Corinthian believers that if they persist in tempting God by their carnal worldliness and spiritual carelessness they would run the risk of being disqualified, as Israel was in this story. It is significant that Paul has just spoken (9:24–27) of the possibility of a believer, and a servant of the Lord, becoming through carelessness disqualified (Greek adokimos), castaway—not in the sense of being cut off from the mercies of God, or of losing salvation, but in the sense of losing one’s reward, one’s