When ye come therefore together into one place, it is not to eat [the] Lord's supper.
The Corinthians met week by week to break bread, yet Paul tells them their gathering was not the Lord's supper at all. So what makes a meal His supper and not just a meal Christians share?
One commentator finds in this verse the reason the first Christians met at all:
The first day of the week the disciples met together to break bread. This was evidently their custom... Other things were done; they spoke, taught, as Paul did, sang; but they met together to break bread. This is confirmed by 1 Corinthians 11:20, where the apostle says that the Corinthians did not really assemble for the Lord's supper, since each ate his own supper, not thinking of the others, but eating and drinking for his own pleasure. Now this shows clearly that the object of the assembly was the Lord's supper.
The phrase "the Lord's supper" marks ownership:
We gather together to His name, and the Lord has affixed His name to His supper. It is the Lord's table, and it is the Lord's supper in a special way. The original expression is such that it shows the supper belongs peculiarly to Him. His name is upon it as being His own supper, just as the first of the week is distinguished as the Lord's day.
People once thought Christians invented the word behind "the Lord's." Later discoveries showed otherwise:
People once supposed that the word kuriakon (compare kuriake, used of the Lord's Day in Revelation 1:10) was coined for this purpose. But we now know that the word belonged to the everyday Greek of that period. It was used to mean "imperial," or "royal."
At Corinth the meeting had sunk to the level of an ordinary meal:
The text shows that the Corinthians clearly confused the Lord's Supper with an ordinary meal, or put it on the same level as one. Some came who were hungry and ate their fill. Others were thirsty and drank too much. The more prosperous among them showed their status all too clearly and ate more than the others. Moreover, it appears that each one came when it suited him... They failed to tell the difference between the Lord's Supper and a normal meal. Paul describes this as eating and drinking unworthily.
Paul's contrast is between the Lord's supper and "his own supper." The problem sat deeper than the food on the table:
The Corinthians came together, and the result was that they ate their own supper. They brought their own food and their wretched selves with them. "Self" was prominent in their minds the whole time they were together. And though they made the usual motions with their mouths, the hearts of many were far from the Lord.
The failure was not in where they sat, but in what they had forgotten:
Never forget this: you can be at the Lord's Table and still fail completely to take part in the Lord's Supper... Selfishness, and forgetting what the supper means, had thrown them into such disorder that they turned this solemn occasion into a feast. So what they ate was their own supper, not the Lord's Supper. They had cut the bread and wine off from almost all connection with the body and blood of Christ.
So what does it mean to eat the supper?
Though professing to do so, the Corinthians did not eat the Lord's supper. So we conclude that taking the Lord's supper does not mean simply eating the bread and drinking the wine. It means entering into the truth of all its deep meaning. It is not a question of doctrine, but of the affections. The simplicity of the description is most striking. The newest believer can easily understand it. Yet the oldest believer cannot reach the bottom of it.
The affections need an object, and He named it Himself:
When we come to the Supper, we do not come to a mere ceremony. We do not sit down to perform an empty ritual. We come to remember a Person. "Do this," He said, "in remembrance of ME." If at the cross the "YOU" filled His thoughts, at the Supper the "ME" must fill ours... the personal element eclipses all else.
- His purpose. The first disciples met to break bread. Speaking, teaching and singing happened around that centre.
- His name. The supper carries His name because it belongs to Him, just like the Lord's day, the first day of the week.
- His supper displaced. At Corinth each one ate his own supper; the meal turned ordinary, and self, not Christ, filled their minds.
- His verdict. A church can sit at the Lord's table and still hear that what it eats is not the Lord's supper.
- His person. Eating it is a matter of the affections, not of going through the act. Remembering Him gives the supper its character.
For each one in eating takes his *own* supper before [others], and one is hungry and another drinks to excess.
The Corinthians met to eat the Lord's Supper. Paul says that is not what they were eating at all. Each one took his own food first, and the gap between rich and poor showed at the table. How did a memorial of Christ's death sink this low? And what does it warn us about our own meetings?
Paul's rebuke turns on one small word: "own."
How very marked the distinction between "the Lord's supper" and "his own supper"! Does it not strike you, dear friend? The first holds the grand idea of the whole body. The second is a miserable, selfish individualism. We cannot eat "the Lord's supper" with spiritual understanding unless we hold in our hearts the blessed truth of the whole body and every precious member of it. In short, when we eat "the Lord's supper," we think of Christ and His beloved members. When we eat "our own supper," we are occupied with self and its interests.
The trouble started at a shared meal run on Greek social custom:
At these love-feasts they each brought their fare as at the festive shared meal (the eranos) of the Greeks. This was, in fact, a contribution-meal. What a descent from Christianity to pagan practice, when each would bring his own! So the rich came with plenty, and the poor had little or nothing to bring. When they came together for these feasts, selfishness marked them, not love. Those who had plenty soon proved how easy it is to have too much, and those who were poor felt it on these occasions.
The love-feast lay behind the disorder. One writer explains what it was, and where it led:
The love-feast was a meal the early Christians ate in common. Its aim was to build friendship among people who are strangers and pilgrims here, called to suffer on earth and to spend eternity together in glory with the Lord... The Corinthians, however, had lost that sense of being strangers here. So the principle of Christian fellowship was destroyed at the very meal that should have displayed it. And as they selfishly forgot why they came together, God gave them up to the deeper sin of degrading the Lord's supper, which they ate at the same time, through the effects of their licence in eating and drinking.
Commentators differ on how far the excess went. Some hold that the word means just what it says:
We consider the older Authorized Version's rendering of 1 Corinthians 11:21 quite correct. The word it translates "drunken" comes from the same root as the word rendered "do not get drunk" in Ephesians 5:18. That proves very clearly that the wine they used was intoxicating.
Others read it as excess falling just short of that:
Paul told them to "wait for one another." Each had been eating his own supper before his neighbour's came, making a picnic of it, as they pleased. I do not know that they became actually drunk, but some were what one calls carousing. It is all easily understood if you remember that they were taking a meal before the Supper.
The greed was only a symptom. Underneath lay a failure to discern the body of Christ. The same root can bear quieter fruit in us:
They failed to discern the body of Christ, and so each one thought only of himself... Here self was allowed to bear fruit so glaring and so monstrous that it shocks our natural feelings. But suppose I come to the meetings and sit there thinking only of the chapter I am to read, the hymn I am to give out, the part I am to take. Then self is the hinge on which my thoughts turn in spiritual things, just as much as if I had brought my own supper and eaten it, like the Corinthians in natural things, while my poor brother who could not afford one went away without.
Paul's remedy is practical: hunger belongs at home, and the assembly belongs to God.
But if they wanted to eat and drink independently of others in the assembly, could they not do this in their homes? They were despising the Church of God, and shaming others less privileged than themselves.
Paul does not stop at rebuke. He gives an order later in the chapter:
They made that sacred memorial so much a private thing that it became a scene of unfitting disorder, everyone eating for himself. So the apostle instructs in verse 33: "So then, my brothers... wait for one another."
- Self — The whole verse turns on one word: "own." Self took Christ's place at the centre, and the rest followed.
- Sink — Worldly class lines took over a common meal, and the holiest feast on earth went down with it.
- Split — Forget the body, and believers eat side by side yet apart: one hungry, one full, none in fellowship.
- Scandal — Shaming the poor at that table was not just bad manners; it was despising the church of God itself.
- Solution — "Wait for one another." Eat at home if you are hungry; come to the Supper for Christ and for each other.
Have ye not then houses for eating and drinking? or do ye despise the assembly of God, and put to shame them who have not? What shall I say to you? shall I praise you? In this [point] I do not praise.
Paul has just described the Corinthians' gatherings: private meals, some going hungry while others drank too much. Now he asks four blunt questions, and each one names a different wrong — misuse of the meeting, contempt for God's assembly, shame heaped on the poor, and praise he cannot give.
The trouble grew out of a shared meal held alongside the breaking of bread. One writer traces the collapse to class distinctions taking over that meal.
The love-feast was a meal the early Christians shared in common. Its aim was to build social fellowship among people who are strangers and pilgrims here, called to suffer on earth and to spend eternity together in glory with the Lord. But the Corinthians had lost the sense that Christians are strangers here. They had let in from the world the rivalry of the schools over favourite teachers. In the same way they degraded even the love-feast by holding to class distinctions. The rich feasted on their own contributions to the meal, and made those who had nothing to give feel their poverty keenly.
The first question is not a ban on eating. It sends ordinary hunger home, because something else was happening where they met.
The supper was a memorial of Him in His death, but it was a memorial of Him, the living One. It sent their hearts back to Calvary, but He was present; this was the point. They had houses to eat and drink in. If the question was satisfying hunger and thirst, let them eat their food at home. But at the Supper the Lord was there, while His death and the manner of His death filled their hearts.
Paul does not say they despised each other. He says they despised the church of God — and that possessive is the hinge of the whole charge.
These thoughtless rioters had done a double wrong. They had despised not only God, but His Church... They had gathered, but where was the Lord? It is a solemn thing to come together in that Name. An assembly of Christian worshippers is not simply a voluntary association. To the eye it is made up of people, but it takes its name and true character from God, who is always in the middle of His gathered people... To behave badly in His congregation is to insult Him in His house... His house would have fed them well. But while that spirit ruled, the gathering was their own, not His.
The second half of the question ties back to the first. Shaming the poor is not a separate failure from despising the assembly, because of who belongs to it.
Apart from these excesses, the assembly was no place for social feasting. "Do you not have houses to eat and drink in?" asks the Apostle. Or were they putting the poor to shame and despising the assembly of God, which holds rich and poor together?... They brought the social element into the assembly, and it led to social distinctions and self-indulgence. So their coming together denied in practice both the Lord's Supper and the assembly of God.
Paul asks what he should say, then answers himself. Refusing praise goes against his own wish for them.
They were a spectacle of greed. What made it more blatant: those who had money were the worse offenders, despising the church of God and putting the poor to shame. With all his desire to praise the Corinthians, in this the apostle could not.
The Corinthian scene is crude enough to feel remote. One writer finds the same root in a far more respectable form.
The moral root of the disorder was this: they failed to discern the body of Christ, and so each was occupied with himself... Here they let self produce fruit so glaring and so monstrous that it shocks our natural feelings. But suppose I come to the meetings and sit there, thinking only of the chapter I am to read, the hymn I am to give out, the part I am to take. Then self is just as much the hinge on which my thoughts and worries turn in spiritual things. It would be no different in natural things if, like the Corinthians, I brought my own supper and ate it, while my poor brother who could not afford this went away without.
- Self is the root. Each took his own supper first. Failing to discern the body of Christ leaves everyone busy with himself.
- Self despises. Bad manners here are contempt for God. The assembly takes its name and character from Him, and He is present in the middle of it.
- Self shames. The assembly holds rich and poor together. Class distinctions at the table humiliate the people it embraces.
- Self empties the Supper. Their gathering denied in practice both the Lord's Supper and the assembly of God. The form stayed; the reality was gone.
- Self forfeits praise. Paul wanted to commend them and could not. Ordinary hunger belongs at home. Where the Lord is present, His death fills the heart.
For *I* received from the Lord, that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, in the night in which he was delivered up, took bread,
Paul answers the Corinthians' disorderly meals by going back to where the supper came from, and he names his source. Two questions follow: why did the Lord give this to a man who was not in the room, and why tie His memorial to the night of betrayal?
Paul was not in the room the night the Lord gave the supper. He could have asked those who were there. Instead the account came to him from heaven.
Thinking about this special revelation adds to the seriousness of the subject. Paul, the chief of the apostles, was not in the supper room with the eleven before the crucifixion. But the Lord spoke to him directly from heaven, so that he heard from His own lips in glory that those who loved Him were to keep this supper.
The way it reached him shows how much the Lord values it, and who He meant it for.
Does this not show what the Lord thinks of the supper, and how He values our remembrance of Himself and our answer to His love? His own heart of love, which brought Him down into death, gives this revelation to Paul, the apostle of the Gentiles. Jews might otherwise have said that the supper was only for Jews, since it was tied to the Passover. But the Lord gives it to him as a distinct and direct message to the Gentiles.
Paul received a special revelation about the supper, but not about baptism. Commentators see a reason for that.
It is interesting to notice that Paul received a revelation of the supper, not of baptism. He was baptized like anyone else, and not even by an apostle, in case anyone twisted that into making him dependent on the twelve apostles. He was baptized by a simple disciple, Ananias… But the supper is the memorial of Christ, and especially of His death, and it is now bound up with the body of Christ… Paul was the chosen vessel who would make known the mystery of Christ and the church. So it seemed good to the Lord that he should receive a special revelation of His supper, the standing sign of its unity and public witness of its communion.
The Corinthians' table had gone wrong. Notice how Paul corrects it: he does not argue with them.
The only remedy for disorder at the Lord's supper — even in the days of the apostles, note — was to go back to the original institution: its spirit, its meaning, its orderly simplicity. Paul did not argue on the subject. In verses 23 to 27, he simply goes back to what the Lord Himself had instituted… Any "order", however grand or beautiful to human eyes, is disorder in God's eyes if it is not God's order.
Two things in the verse repay a closer look: the name Paul gives Him, and the night he names.
The revelation came to him about "the Lord Jesus" — not Jesus only, but the One Who is the exalted Lord in the highest place in glory. When was it? On "the same night in which he was delivered up" (as it should read). That is a much wider thought than the rendering "betrayed", which limits it to Judas' treachery. What does it involve? That was the hour when everything in man's heart came out, when all the wickedness of man rose to its height. There was the treachery of Judas, the weakness of Peter and of His disciples, the hatred of the scribes and priests, the cruel mockery of the soldiers, and the unrighteousness of Pilate, who three times protested His innocence and finally gave Him up to be slain. Behind it all was the power and energy of Satan.
The Lord chose that night on purpose, and the choice carries His message.
No tongue can tell how the Lord felt the betrayal of one of His own! He felt it keenly; but, feeling it, He took the bread and there and then instituted the Supper. What did that mean? To me it meant this. You may not be able to trust anyone else, but you may trust Me. If treachery springs up in this inner circle, who can you look to? My love will not fail you… In days of darkness and nights of treachery and betrayal you will find Me always the same.
With the cross hours away, His attention was not fixed on His own ordeal.
We might have thought that the work the Lord Jesus was about to do would have filled all His thoughts and taken all His attention. But no; He thinks of the love of His disciples, and longs to draw that love, so ready to wander, back to Himself, again and again.
- Received — Paul got the supper straight from the Lord in glory, not from the eleven who were there. The source shows how much the Lord values it.
- Revealed — the Lord revealed the supper to Paul, not baptism. Paul carried the truth of Christ and the church, and the supper is the standing sign of that unity.
- Reaching — it came through the apostle to the Gentiles, so no one could call it a Jewish rite tied to the Passover.
- Remedy — the cure for disorder at the table is a return to the original, not argument. Order that is not God's order is disorder in His eyes.
- Remembrance — He fixed His memorial to the night of betrayal. In every later night of treachery, His own can rest in a love that does not change.
and having given thanks broke [it], and said, This is my body, which [is] for you this do in remembrance of me.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
In like manner also the cup, after having supped, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood this do, as often as ye shall drink [it], in remembrance of me.
The Lord speaks these words over the cup at the end of a meal. They tie a covenant promised to Israel centuries earlier to His own blood. Why name a covenant here, and why repeat the call to remember Him?
The Lord did not drink the cup He handed over, and what He says over it is a command, not a suggestion.
What the Lord lays down is not only a permission; it is also a command... So too with the cup. Supper was ended, and with it the Master's share in the former things. He hands us the new covenant of life and peace, for each of us to accept, in this new and special cup of blessing. The Master would not drink it... But He cannot drink the cup of the new covenant. His blood is not shed for Himself, but for His saints.
Calling the cup a covenant is a figure of speech. The covenant it names is one a prophet had announced long before.
A "cup" is a common picture in Scripture, where the cup stands for what is in it. "This cup," that is, the wine, "is the new covenant in My blood." The Lord is pointing here in particular to the new covenant promised long ago through Jeremiah. God will make it with His repentant earthly people. Then their sins will be put away, and Jehovah will write His laws in their hearts (Jer. 31:31-34). The foundation blessings of that future covenant with Israel are ours now through the blood of Christ.
Jeremiah announced the covenant but left much unsaid. In the upper room the Lord filled in what was missing for the Twelve, His closest disciples.
At last, in the upper room in Jerusalem, the Lord spoke of it to just the Twelve. He spoke of it in a way that showed heaven had not forgotten it... But He added two important things to what Jeremiah had revealed. First, the covenant would rest on the blood of a sacrifice. Second, that blood was to be His own.
The covenant still awaits Israel. The Lord has already shed the blood it rests on.
The Lord's supper then is to remind us of Christ, of His death; not of our sins but of our sins forgiven and ourselves loved. It is in no way the old covenant of condemnation. It is the new covenant: God known in grace, wrongdoing forgiven, and sins remembered no more. It has not yet been made with the houses of Israel, settled for ever in the land under the reign of Messiah. But the blood that is its foundation has been shed, and we who believe, Jew or Gentile, have it in spirit, not in letter... Of this the cup especially is the pledge.
The Lord did not hand out one emblem but two, and their separation is itself the message.
No mystery surrounds this feast such as men delight to import into it. All is simplicity. It is the simple, but touching, memorial of the death of Christ. The bread speaks of His body — Himself. The cup speaks of His blood — His work. The symbols of the body and the blood are separate, speaking of a dead Christ.
The wine is not blood still flowing in a living body.
And so with the cup "after the supper," who could hesitate about what that cup set forth? He Himself says, "In My blood." It is not the blood in the body but apart, separated from it — that is, in death.
The Lord gives the same instruction over the cup as over the bread, and He points to Himself.
Notice how the instruction, "This do in remembrance of Me", is repeated for the cup as well as for the loaf. The Lord Himself is speaking, so He seeks the remembrance of Himself — "of Me." It is very important to remember that the Lord Jesus Christ is the central figure of this Supper. He is there!
A church can keep the ceremony and still forget the Person.
They had observed the appointed ceremony, but had forgotten Him. They shared the bread and the wine, but the Lord Himself was not before them. They thought only of themselves and of their "own supper".
The verse sets no gap between one Supper and the next.
At the institution of the Supper, the Lord Himself made no restrictions... He laid down nothing about how often to take part. Later He gave a special revelation to the apostle to the Gentiles, and even there He did not fix the gap between one feast of remembrance and the next. His silence on this point tells us with the greatest certainty that He has left it to the love and faithfulness of our hearts.
- Blood — the covenant Jeremiah promised needed a sacrifice, and the Lord said the sacrifice would be His own.
- Cup — the wine stands for that blood, poured out and separate from the body; it sets a death before us, not a living Christ.
- Covenant — its terms are grace, forgiveness, and sins remembered no more, and the cup pledges that its foundation is already laid.
- Reach — the covenant itself still awaits Israel, yet its first blessings are ours now through the blood of Christ.
- Remembrance — the Lord repeats it over the cup and points to Himself: never keep the form and forget Him, and keep it as often as love decides.
For as often as ye shall eat this bread, and drink the cup, ye announce the death of the Lord, until he come.
One simple act holds the church's whole life between the cross and the return of Christ: eating bread and drinking a cup. Paul's comment on it raises three questions. What does the act announce? Who hears it? How long does it last?
Two ordinary words stand together here. One writer will not hurry past them:
You could not find two words that mean so much when put together: the death of the Lord. How much is held in this — that He who is called the Lord had died! What love! what purposes! what efficacy! what results!
Those results reach both ways — back to blessings made sure, and forward to a Lord who kept every right through death:
"The Lord's death." Such words invite meditation; they take us back to the past. "Till He come." This carries us on in thought to the future... The Lord had died, but the Lord will return; and He has lost none of His rights by death... by it all our blessings for eternity have been purchased, and are put beyond the reach of uncertainty.
The supper sets before us a death already finished. One writer presses this against any idea that the sacrifice is repeated:
Note well that it is not even a dying Christ, but a dead Christ. Many wrongly teach that His sacrifice is repeated again and again. That is not so. He is a dead Christ: "for by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified" (Heb. 10:14).
Yet the One remembered is not the One we now deal with:
We remember what is not present, never what is. And what we remember is in the past... Clearly the Lord's death is not a present thing, but past: "death no longer has dominion over him." We remember a dead Lord. But the Lord we deal with now is living.
The announcement belongs to the gathered company, not to one person speaking. So no one at the table is a spectator:
Whenever the children of God take the Supper as the Lord set it up, they announce together the central truth of Christianity — "the Lord's death until He comes."... The death of the Lord is remembered there. The believers announce His death every time they take the Supper. It is true of those whose voice is not heard in the assembly, yes, even if some were unable to speak.
A proclamation has hearers. One of them is the world outside, and the message is not comfortable for it:
Showing the Lord's death until He comes is not only a memorial; it is a testimony to the world that they crucified the Lord. The church at the Lord's supper publicly witnesses to the world's sin and its condemnation... For it is no less a witness of the patience of God as of the world's sin. So long as the church remains here, the forgiveness of sins through His blood is preached.
Preaching is not the only testimony to that death:
The Gospel proclaims His death and its wonderful results, whereas His Supper furnishes the lasting and standing witness to its reality.
The phrase sets the supper between two events and settles the question of whether it has expired:
The central event in God's history of the world is the death of Christ upon the cross... The next great event is the Lord's second coming. The Lord's supper connects the two, standing between the past event and the future one... The Lord has not yet come, so those who neglect the supper are without legitimate excuse.
The end point is not our death but His arrival. That makes the hope a shared one:
As regards the Lord's supper, it is said, "you proclaim the Lord's death [not, till death, but] until he comes," 1 Cor. 11:26. There is the basis of our common hope — the death of Christ. We go on showing this until He comes again to receive us to Himself. If I think of death, of my going to be with Christ, I am thinking about myself. I shall be happy, but that is not the whole church glorified.
The Lord fixed the end point but not the rhythm. Writers take that silence as trust:
His silence on this point tells us with full certainty that He has left this to the love and faithfulness of our hearts. We answer His own expressed desire by eating bread and drinking wine as often as circumstances allow... In Jerusalem at the first the saints were able to break bread at home daily. In Troas the custom was to gather for that purpose on the first day of the week.
- Announce — the supper is not silent remembering. The whole company declares a death, and every believer at the table shares in it, even without speaking.
- A dead Lord — we remember a finished death, not a repeated sacrifice. The One who died is the One who now lives.
- To the world — the supper witnesses to the world's guilt in crucifying Him. It also witnesses to God's patience, while forgiveness is still preached.
- Until He comes — the end point is His return, not our death. So the hope belongs to the whole church, not to me alone.
- As often as — He set no interval. He left the frequency to our love, and the supper ends only when He comes.
So that whosoever shall eat the bread, or drink the cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty in respect of the body and of the blood of the Lord.
Paul gives this warning right after retelling how the Lord set up the supper. It lands on a church whose gatherings had turned disorderly. Older translations say "unworthily," and that word has frightened many readers away from the table. Does it describe the person coming, or the way they come?
The warning falls on conduct, not on the character of the one eating. Many readers have taken it the other way.
Paul condemns the way in which the supper was observed. Some people have misunderstood this text and have needlessly stayed away from the Lord's supper for years. They say, "I am not worthy to go; it says in the Bible I ought not to go." But they have not read the passage carefully. The verse does not speak about unworthy persons eating. It speaks about the unworthy way in which some people ate.
If personal fitness were the test, the table would stand empty.
If eating the Supper depended on personal worthiness, no one on earth could take part. No one is worthy in himself to share in the Lord's Supper. We are only worthy in this sense: Christ has taken us in our lost condition and cleansed us by His blood. That fitted us for His presence and gave us the right to take part in the Supper. This right is the result of what He has done for us, and not of any personal worthiness.
Why does careless handling of the bread and the cup count as guilt against Christ Himself?
Suppose someone threw dirt at my mother's picture, or treated it with contempt. He would be guilty in my eyes, not of disrespect to a mere painting, but to my mother, and I would greatly resent it. Now some in the church at Corinth were doing something like that. They were treating the Lord's Supper as a common meal, or worse. They did not recognise its sacred character. It was sacred for two reasons: because of what it represented, and because the Lord Himself set it up as a remembrance of Himself in death.
The problem at Corinth was not who came to the table, but how they came.
It is not a question of allowing unworthy persons to take part. Low as the Corinthians had sunk, they had not fallen that far. But they were in danger of reducing its observance to a form for themselves. They were in danger of taking part in the supper without exercise of soul — either about their own ways, or about the unspeakable love of the One who was reminding them of His death for them... To eat or drink it as an ordinary meal, or a common thing, without reflection or self-judgment, is to eat and drink "unworthily." And it is worse when a Christian does it. Of all men he should feel most what he owes the Lord.
A believer can fail the same way today, taking the Supper while going on in sin he will not judge.
It would show that he did not discern the Lord's body. He did not see in the death of the Lord the judgment of the evil he was committing, or the love that led the Lord to bear that judgment — though by eating the Supper he claimed to see both.
One writer weighs the Greek word for judgment, which older translations turned into "damnation."
The supper, then, was no common meal. To take part in it unworthily was no light matter. Whoever did so was guilty of the body and blood of the Lord — that is, liable to judgment because of the slight put on Him. Such a person ate and drank judgment to himself — judgment (krima), not damnation (katakrima). He did not discern the Lord's body, that is, what the bread stood for... Yet there was grace in the Lord's dealing with them. He dealt with them this way because they were true Christians, so that they would not be condemned with the world.
Paul's remedy is self-examination. Where is it meant to lead?
The Lord would have His own to come, but not with carelessness of spirit or levity... Still He invites all, even while He urges the testing of our ways. Self-judgment is with a view to coming, not to staying away.
Another writer wrote this to a reader who felt unfit to come.
The word says, "Let a man examine himself, and so let him eat." It does not say, "Let him absent himself." It is unjudged evil that affects the assembly. A person who habitually judges himself will never prove a hindrance to the assembly.
- Manner — The warning is not about unworthy people. It is about an unworthy way of eating: treating the memorial as a common meal, with no self-judgment.
- Memorial — The bread and cup stand for His body and blood. Contempt shown to them is contempt shown to Him, as dirt thrown at a portrait insults the person.
- Merit — No one qualifies by personal worthiness. The right to come rests on Christ, who cleansed us by His blood.
- Measure — The outcome is judgment, not damnation. The Lord chastens His own so they will not be condemned with the world.
- Move — Self-examination should bring you to the table, not keep you away. Paul tells the believer to examine himself and then eat.
But let a man prove himself, and thus eat of the bread, and drink of the cup.
Paul has just warned against taking the bread and the cup carelessly. Now he gives the remedy. It raises two questions Christians still ask. What am I looking for when I examine myself? And what should I do with what I find?
Paul is not asking you to hunt for proof that you belong to Christ. He is asking about the spirit in which you come to the table.
"Let a person examine himself," not to see whether he is a Christian, as some say. We should be sure of our salvation. But even then the Lord means us to search our hearts seriously and to question our souls every time, so that we see in what spirit and state we come to the Lord's Supper.
Notice what Paul does not offer as the outcome of the test: a straight choice between eating and staying away.
1 Corinthians 11 is not about the basic question of whether we take part. It is about the way we take part. After examining himself, a person is not left choosing between eating and staying away. The verse says, "and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup" (v. 28). The person in view is a believer who should, and indeed must, examine himself closely. Can he eat in a worthy manner? Or are there things in his walk that he must put right?
The little word "so" ties the two halves together. The believer tests himself and then comes. His right to come never rested on his own record.
Each one is to put himself to the test, and so eat and drink. The Lord wants His own to come, but not carelessly or lightly... He still invites everyone, even as He presses us to examine our ways. Self-judgment aims at coming, not at staying away. For these are people whom grace counts worthy. Whatever their past, whatever their own unworthiness, they have been washed, sanctified and justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.
Some avoid the exercise because they expect it to disqualify them. The verse answers that fear directly.
But some may say: I dare not examine myself. If I did, I would find such shocking things that I could not go to the Lord's table, because I would find myself so unfit. That is not what we find here... When self-examination puts us in the searching light of God's most holy presence, we will uncover much that we grieve over before the Lord. But should we stay away from His supper because of that? Certainly not. We judge ourselves, we condemn in His sight everything we have found that is against His mind, and then we eat. And so these precious words follow: "But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged" (v. 31).
Others stay away because of someone else's failure. That reasoning collapses on inspection:
Another person's fault should not keep me away. If it is a good reason for one person to stay away, it ought to stop everyone. Is the Lord to be forgotten because somebody deserves blame? Deal with the person at fault as Scripture directs, by rebuke or otherwise. But my place is to "do this in remembrance of Christ."
The examining is preparation. It is not something to do while the bread goes round.
This does not mean that while I sit at the Lord's table I should look into my own heart. That would be a poor, miserable occupation. I can do that at home. A person ought to examine or test himself. That means judging himself over what he has done and what he is capable of doing. We may be so pleased with ourselves that we forget how easily we go wrong without God's grace.
Paul says examine himself — the person, not just a list of failures.
Remember this. The Table is spread on the ground of finished redemption, but we are to gather round it in the power of personal holiness. Personal holiness does not save us, but we are saved to it — as Christians, grace gives us the right to take part, yet we must examine and judge not merely our ways, but ourselves. Christ was judged for our sins on the cross, and we are urged to judge ourselves, and then proclaim His death. We believe this holy work of self-judgment is deep, earnest and habitual. It is not a formal, wordy confession of the lips on Sunday morning, covering the sins and follies of the past week, soon followed by the sins and follies of the next.
- Examine — the question. Not "am I a Christian?" but "in what spirit and state am I coming?"
- Examine — the depth. Judge yourself, not just your ways. Make it a habit, not a Sunday-morning formality.
- Examine — the place. Do it at home beforehand; the table is for remembering Him, not for staring inward.
- And so eat — the direction. The verse never offers "examine and stay away." Self-judgment aims at coming.
- And so eat — the ground. You are fit because you have been washed, sanctified and justified in the name of the Lord Jesus. Neither your own faults nor another's cancel the invitation.
For [the] eater and drinker eats and drinks judgment to himself, not distinguishing the body.
In the verse before, Paul warns that eating or drinking in an unworthy way makes a person guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Here he names that unworthiness — a failure to discern the body — and that raises two questions: what judgment does he mean, and what is the "body"?
Older English versions translated the word here as "damnation." That one choice has frightened believers away from the table for generations. Commentators say plainly that the word means something else.
The translators have brought in a word and an idea of their own, and it is plainly wrong. They dared to say that "the one who eats and drinks unworthily eats and drinks damnation to himself." It is not true. God says, "he eats and drinks judgment to himself."
The "body" here is not the church. It is what the bread stands for: the Lord's own body given in death. To discern it is to tell this meal apart from any other.
"Discerning the body" has no reference to grasping the church's unity or nature. It means only distinguishing between an ordinary meal and that supper which brings before us the body of Christ given for us. It is the memorial of His death that the apostle presses here, not our union with Him. Not to discern the (Lord's) body is to treat this supper as a common thing.
Discerning is not a mental exercise about symbols. It is faith feeding on a Person.
I discern then the body of the Lord — but the body of the Lord given, His blood shed, His death! It is not an ordinary meal, or a simple act of remembrance, if you like. It is an institution Christ has given to His own. They are not meant to find in the elements anything other than the bread and the fruit of the vine. But their faith may feed on Jesus in the sweetest way, by the power of the Holy Spirit — on what He has been for them when He died on the cross.
Many read this verse as a test of personal fitness and conclude they are disqualified.
People usually apply the word "unworthily" here to the persons doing the act, when it refers to the way the act is done. The apostle never doubted that the Corinthians were Christians. He looked on them as saints, and as saints he urged them to keep the Lord's Supper in a worthy manner. He never raises the question of anyone but true Christians being there.
The remedy Paul gives is to examine yourself and then eat.
This does not mean that when I am sitting at the Lord's table I am to look into my own heart, which would be a poor, wretched occupation. I can do that at home. A person ought to examine or prove himself. It means judging himself about what he has done and what he is capable of doing… So, "let a person examine himself" — and not stay away, but come and eat of this bread and drink of this cup.
Careless remembering on Sunday grows out of what filled the heart during the week.
What we are during the week we will be while at the Lord's table. What our heart has been occupied with throughout the past six days it will also be occupied with on the first day of the week while at His table. If we have been careless and indifferent toward the Lord during the week, we are bound to be careless and indifferent toward Him at His table. We will fail to discern His body and His blood in the true sense in the emblems of the Supper. So we will eat and drink judgment to ourselves.
At Corinth this judgment had already begun.
There were many weak and sick among them, and a good many had died. So the judgment of the Lord had to be on them — not because they were not His own, but because they were. As the apostle says, when we are judged in this way we are disciplined by the Lord, so that we may not be condemned along with the world. He draws the sharpest line between this present judgment and the judgment to come. Yet this present judgment is a most serious and awful thing. Love inflicts it — a love which, because it is holy and because it is love, must inflict what is painful to inflict.
- Judgment. The word is judgment, not damnation. It is the Lord dealing with His own now, not the sentence that falls on the world.
- Discern. To discern the body is to tell this bread apart from common food, seeing in it the Lord's body given in death.
- Manner. The unworthiness lies in how a believer eats, not in whether he is good enough to eat.
- Examine. Judge yourself first, and the Lord need not judge you. This test sends you to the table, not away from it.
- Chastening. Where self-judgment is missing, love steps in to correct, so that His people are not condemned with the world.