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.