The Answer: Honor the Body
11: 27-32
The answer: honor the Body DIG: What does it mean to honor the Body? How would honoring the Body of believers honor the Body of Messiah? How might a person approach the Lord’s Supper in “an unworthy manner?” What should happen before partaking of the Supper?
REFLECT: What actions do you personally take to safeguard against abusing or ignoring the observance of the Lord’s Supper? What might one do to properly observe the Lord’s Supper? What in Paul’s instructions on the Lord’s Supper do you need to take to heart?
By honoring the Body of believers, the Corinthians would be honoring the Body of Messiah.
Having told the story of the Last Supper, Paul is now ready to draw its lessons for the Corinthians. The way they participated in the Lord’s Supper actually dishonored Him in two ways. First, the “haves” had been abusing the “have-nots” by going ahead with their own private suppers (to see link click Bz – The Problem: The Abuse of the Poor). Second, they had thereby been abusing the Lord Himself by not properly “remembering” Him (see Ca – The Problem: The Abuse of the Lord), especially in terms of the salvation He had paid for through His death, which was intended to make them one, not divided, as their current version of the Supper did. Paul’s purpose here was to correct the first abuse by warning them of the dire consequences they would face if they persisted in behavior at the Lord’s Supper that exposed their failure to understand its true nature and purpose.333
Therefore, whoever eats the Lord’s bread or drinks the Lord’s cup of redemption (see the commentary on The Life of Christ Kk – The Third Cup of Redemption) in an unworthy manner (11:27a). The verb unworthy manner (Greek: anaxios, meaning of unequal weights) refers to the drawing up of weights and thus signifies unequal weight, one side of the scales rising high, the other dropping low. The context demands that the side of the scales which holds the bread and the wine drops down because of its weight, while the side that holds the Corinthians attitude rises up because of its lack of weight. Then scales of the Lord’s Supper are uneven. The unworthiness of the Corinthians participation in the Lord’s Supper has already been made plain and Paul will continue to do so.334
Will be guilty (Greek: enochos, meaning liable) of desecrating the body and blood of the Lord (11:27b)! While this is Paul’s only use of the word enochos, it is used elsewhere primarily as a judicial word meaning guilt before the law. Both Matthew and Mark use the word with respect to the Jewish authorities’ agreement that Yeshua was guilty of death (Matthew 26:66; Mark 14:64). Yeshua used the word in the Sermon on the Mount of believers’ being subject to judgment (Matthew 5:22), and James insists that whoever stumbles on one point of the whole Torah, has become guilty of breaking all of the 613 mitzvot (James 2:10). Therefore, those who participate in the Lord’s supper without properly thinking of what it means in relationship to the crucified Lord and in the context of fellow believers, will have to answer to Ha’Shem for their actions.335
Paul didn’t say that we had to be worthy to partake of the Lord’s Supper, but only that we should partake in a worthy manner. The Corinthians had turned the Lord’s Supper into a hypocritical farce that heaped scorn upon the crucifixion of their Lord and His sacrifice for their sins.336 Paul’s concern was not with the bread and the wine themselves, but with how through them, the participants together remembered their Messiah.
Paul gives three key tests to determine whether one is eating worthily:
The first test: All are to examine themselves: Paul is serious when he says: So, let a person examine himself first, and then he may eat of the bread and drink from the cup (11:28). Every time we come to the Lord’s Supper; therefore, we should examine ourselves, looking honestly at our hearts for anything that should not be there and sifting out evil. Our motives, our attitudes toward the Lord, His Word, His people, and toward the Supper itself should all come under private scrutiny before Yeshua Messiah. The Lord’s Supper thus becomes a special place for the purifying of the Body.337
The second test: All were to honor their brothers and sisters in Messiah: By emphasizing the differences between the “haves” and the “have-nots” they humiliated their brothers and sisters in Messiah, His Body. Since they took the Lord’s Supper in an unworthy manner, it was no longer the Lord’s Supper. They needed to recognize all the believers in Corinth, rich and poor, were joined together in Messiah to share equally in His blessings and should be honored as such.
The third test: All were to honor the Body of Messiah: Humiliating fellow believers in the Body of Messiah at the Lord’s Supper was, in effect, an offense against the body and blood of the Lord. This responds to the second problem (see By – Issues Surrounding the Lord’s Supper). For if you eat the bread or drink the cup without honoring (Greek: diakrinon, meaning to distinguish or judge properly) the body of Messiah, you are eating and drinking God’s judgment (Greek: krima) upon yourself (11:29 NLT). The great difference in Paul’s use here of krima (judgment) and katakrima (condemned) is seen in 11:32, where it is clear that krima refers to discipline of the saved and katakrima refers to condemnation of the lost.
To come unworthily to the Lord’s Supper does not simply dishonor the ceremony, it dishonors the One in whose honor it is celebrated. The Corinthians had utterly destroyed the sanctity of the Lord’s Supper. Paul now states what eating and drinking a judgment really means; he does it by pointing to the judgment which had already begun among them. Perhaps the Corinthians were wondering about these afflictions. Paul gave them an explanation: A number of them had not observed the Lord’s Supper properly and paid a price for it.
This is why many among you are weak and sick, and some have died (11:30)! This took place even though some of the Corinthians had the gift of healing (see Cn – The Gift of Healings). This does not imply losing one’s salvation (see the commentary on The Life of Christ Ms – The Eternal Salvation of the Believer), but physical death. The Lord will not have His good name and reputation dragged through the mud. Sin can lead to sickness or even death (5:5). One does not get the impression that death was a common occurrence, but instead they were disciplined. For this argument to have any force behind it, one would assure that the readers could readily identify those who were sick or who had died as guilty of despising and humiliating their brothers and sisters at the Lord’s Supper.338
Paul offers a means of escape from such judgment. If we would examine ourselves, we would not come under judgment (11:31). On the one hand, there is no Scriptural support that the Lord’s Supper will heal the sick; the bread and wine are not good-luck charms, nor do they serve as medications. On the other hand, the bread and wine do not act as a poison which makes the unworthy people sick or kills them. It is the sin of failing these three tests that brings on judgment. Neither does Paul say that the penalty of this unworthiness is invariably physical sickness or untimely death. The Lord alone decides what the judgment would be.
But when we are judged by the Lord, we are being disciplined (see the commentary on Hebrews Cz – God Disciplines His Children), so that we will not be condemned (Greek: katakrima) along with the world (11:32). Thus, the Lord’s judgments which He visits upon believers for the serious sins they commit are evidences of His Fatherly love and not of His damning wrath; in the case of unbelievers, however, the judgments which He visits on them in this life are merely the advance indications of His final consuming wrath.339
Dear Heavenly Father, Praise You for being such a wonderful Father! You not only give Your righteousness to those who love You (Second Corinthians 5:21) and put their sins as far as the East is from the West (Psalms 103:12); You also lovingly guide and discipline Your children for their eternal good. ADONAI disciplines the one He loves. . . Now all discipline seems painful at the moment – not joyful. But later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it (Hebrews 12:6b, 11).
Though discipline is never enjoyed, the fruitful outcome of godly discipline will last for all eternity. To be wisely disciplined and learn the lesson on earth, is so better than getting to an eternal heaven and find we had been on some unwise path. Thank You, Father, for always having time to walk with Your children, even in trials (First Peter 1:6-7) and in discipline to mold us to be more godly, like You in Your awesome patient and wise character! In Yeshua’s holy name and power of His resurrection. Amen
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