The Nugget:
1 Corinthians 15:33 Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners. (KJV)
1 Corinthians 15:33 Do not be so misled: “Evil companionships corrupt good character.” (Williams NT)
1 Corinthians 15:33 Do not be deceived: “Bad company ruins good morals.” (ESV)
1 Corinthians 15:33 Do not be tricked by false words: evil company does damage to good behaviour. (Basic English)
1 Corinthians 15:33 Be not deceived; “Evil stories corrupt well-disposed minds.” (Murdoch)
1 Corinthians 15:33 Don’t fool yourselves. Bad friends will destroy you. (CEV)
My Comment
As much as I usually favor using the King James Version, its rendering of 1 Corinthians 15:33 is probably next to meaningless for modern readers. One good method of studying a verse is to read it in several English translations. I have found that while parallel Bibles–sometimes presenting four translations at once side by side–are sometimes helpful, their biggest failure for me is that the translations they contain basically repeat each other with little additional insight. What is needed is to compare translations that are distinctively different, as I have done for you above for 1 Corinthians 15:33.
The rendering given by the Contemporary English Version, “Don’t fool yourselves. Bad friends will destroy you,” is perhaps the most direct and easy to understand of them all.
Young people, and everyone else, need to learn that lesson well. It is far better to seek wisdom and guidance from proven sources of wisdom like the Bible than to suffer the consequences of learning these truths by bitter personal experience!
I have seen this flaw in human character on display daily for nearly four decades–that is 40 years–as a teacher of high school students in Detroit. It seems that some young people are almost intentionally sabotaging any chance they might have for success in life by falling into the trap of keeping company with the wrong friends. I worked with one young man for four years. He started out very far behind in his reading and writing skills. I was able to help him greatly improve them. It turns out that he was good in sports. In this case, he was an excellent swimmer. The coach worked with me almost daily over time to keep this student on track. During his senior year this student won a scholarship to college based upon his athletic ability. Then he was absent from class unexpectedly. I checked with the coach that very day. The coach said that because the matter was very private, he could not say more than that this young man ruined his once wonderful opportunity. I could read “between the lines,” and I believe that my inference that this young man had fallen as a result of significant moral failure is correct.
After that, I determined to address those issues more directly in my history and later English classroom by means of weekly units of carefully chosen daily Proverbs and Quotations, which I wrote on the blackboard one by one each day. Students have told me directly in their written compositions and when I have chanced to meet them in person years later, and visitors who made presentations on Career Day each school year observed in their comments to me that my strategy worked wonders in positively transforming the motivations and lives of my students.
Encourage any young people in your circle of influence to make the right choices when it comes to who they choose for close companions or best friends. “Hanging out” with the wrong friends can surely destroy young people in more ways than one.
So, as a practical matter, how can you correct yourself or assist young people to in your potential circle of contacts to go in a better direction? Where practical and possible, encourage young people to read and read again and again from the Bible regularly, even daily. Students have thanked me over the years for encouraging them to read the New Testament.
In my literature classes I listed as one of many recommended classics for students to read, the work by John Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress. I can remember yet the faces and names of several young men in my English classes at Cass Technical High School who spoke to me personally to thank me for recommending that they read that book.
Parents can help their young people by encouraging church attendance, Bible reading, Bible study, and active participation in a suitable young people’s group.
We can help young people and ourselves by teaching or learning how to make better use of valuable time. It is my judgment that far too much time is spent and wasted on television and other mass media and electronic devices. It is my considered judgment that sports take up far too much time and effort of our young people which would be better spent on developing character by getting more thoroughly acquainted with the Bible–something that counts for time and eternity.
Other interested persons–which ought to include all Christians–need to be active in winning young people to Christ and providing them guidance and encouragement. Tragedies like Michael Brown currently in the news about Ferguson, Missouri, surely need not and could not have happened had parents and teachers and neighbors and people in the neighborhood churches assisted Michael Brown with academic, moral, and spiritual guidance. One way I dealt in English class with this issue is through poetry. One poem in particular (“Crumbling,” by Emily Dickinson, I think it was) had as its theme and lesson that people do not fail or fall all at once, but that every failure is preceded by a sometimes long series of unaddressed failures or wrong choices.
People need to quit making such failures a racial issue. It is not a racial issue. It is a moral and spiritual issue, as are so many of the problems faced in society and our nation today. God has provided the solution to these problems in His written Word, the Bible. It is about time more people get involved with Real Bible Study themselves! Real Bible Study transforms lives.
For those who desire to DIG DEEPER into this subject:
(1) Consult the cross references given in Nelson’s Cross Reference Guide to the Bible on pages 1326-1326 for 1 Corinthians 15:33.
(2) Consult the cross references given in The New Treasury of Scripture Knowledge on page 1348 or in Logos 5 or 6 Bible software for 1 Corinthians 15:33.
(3) Most people today do not have access to those two resources, so I have posted cross references for this passage as I have developed them even more completely for your study as given below:
1 Corinthians 15:33. Be not deceived. Gr. planaō (S#4105g, Mt 24:4). +**1 Cor 6:9. *Mt 24:4, 11, 24. Mk 13:5. *Ga 6:7. Ep 5:6. Col 2:8. 2 Th 2:10. James 1:16, 22. Re 12:9. 13:8-14. evil communications. or, evil company. or, associations. FS138C, +Ge 22:14. FS92H, +Ac 17:28. 1 Cor 5:6, 9, 10, 11. *Ge 13:12. 39:10, 12. *Ex 23:2. Le 11:24. Nu 11:4. 33:55. Dt 7:16. 20:8. Jsh 23:7. Ru 2:23. 1 K 11:2. 22:4. *2 Ch 13:7. +*2 Ch 19:2. Jb 31:1. 34:8. +*Ps 1:1. 26:4. 84:10. 106:35. +**Ps 119:63, 115. 141:4. **Pr 1:10, 11, 14, 15. 2:11, 12, 16, 19. 4:14. +*Pr 9:6. 12:11. **Pr 13:20. 16:29. 17:12. 20:19. +*Pr 22:5, 10, 24, 25. 23:6, 7, 20, 21. 28:7, 19. 29:24. Ec 9:18. +Je 10:2. Ezk 14:10n. Ho 4:9. +*Mt 15:14. 24:12, 13. Mk 13:5. Lk 22:55. Jn 18:18. Ro 6:19. 16:17, 18. 2 Cor 6:14, 15. Ga 2:13. *Ga 5:9. Ep 4:29. 5:11, 12. 1 Tim 5:22. 6:3-5, 9-11. *2 Tim 2:16-18. 3:2-4. +*He 12:15. *2 P 2:2, 18-20. corrupt. 1 Cor 3:17, 18. Le 14:36. 15:4, 20. Dt 20:18. Pr 22:25. manners. Gr. ēthos. Only here. In the plural, morals. A quotation from the Thais of Menander, an Athenian poet (CB). Judg 16:4. Joh 18:18, 25. Ac 17:22, 23, 28. Col 2:21. Titus 1:12.