The Bible Study Hour

Mark Daniels: In the early church, the Lord’s Supper was meant, among other things, to promote unity, bringing believers of different backgrounds and circumstances together as brothers and sisters in Christ. Yet the table often brought further division.

Welcome to The Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically. As hard as it is to believe, some church members became drunk on the wine, and others refused to participate in the Lord’s Supper.

The wealthy came with plenty, and the poor came in want, yet the abundance was not shared. Even today, believers are divided over the true meaning and purpose of both the host and the practice. Join Dr. Boice as he takes a deeper look into the abuses of the Lord’s Supper and the true meaning and purpose of this fundamental Christian institution.

Dr. James Boice: Most of the ceremonies of this world take great care to distinguish between people so that those who are important get the first place, and those who are less important get a somewhat lesser place, and so on down the line until you get to people that aren't even welcome.

I've taken part in a number of graduation ceremonies, and it is the essence of graduation ceremonies to bestow honor and to distinguish between people. You've had the opportunity to acquire a doctorate degree, you get to wear a robe that has bands on the sleeve, and you have a hood that goes a long way down your back, about three-quarters of the way to the floor.

If you only have a Master's degree, you only get a hood that goes halfway down. If you have a Bachelor's degree, it's shorter than that and it's made of thinner material, and so on. These are the ceremonies of the world. But it's not like that in the Christian church.

There's the ceremony or ordinance of marriage, for example, and where the wedding service is properly conducted, it is a testimony to the fact that the high and the low, the mighty and those who are not mighty, are all united in wedlock in the same way, with the same vows, with the same opportunities in the sight of God.

It's true that sometimes people do strange things to try to make their weddings unique. I have read recently about a couple that were married while skydiving. It was a very short service. Another couple that were married in a burning house.

The reason for that is that the woman was a firefighter, and so she thought it would be appropriate to be married in a house that was burning down around her. They were burning it for a training session of different firefighters, and they set it on fire, and the ceremony began.

They had just a few minutes to conduct it before the rest of the team came and put it out. She wore an asbestos dress. Instead of a bouquet of flowers, she carried a fire extinguisher, and then she left for her honeymoon on a fire engine. In this particular case, the groom's family were not entirely pleased with the arrangement.

We have all kinds of differences humanly speaking, but where in the Christian church a man and a woman come and are married before a minister in the sight of God, it is the same vows they take. And it is the same words that are spoken, whether they are wealthy, whether they are poor, whether they are famous, or whether they are utterly unknown. I suppose of all the places in the world that is most evident is in England.

Where on the one hand you have the most splendid weddings that ever take place, the wedding of a king or a queen of England in Westminster Abbey with all of the trappings. And yet the words that are used in that service are the same words that the most humble person anywhere else in the British Isles, if they're married in a Church of England, say and participate in.

Now that's true of the Lord's Supper. This passage that we are about to study from 1 Corinthians 11 speaks of the Lord's Supper, and what it has chiefly in mind are abuses of the Lord's Supper that had taken place in Corinth.

There were a number of them. One was the fact that when the Corinthians came together to observe the Lord's Supper, that observance had degenerated into what was essentially a banquet with very little, if any, spiritual overtones.

Apparently in these days, perhaps, we don't know for sure, but perhaps in some measure because so many of the early Christians were slaves and didn't have a great deal of free time. When they did have free time, they tried to make the most of it in their Christian fellowship and not to waste time going off to have a meal somewhere. They would bring their food together and they would eat it while they were observing whatever was happening in the service at that time.

And perhaps also because it had been a custom in the Christian church in the early days also to observe the Lord's Supper in connection with what was described as an agape or love feast, sort of a big Christian fellowship dinner where, as part of the dinner, they would also observe the Lord's Supper. There wasn't anything wrong with that.

Except that the way this was practiced at Corinth, it happened that the Christians were coming together more for the food than either the fellowship or the spiritual blessing. And so some would come, I think it was the original casserole arrangement, would come with their dinners, and because they had a lot of money, they would eat and have a great big repast.

And others, because they had very little money, would come with very little or perhaps with nothing at all. And so the whole thing was getting distorted that way. Some were indulging themselves. Paul says some were even getting drunk at the communion service, and others were sitting over there and they really weren't participating in it at all. That was one thing that was wrong with it.

But the other thing, which is closely wrapped up with it, and which as I read this actually seems to be the major concern of the Apostle Paul, is that by conducting themselves in that manner, they were actually producing divisions among themselves in the very midst of the observance of that which should have indicated that the church instead of being divided into all sorts of diverse parts was actually one.

You only have to go back a chapter to 1 Corinthians 10, where Paul is speaking of the Lord's Supper also, in verse 17, and find him there stressing the unity. Paul says there, "Because there is one loaf from which they participate, we who are many are one body, because we all participate in the one loaf."

He said the very way in which they were in the habit of observing the Lord's Supper, that is taking one loaf of bread, breaking it, and distributing it among the many who were there, indicates that the Church of Jesus Christ is one. And yet here they were in their particular observance of this denying the unity of the body by creating the very kind of schisms that he had been deploring earlier in this book.

Apparently they had sects at Corinth. There was a sect that centered around the name of Apollos, because Apollos was such a wise and eloquent preacher. There were others who centered around the name of Peter. They said, "Oh, we're of Peter's party." And then there were people who were of Paul, and people who thought they were more spiritual than anybody else and said, "Oh, but we are of Christ's party, not any of these." And then in addition to all of that, there were the wealthy and there were those who weren't wealthy, and oh, it was just a terrible big mess.

This bothered Calvin. Calvin wrote about it in one place. He said, "It is wonderful and well-nigh portentous that Satan could have accomplished so much in so short a time. We may learn from this example what is the worth of mere antiquity, that is what authority is due to custom unsustained by the word of God."

Paul of course was bothered by this too. And so as he begins to write about it, he is not disguising in any measure his displeasure. Earlier in this chapter, as he began to talk about worship and the whether women were to be coming to worship with their heads covered or not, he begins with a word of praise. He said, "I praise you," and so forth. He gets into it that way.

But when he comes to this point, this disruption, this disunion, this schism in the Lord's Supper, he says instead, "I do not praise you about this," and he begins to talk about all the things that they have done. Now the way Paul counters it is to go back and remind them of that which they certainly knew, which was the words of the institution of the Lord's Supper.

Which as Paul says here very clearly, is not something he had invented, was not something that was practiced in some unique way by the church of Corinth, as if they could have one kind of communion service while people somewhere else had something different. "Oh, no," said Paul, "What I delivered to you is exactly that which was delivered to me, that which came from the Lord Himself," namely, and then he goes on to explain.

How when the Lord was betrayed on that very night, gathered together with his disciples, he took bread and he broke it. And as he broke it, he said, "This is my body, which is given for you." And he told them to do that in remembrance of him. And then he said, "In the same way, this is what all the churches observe, this is what came from Christ, when he had finished that, he took the cup."

And he said, "This cup is the cup of the new covenant in my blood and as often as you drink this, do it in remembrance of me." And so he instituted that part of the Lord's Supper. And Paul says as he gets to the end of this summation, "So whenever you eat of this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he come."

I've sometimes said and I think it's a very helpful way to look at these verses that they contain three time elements. There is first of all a reference to the past because Paul says, quoting the Lord Jesus Christ, that we're to do this in remembrance of him, that is we're to look back. And then there's the future element, because as Paul says, as often as you do this, you show forth the Lord's death till he come, and so we're looking for Christ's second coming, which is future.

And then because of that, because we're here in the middle between that which Jesus did at his first coming and what he's going to do at his second coming, because we're here and we're living on the basis of what he's done and we're looking forward to that second coming, we are to live for him. And that means that there is a present element to the communion service, chiefly in the fact that we're to examine our hearts in order that we might not eat or drink unworthily, but might begin to grow in grace, which is the reason for which the Lord Jesus Christ instituted the sacrament.

Now when we look to the past, we look to Christ's death. And when we look to his death, we look to that death not simply as a tragedy, not simply as the execution of an innocent man and therefore a miscarriage of justice. So we say, well things like that are bad and they should never happen again. But rather we look to the past as that sacrifice which Jesus made for our sins and which was no accident because it had been planned from before the foundation of the world.

This is what it says. It says that Jesus was the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world. And that means as far back as we can think and farther than that, in the mind of God, before this world began, God set Jesus Christ aside to be our Savior by his death on the cross. And it was necessary that he die, the innocent for the guilty, the Son of God for creatures who had besmirched themselves with sin. We look to that, we're looking then obviously to that which is the focal point of all history, namely the cross of Jesus Christ.

It is a pity that the Lord's Supper and our interpretation of it and the words that our Lord used should have become as they have become such a cause of division within the Christian church. Chief cause of trouble here is the Lord's saying when he referred to the bread and said, "This is my body." This has been a cause of at least four major interpretations.

The Roman Catholic church at the time of the Reformation (it had developed somewhat during the middle ages) took these words in the most literal of all ways. They said, if Jesus said "This is my body," then that is his body. And that means that in some way which we may not fully understand, the bread which represents his body, and they added also the wine which represents his blood, are in the sacrament changed into the literal body and the literal blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.

They had a word for it. The word in theology is the word "transubstantiation." It meant that there is a literal change. And in Roman Catholic theology that happens at that moment in the mass where the priest lifts up the host and pronounces the words, "This is my body," which is broken for you. At that moment a bell rings in the Roman Catholic service, and it's understood that the transformation literally takes place. When the bell rings, the worshippers kneel because now they are adoring the host, which is the bread and the wine which has now been changed into Jesus Christ, and so in worshipping the elements they worship him.

The reformers didn't like that. They said that was patently wrong, and I believe it is wrong. Though I want to say by way of qualification that I believe there are strong Christians in the Roman Catholic church who don't understand it necessarily that way and recognize that Jesus Christ did die once for all for their sin and they trust him. But as theology, that is wrong.

I would say that even as an interpretation of the historical circumstances of the Lord's Supper, it's obviously wrong because when our Lord first pronounced those words saying "This is my body which is broken for you," his body was right there. None of the disciples would understand when he made that kind of a declaration, being seated before them around the very table where they were gathered, that he was saying, "Now a great miracle is taking place here and though you can't see it, my body which you see is not really here but is being changed into the bread."

None of them would have understood it that way. They would have understood it at least in a mystical sense and perhaps in a symbolic sense. The reformers said really that is what's involved. When we say "This is my body which is broken for you," we're not pretending that there's some kind of miracle that's going on here, so that the body of Christ actually enters into the elements or the elements actually change into the body and blood of Christ.

But rather something else is involved. And moreover they said, it is never the case that the sacrifice of Christ is repeated again and again as it is claimed that it is repeated in the Roman Catholic mass. But rather Jesus Christ died on the cross once for all for our salvation and our salvation comes from faith in what he has done, not in some continuing arrangement which is maintained in the church continuously by priestcraft.

Well so far so good, but the difficulty is that the reformers themselves couldn't quite agree on what was happening. The view that was most antithetical to that of the Roman Catholic church was that of Zwingli from Zurich. Zwingli said, "Oh, you make a big mistake when you begin to talk of any kind of presence of Jesus there in the communion service in the bread or in the wine."

Zwingli said, "Don't you know that Jesus ascended to heaven? His body's not here on earth and it's certainly not in the communion elements. The body of Jesus Christ is in heaven at the right hand of God." So when we observe the communion service and when we say this is Christ's body and when we say this is Christ's blood referring to the wine, we're not saying that there's anything like transubstantiation. All we're doing is remembering what he has done, and those things are symbols of what was done and they're there simply to help us remember. So the Lord's Supper is essentially in the view of Zwingli a memorial.

Now Luther didn't like that. Luther was a literalist where scripture was concerned in the best sense. And furthermore, Luther had a hearty distrust of human reason. Now he was a rational man and he knew how to use reason, but he was well aware that in our sinful state our reason can often lead us astray. So when Luther came to these words and read "This is my body," Luther certainly wanted to take them in some literal sense.

Now Luther didn't believe that the sacrifice of Christ was repeated. Luther rejected the mass. When the priest held up the host, he was not doing the sacrifice of Christ all over again. But said Luther, there's some way in which those elements actually become the body and blood of Christ. There was a meeting at the time of the Reformation where people tried to get Luther and Zwingli together and they had their team there and they discussed these things and it broke down because Luther refused to be anything but literal at this point.

The story goes that he spilled salt on the table so the table was covered with this and then he wrote in the salt by scraping it aside with his fingers the Latin words "hoc est corpus meum," this is my body. And Luther said, "This is where I stand and I'm not going to change on that." And because Zwingli was unwilling to accept that interpretation, the meeting broke up.

And then there was Calvin. Calvin of course was right, though the Roman Catholics, Lutherans, and Zwinglians don't think so. But Calvin's view, the fourth, goes like this. Is the Lord Jesus Christ present in the communion service? Oh, yes, said Calvin, he most certainly is. Is the Lord Jesus Christ present in a special way when the bread and the wine are distributed? Oh, yes, said Calvin, he most certainly is. But how is he present? Is the Lord Jesus Christ present physically? No. In that respect, said Calvin, Zwingli is right.

The body of Jesus is in heaven. He has ascended up on high from where he gave gifts to men and one of the gifts is the communion service. But he said, is that the only way in which Christ can be present? As a matter of fact, is that the most important way in which Christ can be present? Oh, no, said Calvin. The most important presence of Christ is a spiritual presence. That's far more important than a material thing.

And so just as the Lord Jesus Christ is with us in a spiritual way by the Holy Spirit day by day, so he can say in a very real sense, "Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world." So said Calvin, in a very special way the Lord Jesus Christ is with his people in the communion service and the spiritual presence of Christ is imparted to them as they partake of the elements.

I know there are many important differences between the various branches of the Protestant church at least where that is concerned. But the Protestants are at least united in this, that the Lord Jesus Christ gave the communion service. And the communion service is a point at which all who call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ can come and can confess their sin and can be assured of forgiveness and can in some way participate in him.

As a matter of fact, say the reformers, there is even a sense in which the communion service illustrates what it really is to be a Christian. Because being a Christian is not, you understand, merely an intellectual assent to certain doctrines, so that we can say, "Yes, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and yes, I believe he died on the cross for sin, and yes, I believe the Lord Jesus Christ rose again from the dead as the scripture says." That's important, it's basic, it's fundamental to Christian theology, but that alone does not make one a Christian.

What makes one a Christian is participating in that one whom we so profess. So we do not say merely "Yes, Jesus is God," we say "He is my God." We do not say merely "Jesus died upon the cross for sin," we say "He died for my sin." We don't merely say "He rose from the dead," we say "He rose from the dead for my justification." And we receive that by faith just the way we receive the elements. You see the gospel in a certain sense is proclaimed in the elements. And as that gospel is proclaimed, we receive it, we take it in our hands spiritually, and we feed upon it, so it becomes part of us just as the Lord Jesus Christ becomes part of us through saving faith.

Communion service has great power to do that. I was reading Harry Ironside's commentary on 1 Corinthians and he told about an experience that he had had when he was in Japan. There was a Japanese there, a businessman, who had difficulty coming to Christ because he understood that if he did that he'd have to put Christ first and he feared that if he did that he would have to stop making money or at least he'd have to stop making as much money as he was making. That was his hang-up and so he struggled with it for a long time.

Ironside was there once, a year later he came back, the man was still there. He was listening, but he hadn't made a commitment. "When are you going to do that?" he said. Well the man said, "I don't know, it's a real struggle for me, I can't quite make up my mind." "Well," said Ironside, "We're having a service next week, I'd like you to come." And the man did, and part of the service was the communion service.

And this man sat off in the side while the communion service was going on and as he observed that, as he saw the Christians who were assembled sharing in that which represented the broken body and the shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, big tears began to roll down his cheeks and was something in it that reached his heart and changed him. And he came up afterwards and said, "I've held out against Jesus Christ for so long, for so many years. But as I sat there and watched the Christians partake in that holy sacrament, I recognized that Jesus Christ loved me and gave himself for me and so I want to become his disciple."

A number of years ago there was a man who was sitting in the back corner of the church in one of the communion services and he was not a Christian. He was well aware he was not, he understood that the communion service was for Christians only and so during the communion service when the bread was passed, this man refused to take it. And rightly so, the bread went by.

But as the bread passed by, he was aware of what he was rejecting. He was rejecting that which represented the body of Jesus Christ broken on the cross for him. And in the moments after that when the congregation was participating, this man gave his heart to the Lord. And then the service went on and the grape juice or wine representing the shed blood of Christ was passed. And this time when the second element came by he took it because in the meantime he had given his heart to Jesus Christ and was a Christian. This man went on to become Dean of Moody Bible Institute.

You see that's the spiritual presence of Christ in the supper. You say, "Well is he not present at other times?" Yes, he is. But there's a special promise of the blessing of Jesus Christ where we gather together in that way in his name. Now there are two more time elements in this, there's the future element because we don't just look to the past, we don't look to a Christ who died on the cross for our sin and rose again and that's the end of it. But rather that same Jesus who died and rose again ascended to heaven and he's coming again.

He said, "I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go, I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there ye may be also." That is the same Jesus. The Jesus whom we look to in the past is the Jesus we look to in the future, and that Jesus is coming. And because of that, you see, there is the present element as well.

If the Apostle John in his first letter in the third chapter is talking about the return of Christ, and he says one day we're going to see him. And he says when we see him, we're going to be like him. Because of course we can't see Jesus in his glory while we're in our sin, we have to be changed to become like him. We have to be holy as he is holy, we have to be filled with love as he is filled with love and wisdom and mercy and all his other attributes. John says the day is coming when we will see him, and when we see him we will be like him, and then he makes this conclusion. He says, "Therefore, everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, even as he is pure."

That's what Paul is talking about in verse 27 and following. He says there is a way in which a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ can participate in the Lord's Supper unworthily. It doesn't mean being unworthy. It's not an adjective, it's an adverb. It doesn't mean we come unworthy. If that was the problem, none of us could come, we're all unworthy. But he's talking about the manner in which we come, whether we come unworthily.

What he means is we can come treating the Lord's Supper flippantly. We can come taking it as well, just another thing that goes on in the Christian church, just another thing that fills up a little extra time on a Sunday morning and without any real thought about the state of our souls. He says it's possible to do that and actually take judgment to yourself. He said some have been so wrong in the way they've approached the Lord's Supper that the Lord has actually judged them with sickness, not with a loss of their salvation, but with sickness, and some have actually fallen asleep. He means some have actually died. God has taken that so seriously.

The contrary is the way we should come. We should recognize the Lord's Supper for what it is: a great gift of God to his people, a great opportunity for growth, a privilege of meeting with Jesus Christ in a special spiritual way. And if we understand that, then as we come, we search our hearts, we ask the Spirit of God to reveal to us that which is displeasing in his sight. And by his grace, we come confessing that sin and receiving the forgiveness for that sin which we certainly need.

Paul says whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. That is one way of saying that Jesus is most certainly coming. And the question is how are we going to meet him when he comes? Are we going to meet him having treated spiritual things lightly? Are we going to meet him as those who have been faithful, who have profited from his gifts, who have fellowshipped with him at this table, and who are therefore ready to participate with him in that great fellowship at the great marriage supper of the Lamb? Let us pray.

Our Father forgive us for taking your gifts lightly. We confess that we often do. We treat the sacraments lightly, we treat the word lightly, we treat Christian worship lightly. We treat even fellowship with Christian brothers and sisters lightly and do so, we recognize, to our own spiritual hurt. Father forgive us for that and grant that in conviction of our sin in this area we may be turned around. And so go in a way which is profitable, a way which values what you have done and in a way which is honoring to Jesus Christ with whom we fellowship. We pray in his name. Amen.

Mark Daniels: You're listening to The Bible Study Hour, featuring the teaching of Dr. James Boice. Christ's Last Supper was the apostle's first communion, a practice that is still relevant and precious to us today. What is it about the bread and wine that plays a vital role in Christianity?

Find out more in this week's CD offer entitled, "The First Supper", a message given by Dr. Phil Ryken. This free CD is our gift to you. To receive it, call 1-800-488-1888 and we'll be happy to send you a copy of "The First Supper". That number again is 1-800-488-1888.

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We all love how Dr. Boice's sermons always put life in a biblical perspective. It's often impossible, though, to include every biblical reference in detail in a 26-minute broadcast. You can purchase complete preached messages at reformedresources.org. That's reformedresources.org. I'm Mark Daniels. While the Apostle Paul had a lot to say on the subject of tongues, he had a lot more to say on the much broader subject of spiritual gifts in general. Join Dr. James Boice as he emphasizes the important topic of believers exercising their spiritual gifts for the benefit of the church. That's next time on The Bible Study Hour, preparing you to think and act biblically.