1Cor 10:14-22 | KingComments | STEP | Here Paul starts with a new issue. Up until now he has spoken about the church as a house where God dwells. Because God dwells there, He has the right to say how believers should behave there. It is His house after all, isn’t it? When things happen in the church that do not please Him, He points out how to deal with them. In chapter 5 you have read about a clear example regarding such a case. There it is written that the evil person has to be removed ( ). The issue Paul starts with now is still connected to the church. But here the church is no longer presented as a house, but as a body. In you read about “one body”. We will see what that means soon. . First another thing about : This verse connects to the previous part. Actually it is a kind of summary of . In the previous verses it is made clear that idolatry is something that takes your eyes off of God and Christ. It is something that takes Their place. The meaning of that ‘something’ is often different for each child of God. Apparently you know for yourself which things can so easily bring a distance between you and God. But the call “flee” is the same for each child of God. He who lets himself be dragged down in any way by idolatry, cannot partake in the blessings which are the result of “a sharing in” or better “the communion of” the blood of Christ. . In the case of the Corinthians, it was the tendency of going back to the idol temples. Besides, they also could fool themselves, now they were Christians, that an idol was nothing. That, however, was a mistake. You cannot participate in religious, idolatrous rituals without denying your position as a Christian. That was something the Corinthians had to think about very carefully. Paul addressed them as “wise men”, which means people who were able to judge what they were doing. . The absurdity of their participation in the service of idols is most visible in the presentation of their communion, which they have as Christians. As Christians they celebrated the Lord’s Supper every first day of the week. Thereby they made use of a cup and bread, as the Lord Jesus told them. You can read about the institution of the Lord’s Supper by the Lord Jesus in the Gospels ( ; ; ). Also in the next chapter of this letter you read about it ( ). The emphasis there is that the Lord’s Supper is a meal of remembrance. When we eat of the bread and drink of the wine, we do that in remembrance of what the Lord has done on earth. We think of Him and we do that in remembrance of Him . In the study of chapter 11 I will tell you more about this special event. In chapter 10 that lies before you, another aspect is highlighted. The issue here is that by partaking of the Lord’s Supper, you have communion of the blood and the body of Christ. Of course I don’t know whether you already partake of the Lord’s Supper. In case you don’t yet partake, I do hope you soon will. Of course the reason should not be just ‘to belong to the fellowship’, but out of love for the Lord Jesus because He invites you. It is important to examine where you should do that. To be able to do that you should discover if the place where you want to partake of the Lord’s Supper, is a place where the practice is according to what is written here. In the first place it is: Do you recognize if they gather there, it is to express the communion of Christ’s blood and of Christ’s body? That is what says. Second: Do you recognize that they gather there as a unity, as it is expressed in ‘the one bread’? That is what says. You might find it difficult, which is understandable. You ought to make some efforts to become aware of these aspects. Therefore it is not for nothing that Paul addresses them as wise men. These are not things you talk about with little children. The partaking of the Lord’s Supper by little children is therefore not according to God’s thoughts. He who partakes of the Lord’s Supper, needs to have some awareness of what he is doing. I will try to clarify that a little bit more. The word ‘share’ or better ‘communion’ that occurs often in this part, means ‘to be partakers of something together’. You share something with others. Before you knew the Lord Jesus, you shared the things in the world with your friends. You partook of their pleasures, you feasted with them. Now you have other people, your brothers and sisters in Christ, with whom you share in blessings that have become your share also because you know the Lord Jesus. That communion has been made possible through the blood of Christ. It is the communion of His blood. Through the blood you have been reconciled with God. Your sins have been taken away forever. All who hide behind the blood ( ), which means whose sins are covered before God through faith in the blood, partake of that communion. All who have no share in the blood of Christ are outside of that communion. The blood is mentioned here first because it is the basis of the communion. When subsequently the bread is spoken about, you see there the communion of the body of Christ. The expression “the body of Christ” has two meanings. The first meaning is the physical body of Christ, which is His body in which He was on earth and in which He bore our sins. The second meaning is the figurative body of Christ, which is the church, to which all true believers belong. When we break the bread we first think of His body that He surrendered into death. We admire collectively, that is together or with one another, that precious body with which He glorified God. That means that we admire His Person. Christ has come in the body that God had prepared for Him when He came into the world ( ). That is also in remembrance of the fact that the church has come into being because He gave His body into death. A beautiful picture of that you find in Genesis 2 ( ). God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, a death sleep so to speak. Then God took one of Adam’s ribs and built him a woman out of that rib. When He brought Eve to Adam, Adam says: “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh.” This is how you can recognize in the church the body of Christ. Therefore we break the bread in remembrance of both the body that Christ gave into death and of the church that has come into being through His death. . In this verse the issue is obviously the church. It is about us, “we who are many”. All who belong to the church are allowed to show that by partaking of the one bread. Thereby you may say that it is ‘inclusive’, which means they who are included, who belong to the body. You may also say that it is ‘exclusive’, which means that it excludes everyone who doesn’t belong to the body. It is inclusive because it is for all who really belong to the church. It is exclusive because the Lord’s Supper has no room for unbelievers and for believers who live in sin or don’t exercise discipline on it. Now read 1 Corinthians 10:14-17 again. Reflection: Do you already partake of that one bread?

‏ 1 Corinthians 10:14-22

One Bread, One Body

Here Paul starts with a new issue. Up until now he has spoken about the church as a house where God dwells. Because God dwells there, He has the right to say how believers should behave there. It is His house after all, isn’t it? When things happen in the church that do not please Him, He points out how to deal with them. In chapter 5 you have read about a clear example regarding such a case. There it is written that the evil person has to be removed (1Cor 5:13b).

The issue Paul starts with now is still connected to the church. But here the church is no longer presented as a house, but as a body. In 1Cor 10:17 you read about “one body”. We will see what that means soon.

1Cor 10:14. First another thing about 1Cor 10:14: This verse connects to the previous part. Actually it is a kind of summary of 1Cor 10:1-13. In the previous verses it is made clear that idolatry is something that takes your eyes off of God and Christ. It is something that takes Their place. The meaning of that ‘something’ is often different for each child of God. Apparently you know for yourself which things can so easily bring a distance between you and God. But the call “flee” is the same for each child of God. He who lets himself be dragged down in any way by idolatry, cannot partake in the blessings which are the result of “a sharing in” or better “the communion of” the blood of Christ.

1Cor 10:15. In the case of the Corinthians, it was the tendency of going back to the idol temples. Besides, they also could fool themselves, now they were Christians, that an idol was nothing. That, however, was a mistake. You cannot participate in religious, idolatrous rituals without denying your position as a Christian. That was something the Corinthians had to think about very carefully. Paul addressed them as “wise men”, which means people who were able to judge what they were doing.

1Cor 10:16. The absurdity of their participation in the service of idols is most visible in the presentation of their communion, which they have as Christians. As Christians they celebrated the Lord’s Supper every first day of the week. Thereby they made use of a cup and bread, as the Lord Jesus told them. You can read about the institution of the Lord’s Supper by the Lord Jesus in the Gospels (Mt 26:26-28; Mk 14:22-24; Lk 22:19-20). Also in the next chapter of this letter you read about it (1Cor 11:23-26). The emphasis there is that the Lord’s Supper is a meal of remembrance.

When we eat of the bread and drink of the wine, we do that in remembrance of what the Lord has done on earth. We think of Him and we do that in remembrance of Him. In the study of chapter 11 I will tell you more about this special event.

In chapter 10 that lies before you, another aspect is highlighted. The issue here is that by partaking of the Lord’s Supper, you have communion of the blood and the body of Christ. Of course I don’t know whether you already partake of the Lord’s Supper. In case you don’t yet partake, I do hope you soon will. Of course the reason should not be just ‘to belong to the fellowship’, but out of love for the Lord Jesus because He invites you.

It is important to examine where you should do that. To be able to do that you should discover if the place where you want to partake of the Lord’s Supper, is a place where the practice is according to what is written here.

In the first place it is: Do you recognize if they gather there, it is to express the communion of Christ’s blood and of Christ’s body? That is what 1Cor 10:16 says.

Second: Do you recognize that they gather there as a unity, as it is expressed in ‘the one bread’? That is what 1Cor 10:17 says.

You might find it difficult, which is understandable. You ought to make some efforts to become aware of these aspects. Therefore it is not for nothing that Paul addresses them as wise men. These are not things you talk about with little children. The partaking of the Lord’s Supper by little children is therefore not according to God’s thoughts. He who partakes of the Lord’s Supper, needs to have some awareness of what he is doing.

I will try to clarify that a little bit more. The word ‘share’ or better ‘communion’ that occurs often in this part, means ‘to be partakers of something together’. You share something with others. Before you knew the Lord Jesus, you shared the things in the world with your friends. You partook of their pleasures, you feasted with them. Now you have other people, your brothers and sisters in Christ, with whom you share in blessings that have become your share also because you know the Lord Jesus.

That communion has been made possible through the blood of Christ. It is the communion of His blood. Through the blood you have been reconciled with God. Your sins have been taken away forever. All who hide behind the blood (Exo 12:13), which means whose sins are covered before God through faith in the blood, partake of that communion. All who have no share in the blood of Christ are outside of that communion. The blood is mentioned here first because it is the basis of the communion.

When subsequently the bread is spoken about, you see there the communion of the body of Christ. The expression “the body of Christ” has two meanings. The first meaning is the physical body of Christ, which is His body in which He was on earth and in which He bore our sins. The second meaning is the figurative body of Christ, which is the church, to which all true believers belong.

When we break the bread we first think of His body that He surrendered into death. We admire collectively, that is together or with one another, that precious body with which He glorified God. That means that we admire His Person. Christ has come in the body that God had prepared for Him when He came into the world (Heb 10:5). That is also in remembrance of the fact that the church has come into being because He gave His body into death.

A beautiful picture of that you find in Genesis 2 (Gen 2:21-23). God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, a death sleep so to speak. Then God took one of Adam’s ribs and built him a woman out of that rib. When He brought Eve to Adam, Adam says: “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh.”

This is how you can recognize in the church the body of Christ. Therefore we break the bread in remembrance of both the body that Christ gave into death and of the church that has come into being through His death.

1Cor 10:17. In this verse the issue is obviously the church. It is about us, “we who are many”. All who belong to the church are allowed to show that by partaking of the one bread. Thereby you may say that it is ‘inclusive’, which means they who are included, who belong to the body. You may also say that it is ‘exclusive’, which means that it excludes everyone who doesn’t belong to the body. It is inclusive because it is for all who really belong to the church. It is exclusive because the Lord’s Supper has no room for unbelievers and for believers who live in sin or don’t exercise discipline on it.

Now read 1 Corinthians 10:14-17 again.

Reflection: Do you already partake of that one bread?

The Lord’s Table

1Cor 10:18. To clarify what he means by ‘share’ or, better, ‘communion’, Paul presents the example of the worship service of Israel. What was that like? In the book of Leviticus you can read about different kinds of sacrifices that could be brought, and sometimes had to be brought. All those sacrifices show something about the Person and the work of the Lord Jesus. He is the true Sacrifice. Those sacrifices were put on the altar that stood in the court of the tabernacle. That altar was called ‘the bronze altar of burnt offering’.

The sacrifice Paul is thinking of here in particular, is the peace offering. That is the offering that you could call a meal offering or a fellowship offering. Of the peace offering God received a portion, the priest received a portion and for the rest each member of the people who was clean could eat from this offering. You can find this in Leviticus 3 and Leviticus 7. That means that God had fellowship with His people and this fellowship consisted of eating the peace offering together. The place where this fellowship, this communion, this sharing together of the offering happened, was the altar. The altar was the meeting place where God and the people came together.

When you think of the altar to be a place where the offering was consumed in the fire, you may think of the cross of the Lord Jesus. Then it is clear that the altar is a meeting place between God and the people. After all, the Lord Jesus has reconciled sinful and repentant people with God by bearing and taking away their sins in the fire of God’s judgment. He has fulfilled God’s holy demands with a view to the sins.

You may remember at the same time that the altar is a picture of the Lord Jesus Himself. Just like the altar, as it were, offered the true offering to God, the Lord Jesus offered Himself to God. This is what you read in Hebrews 9: “Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God” (Heb 9:14a) Therefore, when you think of “sharers in the altar” or “communion with the altar” as it is said here, it means that we may, together with God, enjoy the Lord Jesus. Isn’t that fellowship or communion after all: enjoying together the same portion?

Don’t you think that God enjoys His Son unspeakably? And don’t you enjoy Him very much also? Of course Israel didn’t understand that in this way. But you remember from 1Cor 10:6 and 1Cor 10:11 of this chapter that everything that happened to Israel has happened as examples for us. We now may know what God really has meant by that when He gave all these statutes to Israel. Therefore Paul can say: “Look at the nation Israel” or “See Israel according to flesh”.

1Cor 10:19-20. Because of this example, it also becomes clear that any other way of fellowship is excluded. To Israel it was absolutely forbidden to partake of pagan offering feasts of the nations around them. The same applied to the believers at Corinth. Not that Paul wanted to withdraw what he said before, in chapter 8, about the offerings to idols and about the idols (1Cor 8:1 ; 4). The meat that was offered to an idol was and still remained plain meat. And an idol was and still remained just a piece of wood or stone. That is not the point.

The real point is that – and he wants to make that very clear to the Corinthians – the offerings that are offered by the pagans in fact are offered to demons, evil spirits. Behind the idols of wood and stone demons are hidden. The reverence and worship with which the pagans offer their sacrifices and kneel down before an idol are received by these demons.

Demons really exist and they are a reality. They are creatures that are aimed to destroy man and to keep him far from the fellowship with God. The demons respond to the imagination and fear of man. In this way man is forced to bring sacrifices to an idol to please him, while the demons are the real recipient of those sacrifices. In this way the true and only God is excluded. Everyone who partakes of these sacrificial festivals will not be aware of that, but that is actually the case in reality.

1Cor 10:21. Therefore there needs to be a radical separation between the Christian worship service and the pagan worship service. Fellowship with demons and fellowship with God cannot go together. The cup of the Lord and the cup of demons exclude one another. It really is unimaginable that we for one moment drink the cup of the Lord, whereby we remember the blood that He shed to be able to bless us and we then for another moment drink from a cup that is dedicated to demons and we thereby are connected to the big opponent of Christ.

It is remarkable that in Ezekiel 41 and in Malachi 1 the Table of the Lord is mentioned as well (Eze 41:22; Mal 1:7 ; 12). There the bronze altar of the burnt offering is indicated this way. So here Paul again connects to the picture of the Old Testament. And what again was presented by the altar? Indeed fellowship. What is presented by the Table of the Lord? Fellowship.

A normally functioning family sits down to eat together at regular times. To the family members, parents and children, that is the time to have fellowship with one another. During the whole day they have been at several places: in the house, at school, at the working place, but at meal time they are together and share their experiences of the whole day with one another. That is also the thought of the Table of the Lord. To the Table of the Lord every believer partakes with what he has enjoyed of the Lord Jesus during the week to tell that, collectively together with others, to God the Father and to the Lord Jesus.

But just like the table of the family, the Table of the Lord should be no place for things that do not belong there. Children, who do or say bad things, spoil the atmosphere at the table. Then they should be dismissed for a certain time from the table, till they understand what they did wrong. This every-day example shows something of what also applies to the Table of the Lord. There is a place for each member of the church at the Lord’s Table. But he who teaches wrong doctrines about the Lord or who allows things in his life that do not suit a believer, has to be removed from the Lord’s Table. The Lord Jesus cannot tolerate any connection with demons with His own people.

The Table of the Lord and the table of demons are about two extremes which cannot be related to each other. A person who partakes of the Lord’s Supper should only partake of the Lord’s Table and not of the table of demons. In many places of professing Christianity the Supper is celebrated, but it cannot be said that it is celebrated at the Lord’s Table. This does not mean however that it is the table of demons.

It’s not about just a table, it is the Table of the Lord! That means that you can speak with certainty of the Table of the Lord only if it is clear that people practice it according to the will of the Lord. In His Word we can read what His will is. Therein we read that the circle of fellowship is not to be made smaller or larger than the body of Christ.

In case we get in touch with Christians who gather in a certain way and also celebrate the Supper with one another, we need to examine on the basis of the Bible, if these Christians are willing to obey God’s Word. Obedience to God’s Word will become apparent from a life to God’s honor, and that any sin is judged. In that case we may recognize them as believers who only want to do what the Lord says and together with them we can express the unity of the church as the body of Christ by the breaking of bread.

1Cor 10:22. Professing Christianity is split into a lot of churches and denominations. Therefore we are exclusively dependent on the Bible as our guide. We do not want to tempt the Lord to jealousy by connecting His Name to miscellaneous restrictions that are created by men in many parts of professing Christianity, do we? He cannot approve that we let ourselves be guided by our own ideas. When we do that He will have to admonish us and if we do not listen, He will have to chastise us. He is strong enough to do that.

Now read 1 Corinthians 10:18-22 again.

Reflection: Is there only one Table of the Lord or are there more?