Examine Yourself Before Taking the Lord’s Supper

1 Cor. 11:17-34 ¹⁷ In the following directives I have no praise for you, for your meetings do more harm than good. ¹⁸ In the first place, I hear that when you come together as a church, there are divisions among you, and to some extent I believe it. ¹⁹ No doubt there have to be differences among you to show which of you have God’s approval. ²⁰ When you come together, it is not the Lord’s Supper you eat, ²¹ for as you eat, each of you goes ahead without waiting for anybody else. One remains hungry, another gets drunk. ²² Don’t you have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you for this? Certainly not! ²³ For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, ²⁴ and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” ²⁵ In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” ²⁶ For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. ²⁷ Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. ²⁸ A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup. ²⁹ For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself. ³⁰ That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep. ³¹ But if we judged ourselves, we would not come under judgment. ³² When we are judged by the Lord, we are being disciplined so that we will not be condemned with the world. ³³ So then, my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for each other. ³⁴ If anyone is hungry, he should eat at home, so that when you meet together it may not result in judgment. And when I come I will give further directions.

I would like to focus today on verses 27-29: Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. ²⁸ A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup. ²⁹ For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself.

Now, some have taken this verse to mean that we should not partake of the bread and juice unless we are worthy of it. I’ve heard that there have even been some congregations in which the pastor was the only person who felt worthy enough to take the symbols.

Now, in one sense this was the right thing to do, and in another sense it was completely wrong. That’s because none of us are really worthy of Christ’s sacrifice—but that really isn’t what Paul meant. He didn’t ask whether we are worthy – what he said is that we should take the symbols in a worthy manner. It is precisely because we are unworthy that we need the sacrifice of Christ, and the whole point of taking communion is to remember what Jesus did for us, not about how good we are.

So what did Paul mean when he said that we need to recognize the body of the Lord? Are we supposed to somehow see the body of Jesus in the bread? No, not even Catholic scholars say that. Paul was really talking about seeing the church as the body of Christ.

You see, Paul was correcting the Corinthian church about the way that they had been observing the remembrance of Jesus’ death. As he said in verse 21, some people were eating all the food, while others in the congregation were going hungry. They were acting selfishly, not acting like they were brothers and sisters in the same family. They had forgotten that they formed one body, the body of Christ.

Paul told them in chapter 10 that when they all shared in the same loaf of bread, it was because they were one body. But when some people ate all the food and others went hungry, they were not acting like one body. So Paul is telling them how they ought to participate in a worthy manner: they were supposed to discern the Lord’s body, to discern that the church is the body of Christ, and everyone who is in Christ is part of the body.

If we participate selfishly, then we are missing the whole point of Jesus’ life and death. If we eat the bread and drink the juice only for selfish reasons, then as Paul says, we are eating and drinking judgment to ourselves. And in the same way, if we participate in the church only for selfish reasons, only for what we can get out of it, then we are calling judgment upon ourselves.

The bread and juice remind us of what Jesus did, and that was to give himself, to serve others, and when we today eat the bread and drink the juice, we are symbolizing our participation in this kind of life. Participating in communion for selfish reasons is simply a contradiction in terms. We are to discern that we are part of a body of believers, the body of Christ, and when we participate in Christ, it means that we are united to a whole bunch of brothers and sisters in the faith.

So we should examine ourselves, Paul says. This is not so that we refuse to participate – it is so that we participate for the right reason. And the reason is that the bread and juice symbolize our participation in the life of Christ, a life that means service to others, a life that includes others.

When we eat the bread and drink the juice, we are sharing in this together. When we are connected to Christ, we are also connected to one another. So as these substances go into our mouths and into our bodies, let it symbolize that Christ has come into us, and he lives in us – not a life of selfishness, but a life of service to one another.