"EXAMINE YOURSELF"
I COR. 11:17 34
Have you ever sat in a communion service and been told to examine yourself? This is indeed God’s word to us! But what Paul meant was something considerably different from what is often said or implied today.
Read 17 34
The passage I’ve just read is especially familiar to any of us who have been in the church for any significant length of time. The problem is that we know this passage so well that we hardly think of it as needing to be interpreted.
Yet this passage, which we know so well, is part of Paul’s response to a problem that is somewhat difficult to reconstruct. But since the theme of "examination" and "judgment" is so predominant, they must certainly have been written in direct response to the error in the church at Corinth.
The church at Corinth had many problems, as many of you well know. This specific problem has to do with an abuse of the Lord’s Supper in the context of community.
Five times in these verses Paul repeats the verb "when you come together" or "assemble". This verb is a semi technical term for the church assembling together as a community to experience the presence of the Spirit and the power of the Lord.
The language is important: "When you come together as a church." So it is a community gathering.
The word translated "Lord’s Supper" is another semi technical term for the Christian meal. Literally it means "a supper in honor of the Lord." This means that the meal is one that pertains to the Lord or is held in His honor.
Verses 23 25 make it very clear that it is not simply any meal held in Christ’s honor. It is the meal, the meal by which the church uses symbolic action to rehearse the events surrounding the death of Christ that brought redemption.
When Paul says in verse 20 that it is not the Lord’s Supper they are eating, he does not mean that they are not actually partaking of the Lord’s Supper. What he means is: The things they are doing to the supper so abuse it that the Supper is no longer "in honor of the Lord"
We know that for many years the Jewish people anticipated the hope of the coming of the Messiah. Part of their anticipation was the hope of celebrating at a great banquet in the presence of God.
It was this hope that lay behind the attempt to make Jesus a King right after he fed the five thousand. They saw in that miracle the possible fulfillment of their hopes in that great messianic feast.
Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper in the context of that hope. He said, in effect, "I will not eat of this meal again until it is fulfilled in the end time. But you shall eat it until that day." It is only natural that the anticipation of that event would itself be a feast.
In the first century the church celebrated it’s life in Christ at the table together; and the Lord’s Supper was undoubtedly a regular part of that celebration.
Almost certainly this combination of the Lord’s Supper with the love feast is the necessary background in order for us to understand the Corinthian abuse.
Apparently some of the Corinthians thought of the Christian meal too much in terms of their former practices as pagans...(explain)
The result was a love feast that was altogether too much "feast" and too little "love."
On the one hand, they were clearly missing the point of the Lord’s Supper as a meal in honor of the Lord. Their gluttony and drunkenness were scarcely in keeping with "the Lord Jesus, on the night He was betrayed."
The first dimension of the problem, therefore, was vertical. It had something to do with their relationship to the Lord at His table.
Verses 23 32 speak directly to this.
But Paul is obviously deeply concerned about the horizontal dimension as well, which has to do with their relationships with one another. There was "too little love." Both the beginning and the ending of the passage speak directly to those abusing the church. But what exactly did the abuse consist of?
In verse 18 he says "There are divisions among you." The divisions in some way seem to be along the lines of "rich" and "poor." One remains hungry while another is full and gets drunk. Those who have nothing are being humiliated by those who have "homes to eat and drink in.
But if the poor are being humiliated by the gluttony and drunkenness of the rich, even worse is the fact that they are being excluded altogether from the Lord’s Supper.
If you would look back to chapter 1 verse 26 you’d see that the Corinthian church was made up of a large number of "nobodies."
7:20 24 makes it clear that some of these "nobodies" were slaves.
It is likely that those who were being excluded were slaves who simply could not go to a meal any time they might wish to. Perhaps the "wait for one another" speaks specifically to this problem.
So Paul makes the appeal to stop abusing the Lord’s Supper. He begins and concludes the first paragraph with the words, "I have no praise for you." And everything in between tells us why.
This paragraph is dominated by the concept of "assembly." And he says that their assembling does more harm than good, because there is division rather than togetherness.
Their problem was that they were physically together "at the same place" but they were not really together as a community. Instead of eating the Lord’s Supper as a community, each one was "doing his own thing."
In verse 22 Paul concludes this paragraph by saying, "You have homes for each to go ahead with his own meal; but to do that when you are together is to despise the church.
Verses 23 26
In this paragraph Paul gives the meaning of the Lord’s Supper. When they assemble as a church at the Lord’s Supper, they are to do so as a proclamation of their redemption in Christ. They were to recognize their salvation.
What Jesus did and said "on the night he was betrayed" is to be the controlling theme of what they do and say at the meal.
Paul has two special emphases in his presentation of the words of institution. One is found in his repeated statement, "Do this in remembrance of me."
The other is found in verse 26, which Paul gives for the sake of the Corinthians, "proclaiming the Lord’s death til He comes is what the supper is all about.
Paul’s first point of correction speaks to the vertical dimension of their abuse. They were not honoring the Lord Himself at His table. By their actions their meal scarcely consisted of "participation in the blood and body of Christ.
The abuse of the Lord’s Supper by the Corinthians was in their doing, not in their saying.
The vertical part of the problem was their failure to honor the Lord. The horizontal part of the problem was their failure to eat the meal as a loving community.
Vs. 27 32 talks about judgment at the Lord’s Table. Because this passage is read so often in the church outside of Paul’s original context, it is frequently misinterpreted.
The wrong interpretation is very unfortunate in this case. It needlessly brings people under condemnation at the Lord’s table, the very place where by faith they should once again be experiencing God’s acceptance.
It should be noted that this entire paragraph is dominated by the vocabulary of law court. Paul makes a considerable number of plays on the word "to judge." The basic word "to judge" in Greek is krinein, which occurs twice...vs. 31 "come under judgment"; vs. 32 "when we are judged by the Lord."
A compound form of that same word is used in vs 29, 31 where it means to judge correctly, or to distinguish clearly between two things. Still another form of the same word occurs also in vs. 32 which means to condemn.
In verse 28 a different root word is used that means to "put to the test" and one final word, in vs 27, appears that means "to be guilty."
What does all this mean? What is the point??
The Lord’s Supper is supposed to be a time of fellowship with the Lord...a meal in His memory until He comes. But their meal is "unworthy" of that memory. Their gluttony, drunkenness, and despising of the church of God are examples of eating "in an unworthy manner."
Unfortunately the word anaxios was translated "unworthily" in the KJV, with the result that moral connotations, which are not there, have been read into the word.
But Paul is not talking about eating and drinking in a sinful condition. He is referring to the way they were abusing the Lord’s Supper which indeed was sinful.
To eat the meal as they were doing meant they were not proclaiming his death as something that happened "for them." Their actions put them in the same category as those who judged Jesus in his death.
God’s remedy for the Corinthians is: "A man ought to examine himself before he eats." They were to recognize the Lord as present with them at the supper, and by doing so they would not be despising others in the church.
Read vs 32...
It is clear from this passage that, despite all their errors and abuses, they are still God’s people. There is present judgment to be sure, but that means they are children under discipline.
BUT THEY MUST LET THE DISCIPLINE BE EFFECTIVE!!!!
Paul saw the Lord’s Supper with a view of the end times. This is clear from his interpretation of the Supper as a proclamation of Christ’s death until he comes.
By this proclamation we Christians are not only saying something about Christ and his death as "for us" when we partake of the communion, but we are also saying something about our own existence as being "between the times."
The supper was likely celebrated rather than solemnized. It was a joyful expectation of his return.
At the Lord’s Supper we not only have fellowship with the Lord and participate in the benefits of his body and blood, but it is also a time for the community to experience it’s oneness in Christ.
It is a time to "recognize the body," to affirm that we are one family at the table, one body in Christ.
At the Lord’s table all distinctions between rich and poor, Jew and Greek, male and female are obliterated. We don’t come to the table because of status, or because of worth, or "worthiness."
I want to suggest that if there are any here who feel unworthy because of their sins, that you not be excluded from taking communion. Precisely the opposite. You should be encouraged to participate.
It is here that we proclaim the very forgiveness and acceptance that you need. We must be sure that it is the Lord’s Table, not ours.
The real parallel to the Corinthian "unworthiness" is in the horizontal dimension. For believers who have differences and enmity with one another, to partake at the table would be partaking in an unworthy manner.
This is to be a place where we are to affirm and experience our oneness in Christ.
Perhaps one of the most effective ways we could recapture our sense of oneness is to recapture the symbol of the meal. Have you ever noticed how difficult it is to eat at the same table with someone that you are at odds with?
If you have such differences with someone, why not stop now and pray about them. If you have broken relationships with someone, now would be a good time to move toward the healing and reconciliation that God provides.
