Then He said to Moses, “Come up to the Lord, you and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, and worship from afar. 2 Moses alone shall come near to the Lord, but the others shall not come near, and the people shall not come up with him.”
3 Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord and all the rules. And all the people answered with one voice and said, “All the words that the Lord has spoken we will do.” 4 And Moses wrote down all the words of the Lord. He rose early in the morning and built an altar at the foot of the mountain, and twelve pillars, according to the twelve tribes of Israel. 5 And he sent young men of the people of Israel, who offered burnt offerings and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen to the Lord. 6 And Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins, and half of the blood he threw against the altar. 7 Then he took the Book of the Covenant and read it in the hearing of the people. And they said, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient.” 8 And Moses took the blood and threw it on the people and said, “Behold the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.”
1 Corinthians 11:17-29
17 But in the following instructions I do not commend you, because when you come together it is not for the better but for the worse. 18 For, in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you. And I believe it in part, 19 for there must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognised. 20 When you come together, it is not the Lord’s supper that you eat. 21 For in eating, each one goes ahead with his own meal. One goes hungry, another gets drunk. 22 What! Do you not have houses to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I commend you in this? No, I will not.
23 For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when He was betrayed took bread, 24 and when He had given thanks, He broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” 25 In the same way also He took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.
27 Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. 28 Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. 29 For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.
Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 11 have been the cause of much debate and confusion in the Church, so as we begin today, we need to put things into their historical context in order to try and understand what Paul is really talking about.
Corinth was an old Greek city, one of the largest commercial cities of its time and was an important trading centre because of its location in ancient Greece.
It was an affluent city and status was very important in Corinth, and as a result many of the problems they experienced in the church in Corinth were because of personal struggles and issues all to do with status and importance.
Paul said that their meetings did more harm than good. Of course, every church has its issues. Put a bunch of sinners together, and you’re guaranteed to have fireworks, but the Corinthian church was seriously divided. It was a house church, or a series of house churches, like most of the early congregations, and they would celebrate the Lord’s Supper or Communion each week, but these meals had degenerated to the point where they were really no different to any other meal at the time. They had forgotten the significance of the Lord’s Supper, which was one of the reasons Paul was critical of them.
Status and importance would dictate who ate when and where. The rich people were in a special room, and the poor people were not allowed in.
Even at the same table, people were served different food based on their status. If you were rich and had high status, you’d get the choice foods. The poor were given nothing more than leftovers. The rich and famous were even meeting together beforehand, gorging themselves and getting drunk, and the poor people were only allowed in later.
This is why in verse 20, Paul says they weren’t even really eating the Lord’s Supper. It was meant to be a common meal that was shared by everyone in the church, but the Corinthians were missing the whole point by treating it like any other meal. They divided people up by class and they humiliated the poor.
So one of the reasons Paul wrote to this church was to remind them of what Holy Communion was really supposed to be about. He needed to remind them of the basics. They had forgotten what the Lord’s Supper was, and so he takes them back to the Last Supper, the meal that Jesus ate with His disciples on the night before He was crucified. I would hope we are not as divided and confused as the Corinthian church, but there is always the danger that we lose sight of the deeper spiritual message of this sacrament.
So just what is Holy Communion?
Firstly, it is a memorial.
“This is my body” and “Do this in remembrance of me.” In the reformed church we don’t believe that the bread and wine literally turn into the body and blood of Jesus. The theological term for this is transubstantiation. A simple analogy that explains the reformed belief is a photograph. I can show you a picture of myself and say, “This is me,” but you will know that a picture of me on a piece of paper isn’t really me – it is a picture of me, a representation of the real me. In much the same way, the bread does not literally and magically turn into Jesus’ body. Jesus’ disciples weren’t confused when He said, “This is my body, this is my blood.” They understood that He was talking about the bread and wine in symbolic terms.
On the other hand, there are some Christian churches that believe the bread and wine remain nothing more than simple bread and wine. The elements used at a Communion service are there to remind us of Jesus and what He did, but the elements hold no deep spiritual significance. Their understanding is that there is nothing important or symbolic about the bread and wine, we just do it to remember.
The reformed church fits somewhere in between these two points of view.
The bread and wine don’t literally turn into the flesh and blood of Jesus, but at the same time it’s not simply bread and wine. We believe there is a much deeper significance in what the elements mean to us.
In a moment you’ll be eating a small piece of bread and drinking a small glass of grape juice. But it will mean so much more than that. You will be publicly proclaiming that you’re living in a covenant relationship with Jesus Christ. By faith, you will be making a direct connection between the sacrament and the Cross of Calvary.
As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10:16, “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?” It is by His literal body which was nailed to the cross and His literal, actual blood which was shed for us that we are saved.
We were not there at Calvary, so how do we make sense of Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 10:16? How do we “participate” in the body and blood of Christ? Galatians 2:20 will help us. “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” Again, we were not actually crucified with Him in a literal sense, but by partaking in the sacrament of Holy Communion, we are binding ourselves to Christ, and what He did for us by faith.
So when we celebrate Holy Communion we do this in remembrance of Jesus’ death and resurrection. It’s a memorial, not just a cerebral action. It’s not just something that happens in our mind, but rather something we do with our whole being. It’s a physical and a spiritual thing, and that is what makes the bread and wine more than just bread and wine.
The Canadian theologian Gordon Smith wrote in his book, A Holy Meal, “We need to come to the table regularly, when we feel like it and when we don’t, for the great danger is that we would forget. We can so easily forget. I do not mean that we no longer recall or believe that something happened. Rather, our forgetting is one of no longer living aligned with the reality and wonder of Christ’s death and resurrection. We can fail to live in the light of this ancient event. So easily through neglect the cross and the resurrection no longer penetrate our present, enabling us to live in the light of the Gospel.”
So Holy Communion is a memorial.
Secondly, it is fellowship.
Jesus isn’t just an historical figure who died 2000 years ago who we remember by eating bread and drinking wine or grape juice. He’s alive, and by His Spirit He is present when we celebrate the sacrament. That’s one of the reasons we use the word communion. We are in communion with one another, and we are in communion with Him. That’s part of the issue the Corinthian church was facing. They weren’t celebrating this meal properly because they weren’t in communion with one another. They didn’t look at each other and say, “We are one. Jesus has made us one.”
Let’s look at what Paul says in verse 29, remembering that he is writing to the Corinthian church: “Anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.” This is one of the verses that has caused some confusion. The NKJV says, “He who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body.”
This points us again to the significance of Holy Communion, and what the elements of bread and wine represent. It’s a little different for us in our day, because we are not eating a full meal like in the days of the Corinthian church, but the same principle applies. When Christians don’t properly appreciate the significance, in fact, the holiness of the celebration of Communion, in effect we are treating with indifference the Lord Himself. In other words, we are trivialising or diminishing the significance of His life, suffering, and death.
Also, because this sacrament is a communal meal, we shouldn’t be doing this while we have issues with one another. Now this point needs some clarification. I’m a sinner, and so are you, and that means that our relationship can never be perfect. Our love for each other will never measure up to God’s standards, so does that mean we should not have Holy Communion together? No. We must remember the grace of God.
If perfect harmony in human relationships were a prerequisite for Holy Communion, Jesus would not have given us this meal in the first place. He still gave us this sacrament, knowing full well that the church will always have issues amongst its members. He would not have commanded us to do this in remembrance of Him if we were not worthy enough to come to the Table. But our worth is in Him, and that is the key to making sense of Paul’s statement in verse 29.
It’s about Jesus and who He is, more than it is about us. Paul though, does say in Romans 12:18 (another letter to the church), “If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.” So there is an obligation on our part to have a sense of community, especially when we share Holy Communion. We are duty and honour bound to make an effort as far as is humanly possible and with God’s help, to resolve personal issues and conflicts in the church. This is a memorial, and a time of fellowship.
Thirdly, Holy Communion is a covenant renewal ceremony.
“This cup is the new covenant in my blood.” Jesus is saying here that His blood, His sacrifice, replaces the old covenant given to Moses in Exodus 24. This is the new covenant that Jeremiah wrote about in chapter 31 when God said He would write the law on our hearts.
All covenants are represented and remembered through symbolic acts. In the Old Testament, it usually involved animal sacrifice. An animal would be cut into pieces. Part of the animal would be sacrificed by being burnt on an altar, and part of it would be eaten in a covenant meal.
In the new covenant, Jesus is both the sacrifice and the one we are in covenant with. In 1 Corinthians 5 Paul calls Jesus the Passover Lamb who has been sacrificed.
When we come to the Table to share in Holy Communion, we remember the covenant God has made with us, and we respond in faith to Him, as we renew our covenant with Him.
This is a place where we find mercy and forgiveness for all the ways we have not lived up to who we should be, and to declare our intention to renew the covenant.
The sacrifice of Jesus is a once off, never to be repeated sacrifice. God keeps His covenant promises, and He doesn’t need to renew them or be reminded of them, but we do, and this is one of the reasons we need to come to the Table regularly.
This is a place to refresh and renew our commitment to be faithful disciples of Jesus.
Fourth, Holy Communion is a declaration of thanksgiving and hope.
Eucharist is another word used for this sacrament, and it comes from the Greek word for thanksgiving. When we celebrate Communion or the Eucharist, it really is a celebration. Jesus gave thanks, and so should we. We give thanks to God for giving us life, for offering us forgiveness, and to Jesus for paying the price of our sin. We also give thanks for the gift of the Holy Spirit to live in us and comfort and guide us.
We are also reminded at the Table of the hope we have. Verse 26 says, “As often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.”
This meal doesn’t just look back at the Last Supper that Jesus shared with His disciples. It looks forward to another meal that Jesus will eat with us when He returns. In Revelation 19 it is called the wedding supper of the Lamb. So we look back in thankfulness, and forward in hope.
None of us can pretend to fully understand the mysteries of God, Holy Communion included. We are all different and God meets us and ministers to us in different ways as we share in this sacrament. It’s about us as His family, but it is also a deeply personal thing we do.
Before we close I want to look at some of those phrases in 1 Corinthians 11 that have created confusion and division in the Church.
Verse 27 says we shouldn’t do this “in an unworthy manner.” Many believe that these words mean that just because they are sinful, they shouldn’t take Communion at all, but again we need to look at the historical context of the issues Paul was addressing, and who he was writing to. When he warns the Corinthians against taking Communion in an unworthy manner, he was telling them that they shouldn’t abuse it – something they had been doing. Based on their status in society, they had been applying worldly standards to decide who could and who couldn’t take Communion. That was unworthy of the grace of God and unworthy of the sacrifice of Jesus.
In verse 28, “Examine yourself” doesn’t mean make sure you don’t have any sin. We come to the Lord’s Table to receive mercy, and if we waited until we were without sin, no one would be able to come. Jesus is the host at this table, and Jesus ate with sinners. He welcomes us at this table in the same way He welcomed and forgave Peter after he denied Him.
So ‘examine yourself’ does not mean make sure you don’t have any sin. Rather it means to examine your heart, recognise your sin, recognise your need for grace and come to the Table knowing that Jesus is the source of the grace and forgiveness you need. Remember the power of the Gospel of Christ. Another way of putting it: It’s when you think you’re least worthy to take Holy Communion that you need it most. Remember that God loves you, and He would not have sent Jesus to the Cross had He thought you weren’t worth saving. But He did, because you are worth saving.
The Lord’s Table is a place of mercy where you are reminded of what God has done for you, and what He has promised to you, but it’s not just about you. It’s not even just about you and Jesus. It is also about the Body of Christ, the church, coming together to celebrate Jesus’ death and resurrection. This is not just any meal. It is the meal where we declare we are one in Christ.
The church is not a club of like-minded people getting together. There are many organisations like that, but the church is very different to a sports or social club. We are, or at least we should be, a diverse group of people gathered around Jesus Christ. That’s why as far as it depends on us, there should be no divisions at the Table. It’s when we start thinking of ourselves as better than others that we’re in danger of eating and drinking judgment on ourselves.
This is a place to remember. It’s a place to gather together. It’s a place to renew our commitment to Jesus, and it’s a place to be reminded of what God has prepared for those who love Him.
Homegroup Study Notes
Our theme on Sunday was the Sacrament of Holy Communion.
What are some of the feelings or emotions you experience when sharing in Communion?
The four points or aspects of Holy Communion we looked at on Sunday were:
- Communion is a memorial
- Fellowship
- Covenant renewal ceremony
- A time of thanksgiving and hope
How do you see each of these points in Holy Communion?
What others can you think of?
The Corinthian Church was a deeply divided Church with many divisions and issues.
Read 1 Corinthians 11:17-29
Pay particular attention to the wording in verses 17, 18, 22, 27, 28 and 29.
(“No praise for you, more harm than good, divisions among you, despise the Church of God, unworthy manner, sinning against the body and blood, examine himself, recognising the body.”)
What do you believe Paul means by these words?
How do you think you may have misunderstood him in the past, and how are we to apply the lessons he teaches in the Church today?