32 What Was Wrong with the Lord’s Supper in Corinth (1 Corinthians 11:17-22)

Krisan Marotta: Welcome back to Wednesday in the Word. I'm Krisan Marotta, and this is my podcast about what the Bible means and how we know. We are studying 1 Corinthians chapter 11, verse 17 through 22 today, and this is the 32nd talk in our series on 1 Corinthians. As always, you'll find the lecture notes for today's talk on the link below the podcast, or you can find them on the website wednesdayintheword.com slash 1 Corinthians 3.2. And while you're on the website, check out the other helpful information there to improve your Bible study. There's no charge for it, no spam. I have no ads on the website, just Bible study. I'm really glad you're listening. We are starting a new topic in 1 Corinthians today. We're still in chapter 11, but we're turning to a new topic of discussion, and that is communion or the Lord's Supper. The section on this topic runs through the end of the chapter, but we're only going to look at the first few verses today. I'm going to break it into three parts. In the first part today, we're going to look at what the problem was in Corinth. In the second part, we're going to look at the next few verses. Why is Paul so upset about what they're doing? And then in the third part, when we look at the end of the chapter, we're going to put that together and figure out what he wants them to do differently. You'll recall that this letter we call 1 Corinthians is a response to both a verbal report Paul has received about the situation in Corinth and to a letter that they have written to him asking him questions. And we're in the section of the letter where he's addressing their specific questions, and each time he begins a new topic, he says now concerning, and that signals he's moving on to another question that they have asked him. And starting in chapter 11, the issues he's been addressing relate to how they're handling their worship services. So the first one we looked at was the issue of whether or not married women should uncover their heads when they stand up to pray or to teach, and now he turns to how they're handling the Lord's supper. I'm going to read the first few verses. This is first Corinthians chapter eleven verses seventeen through twenty two. But in giving this instruction, I do not praise you, because you come together not for the better, but for the worse. For in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear that divisions exist among you, and in part I believe it, for there must also be factions among you so that those who are approved may become evident among you. Therefore, when you meet together, it is not to eat the Lord's supper, for in your eating each one takes his own supper first, and one is hungry, and another is drunk. What? Do you not have houses in which to eat and drink? Or do you despise the Church of God and shame those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you? In this I will not praise you. Now before we look at the passage, I want to discuss what's at stake in this topic. Some people approach this passage with the assumption that the problem here is the way they're handling a sacrament. They conclude that the Corinthians are profaning a holy ritual. So it's one thing to sin in your ordinary mundane life. That is a problem, but it's an even worse problem to profane a sacred ritual. And they see Paul's emphasis is that you've got to get this ritual right. There is a right and a wrong way to do communion, and you need to get it right because this is a sacrament. Others look at this passage and they see a different kind of emphasis. They focus on the language coming up about the poor, the haves, and the have nots, and they think that Paul's emphasis is on social justice. Clearly, the rich people in Corinth are mistreating the poor people in their church, and so they understand, well, Paul's primary concern is that we achieve social economic justice, and they think the key teaching here is that no poor person should have any less or be treated any differently than a rich person. Well, both of those ideas have an element to truth to them, but I think they're missing the point of the passage in context. I would argue that when you look at this passage, and this is like most of the exhortations in the New Testament, I think the issue comes down to how do I relate to the truth about God, about myself, and about my neighbor? Am I willing to face squarely into that truth and live like I believe it? Or am I blowing it off and pursuing a completely different path? And I would argue that Paul's emphasis or the key issue in this passage is not how we handle a sacrament, nor is it how we treat the poor. Rather, the key issue is what do I believe? As I interact with the Lord's Supper and with the poor, what do I believe to be true and am I living consistently with that belief? So I don't think Paul's concern is results oriented. His concern is not that the poor are fed or that the ritual is done properly. I think his concern is do you really believe, do you understand what you're doing when you come to the Lord's Supper, and do you really believe it? In other words, suppose I do everything right, I handle the Lord's Supper properly, I handle it respectfully, and I make sure every poor person in my area is well fed and I don't cause any trouble in the worship service. Would Paul be pleased with me? Could I be assured that I am okay and I am right with God? Well, I would say maybe, maybe not. It depends on why you're going through those motions. And if you're going through the right motions, but you lack faith, you lack belief, then the ritual, the motions are of no value. And I would argue that Paul's concern is not that we get numbers on a page or that we solve poverty. His concern is do you really believe what you say you believe? Or are we in fact people of faith? Because over time our actions are going to reveal whether or not that is true. We can fake it for a while, we can say and do all the right things and get results and be a hypocrite, at least for a while, but eventually life gets hard or circumstances change and we get caught out. So I would argue that results are not the issue here, and the problem is not that the ritual is corrupted or the poor are mistreated. The problem is that some of the Corinthians are showing themselves to be the kind of people that don't care about the things of God. They don't value what God sees as valuable, and they don't believe what the Lord's Supper is supposed to celebrate. Let me explain with an analogy. Suppose that I'm a guest at a Passover meal, but I'm very unfamiliar with the customs and the practices of a Passover, and at certain points maybe I eat too soon or I say the wrong thing at the wrong times, and I generally mess up the ritual. You can imagine that my hosts might shake their heads over my ignorance, but they would probably forgive me. But if at this Passover meal I start praising Adolf Hitler and reminiscing and longing for the days of the Third Reich, then my hosts would be horrified. Their response would not be, Oh, sorry, you've done something wrong. Their response would be, How did you get in here in the first place? You don't belong. You don't seem to understand what this ritual is all about. My actions would not just be inappropriate. My actions would say more than I got the order wrong or the details wrong. They would reveal something very significant about what I believe, and they would indicate that what I believe is not compatible with the meaning and the purpose of this ritual. So the problem is not that I've profane the ritual, the problem is I have revealed something very important about my lack of understanding. And that's what I think is going on with the Corinthians, and I think it's why Paul's so upset about it and so deeply concerned. The way the Corinthians are handling the Lord's Supper reveals a profound problem with what they believe. It says something about their values and their perspectives that is profoundly inappropriate and contradictory to the gospel. Their actions reveal that they believe the opposite of what they ought to believe when they come to the Lord's Supper. Their actions call into question why they're participating in the ritual at all. If they understood what this ritual means, they wouldn't act this way. So the important underlying issue is what do they believe to be true? Alright, let's take this verse by verse. Let's start with 1117. But in giving this instruction, I do not praise you because you come together not for the better but for the worse. Notice the difference right off in the tone between this section and the last one we looked at. Paul started chapter eleven with the issue of head coverings, and there he was praising the Corinthians for the way they were approaching the issue of head covers, and he says he's pleased that they're trying to follow the traditions he gave them, even if they were confused about how to follow them. He opens this section with a very different tone. Unlike the head coverings where there seemed to be genuine confusion and he was just trying to help them sort it out, in this section, Paul is very concerned about the way they're handling the Lord's Supper. Whatever they're doing, he doesn't like it. He says it's for the worse. They are coming together and practicing this tradition he gave them, which ought to be a good thing, but it's actually a bad thing. He says, I can't praise you in this. You are worse off doing the Lord's Supper the way you're doing it than if you just skipped it altogether. What you're doing is such a travesty that it would be better if you didn't do it at all than do it the way you're handling it. Then in 11 eighteen and nineteen, for in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear that divisions exist among you, and in part I believe it, for there must also be factions among you, so that those who are approved may become evident among you. Now you may remember that this is not the first time we've seen this issue of divisions in the Corinthian church. In the first four chapters of this letter, Paul addressed the problem that some in the church had rejected him and his apostolic authority in favor of Apollos. They didn't think that Paul was wise as they defined wise, and they didn't find him a persuasive teacher in the way Apollos was, and they rejected his authority as an apostle, and they said, Look, Paul is out, Apollos is in, he's our guy. These divisions here are along different lines than in the first four chapters. Here the divisions are by economic class, but it may in fact be the same groups of people. Perhaps those who were economically well off were also those at the top of the social ladder, and also those who valued the wisdom of the world and the rhetorical style that they saw in Apollos. And perhaps those who were economically poor were excluded from those elite social circles of town and also didn't value their way of wisdom. So we may be talking about the same groups, but the dividing line here is social class. In the first issue we saw in the first four chapters, the dividing line was who do we prefer as a teacher and who has true wisdom. Here the dividing line is between the haves and the have nots, and those may or may not be the same people. He has this strange phrase in 1118. For in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear that divisions exist among you, and in part I believe it. How are we to understand that? And I think the answer partly depends on how we take the next verse, verse 19. For there must also be factions among you, so that those who are approved may be evident among you. He could mean something like this I've been hearing these reports about the situation in Corinth. Do I believe them? Well, some of it. Some of it's an exaggeration, some of it sounds like hearsay, but I think some of it is possible. That's one option. Or what he's saying could have the flavor of I hear there are divisions among you, and I find that really easy to believe. From everything I know about you and our past relationship, I can easily see how that kind of situation would develop among you. But then he adds verse 19, for there must also be factions among you, so that those who are approved may become evident among you. Now many commentators and scholars struggle with this verse. How can Paul say it's necessary for there to be factions? How can he be saying factions are inevitable when he has been urging them not to be divided? So how can he say factions are necessary when he's been telling them in the earlier chapters of this letter, look, there shouldn't be any divisions among you? So to answer that, some focus on this word approved and suggest that Paul is being sarcastic. So he's saying, Well, yes, of course there have to be factions because that's the only way that the really cool people will be obvious and they can shine above everyone else. How else will you approve them? How else will you know which of you are cool and which of you aren't unless you have divisions? So he's being sarcastic. Another option, some scholars think that Paul is quoting something the Corinthians have said to him. And you'll remember that the Greek text has no punctuation marks. So we have to decipher from the context when Paul is quoting and when he's not. It's fairly obvious in other places that he's quoting them, and maybe 1119 is one of those quotes. So he would be saying, I know that you would say that divisions are inevitable because that's how the true believers, those who are approved, become known. That's just kind of the way of things. And then they think Paul goes on to say, well, that doesn't have to be the way of things. A third option, and this is the one I lean toward, is that Paul means what he says. Divisions are inevitable, and that that is not contradictory with his earlier arguments in the letter. It goes back to how we understand unity. When Paul talked about unity in the first four chapters and rebuked them for the divisions among them, we talked about how Paul did not want unity just for the sake of unity. He wasn't arguing, look, I don't care what it takes, you all just need to start getting along. He was arguing that they unite around the same gospel. And if they had written back to him and said, Okay, Paul, we've reached agreement, we all agree that you're a phony, fraudulent apostle, and Apollos is our guy, Paul would not be pleased with that kind of unity. He wants them to unite around the truth. He wants them to embrace and believe and follow the same gospel, and when they do that, they will have unity. The rest is conformity. The divisions arise from the fact that some in the church have beliefs that are worldly and conflict with the gospel. Their values don't align with the gospel, and that is creating strife among them. And what they need to do is repent and believe the truth and start valuing and seeking after the same things, the implications of the gospel, and that will result in unity. They will find themselves united because they share a common perspective and common values. He wants them to unite around the truth. He wants those who are embarrassed by the gospel to stop being embarrassed by the gospel, and he wants those who value the worldly things more than the gospel to stop doing that and start valuing the gospel. So he's calling them to unite around the truth. But how likely is that to happen among a group of sinners? There's a sense in which divisions are inevitable because we're sinful people, and we are all at different points on this journey of faith. Some of us are more mature than others, and at any given point we will have different values and perspectives, and there will always be people among the flock who are probably there for nefarious reasons other than the gospel, and eventually they will become known. So I do think by approved here he means those who are genuine believers, those whose faith has been tested and have faced the choice whether they will follow God or not and chosen to follow him. So I think he's saying something like this it doesn't surprise me that there are factions among you. Sooner or later, those whose faith has been tested and shown to be genuine are going to be revealed. They will stand out as distinct and different from those who lack faith. Now don't misunderstand, I don't think Paul is saying that we believers should start judging each other and only associate with those that we find pure and worthy and start rejecting those that we think are not as marvelously faithful as we ourselves are. That is not at all what I'm saying. The divisions have arisen because those holding to worldly values are separating themselves from those who hold to more gospel centered biblical values. And the divisions are arising from those who see themselves as socially and economically superior to others. The gospel is actually what's separating them. The divisions are inevitable in the sense that they have this conflict of values. The world's values will always eventually conflict with the gospel values. And Paul's saying, Of course I can believe there are divisions among you, because I would expect that the worldly and foolish among you will ultimately show themselves to be different than those who are mature in the faith. Those who follow the world are on a different path, and eventually that different path will become evident. Now we sinners are difficult to get along with. So what happened when the church gathered? The wealthy, those close friends of the host, the social elite would eat with the host in the dining room, and everyone else would eat in the courtyard. And those in the courtyard would be the poor, the freed slaves, the lower classes, and so forth. And it was common for people to bring their own food to these gatherings, and people of different status would bring different amounts and different types of food. Now I don't know if this picture of the dining room versus the courtyard. Courtyard was a given in Paul's time or not, but it fits with what we have in the text, and of course the text is a given. So he says in 1120, Therefore when you meet together, it is not to eat the Lord's supper, for in your eating each one takes his own supper first, and one is hungry, and another is drunk. What? Do you not have houses in which to eat and drink? Or do you despise the Church of God and shame those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you? In this I will not praise you. So Paul tells us that as they come together to have this meal and celebrate communion, one is going hungry while another is getting drunk. And then he uses this language in 1122 about shaming those who have nothing, despising the Church of God. And then at the end, he's going to urge them to wait on one another and to eat at home. So I'm going to skip down to thirty three and thirty-four and look at his conclusion. So then, my brethren, when you come together to eat, wait for one another. If anyone is hungry, let him eat at home, so that you will not come together for judgment. The remaining matters I will arrange when I come. So he tells us the problem is they're coming together for this common meal, and those who have a lot are eating to the point of getting drunk, while others who don't have much are going hungry. And then he concludes, Look, if you're just coming for the meal, eat at home. And when you come together to eat, wait for one another. By waiting for one another, I don't think he means that everyone should start eating at the same time. Something like wait until everyone gets there before you start eating. That could be a problem, but the evidence suggests that something bigger is going on because of this language about putting to shame those who don't have. Those who have an abundance are feasting. They have lots to eat and drink while others in the church are going hungry. They brought what little they have and they don't have very much, so they're going hungry while others are feasting on a banquet. So there's a party going on over here where they have so much they can get drunk on it, and these others are going hungry. So what does he mean by wait for one another? Given the fact that their conduct shames those who don't have, I think he suggests they don't even recognize that this is a problem. They're going ahead and eating without even recognizing that their brothers and sisters are starving. So I think this idea of waiting on each other is more like be a waiter, be a server, serve one another, attend to everyone's needs before you attend to your own. So wait on each other like a waiter. Instead of bringing your big feast and ignoring those who have nothing, you should wait on them. You should serve them. You should share some of what you have with them. So make sure they have enough before you start eating. If anyone is hungry, let them eat at home. If your primary concern is that you fill your stomach, then just stay home and eat, because that's not what this meal is about. A meal that celebrates your common belief in the gospel is not a good place to stuff yourself while someone else is going hungry. So eat something at home and come prepared to share with everyone else. Make this a celebration where we recognize that we are all in this together and look to see that everyone has something before you start eating so that this ceremony becomes about your togetherness. That's the situation in Corinth as I understand it. And that sets us up for understanding what Paul says the Lord's Supper is all about, and that's what we're gonna look at in the next podcast. So what we've looked at today is what's the problem? What are they doing that is upsetting Paul? Then next week we're gonna look at his explanation of why that's such a problem, and then in the third week we'll put those two ideas together. So to summarize what we talked about today, first there will always be a division between those who follow the world and those who follow the gospel. There is a time when it's appropriate to compromise and accommodate, as we learned in the meat sacrifice to idols section and somewhat in the head covering sections, but there is also a time when the fundamental issues of the gospel are at stake, and it is not appropriate to compromise or accommodate there. And we need to learn the difference. We have to live our lives in light of the gospel, and that will inevitably separate us from those who don't live in light of the gospel. And we can't compromise the gospel itself for the sake of unity. Second, in this situation, the way they're conducting themselves casts doubt on whether they really believe the gospel. So in a ceremony that is supposed to celebrate our unity in Christ, they are willing to ignore those who are going hungry while they indulge themselves. Their actions are so incompatible with the gospel that Paul's concerned that they might not really believe it. He sees that they are more concerned that they only hang around with the rich, the important, the social elites, than that they become a church, that they become a local body of Christ. So Paul is not just concerned that the poor get treated better, but that everyone in the church recognizes that that kind of conduct is evidence of an entirely different set of values than what the gospel calls for. Paul is not primarily concerned that the poor get fed or that the ritual is being violated. He's concerned that their actions are incompatible with what the ritual means and what it's supposed to celebrate. And that's what we'll look at next week. Thank you for listening to Wednesday in the Word, the podcast that explains not only what a passage means, but shows you how we figure it out. I really appreciate you listening to this podcast, and if you've been blessed by it, I have three favors to ask. Please subscribe to the podcast, leave a positive rating and review on your favorite podcast platform, and tell a friend. It really helps others find the podcast if you can leave a positive rating. And if you only have time to do one thing, telling a friend is best. Our theme music is graciously provided by my favorite singer-songwriter, Reggie Coates. You can find his music on heartfeltmusic.org. I'm Krisan Marotta, and I'll see you next week at Wednesday in the Word.