11:20-22 What is this meal that Paul censures the Corinthians for partaking of here?
11:20-22 What is this meal that Paul censures the Corinthians for partaking of here?
The Corinthian Christians actually treated this meal as the Lord's supper, thinking that they were honouring Christ. But they had perverted the meal into a shameful orgy of sinful and selfish feasting by wealthy Christians which humiliated poor Christians.
Paul was strongly critical of their behaviour and reminded them of the solemnity of the occasion for the Lord's supper (CP V23-26 with Mt 26:20-29; Mk 14:17-25 and Lu 22:14-22).
Christians have to examine themselves before partaking of the Lord's supper (CP 1Cor 11:27-33).
Paul draws out for us here the implications of the nature of the Lord's supper: to eat and drink unworthily is to partake of the Lord's supper in an indifferent, self-centred, careless and irreverent manner, treating the Lord's supper as a common meal and the bread and the cup as common things, not attributing to them their solemn symbolic importance as representing the broken body and shed blood of Jesus.
Those who do this despise the ones for whom Christ died, and are held liable for Christ's death. They are guilty of the body and blood of the Lord, and eat and drink future judgement upon themselves (CP V27, 29 with 2Pe 2:13 and Jude 12).
We must never treat the Lord's supper as though it were meaningless. The Corinthian Christians did and they paid for it, as V30 teaches. Many of them were weak and sickly, and many had died.
None of this teaches however that we have to morbidly re-enact Christ's death every time we partake of the Lord's supper, but we have to be sensitive to His suffering and ignominious death on the cross that brought healing for our bodies and salvation for our souls (CP Isa 53:4-5; Mt 8:16-17; He 9:28; 1Pe 2:24).
Before partaking of the Lord's supper Christians should examine themselves to ensure that they are where they should be in God, and judge themselves to see if there are any sins that need to be repented of and confessed before God (CP 1Cor 11:28, 31 with 2Cor 13:5).
If any Christian is conscious of any sin in their life not yet confessed and repented of, or are cherishing anything in their heart not consistent with the Christian walk, they should not partake of the Lord's supper.
This does not mean that Christians have to be perfect to partake; if they are honestly and earnestly striving after holiness, doing all that lies within them to live according to God's word, and being sincerely repentant over any sins committed and confessed, they are at perfect liberty to partake of the Lord's supper (See also comments on Mt 26:17-19 and 26:26-29 and author's study Communion in his book Foundational Truths of the Christian Faith).