We have two great points brought before us in 1 Cor. 11. 1st, God’s order of creation, now Christ has come into it; He is the firstborn of every creature, compare Col. 1, and therefore has the pre-eminence there; 2nd, the order of the Assembly of which the Lord’s Supper is the central meeting. The first thing the apostle does is to show the persons who compose the inside, and to put them in their proper place one towards another. From ver. 17 to end he talks positively of the Assembly Meeting, the Lord’s Supper. (Ver. 3) Now in the new creation, there was the man, whose head was Christ; there was the woman, whose head was the man; there was Christ, whose Head was God. In the old creation we have simply Adam, whose Creator was God, and the woman, whose head was Adam (cp. Gen. 1 and 2). But in the new creation, of which we get a beautiful picture in Luke 1 and 2, we have the man, the woman, Christ and God; angels too looking on and rejoicing. Redemption was not then accomplished, true, so that the holy men and women therein mentioned were not yet introduced into the new place, nor had they received the Spirit of adoption, which constitutes a man a Christian, but they were born again, and the whole atmosphere breathes of the new creation.
The relationships of man and woman one towards another were important for the Assemblies to know; for a woman must always realize her position in creation, as having her head in the man, and being of the man (ver. 3-8), and thus being in subjection, though also created for the man as a helpmeet (ver. 9). Therefore, in praying and prophesying, her head was to be covered, for she was the glory of the man; whereas the man, in doing the same, was to have his head uncovered, for he was the image and glory of God. The hair was a sign of power (ver. 10; cp. Judges 16:17). All her power was on her head, which was the man. She ought to own that place in the Assemblies. Angels rejoiced again when Christ was born. The Church showed to the principalities and powers in the heavenlies the manifold wisdom of God (Eph. 3). The woman was to own her proper place on account of these angels. Nature even taught the same thing, that it was uncomely for the man to have long hair, but it was the glory of the woman, for it was given her as a covering. These verses seem to own that in certain places or meetings the woman prayed and prophesied, as also in the case of Philip’s daughters (Acts 21:8-9). It seems also as if they did on the day of Pentecost, but it was outside in creation (cp. Acts 1:13, 14; 2:1-18), and comparing it with 1 Cor. 14 and 1 Tim. 2, it seems clear that they were silent in the Assembly meetings, where they were distinctly forbidden to teach, which however is distinct from prophesying. From ch. 11:16 to 14 end, the subject is distinctly the Assembly meeting, as such (see ch. 11:18; 14:19-24). There the woman has evidently no place except to be silent.
The Lord’s Supper
As to remembering Paul in all things, and keeping the ordinances, he could praise them, but as to the matter of detail, and the manner of their doing it, he could not praise them. They came not together for the better, but for the worse. (Ver. 18) For when they came together in Assembly, he heard there were schisms amongst them. (Ver. 19) Divisions were necessary in a way that those really approved might be manifest amongst them. (Ver. 20) Still he could not allow that the way in which they came together was to eat the Lord’s Supper. (Ver. 21) They were making it a time of feasting, eating their own suppers; one was hungry, another was drunken. (Ver. 22) Surely they had houses to eat and to drink in; for to confound a common meal with eating the Lord’s Supper, was to despise the Assembly of God, of which the latter was the expression. He then puts them right on the subject, not denying that the Lord’s Supper was the Assembly meeting, but denying that as they met it was such.
(Ver. 23, 24) He had received of the Lord that which he had delivered unto them, that the Lord Jesus the same night in which He was betrayed took bread; and when He had given thanks, He brake it, and said, Take, eat; this is my body, which is broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me. Our thoughts are carried back to the night in which the Lord was betrayed: and yet, with a Judas there, He could give thanks, and break the bread. He could bring that before them which alone, in the midst of evil, could attract their hearts, and enable them to overcome. Blessed Savior! His love always mounted above the evil, and overcame it with good. My heart finds rest in Him. (Ver. 25, 26) After the same manner also He took the cup, when He had supped, saying, This cup is the New Testament in my blood; this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me. For as oft as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord’s death till He come. It is His little photograph which brings to our remembrance His unbounded love to us in times past. The bread broken, and the blood shed, cause us to remember our precious Lord’s body broken and His blood shed for us. He is absent from us. We announce His death till He come. Thus the love of Christ, in putting away sin, and bearing our sins, is continually before our minds. His blood also not only answering to all the claims of God against us, but sealing to us all the blessings of the New Testament. We remember it all, and announce His death till He come. The Lord’s Supper thus links our Lord’s death with His coming. His death shutting out every thing of the flesh, world, and devil; His coming, as that when we shall no longer have need of a symbolical ordinance to remember Him during His absence.
(Ver. 27) But to announce the Lord’s death as to responsibility is important, for to eat and to drink unworthily, was to be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord; for I allow the flesh which killed the Lord. (Ver. 28) To come into the Assembly without having examined myself, was to bring living flesh into the Assembly of God. (Ver. 29) The Lord, in such a case, could only be present as a Judge, and for living flesh to eat and drink the Lord’s death, was to eat and to drink judgment to itself, not discerning the Lord’s body, which announced death and judgment to the flesh. (Ver. 30) For this cause many of the Corinthians were weak and sickly, and many even had died. This was the Lord’s chastening hand, because the Corinthians did not judge themselves. (Ver. 31) If they had done so, they would not have been judged. (Ver. 32) The effect of this chastening of the Lord was that they might not be condemned with the world. Thus the Lord’s Supper holds a most important place, as keeping the saints in a habit of individual self-judgment. (Cp. Matt. 26, Mark 14, Luke 22.) Not that they ought to judge themselves when they come there, but before (see ver. 28); not that they ought, if failing, to keep away: that would be to get worse. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat.
The Lord’s government here is shown to be most graciously exercised, in order that the saint might never be condemned eternally. Sickness, and even temporal death, consequently, are the Lord’s ways towards His saints, to preserve their walk up to their standing before God, and to preserve them from ever being lost. Temporal death would be a last resource to separate the Christian from the body of sin, which he ought by faith daily to reckon dead. (Vers. 33, 34.) But what confusion had the Assembly at Corinth got into! Every one was eating before other his own supper. They did not tarry one for the other; one poor man was hungry, not getting anything, another was drunken. He exhorted them, therefore, if any were hungry to eat at home, that they might not come together for condemnation; and the rest he would set in order when he came.
We have in this Epistle the full doctrine of the Lord’s supper set forth. First, in 1 Cor. 5, we see it as the center from which the discipline of the house of God is exercised; secondly, in 1 Cor. 10, we see the Lord’s Table placed as the central expression of the saints’ communion on the earth; thirdly, in 1 Cor. 11, we have the Lord’s Supper as the place where we are called to remember the Lord’s death, and where we are kept in the individual judgment of ourselves in view of that death. The Lord’s Supper gives a more individual aspect of the Table, and links it more to the original institution on the night on which the Lord was betrayed. It is blessed to think that though a Christian may be in a wrong ecclesiastical position, and deny the unity of the body by his position, he may yet get individual blessing to his soul, as remembering his Lord, in the midst of a mass of evil.