THE intention of our present writing is to consider carefully and closely what the Spirit, by the Apostle Paul, has given us regarding the Lord's Supper, in the second half of 1 Cor. 11 All that we shall do in this number, will be to consider the disorders connected with it, and the Apostle's censure of them.
"Now this I command [you], not praising you, that ye come together not for the better but for the worse."
The Apostle's praising (verse 2), and his not praising, are closely connected with the two parts into which the chapter is divided. (1) "Now I praise you that in all things ye are mindful of me; and, as I gave you them,' that ye hold fast the traditions." He would praise them for holding fast the instructions, or directions, he had given them. But grave disorders had broken out among them at the love-feast, and the Lord's Supper, and with regard to these he writes, " I praise you not" (or " not praising.") "Now this I enjoin (or command); " he does not say what, but goes into a detailed statement of the disorders he had heard of on their assembling together; and then, at verses 32, 33, he gives his injunction.
There are some who think that the words, "Now this I enjoin," refer to what goes before respecting the veiling of Christian women. This does not commend itself to us as correct. It refers most distinctly to what follows, for his whole writing to the end of the chapter has the effect of an authoritative apostolic injunction, laying down positive doctrine, and rectifying their disorders.
" That ye come together not for the better but for the worse." This appeared in their moral condition, and also in such things as are mentioned at verses 29, 30. There is no place where our state is more deteriorated by levity and irreverence of mind and act than at the Lord's table. But if we observe the Lord's Supper in a spiritual, devout, reverent frame of mind, really discerning the Lord's body, being in contact with Him in His death by a living faith, and worshipping the Father with praise-filled lips, our souls and hearts, touched afresh by the love of Christ, we shall be perceptibly " better," and our whole moral state shall be elevated, and our spiritual tone improved. But it is a very solemn thing that, if we come not together for the better, it must be for the worse, and may even be " to judgment " (verse 34). That ye come together not for the better, but for the worse, is what he cannot praise in the Corinthian Church. He then proceeds to point out their faults in detail.
" For, first, when ye come together in assembly, I hear that divisions exist among you, and I partly believe it." He had heard of their divided state of opinion (chap. 1:10), and had dealt with them regarding it, and their setting up of one leader against another; but here divisions had shown themselves in their Church meetings even when professedly come together to eat the ordinary love-feast, and partake of the Lord's Supper, which then went along with it. " In the church" does not mean "place of assembly," nor " congregationally," but "in a church-meeting" or "in assembly," as the words literally read.
" For first," de. Where is the second point? At verse 20? Not so, but at chap. 12:1; for Paul blames two evils in this assembly: (1) the degeneration of the love-feast (verses 8-34), and (2) the misapplication of the gifts of the Spirit (Chapter 12:1).
There were divisions among the believers at Corinth, but they had not separated from one another externally as Christians have done in our day. There was a divided state of mind, heart, and feeling, leading to selfish and disorderly action when gathered together; and this, in turn, to deterioration of their spiritual state; but there were no outward separations. They all came together in assembly. They had unhappily more light and gifts than love and conscience; but yet they continued to come together in a church-meeting as one assembly. If there were mutual separations, they were within the assembly. The divisions or schisms were only separations through social distinctions, or alienated feeling; saints ceased to cleave to one another through want of love, or differing thoughts, or position. But the saints thus divided in thought, feeling, or by social distinctions, were still the one “Church of God at Corinth." But when this negative process of not cleaving to one another in cordial Christian love and sympathy goes on for a time, the falling away assumes a more positive and antagonistic form in the reunion of the disunited into cliques and parties, in accordance with the law of sympathizing selection. This is a necessity, in the nature of things, arising from the operation of divided opinion and alienated feeling; and then we have what the apostle calls heresies in verse 19, as the evil result. Schism is the inner disunion in the Church, which shows itself outwardly in heresies or positive divisions and factions, which would naturally lead ultimately to a position outside.
"For there must be also sects among you, that they who are approved may become manifest among you (verse 19). " Heresies " here does not mean false doctrines, but false parties antagonistic to the assembly, or factious divisions in the Church. They separate themselves into factions, generally around some leader who has got some notion of his own outside of Scripture, which, if carried out to its logical issue, would lead him outside the Church on earth.
Writing to Titus St. Paul gives this injunction: "An heretical man after a first and second admonition have done with, knowing that such an one is subverted, and sins, being self-condemned." A heretic is a man that sets up his own opinions, and by that means forms a party in the church, and sins, and is self-condemned; for by making a party for his own opinions he is not satisfied with the truth as God has given it, nor with the church formed by it, but wants to have a truth of his own, and a party around himself, and his own notions. The apostle writes to the Corinthians, ' For it is necessary that there be also heresies among you in order that the approved may become manifest among you." The Lord said in Matt. 18:77Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh! (Matthew 18:7), " It must needs be that offenses come," &c.
The end to be reached by the presence of heresies among the saints at Corinth, was that the tried or approved ones among them might become manifest by their keeping clear of such factions. God permits such sects to appear in the church to test faith and fidelity; and how few stand such a test, and keep apart, especially when, as at Corinth, parties in the church are all but universal, and a saint is esteemed as of no account unless he be in connection with one or another of them! Yet says the apostle, by the Holy Ghost, the sects must be among them, that the approved—the persons who have stood the test and refused all these factions and parties-may become manifest. God's approved ones are such as stand by God's truth and God's church, and refuse to be carried away by party agitation, or to be ensnared by the most subtle and specious heresies.
The language here is believed by some to refer to the future and the coming of these "heresies," others, that the heresies were there. “There must also be heresies (as well as other evils) among you," and they are even now among you. But one would suppose from the " also" that there was also a stress to be laid upon the " heresies," as indicating something worse than schisms, and pointing to what would continue to happen in the future of the church. “For it is necessary that there must arise even heresies among you as an ordeal to test and make manifest those who are approved"—a truth which the whole history of the church has signally illustrated, and never more conspicuously than in our day.
" When ye come together therefore into the same place, there is no eating of the Lord's supper; for in eating each takes his own supper beforehand, and one as hungry, and another drinks to excess" (verses 20, 21). " Therefore" resumes, after the parenthesis, from verse 18; and the apostle now proceeds to the real object of his censure, " When ye come together" is followed by a phrase (epi to auto), which also signifies together, and never once means one place in Scripture: and this leads one to think that it must mean the same thing as, " When ye come together in assembly,," inverse 18. For this was the sorrowful thing that, meeting ostensibly, in a body, professedly as the church, and as a whole (see Matt. 22:3434But when the Pharisees had heard that he had put the Sadducees to silence, they were gathered together. (Matthew 22:34); Luke 17:38; Acts 1:15; 2:1; 44:47; 4:2615And in those days Peter stood up in the midst of the disciples, and said, (the number of names together were about an hundred and twenty,) (Acts 1:15)
1And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. (Acts 2:1)
26The kings of the earth stood up, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord, and against his Christ. (Acts 4:26); 1 Cor. 7:5; 11:20; 235Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time, that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again, that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency. (1 Corinthians 7:5)
20When ye come together therefore into one place, this is not to eat the Lord's supper. (1 Corinthians 11:20)), there should be such a want of heart and conscience among the saints, and such a lack of order and waiting for one another that " there does not take place an eating of the Lord's Supper;" for after the custom of the men of their nation when they met at supper each of the better sort seemed to have brought bread and wine and meat, each for himself, which they did not set out for general use, as would have been done in a happier condition of things, but everyone generally ate his own, or that which he had brought. In this each one took his own supper as it suited him, not waiting for, or sharing his abundance with, others'; and so " one is hungry," the poorer saints, " and another is drunken," the better-off sort. Awful description! Dreadful state of things! And in this there was no eating of a Lord's Supper, which was a common eating of all, but of that which was each one's own supper, He therefore says, " It is impossible in these circumstances to eat Ethel Lord's Supper."
And not only was it impossible to eat a Lord's Supper in that way; but it was a selfish way of eating even the social meal that, at that time, accompanied the Lord's Supper, and which furnished the material elements for the latter, for the well-to-do took their own supper separately, even in the place of meeting, and left the poor in their hunger without any provisions. Love was gone from their hearts, and this allowed such ungracious conduct in their gatherings. How different this from the saints at Pentecost, when " all that believed were together, and had all things common;" and when they " broke bread at home," and at the same time " did eat their meat with 'gladness and singleness of heart, praising God!" " And the Lord added together daily such as should be saved."
The apostle, then, brings home the disorder to the consciences of the Corinthian saints in a lively succession of questions, and shows them the awful character of such conduct in God's assembly.
“What, have ye not then houses for eating and drinking Or do ye despise the church of God, and put to shame them who have not? What can I say to you? Shall I praise you? In this I praise you not" (verse 22). As we have already seen, the early Christians celebrated the Lord's Supper at the same time that they ate the love-feast, so that the joint repast was one continuous feast after the pattern of the Lord's doing at the institution of the Lord's Supper, when He ate the Passover feast with His disciples, at the same time that He gave them the Lord's Supper. Together, both love-feast and Lord's Supper, were regarded as one feast and called “the supper belonging to the Lord " (Kuriakon deipnon, the Dominical supper). All the saints of God in a city being one in Christ, and " all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus "—one family, one church, they ate together the supper given by the Lord in this twofold aspect of it, as witnessing their unity and union for time and for eternity. This combination, although forbidden by the apostle for the assembly henceforth, continued down to the end of the fourth century. But at Corinth, where the love of the saints had evaporated through their too exclusive occupation with gifts and their division and forming of parties around leaders, the Lord's Supper, which was to keep the Lord and His love freshly before their souls and hearts, thereby degenerated into a mere idion deipnon (one's own supper), and was thereby deprived of its peculiar meaning and significance, and was so utterly unlike what the Lord instituted, and that which St. Paul had delivered to them from the glorified Christ in heaven, that it had become a personal eating which might as well have been performed in their own homes, for its assembly character and their common partaking as one body, had disappeared; and it was no longer a bond of union and a remembrance of Christ into whom they were baptized as one body, but a symbol of discord and a scene of disorder, selfishness, and shame. Such are the baneful effects of Christians having divisions among themselves, which tend to the isolation of individuals, and the forming of parties in the church.
What! have ye not houses for eating and drinking?" If there is no higher Object than eating and drinking in solitary isolation, better far be in your own houses. If it is not an eating of the Lord's Supper as a common and united feast in remembrance of the Lord Himself in His death for God's glory and our redemption, the Lord's body not being discerned—it must be a coming together " not for the better but for the worse"—not for edification, but for judgment!
" Or despise ye the church of God?" of which the better part are the poor in this world, rich in faith (James 2:55Hearken, my beloved brethren, Hath not God chosen the poor of this world rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which he hath promised to them that love him? (James 2:5)). For it is not church-buildings, of which there were none (and better for the saints there had never been any), but the building of Christ and the living assembly, built of living stones on the living Stone, and partakers of all His preciousness by faith which is here called " the church of God."
“Despise ye the church of God? Christ loved the church and gave himself for it," and do ye despise that for which He shed His blood that you maintain your divisive isolation even at the Lord's table, that tells by its expressive emblems of that " Lord's death" which gave it birth? “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? Because, we, the many, are one bread, one body; for we all partake of the one bread (1 Cor. 10:16, 1716The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? 17For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread. (1 Corinthians 10:16‑17))." Here is complete identification with Christ in His body and blood at the Lord's table; and our unity is as complete as our identification, and we give expression to our being one body there (and nowhere else), in the very act of communicating, "for we all partake of that one bread." The saints being "one body" partake of the one bread, and drink of the one cup, and in doing this they manifest themselves as one body.
“Despise ye the church of God " by eating in isolation, and not in fellowship? This is done wherever there is divided feeling such as to produce individual instead of united eating and worship, or to gender that isolation that keeps saints apart, or makes them refuse to recognize one another after the supper in the cordial greetings of Christian brotherhood. For is not corning together week after week for the breaking of bread, and yet refusing to shake hands with, or to speak to, each other at the close, in principle, a despising of "the church of God?" The assembly is God's, for He has both formed it, and dwells in it, and has purchased it with the blood of His own Son. What dignity attaches to it! It is God's new work in Christ, for which Christ died, rose, and went above, and the Holy Ghost came down to give it its existence and objective manifestation, and dwells in it to maintain it in divine power, in blessing and unity in Christ, that He may be glorified. Then, surely, wherever there is the slighting, or setting aside, of the poorest or weakest of Christ's members as not worthy of eating with us, or of being recognized by us on the common footing of being Christ's, there "the church of God" is despised. Any action of individuals of a slighting or isolating sort that offends against any of Christ's little ones, or disturbs the unity of the assembly, is a despising of he church of God. When one does that apart in he church which he might do at home—eat his own supper, or break bread with no solemn sense of its being the Lord's body-and eat in isolation without being cordial with all the saints, or in a real consciousness of " the unity of the Spirit " who gives us divine oneness in Christ, he despises the church of God.
Again the apostle asks: Are ye the persons who cause the poor to be put to shame? The body is one, and hath many members, and as the great majority are poor, to shame “them that have not," i.e., the poor, is to put to shame the great part of Christ's members.
The work of the Spirit of God in the church is so very fine in its texture that it is easily hurt. A wrong look, an unguarded word, a studied neglect, or setting aside, may deeply wound and shame poorer saints, and produce such dislocating feelings as may so dishearten, that at length Satan may obtain such advantage that those who have been thus put to shame-may, by-and bye, cease coming together with the saints to remember the Lord's death.
On the other 11 and, how delightful it is when saints are so full of Christ that self is gone, and they carry out such injunctions of the Spirit as these—"As to brotherly love, kindly affectioned towards one another; as to honor, each taking the lead in paying it to the other. Have the same respect one for another, not minding high things, but going along with the lowly. With all lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering, bearing with one another in love, using diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit in the uniting-bond of peace. Fulfill ye my joy that ye may think the same thing, having the same love, joined in soul, thinking one thing: let nothing be done in the spirit of strife or vain-glory, but in lowliness of mind, each esteeming the other more excellent than themselves; regarding not each his own qualities, but each those of others also."
The very reverse of all this was practiced in the Corinthian church, and the apostle having brought home to them their sad conduct, ends by asking: “What shall I say to you? Shall I give you praise? On this point I praise not." On other points he had already praised them (verse 2), on this point he could not do so. The deliberate and ceremonious manner of the apostle shows that, though his language is moderate, he meant them to feel that they deserved the very reverse of praise-that, in fact, they were very much to be blamed. “On this point I praise not." The ground on which this is said is given in verse 23, &c., where he refers to his revelation from the Lord, regarding the Supper which he had delivered to them. "For I received of the Lord that which I also delivered unto you," &c. This made their disorder the more inexcusable, as it was sinning on their part with the apostolic declaration before them. They knew the right, and they did the wrong. It was impossible he should praise them.
In a subsequent number, we hope to examine and state what we find in this peculiarly interesting communication of the glorified Lord to His holy apostle, in which we have at once the earliest recorded account of the institution of the Lord's Supper, and the earliest recorded speech of our Lord; and also the full doctrine of the Lord's Supper, as well as the final apostolic regulations regarding the due observance of the same. It is appropriate that our apostle who first saw the Lord in glory, and heard from His mouth of the oneness of Him and His saints, and received His gospel and commission from Him; and who was the minister of the church, should also be the on to receive and give from the Lord the doctrine of the Lord's Supper, the only ordinance which in its celebration gives a symbolic manifestation of the church in its unity as the body of Christ on earth (1 Cor. 10:16,1716The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? 17For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread. (1 Corinthians 10:16‑17)).