christ, but the wisdom of men. We have only to read Paul's epistles to hear him warning people against false doctrine, and warning that false doctrine does not save the soul. In the end false doctrine is seen to embrace, in some way or other, salvation by human effort, wisdom or strength. Paul makes clear in his letter to the Galatians that as soon as human merit is added even in a small way to obtaining salvation from sin and death, it places a person under the curse of the Law, because if personal effort is trusted in, even in a small way, this places a person under the Law, and severs them from Christ. In this state the person is bound to keep the whole Law of God perfectly if they would be saved.

Satan is always seeking to lead us astray from Christ and total surrender of trust in him alone as our righteousness, and the renouncing of all dependence on anything we may do or achieve as contributing in any way to our being saved from our sin. It is Christ alone in whom we trust, and in him alone.