How the Lord’s Supper shatters divisions

17 Now in giving this instruction I do not praise you, since you come together not for the better but for the worse. 18 For to begin with, I hear that when you come together as a church there are divisions among you, and in part I believe it. 19 Indeed, it is necessary that there be factions among you, so that those who are approved may be recognized among you. 20 When you come together, then, it is not to eat the Lord’s Supper. 21 For at the meal, each one eats his own supper. So one person is hungry while another gets drunk! 22 Don’t you have homes in which to eat and drink? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What should I say to you? Should I praise you? I do not praise you in this matter!

23 For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: On the night when he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”

25 In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, and said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

Self-Examination
27 So, then, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sin against the body and blood of the Lord. 28 Let a person examine himself; in this way let him eat the bread and drink from the cup. 29 For whoever eats and drinks without recognizing the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself. 30 This is why many are sick and ill among you, and many have fallen asleep. 31 If we were properly judging ourselves, we would not be judged, 32 but when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined, so that we may not be condemned with the world.

33 Therefore, my brothers and sisters, when you come together to eat, welcome one another. 34 If anyone is hungry, he should eat at home, so that when you gather together you will not come under judgment. I will give instructions about the other matters whenever I come.

1 Corinthians 11:17-34

Introduction

Read this passage and you will discover some shocking news. It is possible to wake up on a Sunday morning, get dressed, come to church, sing songs of praise, say amen to all the prayers, and leave this building in a worse spiritual state than when you arrived.

In fact, the Apostle Paul looks at a church which is thriving, a church which is gifted in Corinth, and he delivers a verdict to them. He tells them, “Your gatherings are doing more harm than good.” And we’d be wise to ask the question, why? Because their worship was only about looking up. They forgot that the table of God forces us to look across at the person on the other side of the table.

I want to give you a little bit of a Bible picture through the whole of Scripture that whenever God wants to seal a relationship with humanity, He throws a party. He serves a meal. In Genesis, Genesis chapter 18, Abraham feeds God under the oaks of Mamre. On Sinai, the elders gather to see God’s glory and they eat and they drink. In the upper room, the Gospel records that Jesus takes and He transforms the Passover around a wooden table. At the end of time, at the end of Scripture in Revelation chapter 19, as all of history wraps up, it wraps up not with a corporate meeting, but with the marriage supper of the Lamb.

Eating with God is the ultimate picture of a vertical peace. But in Corinth, the horizontal reality was in an absolute mess. The wealthy were feasting early and the working poor people were arriving late to find empty plates. The communion table had become an exclusive country club event.

Now at this table—the Lord’s Supper, the Lord’s table, communion that we together will share later on this morning after we come together for a bring-and-share meal together—it is the gospel that secures our vertical identity with God and as a result that must shatter horizontal divisions with man.

Friends, the point of this message this morning is we cannot claim to love God who is up there while neglecting our brothers and our sisters who sit right next to us.

Today, Paul gives us a three-part diagnostic to expose our own fractures as we look at the first point.

Look Out

The first point is simply Look Out. It’s taken from 1 Corinthians chapter 11 from verse 17 to verse 22.

Meals between man and God in Scripture are covenantal markers. They reflect the horizontal and vertical relational realities that we have. But in Corinth we see structural failure, a church which is breaking more than just social etiquette.

Paul begins this section with a severe rebuke. He looks at the corporate life of the church and he delivers his shocking verdict. You can read it in verse 17. He says, “Now in giving this instruction, I do not praise you since you come together not for the better but for the worse.”

Just think about that. Dwell on that. That possibility of coming to church on a Sunday morning and leaving in a worse spiritual state than when you arrived. And it’s not about how you sing in three-part harmony or the prayers that you pray together with the rest of the saints. It’s about how you love the man or woman standing next to you.

Paul traces the logic of their failure step by step. First, he addresses the report of their fractured relationships. Verse 18 we read: “For to begin with, I hear that when you come together as a church there are divisions among you, and in part I believe it.” The Greek word here for divisions is schismata—schisms, divisions, cracks in their relational foundation.

Then he delivers to them a heavy, sobering reality. In verse 19, he says, “Indeed, it’s necessary that there be factions among you so that those who are approved may be recognized among you.” Paul isn’t condoning divisions in this text, but he is stating a divine reality. Their factions, their divisions, their schisms, they reveal who is genuinely approved by God and who is at church playing social games.

Paul offers concrete proof of their corporate failure in verse 20: “When you come together, then, it’s not to eat the Lord’s Supper.” It’s what you thought you were doing. But for this meal, each one eats his own supper so that one person is hungry while another gets drunk.

A bit of context here. In the Greco-Roman world of the day, meals were a highly stratified event by social class. A very wealthy host would invite his high-status peers into his formal dining room. The elite would sit and dine in comfort, eating the best of foods and drinking the best of fine wine. The slaves, the working-class people, those who were poor—well, they were relegated to the atrium outside. They were pushed into the courtyard where they were dished up cheap rations. The system of the day was entirely built on status, on prestige and on socioeconomic standing.

Now this worldly discrimination bled into the church. The wealthy elite probably arrived early because they had the luxury of time on their hands and they feasted on the covenantal meal and the love feast and they got drunk in the process. Meanwhile, the poorer members arrived after a brutal day of labor and when they got to the table, nothing was left. They were left hungry. The covenant meal had become an exclusive country club.

So Paul finishes his rebuke against them in verse 22 with scathing questions for the church in Corinth: “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 should I say to you? Should I praise you? I do not praise you in this matter!”

Bottom line is for the apostle, the Corinthians by treating the poor with contempt were actively despising the church of God. And this is not a minor misunderstanding. This is a theological crisis. Their division was a functional denial of the cross.

We call ourselves family.

Imagine a family dinner where the parents eat steak at the table while the children hunt for scraps on the floor. That would be grotesque. It would mock the very concept of family. But that’s exactly what happens when divisions dictate how we treat the household of faith.

Friend, you cannot look up to God in worship while looking down on a brother or sister in pride.

We have the potential for division at Benoni Baptist Church, too. I mean, even for a moment, look at the people to your left and to your right in the hall today. God has given us immense growth over the past two years. The older members who anchored this work when I arrived comprise about a third of our congregation. Now the other two-thirds of our church are newcomers who have arrived over the last two years. There is the potential at least for cliques to form, for divisions to emerge—the oldies on one side and the newbies on another.

So how do we practically break down the walls which so naturally separate us? Today, our rhythm has been intentionally disrupted. The bring-and-share lunch is right after the service and communion is after that. Why? It is to remind us that the early church communion occurred within a shared community meal. And during the meal we will sit at long tables and hopefully you will sit alongside or near enough to someone that you don’t know. You will get to talk to them over the love feast and get to know them.

You might be sitting here right now realizing that you didn’t bring something for bring-and-share. No worries. When we dismiss, there’ll be a little bit of time for you to nip off to Spar and come back or just join us. There might be food of plenty. Caitlyn will scurry around and try and secure more food, I’m sure.

How do we move past the divisions which we have even in our own church? How do we look beyond our own comfort, our own timing, our own circles, the cliques that we naturally are in? We cannot rely on social etiquette. And Paul doesn’t rely on social etiquette in this passage. He looks towards an objective standard.

Look Up

And that brings us to our second point from the text and that’s Look Up. We’ve had Look Out and now Look Up. 1 Corinthians chapter 11 from verse 23 to verse 26.

In the Lord’s Supper, the gospel levels the ground upon which we all stand. There are no VIPs at the foot of the cross.

How do you correct horizontal abuse happening in the courtyard of Corinth? Well, Paul forces the church to stop looking at one another’s social status and to look up at their vertical source. He does not offer them a lecture on modern social etiquette or a lesson on basic manners at the table. Instead, he anchors them in what he has received directly from the Lord.

Verse 23—read along with me: “For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you.” This is the received tradition that was delivered to him by King Jesus Himself and cannot be edited by human pride.

Paul takes them back to the upper room in verse 23: “On the night in which He was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took bread, and when He had given thanks, broke it, and said, ‘This is my body which is for you.'”

Consider the weight of the timing of that event. On the very night human treachery was doing its worst, divine mercy was doing its best. He—being Jesus—took the bread and He broke it and He handed it to those who would soon scatter.

And Jesus Himself attaches a perpetual command to the bread at the end of that verse: “Do this in remembrance of me.” This is not a passive mental recollection of a dead historical figure. This is an active covenantal remembrance of our living King which we do together.

Verse 25: “In the same way also He took the cup, after supper.” The fact that it was after supper is crucial to the way that we normally do the Lord’s table because this wasn’t part of the regular casual consumption of food to fill an empty stomach. This cup was distinct. It was set apart as the climax of the Passover meal to signify that the old shadows were fading away because the Truth—the Son of Man, the Savior who takes away the sins of the world, the Lamb of God—was standing right in front of them.

And He, Jesus, said: “This cup is the new covenant in my blood.” The new covenant is God’s unbreakable promise, sealed in the blood of Jesus to forgive sins fully and write His laws on the heart of His people. And unlike the old covenant that depended on man’s obedience, this new covenant rests on Christ’s finished work. It creates a new humanity where every single believer regardless of status or ethnicity enters on the same basis—free grace.

This new covenant is not ratified in the blood of bulls and goats and sheep or temple sacrifices. It is eternally ratified by the precious, unblemished blood of Jesus Christ Himself—that Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

Jesus concludes His instruction for the cup in verse 25. He says: “Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”

This is the ultimate status-shatterer. The cross leaves no room for human boasting. Every single person—whether a wealthy Greco-Roman homeowner who owns an estate or a destitute slave who just slipped in through the back door—every single person enters into the new covenant on exactly the same basis—unmerited, free grace. Everyone is entirely spiritually bankrupt without Jesus Christ. And so absolutely no one can claim a higher status or a better seat at His table.

So this is important for you to know. Mark this. Every time that you eat the bread and drink the cup, friend, you are preaching a silent, visible, yet thunderous sermon to those who are around you.

Verse 26: “For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.”

Just as a side note—I was mentioning it earlier to parents who have their children with them—this is why kids stay in the service on communion Sundays. So that they can watch their mom and their dad preach to them as they eat and they drink from the cup. This table is an ongoing visible declaration of Christ’s victory. His final return is marked as certain in this text.

Verse 26 again: “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.”

Until He comes.

Unbeliever that’s here today—Jesus Christ came into this world 2,000 years ago to die on a cross to pay the price that your sins deserve. But Jesus did not stay dead. Jesus rose from the grave and He ascended into heaven and He will soon come again. And when He does, it will be to collect His church for Himself and then He will judge the living and the dead.

Friend, right now the door of salvation stands ajar. Run to it and you will be saved. Put your faith and your trust in Jesus Christ as your Lord and your Savior. You must do this at once because the door will not stay open forever. The text before us says “until He comes”—His coming might be a moment away. Repent now for the forgiveness of sins.

In 1 Corinthians chapter 11 from verse 23 to verse 26, Paul instructs according to the Lord’s very words how the Lord’s Supper is to be taken. And it is a true, uncompromised proclamation of the gospel.

Look In

And friends, if the table demands a level ground, how do we spot hidden pride lurking within our own hearts? How do we assess our own spiritual condition? So to answer that, we must move from the looking up and that looking out to now Looking In—from 1 Corinthians 11:27 to verse 34.

In our church, our vertical relationship with God is on horizontal display. You cannot separate how you treat the God of heaven from how you treat the believer that is sitting next to you in this hall.

To take the Lord’s Supper in an unworthy manner is to sin. Verse 27: “So then, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sin against the body and blood of the Lord.”

I’ll be honest with you. I think on any given Sunday all around the world, often times we misunderstand this phrase. We look at this phrase “unworthy manner” and we look inward. We think of an unworthy manner being a flaw in our personal walk and we spend some time in quietness dwelling on all of those flaws. Did I struggle with a particular sin this week?

But do you now see as we’ve gone through the context of this passage from verse 17 all the way to this point that the context is that eating unworthily means that we are eating while ignoring the brothers and the sisters alongside of us? Failing to recognize the body does not mean failing to think about the physical flesh of Jesus on the cross. It means treating His church—Christ’s corporate body—with contempt.

Verse 27 talks of an unworthy manner. It does not talk of an unworthy person. It says, “Whoever eats this in an unworthy manner.” If you think the table is for perfect people, for worthy people, you will wrongly exclude yourself. This warning is not against weak sinners. It is against the proud, divisive, and selfish lifestyles that trample on other believers.

And so Paul gives us a remedy in our text in verse 28. We must examine ourselves before we take of the Lord’s Supper. It says: “Let a person examine himself, and in this way, let him eat the bread and drink from the cup.”

This is a call, a call to take a hard look at your relationships within this community. Are you harboring bitterness? Have you been ignoring the poor? Are you staying in your comfortable elite social clique while others are being marginalized?

Verse 29: “For whoever eats and drinks without recognizing the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.” And this might be why many of you are sick and ill and many have fallen asleep.

Recognizing the body means attending to the needs of others. It means caring for the social body of believers who are gathered at the meal. Corporate unity is so serious to God that God will discipline His church with sickness and even physical death if they trample on their horizontal love for one another. This discipline is meant to spare the church from ultimate condemnation with the world.

Now, don’t misread this. This text is not meant to be a diagnostic tool for you to read your present illness as a specific punishment for a secret sin. This is a covenantal judgment which is meant for restoration of a covenantal people. It means that we can come joyfully and freely to this table as we abandon our sin. This is the time to remember Jesus’s death and it is a terrifying time to play games with His bride.

The logic of the text is clear: “If we judged ourselves, we would not be judged.” But when we are judged and disciplined by the Lord, it is so that we may be spared.

Verse 31 says: “If we were properly judging ourselves, we would not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned with the world.”

Paul’s final application is intensely practical. Verse 33: “Therefore, my brothers and sisters, when you come together to eat, welcome one another.” Maybe your version says “wait for one another.” “If anyone is hungry, he should eat at home, so that when you gather together you will not come under judgment.” And then he closes the section by saying, “I will give you instructions about the other matters whenever I come.”

If you are just hungry for food, eat at home. But when you gather as the church of God, you gather to care for the body and you gather to eat the Lord’s Supper together.

Conclusion

Thinking of a way of illustrating this, I thought of a bridge. A bridge spanning a river cannot stand if the vertical pillars are strong but the horizontal deck is completely fractured. It will collapse into the river below. In like manner, you cannot look up to God in worship while looking down on the horizontal relationships that God has given you in this church with pride.

In 1 Corinthians 11 from verse 27-34, Paul warns that without self-examination and communal care, the consequence will be covenantal judgment. And Paul commands the Corinthians to stop divisions and examine themselves so that the Lord’s Supper will proclaim the gospel rather than inviting judgment.

So we find ourselves back where we began. The sobering reality is that it is entirely possible to come to church and leave in a worse spiritual state than when you arrived.

Throughout history, God’s covenantal meals have always demanded both a vertical peace with Him and a horizontal peace with one another. The Lord’s Supper—the gospel that secures our vertical identity—must shatter our horizontal divisions. We cannot look up to the God who is there while neglecting the brother or the sister who is sitting right beside us.

To protect this unity, Paul gave us a map in 1 Corinthians chapter 11 from verse 17 to verse 34:

– We must Look Out to confront the cultural fractures and cliques that threaten to split us apart.
– We must Look Up to anchor our souls afresh in the finished, unmerited work of Jesus Christ.
– And we must Look In to soberly examine our corporate behavior before we ever dare touch the bread or drink of the cup.

If you are here today and you are an unbeliever, look up to the Savior who died to pay for your sins and run to the open door of grace before it closes.

If you are here today and you are a believer, look across the aisle and come to our bring-and-share lunch and step out of the comfort of your circle and love the family of God which Christ died to unite.

Let us step forward to the table not as isolated individuals but as one body, fully reconciled to God and fiercely committed to one another.

Amen.