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Scripture Reading: 1 Cor. 11:23-29; 10:16
In this chapter, we want to see something concerning the meaning of the Lord’s table. First Corinthians 11:23-29 says,
For I received from the Lord that which also I delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus in the night in which He was betrayed took bread, and having given thanks, He broke it and said, This is My body, which is given for you; this do unto the remembrance of Me. Similarly also the cup after they had dined, saying, This cup is the new covenant established in My blood; this do, as often as you drink it, unto the remembrance of Me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you declare the Lord’s death until He comes. So then whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and of the blood of the Lord. But let a man prove himself, and in this way let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For he who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself if he does not discern the body.
When the Lord said “this do” two times, He was referring first to taking the bread and eating and second to taking the cup and drinking.
The King James Version inaccurately translates verse 29 as, “For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body” (emphasis added). According to the Greek text of the better manuscripts, the word Lord’s should not appear in this verse. Hence, the verse should read “if he does not discern the body,” not “if he does not discern the Lord’s body.”
In this passage we are told that the bread that we take at the Lord’s table is the body of Jesus, which was nailed to the cross and sacrificed for us. However, in the previous chapter, Paul writes, “The bread which we break, is it not the fellowship of the body of Christ? Seeing that there is one bread, we who are many are one Body; for we all partake of the one bread” (vv. 16-17). Hence, the meaning of the bread in chapter eleven is different from the meaning of the bread in chapter ten. In chapter eleven the bread signifies Jesus’ body sacrificed on the cross for us, whereas in the tenth chapter the bread signifies us as the Body of Christ. We all must be clear concerning these two aspects of the meaning of the bread of the Lord’s table. The first aspect of the meaning of the bread is the Lord’s physical body that was sacrificed, nailed to the cross, and crucified for us. The second aspect of the meaning is that this bread signifies the Lord’s mystical Body, the church, which includes everyone who has been regenerated by God.
When the Lord Jesus was on the earth, He had a physical body that He sacrificed for us on the cross with a view to imparting Himself to us as life. This is what we may call the Lord Jesus’ “first” body. However, after He died and resurrected, He regenerated us and brought us together so that we could become His mystical Body. Now the Lord Jesus has “another” body. This is not His physical body, which was small, limited, and restricted; this is His universally great, mystical Body, the church. We must see that with the Lord Jesus there are two bodies. One body is the physical body that was crucified for us. The other is His mystical Body which was raised up in His resurrection. The Lord sacrificed His physical body in order to bring forth this mystical Body.
When we come to the Lord’s table and take the bread, we need to have this full and clear realization. The bread on the table first signifies His physical body, which He gave to be crucified on the cross that He might impart Himself into us as life. The second aspect of the spiritual meaning of this bread is that after we have received Him into ourselves as life, we become members of His mystical Body. Once we have received Christ as life, we become the members who are composed together to be His mystical Body. Hence, when we come to the Lord’s table and take the bread, we must have the clear realization that the bread signifies, on the one hand, that the Lord’s physical body was crucified on the cross that we may have Him as our life and, on the other hand, that we all who have received Christ as our life are the Lord’s mystical Body.
Whenever we come to the Lord’s table, we must keep two words in mind. The first is remembrance, which comes from a repeated phrase in 1 Corinthians 11:24-25: “unto the remembrance of Me.” We eat the bread and drink the cup unto the remembrance of the Lord. The second word is fellowship. The cup we drink is the fellowship of the blood of Christ, and the bread we break is the fellowship of the Body of Christ (10:16). Hence, we have the remembrance of the Lord and the fellowship with all the saints. We come to the Lord’s table both to remember the Lord and to fellowship with the saints. When we realize that the bread signifies the Lord’s physical body, which was nailed to the cross for us, we remember the Lord. But when we realize that the bread also signifies the mysterious Body of Christ, which is composed of all the regenerated saints, we fellowship with all the saints.
When we take the bread, what is our realization? When we receive the Lord’s bread, we must have a realization that causes us to pray, “O Lord, this bread is Your physical body sacrificed on the cross for me. Now I take this bread in remembrance of You. Lord, this is also Your mystical Body, which is composed of all the saints, including me and all the dear ones here. When I take this bread, I fellowship with them.” The Lord’s table is thus not merely a matter of remembrance but also a matter of fellowship.
Unfortunately, most of us only have the realization of the fact that the bread is the physical body of Christ. We realize only that the bread is the Lord Jesus’ physical body, which was sacrificed on the cross for us. As a result, we only have one aspect of the meaning of the bread and thus only half of the full realization. Because of this incomplete realization, it may seem that there is only a relationship between us and the Lord but not a relationship between us and all the other saints.
It is because we are Christ’s mystical Body that none of us can take the Lord’s table in our home for and by ourselves. Simply because we love the Lord and enjoy His presence does not mean that we may prepare a loaf and a cup and remember the Lord by ourselves individually. This is because the Lord’s table is not simply a matter of remembering the Lord, but it is also a matter of fellowshipping with the saints. You cannot say that the bread is only you; you can only say that this bread is the Body of Christ, which includes you. To take the bread, which is the symbol of the mystical Body of Christ, we need other saints, the representatives of the Body, to be with us. Whenever we take the bread at the Lord’s table, we have to realize that by taking the bread, we both remember the Lord and commune with the saints.
Whenever we come to the Lord’s table and partake of the bread, we make a twofold declaration to the whole universe. First, we testify that we have Christ as life and live by Him. Second, we declare that because we have Christ as life and live by Him, we have become members of the Body of Christ. The reason we come together to take the Lord’s table is to testify that we live by Christ, that Christ is our life, and that consequently we have become members of His Body. When we come together, each of us must come with the testimony that Christ is our life, that we live by Him, and that we are members of His Body. If this is our individual testimony, it will be our corporate testimony as well.
Yet there is a problem. Do we really live by Christ, and do we really realize that we and the other members of the Body are one? If we do not live by Christ day by day and do not realize that we with all other regenerated ones are one Body, we will not have the boldness to testify concerning these things. We will not be free to testify before the enemy, before the principalities, and before the powers in the heavenlies that we live by Christ and are members of His Body. We must live by Christ day by day and moment by moment. Saints, we must have the deep realization that Christ is our life and that we must live by Him day by day. Not only so, we must realize that as we live Christ, we are members of the mystical Body of Christ. We must furthermore realize that far from being independent, individualistic, and separated, we are one with all the saints as the one Body of Christ. If we have such an assurance and such a realization, as often as we come to the Lord’s table, we will have the boldness to testify, “Lord, I am here proclaiming, declaring, and testifying that You are my life, that I live by You, and that I am one with my dear brothers and sisters as one Body.” This is the testimony of the Lord’s table.
The Lord’s table is not a small matter. We should never think that the Lord’s table is merely a ceremony or a kind of weekly ritual. The Lord’s table is more than simply coming together every Lord’s Day to sing hymns, give praises and thanks, eat a little piece of bread, and drink a bit of grape juice. That view is altogether too low. The Lord’s table is profound, universally great, mysterious, and very meaningful, for in it we have the central thought of God and the eternal purpose of God: that God gave His Son to us as life so that we would live by Christ and become the members of His Body. We come together and set up the table as a testimony, testifying, proclaiming, and declaring to the entire universe, even to the principalities and the powers in the heavenly places, that we are a group of people who live by Christ and who are one in Christ.
If we do not live by Christ and do not realize that we are one Body in Christ, when we come to take the table, we will be weak, cowardly, and timid; we will have no boldness to give thanks or offer praise. However, if we live by Christ seven days a week and moment by moment, when we come together we will be able to declare and proclaim to the whole universe that we, as a group of Christians, live by Christ and are really one Body in Christ. We come to the Lord’s table to testify concerning who we live by and what we are. We live by Christ, and we are one Body for Christ. We all must have this testimony. This is the significance of the bread.
What then is the significance of the cup? Man is fallen. We have become sinful. While it is true that on the cross the Lord Jesus gave up His body so that He could share Himself with us, He also shed His blood to cleanse us from our sins. Our sin separated us from God and even kept God away from us. However, the Lord Jesus on the cross shed His blood, cleansed us from our sins, brought us back to God, and brought God back to us. In other words, it is through Christ’s shed blood that the relationship between God and us is recovered. This recovery through His blood is a covenant, a testament (cf. Luke 22:20; Heb. 13:20), which God made with us to assure us that He will always be ours, that we will always be His, that there is no separation between us and God, that we can enjoy God, and that God can have us as His people.
Because sin is a separation between God and us, we need the blood, that is, the cup. Let us suppose we come to the Lord’s table with the realization that Christ is our life, that we live by Christ, and that we are one with all the saints. When we have such a realization, the enemy, Satan, will come to us and accuse us, saying, “How about your sin?” When Satan accuses us in this way, we must respond to him, “How about the cup?” Surely we need to realize that we live by Christ and are one with others in Christ. But we must admit that many times we are weak and that we fail and make mistakes. For example, we may lose our temper with a brother. Then two days later, we come to the Lord’s table. As we are sitting there, we may tell the Lord, “O Lord, I come to You to testify that I live by You and am one with all the saints as one Body.” However, Satan will point to us and ask us, “How about your temper two days ago? Now you say that you live by Christ and that you are one with all the saints. But how about the day before yesterday? You lost your temper with a brother.” If Satan points this out to us, all we must do is point him to the cup: “Satan, here is the cup. I am cleansed from my temper by the blood.” Of course, we have to confess before the Lord that we have lost our temper with the brother and, if possible, we must make reconciliation with the brother. Then we will be able to testify that although the sin separated us, the blood has recovered us. This is the cup.
In the Lord’s table we have the bread first and the cup second. The bread speaks of something on the positive side, and the cup speaks of something on the negative side. The Lord’s table is very significant, for everything of the Lord’s redemption is included in it. Whenever we see the bread, it should remind us that the Lord’s physical body was sacrificed on the cross and that today we with all the saints have become the Lord’s mystical Body. Whenever we see the cup, we should realize that the blood cleanses us of all our failures, faults, and mistakes, causes us to be forgiven by God, and looses us from all kinds of condemnation. This table is a table of God’s full salvation.
