Introduction | Table of Contents | Chapter 15

For while the word "supper" stands actually for that which it denotes, the word "table" stands, not simply for the material of the table, but also for that with which it is connected. This is an illustration of that principle of language by which a word is used to signify that with which it is associated. Another instance of this is to be found in those phrases which make mention of the blood of Christ. The blood does not simply denote the physical material, it stands for the Death of Christ by the shedding of His blood in propitiatory sacrifice.

Associated with the table of the Lord are, firstly, the sacrifice of the Cross, through which what is set on the table is provided; secondly, the materials thereon which set forth the body and blood of Christ; thirdly, the privileges and spiritual blessings bestowed upon those who partake. This at once will serve to show how wide is the scope of the significance attaching to the phrase.

Three Tables

There are three "tables" spoken of in Scripture:(1) the table provided for Israel, which signifies the privileges Divinely bestowed upon God's earthly people, through the provision He made for them. Owing to the hardness of their hearts their table became "a snare, and a trap, and a stumbling-block, and a recompense unto them" (Rom. 11:9); (2) "the table of demons," which is in sharp and divisive contrast to (3) "the table of the Lord." "The table of demons" stands for that which is provided for idolaters by these powers of darkness.

The parallel is clear. The various heathen altars of sacrifice supplied "the table," in its spiritual significance, for the devotees of this or that god or goddess. Actually the provision was made by demons. The activity of these beings in this respect, however, is more extensive than what appertains to the idolatrous cults of the heathen. For idolatry does not consist merely of the worship or veneration of images. There are many forms of idolatry. The table is spread for the worldling with a variety of supplies, and believers are warned that they cannot partake of this table as well as of the table of the Lord.

In the Church at Corinth there was a temptation, while partaking of the Lord's table, to revert to the former conditions of unregenerate days, and to associate in idolatrous practices and customs. Against this the Apostle remonstrates. Hence the warning against attempting to participate in both tables. Moreover, such an attempt is to provoke the Lord to jealousy (verse 22), a spiritual application of the jealousy-offering mentioned in Numbers 5. The believer who thus transgresses renders himself liable to drink a cup of judgment instead of the cup of blessing.

The Basis of Supply

With regard more particularly to the table of the Lord, the Old Testament foreshadowing of this is given in such passages as Deuteronomy 12:27, "Thou shalt offer thy burnt offerings, the flesh and the blood, upon the altar of the Lord thy God and the blood of thy sacrifice shall be poured out upon the altar of the Lord thy God, and thou shalt eat the flesh." As the altar of burnt offering supplied Israel with that upon which they were to feed, so the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross is the means of supplying us who sit at His table, not only with the materials which are put thereon, but with the corresponding spiritual provision made for us in Christ Himself. Hence the Apostle says, "Behold Israel after the flesh: have not they which eat the sacrifices communion³³ (or fellowship) with the altar?" (verse 18). The spiritual application of this is mentioned in the preceding verse, in that, in the unity which we enjoy, "we all partake of the one bread (or loaf)."

³³The word rendered "Partakes of" is metecho, to have a share in, whereas in verse 18 the word rendered "have communion" is koinonos, one who has something in common with others.

An Important Difference

Chapter 10 is not primarily occupied with the details of the actual partaking of the Lord's Supper, as in chapter 11, but with the privileges and responsibilities which believers enjoy as those who have fellowship with one another in that which the death of Christ has provided for them. We are, in the more comprehensive sense of the term, always at the Table. This helps to explain the order in verse 16, the cup first, the bread after: "The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a communion of the body of Christ?" This is especially a fellowship of His death. The subject throughout chapter 10 is twofold, namely, the separating power of His death, dissociating believers from the world, and the close bond of their union in Him through His sacrifice.

The Significance of the Order

That the cup is mentioned first, then, is very significant. The passage lays stress on the sacrificial aspect of His death. The blood of Christ is that which met the claims of Divine righteousness, the claims of God as Judge, while at the same time the love of God was therein manifested. The realization of that comes first in the matter of fellowship with one another, a fellowship which we enjoy as those who have come under the cleansing power of the precious blood of Christ. By way of consequent experience, this fellowship is then set forth by the bread which we break: it is a communion of the body of Christ, "seeing that we, who are many, are one bread (one loaf), one body."

Chapter 10 treats of the subject more from the external point of view, while chapter I I views it internally. What is conveyed by "the table of the Lord," while referring immediately to the cup and the bread of which we partake at the Lord's Supper, points especially to our responsibilities and privileges all the week, and the provision made to enable us to fulfil and enjoy them. This is borne out by the immediately ensuing context, where the Apostle points out the necessity of so ordering our life, that we shall abstain from anything inconsistent with the table of the Lord. We cannot partake of that and then go and compromise our relationship. We are to remember that we have a fellowship to maintain, and we are to seek not our own, but one another's good, avoiding everything that would cause our brother to stumble. Indeed, to partake of the table of the Lord involves this, that whatsoever we do we shall do "all to the glory of God," and that we shall give no occasion of stumbling, either to Jews or Gentiles, or to the church of God (verse 32). Any such act belies that fellowship into which we have been brought with other believers, and dishonours the name of Him whom we own as Lord.

The Moral Aspect

The table of the Lord presents a moral aspect. There are moral responsibilities attached to it. To partake of it means that we accept the death of Christ as our own death, the destruction of the body of sin, the death by which we are crucified to the world and the world to us, the world in all its phases religious, political, social. The arch foe of God is its prince, and he will continue to be "the god of this world" till he is removed hence to his appointed doom. Hence the importance of maintaining our identification with Christ as those who, being privileged to sit at His table and enjoy all that He is to the Father for us and the fulness of the provision that there is in Him for us, have at the same time become dead, through His Cross, to all that stands in alienation from Him.

The order in chapter 11 is that in which Christ instituted the Supper, and the subject there is the partaking of it in remembrance of the Lord, and as a proclamation of His death, till He come. We call Him to mind as the Living One, who was dead, and we proclaim the efficacy and the purpose of His death. The contrast in chapter 11 is not between the table of the Lord and the table of demons, but between the Lord's Supper and our own supper. It can only be the Lord's Supper when we acknowledge Him as Lord thereat and, fulfilling His commands as He instituted it, enter into the significance of that of which we are partaking.

For the Whole Era

The teaching given in this Epistle to the Corinthians concerning the table of the Lord and the Lord's Supper, was not intended simply for the church at Corinth. The Apostle associates the church there "with all that call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ in every place, their Lord and ours" (1:2). He definitely states that the instructions he gives are not simply for that church but for all the churches (7:17); so 11:16; he says, too, that what he teaches there he teaches everywhere in every church (4:17). Moreover, the Lord's Supper is appointed as a proclamation of His death "till He come" (11:26). It was therefore not designed simply for the early period of the testimony of the churches.

As in the case of the ordinance of baptism, ecclesiastical tradition has changed the character of the feast, with regard both to its mode and its meaning, so that what prevails in organized religious systems in Christendom bears little resemblance to that which is laid down for us in the New Testament Scriptures.

A Custom Transformed

The Lord's Supper, as instituted by the Lord Jesus, was in one respect not altogether new. The breaking of bread and the drinking of a cup had been customary in connection with burials³⁴. By way of contrast, the Lord appointed these acts as a feast of joy. His followers were to partake of the Supper in remembrance, not of His death, but of Himself (I Cor. 11:11-25). They were indeed to enter into the significance of His death, as set forth in the bread and the cup, and were to proclaim His death in the act of partaking. "Proclaim," be it noted, not "shew" or "shew forth." The word (katangello) is used of proclaiming a message, as in this very Epistle, in 2:1 and 9:16, in the latter verse of preaching the gospel. Not representation but proclamation is intended; not, as has been wrongly interpreted, a showing to God, but a witness to men.

³⁴For the breaking of bread in this respect in the Old Testament see the R.V. of Jeremiah 16:7, where "break bread" is the rendering; Ezek. 24:17; Hos. 9:4; Deut. 26:14.

Again, the Lord's words are "in remembrance of Me" (Luke 22:19; 1 Cor. 11:24,25~) not in memory of an absent person, though He is corporeally absent, nor as a memorial of an act, but in vivid realization of the Lord Himself, spiritually present, according to His promise; yet ever on the ground of the fact, the purpose and the effect of His vicarious sacrifice at Calvary. The force of the word "remembrance" may be gathered from its only other occurrence in the New Testament, viz., Heb. 10:3, "in those sacrifices there is a remembrance made of sins year by year." The effect of the sacrifices under the Mosaic economy was to bring "iniquity to remembrance" (Num. 5:15); the design of the breaking of bread and drinking of the cup is to bring to the hearts of the partakers the realization of what Christ is to them as Lord and Saviour, and what they are to Him through His redeeming blood. He appointed the Supper, not simply "lest we forget," but in order that He might Himself, as the outcome of His finished work on the Cross, communicate to us a fresh impulse of His grace and love.

Not Transubstatiation

As to His words upon giving the broken loaf to the disciples, "Take, eat; this is My body" (Matt. 26:26), certain considerations should be sufficient to make clear that any idea of the actual transmutation of the material elements of the bread into the substance of His body, was by no means His intention.

Firstly, the Lord in bodily Presence was there, reclining with His disciples at the table, His hands that broke the bread and handed it to them being members of His body. The disciples certainly did not conceive of His having, or creating, another body in any sense, shape or form, in addition to that in which He was present with them.

Secondly, the parallel statement concerning the cup cannot be taken as conveying the thought of transmutation. The following reason is sufficient to show this. The Lord, upon giving the disciples the cup, said, "For this is My blood. . ." The narratives in Luke 22:20 and I Cor. 11:25, are given as His words, "This cup is the new covenant in My blood." In whatever language Christ spoke to the disciples in the upper room, it thus becomes plain that He spoke of the cup as symbolizing the new covenant. Plainly His words here, therefore, signify representation and not transubstantiation. The word "this" (neuter in the original) in Matt. 26:28 refers back to the cup (poterion, also neuter), which the narrative records Him having just taken. "He took a cup ... saying ... Drink ye all of it; for this is My blood of the new covenant." The four narratives are all thus in agreement. The Lord's language shows that He had no idea of the transmutation of the contents of the cup itself. Since the cup was undeniably a representation of the new covenant in His blood, the preceding and parallel phrase "this is My body" never should have been interpreted as indicating a change of the actual substance from bread into His body. Clearly, what the Lord meant was, "This bread represents My body, and this cup with its contents represents the new covenant to be made in My death and to be ratified by the shedding of My blood." In regard to the cup, this is again confirmed by what is said of the cup and of the bread in I Cor. 10:16, "The cup of blessing ... is it not a communion of the blood of Christ? The bread ... is it not a communion of the body of Christ?" Neither the cup nor the bread is the actual communion. They stand for, or represent, the communion (that which we have in common as believers), and precisely so the bread represents His body.

Thirdly, in all statements with the verb "to be" as the connecting predicate, the verb is never used to signify that one thing is changed into another. In other words, it is never used as the equivalent of ginomai, "to become." In all such usage either (a) the object is actually what it is said to be, apart from any change from the one thing to another (as, e.g., "This is the witness of John," John 1:19), or (b) the object represents what it is said to be (as, e.g., "the field is the world," Matt. 13:38; "these women are two covenants," Gal. 4:24; "the seven heads are seven mountains," Rev. 17:9). Obviously (a) is not the case in the statement, "this is My body" (for the doctrine of transubstantiation does suppose a change from one thing to another). We are therefore confined to the meaning as set forth in the examples under (b), and the statement is to be understood as meaning "This bread represents My body."

Fourthly, there is not the slightest intimation in any writing of apostolic times, or of post-apostolic times for some centuries, that believers either were taught, or understood, that any change took place in the substance either of the bread or of the wine. On the contrary, the testimony of the Apostle Paul is against the theory of transubstantiation; for throughout the passage, and with reference even to the actual partaking, which would be after the alleged pronouncement of the blessing, the elements are spoken of still as the bread and the cup, and not as the body and the blood.

Fifthly, the Lord's words concerning the cup were, "Drink ye all of it." That this was not intended simply for the Apostles but for all believers, is clear from the testimony of I Cor. I 1:26, where the Apostle, speaking of the whole church at Corinth, says, "as often as yedrink the cup." Now, to say nothing of the audacious decree promulgated in 1415 A.D., forbidding laymen to partake of the wine in the Lord's Supper, there is a very direct testimony against the supposition that the wine ever became changed into blood. The Law of God given to the people of Israel forbade the drinking of blood (Lev. 17:10, 14). Nor was the prohibition ever removed. On the contrary, it was enforced by the decree issued for the churches by the Apostles at their gathering at Jerusalem. The churches were to abstain from what is strangled and from blood (Acts 15:20). Any ecclesiastical fiat, therefore, confining the cup to a sacerdotal partaking (which is itself a breach of the Lord's own institution of the cup) simply made the priests of the religious organization guilty, under the supposition of transubstantiation, of disobeying the Divine prohibition against partaking of blood. But the idea is preposterous. The Lord never instituted a feast which would involve a breach of Divine prohibitions.

Sixthly, the statement "Ye proclaim the Lord's death," taken with the Lord's own words on the subject, teaches that the elements are emblems of Christ in His death, and not in His exaltation and presence in Heaven as the ascended Lord. For, while in bodily presence He is at the right hand of the Throne of God, He is at the same time, in fulfillment of His promise, Himself spiritually in the midst of His people, not in the elements on the table, but Personally with them. That He "took bread" and "took"³⁵ a cup, afforded no ground whatever for the sacerdotal practice of elevating the emblems, either for presentation or veneration. There is no stress upon the word in the original, rendered "took." What is recorded is simply an act in the ordinary sense of the word.

³⁵ Lambano is the ordinary word denoting either 'to take" or "to receive." It never conveys the suggestion of elevating.

Seventhly, whereas attempts have been made to explain the breaking of bread by the interpretation of the sixth chapter of the Gospel of John, a careful perusal of that passage, in which Christ speaks of His being the Living Bread, shows that there is no reference there to the Lord's Supper. Christ was on that occasion speaking of the means whereby a person obtains eternal life, which is granted on the ground of faith, and not on the ground of partaking of the bread in the Lord's Supper. Moreover, when He said, "The bread which I shall give is My flesh, for the life of the world" (verse 51, R.V.), and the Jews made the mistake of taking His words literally, He rebuked them, with the remark, "It is the Spirit that quickeneththe words that I have spoken unto you are spirit and are life. But there are some of you that believe not." To take His words therefore in the literal sense is to support what has become one of the greatest errors in Christendom. Plainly the Lord was drawing the analogy between material support of the body by bread and the spiritual support of the soul by faith.

The partaking of the Lord's Supper, as set forth in the New Testament, is marked by an entire absence of officialism. There is no hint of the appointment of anyone for the administration of the elements. Both the breaking of the bread and the drinking of the cup are for the whole company. The cup is "the cup of blessing which we bless" (or "give thanks for," as is the meaning in I Cor. 14:16); the bread is that which "we break." The argument that the "we" stands for the Apostles and their successors is refuted by the context; for the Apostle immediately says, "seeing that we, who are many, are one bread, one body: for we all partake of the one bread." Again, when he points out to the church at Corinth the inconsistency of partaking of the cup of demons and the cup of the Lord (10:21), the implication in the "ye" is obvious (save to those who have some unscriptural theory to advance) that the whole church partook of the cup.

The sacerdotalism which, by mere human tradition, has intruded human mediators for official ministrations of the elements to all the partakers, has marred the character of the feast as appointed by the Lord, and has perverted the carrying out of His intentions. The solemn responsibility, yea, happy privilege, of believers is to follow His will and adhere to the teaching which He has left on record for us in the Scriptures of Truth.

Introduction | Table of Contents | Chapter 15

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