The Lord’s Supper: How and Why
1 Corinthians 11:17-34
One of the things I hope you came to see in our study of John 6 was the meaning of the powerful metaphor Jesus used when He said, “I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world,” (6:51). Jesus made it clear that when He talked about eating His flesh and drinking His blood it was a picture of what it means to believe in His atoning death for our sins.
He was saying we would need to acknowledge that He was God in human flesh and appropriate His sacrificial death on our behalf by believing in Him. And as I said when we studied those verses, John 6 is not about the Lord’s Supper, but the Lord’s Supper is about what is described in John 6. It is about believing in Jesus for the forgiveness of sins and eternal life.
Now before we return to the Gospel of John next time, I thought it would be good for us to celebrate the ordinance of the Lord’s Supper together. Our church observes two ordinances, two formal religious rites that Jesus ordained or commanded for us to keep. They are baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Both of these ordinances are very meaningful for us as believers in Jesus Christ.
Before we celebrate the Lord’s Supper today, I would like to put this ordinance in its biblical context and focus on why and how we keep it. I hope that by understanding the Lord’s Supper better, it will become more meaningful and worshipful for you.
Using an outline I borrowed from John Piper I want to look at 1 Corinthians 11 to give a biblical foundation for the Lord’s Supper. Paul gives these instructions about the Lord’s Supper because the church at Corinth was disrespecting the Lord’s Table by some of their ungodly attitudes and actions.
Our text sets out for us six things that will help us to understand how and why we celebrate the Lord’s Supper. You will see them in the outline in your bulletin. 1) the historical origin; 2) the believing participants; 3) the physical elements; 4) the mental action; 5) the spiritual meaning; and 6) the serious sacredness.
Listen to the whole passage. It is a long section and rather than doing a verse-by-verse exposition, I want to consider what Paul teaches here under those six headings.
17 Now in giving these instructions I do not praise [you], since you come together not for the better but for the worse.
18 For first of all, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you, and in part I believe it.
19 For there must also be factions among you, that those who are approved may be recognized among you.
20 Therefore when you come together in one place, it is not to eat the Lord’s Supper.
21 For in eating, each one takes his own supper ahead of [others]; and one is hungry and another is drunk.
22 What! Do you not have houses to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and shame those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you in this? I do not praise [you].
23 For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you: that the Lord Jesus on the [same] night in which He was betrayed took bread;
24 and when He had given thanks, He broke [it] and said, “Take, eat; this is My body which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of Me.”
25 In the same manner [He] also [took] the cup after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood. This do, as often as you drink [it], in remembrance of Me.”
26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death till He comes.
27 Therefore whoever eats this bread or drinks [this] cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.
28 But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup.
29 For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body.
30 For this reason many [are] weak and sick among you, and many sleep.
31 For if we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged.
32 But when we are judged, we are chastened by the Lord, that we may not be condemned with the world.
33 Therefore, my brethren, when you come together to eat, wait for one another.
34 But if anyone is hungry, let him eat at home, lest you come together for judgment. And the rest I will set in order when I come.
First let us consider,
1. The Historical Origin of the Lord’s Supper
All the Gospels record the events of Jesus and His disciples the night He was betrayed. The Gospel of John doesn’t report the eating and drinking of the Last Supper, but instead he records Jesus washing the disciples’ feet and His teaching to His disciples that evening. Hours before Jesus was betrayed by Judas, dragged away by soldiers, judged by the high priests, condemned by Pilot, and crucified by Rome, Jesus sat down with His disciples to observe the Passover meal.
Exodus 12 describes the final chapter in God’s miraculous rescue of Israel from slavery in Egypt: the plague of the death of the firstborn. For the Angel of the Lord who brought death to pass over a household and spare them from the plague, a family had to put blood from a sacrificed lamb on the doorframe of their house and eat the Passover meal as the Lord had prescribed. This lamb and the meal of unleavened bread became the abiding symbol of Israel’s deliverance from bondage. Through Moses, God instructed the Jews to observe the Passover feast annually in remembrance of God’s deliverance. This is the meal which Jesus was celebrating with His disciples that evening.
The Gospels of Matthew (26:26ff), Mark (14:22ff), and Luke (22:14ff) all report this Passover meal, the Last Supper that Jesus had with His disciples the night before He died. Each describes Jesus giving thanks or blessing the bread and the cup, and giving them to His disciples saying that the bread is His body and the cup is the blood of the covenant, or the new covenant in His blood. In Luke 22:19, Jesus says, “Do this in remembrance of me.”
But possibly the earliest written account of the Lord’s Supper actually comes from Paul here in 1 Corinthians. We see here that the church did what Jesus said: They reenacted that supper in remembrance of Jesus and His death. Paul labels this meal “the Lord’s Supper” (1 Cor. 11:20) because it was instituted by the Lord Jesus, and because it celebrates the memory of the Lord’s death. Listen again to how Paul describes it 1 Corinthians 11:23-24, “For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you: that the Lord Jesus on the [same] night in which He was betrayed took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke [it] and said, “Take, eat; this is My body which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of Me.”” Paul himself, who wasn’t at the final supper as the other apostles were, received instructions about it from the risen Lord Jesus.
So the historical origin of the Lord’s Supper is the Passover, that last supper that Jesus ate with His disciples the night before He was crucified. The actions and meaning of it are all rooted in what Jesus said and did on that last night. Jesus Himself is the origin of the Lord’s Supper. He commanded us to observe it. And He is the focus and content of it.
Next let’s consider,
2. The Believing Participants of the Lord’s Supper
The Lord’s Supper is an act of the church, the gathered family of those who believe in Jesus. It is not for unbelievers. Unbelievers may be present—indeed, as with all our worship services, we welcome them to be present—there is nothing secretive about the Lord’s Supper. It is a public act of worship by the gathered church. In fact, in 1 Cor. 11:26, Paul says, “For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death till He comes.” The Lord’s Supper is for proclamation of Christ’s death. We are openly proclaiming the gospel in the Lord’s Supper. Just as preaching is the verbal proclamation of the Gospel, so the Lord’s Supper is the visual proclamation of the Gospel. Our worship service gives us the opportunity to keep these two presentations together, both the verbal proclamation and the visual proclamation.
But those who participate are believers. Notice in our text, five times in 1 Corinthians 11, Paul speaks of the church “coming together” when the Lord’s Supper is eaten. Verse 17: “Now in giving these instructions I do not praise you, since you come together not for the better but for the worse.” Verse 18a: “For first of all, when you come together as a church.” Verse 20: “Therefore when you come together in one place.” Verse 33: “Therefore, my brethren, when you come together to eat, wait for one another.” Verse 34: “But if anyone is hungry, let him eat at home, lest you come together for judgment.”
And notice the word “church” in verse 18: “when you come together as a church.” This is the body of Christ, the assembly of the followers of Jesus, those who have trusted Jesus alone for the forgiveness of their sins, and for the hope of eternal life. These are Christians. So the participants in the Lord’s Supper are the gathered believers in Jesus.
This means that if you have not yet personally trusted in Jesus Christ to forgive your sins and give you the gift of eternal life, you should not take the Lord’s Supper. Just reverently let it pass you by. Likewise children who have not yet professed personal faith in Jesus Christ and followed Him in believer’s baptism should not take the Lord’s Supper. We are not trying to keep anything from you. When you are old enough to trust in Christ to save you from sin and you personally put your trust in Jesus Christ, then you may take the Lord’s Supper with us in worship. Until then, it is your job to watch and wait.
Our Lord’s Supper service is open to all present, including children, who: 1) Are trusting in Jesus Christ alone for the forgiveness of their sins and the gift of eternal life: 2) Are following Christ Jesus as Lord and intending to obey His commandments (including believers baptism).
I might also mention in passing that the New Testament provides no blueprint for the frequency of participating in the Lord’s Supper. It was instituted as part of an annual event (the Passover). Acts 2:46 records that in the Jerusalem church all who believed were “continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house.” The breaking of bread may refer to the Lord’s Supper. In Acts 20:7 Luke uses similar words that Paul does here to describe how the disciples “on the first day of the week … came together to break bread.” Paul refers to the Lord’s Supper in a timeless way here in 1 Corinthians 11 (as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, 11:26).
You may come from a tradition where the church participates in the Lord’s Supper weekly or at some other interval. Our church by-laws dictate that “the ordinance of the Lord’s Supper shall be observed by the church at least once a quarter.” I have tried recently to have us celebrate it monthly. We want to do it often enough to correspond to its proper importance in the Word of God, but we don’t want to do it so often that we become callused to its meaning for us and it simply becomes an empty ritual.
So we have seen the historical context and the believing participants in the Lord’s Supper. Third let’s look at,
3. The Physical Elements of the Lord’s Supper
The physical elements of the Lord’s Supper are the bread and the cup. It is not meant to be a big meal to fill your stomach. It’s not even meant to be a snack that will tide you over until lunch. It’s not about the food at all. In verse 22 Paul reprimands the church saying, “What! Do you not have houses to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and shame those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you in this? I do not praise [you].” It’s not about the food, it’s about worship.
So the meal is very simple, just the bread and the cup. Verses 23b-25, “the Lord Jesus on the [same] night in which He was betrayed took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke [it] and said, “Take, eat; this is My body which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of Me. In the same manner [He] also [took] the cup after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood. This do, as often as you drink [it], in remembrance of Me.”’”
Nothing is specified about the kind of bread or the way it is broken. We do know that when Jesus ate the last supper with His disciples it was the Passover meal they were eating (Matt. 26:17; Mark 14:12; Luke 22:1; John 13:1). This meal was associated with the Feast of the Unleavened Bread.
Jesus took that ancient feast and transformed it into a meal with new meaning when He instructed His disciples to eat of the bread and drink of the cup in remembrance of His death on their behalf. Therefore, Christ’s death has superseded the exodus from Egypt as the great redemptive event of our faith. Christians don’t recall the blood on the doorposts, but the blood shed at the cross. We don’t eat the flesh of a Passover lamb, but we eat the bread which pictures the body of Christ broken for us. The Lord’s Supper is a memorial of Christ Himself. He is our Passover and the unleavened bread now speaks of purity from sin. Listen to the picture Paul gives us in 1 Corinthians 5:7-8:
7 Therefore purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. 8 Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened [bread] of sincerity and truth.
Matthew, Mark, and Luke tell us what was in the cup when Jesus says: “But I say to you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in My Father’s kingdom,” (Matt. 26:29; cf. Mark 14:25; Luke 22:18). Jesus called it the “fruit of the vine.” That is why most churches use grape juice or wine in the Lord’s Supper.
These physical elements of bread and wine are not the literal body and blood of Jesus Christ, but they are symbols that should bring us to remember the death of Jesus on our behalf and how His death and resurrection has freed us from the bondage of sin and death.
This naturally leads us to point number four,
4. The Mental Action of the Lord’s Supper
The mental action of the participants of the Lord’s Supper is to remember Jesus and especially His work in dying for our sins. Verses 24 and 25 both repeat the words of Jesus that night: “Do this in remembrance of me.” As we eat the bread and drink from the cup, we are to do the mental act of remembering. That is, we are to consciously call to mind the person of Jesus as He once lived and died and rose again, and what His finished work on the cross means for the forgiveness for our sins.
Therefore, the mental action of the Lord’s Supper is a conscious directing of the mind back into history to Jesus and what we know about Him from the Bible. We are not thinking that the bread and cup actually become the literal body and blood of Christ. They remind us of His body and blood. We are not thinking that Christ is being sacrificed for us again in the Lord’s Supper. It is not in any way a new occurrence of the death of Christ as we eat and drink. Rather, it always memorializes the once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross.
The mental action is to remember, to “Do this in remembrance of Me.”
That brings us to,
5. The Spiritual Meaning of the Lord’s Supper
This is all important. There is nothing inherently spiritual about eating bread, drinking grape juice, or even in remembering. So for the Lord’s Supper to be what Jesus means for it to be, something more must be happening than only eating, drinking, and remembering. As with all our worship it must be observed by faith.
Paul helps us to grasp that meaning in the previous chapter, 1 Corinthians 10. In that chapter Paul is dealing with the problem of idolatry and participating in the worship of idols. As a basis of his argument to avoid idolatry, he uses the Lord’s Supper. He argues that idolatry should be avoided because of the meaning of the Lord’s Supper. Paul contends that Christians should not join in the feasts of idols because it is really fellowshipping with demons (1 Cor. 10:20) in the same way that participating in the Lord’s Table is fellowshipping with Christ.
Listen to what Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 10:16-17. As I read it, ask, “What does the word ‘communion’ mean here?”
16 The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? 17 For we, [though] many, are one bread [and] one body; for we all partake of that one bread.
The word communion in verse 16 means fellowship, sharing, participating (koinōnia) in the body and blood of Christ. And what does this communion mean? I think verse 18 gives us the clue because it uses a similar word, but compares it to what happens in the Jewish sacrifices: “Observe Israel after the flesh: Are not those who eat of the sacrifices partakers of the altar?” What does partaker or sharer in the altar mean? It means that they are sharing in or benefiting from what happened on the altar. Those who worship at the altar enjoy the spiritual benefits provided by the sacrifice.
So when believers eat the bread and drink the cup physically we do another kind of eating and drinking spiritually. We eat and drink—that is, we take into our lives—Christ and what happened on the cross. This is not some mystical or magical experience. Taking the Lord’s Supper does not impart God’s grace or gain us forgiveness or eternal life. The Bible is clear that we are saved by grace through faith and forgiveness of sins comes through believing in Christ’s atoning death.
The Lord’s Supper must be an exercise of faith. By faith—by trusting in all that God is for us in Jesus—we nourish ourselves with the benefits that Jesus obtained for us when He bled and died on the cross.
To use an illustration, if you see a photo of somebody you love who has died, it isn’t just a symbol, a picture. As soon as you look at the photo, the whole of that person is actualized in your mind. Right? All of a sudden, everything you know about that person is alive to you. Your mind and heart are flooded with reality. And what happens with communion is similar.
To partake of the elements actualizes Christ’s death; it makes it vivid; it makes it real; it intensifies my sensitivities to the reality of Christ dying for me. You see? It isn’t just a symbol; it is a symbol that is activated by the Spirit of God by faith to make Christ’s death a living reality to me. That’s the idea of communion.
It makes real to us the testimony of Galatians 2:20. “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” Communion is an act of faith where we testify that we are trusting in Christ’s death and resurrection. We are living by faith in the Son of God who loved us and gave Himself for us.
So eating the broken bread and drinking the cup of blessing has a spiritual meaning that we are by faith sharers, participants in the death of Christ.
Finally, this spiritual meaning of the Lord’s Supper leads us to the last topic,
6. The Serious Sacredness of the Lord’s Supper
Paul closes his discussion of the Lord’s Supper in 1 Corinthians 11 with a warning. The Corinthians were partaking of the Lord’s Supper in an unworthy manner. The reason Paul wrote this section was to correct those errors. The Corinthians were divided. They were selfishly forgetting to love one another and wait for each other. This lack of love showed that they were not really worshipping Jesus in the Lord’s Supper (11:20). So he warns in verse 27, “Therefore whoever eats this bread or drinks [this] cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.”
What is an unworthy manner? Paul’s admonition is more than a strict warning against missing the symbolism of the elements. In the broader context of 1 Corinthians 11, Paul is obviously concerned about the self-centeredness, gluttony and drunkenness that had come to characterize many of the Corinthian believers and their participation in the Supper. These sins, of which the Corinthians were not repenting, led Paul to alert them of God’s disciplinary judgment.
He warns that if you come to the Lord’s Supper unworthily in that cavalier, callous, careless way not discerning the seriousness of the death of Christ and its implication for your relationships with one another, you set yourself up for discipline from your heavenly Father.
The remedy in verse 28 is for believers to examine themselves as they come to the table, “But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup,” (also 11:31). So our preparation for the Lord’s Table should include self-examination. Check out your life–your motives and your attitudes toward the Lord, His Table, and other Christians. We need to be certain we’re not careless, flippant, indifferent, unrepentant, or irreverent when we partake of Communion. We must examine our hearts to discover if there’s anything that shouldn’t be there. When we have examined ourselves and dealt with any sin or improper motive, then we are ready to share in the bread and the cup.
Listen, there are no perfect saints at the Lord’s Table. We are all debtors to grace. Forgiveness through Christ is our only hope of acceptance before God. But look carefully here, lest you think that forgiveness and grace mean there is no severe fatherly discipline. The rest of this chapter is Paul’s warning about the kinds of discipline, like sickness and even death, which may befall Christians who carelessly and unlovingly come to the Lord’s Table. Don’t take the Lord’s Supper lightly. It is one of the most precious gifts Christ has given to His church.
So today as we come to the Lord’s Table I encourage you, reflect on your relationship with the Lord, repent of any known sin, reconcile with one another, remember His sacrifice for you, and recommit yourself to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Then come.
