I speak as to intelligent [persons] do *ye* judge what I say.
Paul has just told the Corinthians to run from idolatry. Instead of pressing his authority as an apostle, he hands the matter back to them to weigh. What kind of "wisdom" is he appealing to, and what does he want them to judge?
The word Paul chooses is not a compliment to clever minds:
Scripture never addresses men as "wise" in the sense of having philosophic minds. The New Testament has two words translated "wise," and their meanings are quite different. The word phronimois in 1 Cor. 10:15 has the force of "sensible," "sane" or "having common sense." It stands in contrast to "foolish," a word the apostle used freely at the start of the letter. I make no claim to speak as a prophet, but merely as a man of common sense to people of common sense.
Older translations say "wise men." William Kelly gives it as "prudent." The point is the same. Paul expects a level head, not brilliance.
Something shifts at this verse.
Up to this point in the letter the Apostle had addressed the Corinthians on the ground of their responsibility. So he assumed that some among them might not be real. At verse 15 he shifts his viewpoint a little and addresses them as "wise men." Not every true Christian could be described that way, we fear, and certainly no unconverted person could be. He speaks to the true members of the body of Christ. They have His Spirit, so they can judge what he is now going to put before them.
The judgment is not abstract. Paul at once sets the Lord's Supper in front of them.
To count idolatry impossible for a Christian is to trifle. This the Corinthians were doing. They said they knew the idol was nothing, so eating meat offered to idols meant nothing to them — and they would even sit and eat in the heathen temples. The apostle holds the opposite principle: you share in an evil by joining in it, even when you would not do it yourself, and especially in sacred things. The true wisdom in such cases is to keep wholly aloof. It is a misuse of knowledge to take part in what is religiously false, or even to look as though you take part in it... At once the apostle makes them the judges. He puts them in the presence of the central and permanent institution of church fellowship. Where was their practical understanding now?
The appeal assumes something is already there. Every believer has this power of judgment, however badly it worked at Corinth:
There is, perhaps, a touch of irony in these words. If so, it soon fades as he moves into the subject of the verses that follow. Here he is calling on his fellow believers to use that power of spiritual judgment which really does exist in every genuine believer. In some at Corinth it was weakened and held back by the tangle of natural vanity and self-conceit. He asks them to decide for themselves how far any tampering with idolatry could fit with true spiritual worship.
Paul could have simply ruled on the matter. He did not, and that sets a pattern for anyone who teaches:
The more the Lord has given them special gift, the less they need to fence themselves round with the claim of authority. That authority lies, after all, in the word they bring. It must find its confirmation in the conscience and heart of those who listen to it... The more sure they were that the truth they held was indeed from God, the more freely they could take the ground of one of these apostles: "I speak as to wise men" — sensible men, as we say — "judge what I say." The outcry against the mind, so often raised by assumed spirituality, goes completely against God. He has made us altogether for Himself... Mind is not a product of the fall, though the fall has darkened and weakened it.
This verse is often quoted as a general permission to judge. Commentators draw a line around what may be weighed:
Judging things, or judging teaching, is not forbidden but encouraged — as we see, for instance, in 1 Corinthians 2:15 and 10:15. Judging persons is forbidden... As soon as we start judging others, we become blind to our own faults. The most profitable form of judgment for each of us is self-judgment.
- Sensible, not clever. The word means sane and level-headed. It is the opposite of the "foolish" Paul has already rebuked, not a matter of clever minds.
- Addressed to the real. Here Paul stops speaking to a mixed crowd. He turns to those who have the Spirit, because only they can weigh what follows.
- A faculty already given. Spiritual judgment exists in every genuine believer, even where vanity and self-conceit have clogged it. Paul calls it into use; he does not supply it.
- The test is the Table. He makes them their own judges by setting the cup and the loaf in front of them. True wisdom is to stay wholly clear of what is religiously false.
- Judge the thing, not the person. Teaching is open to examination; people are not — and the most useful judgment any of us can make is on ourselves.
The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not [the] communion of the blood of the Christ? The bread which we break, is it not [the] communion of the body of the Christ?
Paul is warning the Corinthians to keep away from idol feasts. He stops arguing and asks two questions instead. They are about the cup they bless and the loaf they break. His point is that eating and drinking are never neutral acts: they join you to what is on the table.
The two questions belong to Paul's argument about idolatry. One commentator sets three tables side by side:
after_note: DELETE
The apostle is dealing with the question of idolatry. The Jews shared in the altar; the Gentiles drank the cup of demons. What we Christians share in is communion with the sacrifice of Christ. We are identified with that sacrifice, and we cannot be identified with the cup of demons too.
The phrase is easy to misread as blessing coming down to us. Commentators point instead to the Passover meal, where one cup carried thanks up to God:
Here we are to understand blessing rising to God from His people. The phrase that follows, "which we bless", shows that the Spirit of God means blessing given by the worshippers, and not blessing given to them. The words also match the Jews' cup of blessing, which clearly meant blessing rising to God. The Passover service in the apostles' time included a Cup of Blessing. It was called that because those who took the cup said the words, "Blessed are You, Jehovah our God".
So to bless the cup is to give thanks for it. What the cup cost Christ, and who gives the thanks, both matter:
For us the cup is a "cup of blessing", a symbol of the blood of Christ. It reminds us of His death, when at the Cross He shed the blood that cleanses from all sin. For Him it was a cup of judgment. But the cup that brought judgment to Him secures blessing for us. For this cup we can bless, or give thanks. Blessing the cup here carries no thought of one person consecrating the bread and the wine, as corrupt Christendom imagines.
after_note: DELETE The Apostle says, "we" bless, "we" break, and "we" partake.
Paul names the cup before the loaf. One writer sees purpose in that order:
That is the cup for which we give thanks at the Lord's Supper. The cup comes first because we can only get right with God on the ground of redemption by blood. That is why the Spirit stresses the fact of death here, by putting the cup before the loaf.
Paul also writes "of Christ" here, not "of the Lord" as in the next chapter:
The first appeal rests on the blood of Christ. That blood is the answer of divine grace to the deepest need of a soul that stands guilty before God and covered with defilement. Was this to be treated lightly? … Here he does not say "the blood" or "the body of the Lord". We find that in 1 Corinthians 11. Here it is Christ, because the matter is one of grace. "The Lord" brings in the idea of authority.
The verse calls the cup a "participation" in Christ's blood; older translations say "communion". That word usually makes us think of fellowship with each other, but here it means something else:
There are two expressions of fellowship here — fellowship with and fellowship of. We usually speak of fellowship with one another, more in the sense of 1 John 1:7. But here it is not communion with, but communion of. The words "communion" (verse 16), "partakers" (verse 18) and "fellowship" all stand for the same root word in the original, which gives the idea of sharing in common. … The fellowship, or communion, of the blood of Christ is the sharing in common with all God's children in all the value of His wonderful death.
Sharing in the body of Christ does not mean the loaf turns into it:
There is no need, however, for fanciful ideas about the bread. Let us be clear that the material is bread, and that it stays bread. He said, "This is My body," using a figure of speech, as He often did. … When He said "This is My body," He gave the loaf a special meaning as His memorial.
Eating identifies you. That already settled the Corinthians' visits to idol feasts:
Israel by natural descent ate of the altar, and by eating they identified themselves with it. In the same way, if you share the table of the Lord, you have a common part in it with others. Eating is not itself identity with the body, but the sign of it. You cannot share in Christ and in demons at the same time. This is a moral "cannot".
- Cup — the cup of judgment Christ drank becomes the cup we bless. To bless it is to send thanks up to God, as at the Passover cup.
- We — "we bless," "we break," "we partake": the thanks belong to everyone who shares the meal, not to one person consecrating the bread and the wine.
- Communion — the word means sharing in common. We share with all God's children in the whole value of Christ's death.
- Sign — the bread stays bread, and the cup is a symbol of His blood. The sign is not the thing itself.
- Therefore — sharing identifies you. Eating joins you to the altar, so you cannot have a common part with Christ and with demons at once.
Because we, [being] many, are one loaf, one body; for we all partake of that one loaf.
Paul is warning the Corinthians away from idol feasts. He does it by pointing at their own table — at the loaf they break. The verse turns a simple act of eating into a statement about who Christians are. What does the one loaf stand for? How far does the "we" reach?
The verse sits inside a warning. The table where Christians eat already says something, and the idol's table denies it.
The bread which we break was nothing less than fellowship with the body of Christ. At the same time it set forth the close unity of His saints on earth. What could be more inconsistent than to own this truth in the breaking of bread, and then to disown it by feasting in idol temples?
If the loaf stands for the body of Christ, what does that make the people who share it?
The blood of Christ awakens the gravest thoughts in the Christian. The body of Christ speaks of the closest unity possible, since we, the many, are one loaf, one body, and we all partake of the one loaf. The bread does not become the body of Christ, nor is the body joined to it. It is the loaf that we break, and it is the one loaf of which we all partake. It stands for the one body of Christ; and if the loaf is that body, then we, the many, are that one loaf too.
Commentators differ here. Some hold that the loaf stands for the body of Christ given in death, and nothing else. On this view, the shared act of eating is what shows the unity of believers.
Read that verse with care. It states that we, who partake of the cup and the loaf as we should, are one bread — or loaf — that is, one body. The sign of that fact is that we all partake of the one loaf. The loaf is the symbol of the holy body of our Lord, given up in death as a sacrifice for us all, and of that alone.
Others point back to the tabernacle, the tent where Israel worshipped God. Twelve loaves stood on its table, and that number, they argue, is part of the message.
It has been said that we do not have the unity of the church shown in the one loaf, but only in our partaking of that one loaf (Christ). But when we remember that there were twelve loaves on the table in the tabernacle, and that these symbolised Israel's national unity presented before God in Christ, we can hardly fail to connect the unity of the church in Christ with what is represented in the one loaf.
What does it mean to "partake"? Israel's own sacrifices give the picture.
At its simplest, the word communion means a common participation. Here it is the saints, as members of the one body, sharing together at the Lord's Table in what the blood and the body of Christ set forth. Eating or drinking implies identification with the thing eaten or drunk. So the apostle says, "Consider the people of Israel: are not those who eat the sacrifices participants in the altar?" That is, by eating what they had placed on the altar as a sacrifice, they became identified with the sacrifices.
The "we" is not limited to the people in the room, or even the believers in one town.
In partaking of the "one bread", we set forth our identification with the one body. Christ is the Head of that body, and all believers are members of it. The "one bread" does not only mean that those who partake at any given time are one. It does not only mean that believers in one place are one. It sets forth the unity of the whole body, which includes every true believer.
Owning that worldwide union does not settle every question of conduct.
So in partaking of the one loaf, the Christian who is taught by God owns his union with all true believers across the whole earth. Their ignorance, weakness, or Christ-dishonouring divisions do not change that. But even so, he can only have fellowship with those who seek to walk in obedience to the word, and apart from evident evil. The Holy Spirit of God would certainly never seek to keep outward unity at the cost of inward holiness.
- One loaf. Commentators read the "one bread" as a single loaf, and Paul's argument rests on there being only one.
- One body. The loaf represents the body of Christ. Commentators differ on whether it also pictures the church, or whether the shared eating alone does that.
- All partake. "Partake" means common participation. Eating identifies you with what you eat, just as Israel's eating of the sacrifices made them participants in the altar.
- All believers. The "we" stretches past the room and the town to the whole body — every true believer on earth.
- One table. Owning that union at the table while feasting in idol temples is a contradiction. And unity is never kept at the cost of holiness.