Commentaries:
Verse 25 reads, "This cup is the new covenant in My blood." It employs a figure of speech in which the word "cup" is a metonymy, meaning that the cup represents what it contains: literally wine. The wine symbolized His blood, thus, "This cup is the new covenant in My blood."
A covenant is an agreement, a contract, between two parties. It is a device to bring people into a binding relationship to accomplish some undertaking. This particular covenant is unusual in that it is in His blood.
In his commentary on I Corinthians 11:23-34 (p. 104), William Barclay makes a very interesting comment on this. He changes a few words and provides proof that the change is grammatically legitimate. He paraphrases it in this manner: "This covenant cost Me My life." This agreement, the New Covenant, is made at the cost of the most precious, the most valuable and dearest Life that has ever lived on the face of the earth, that of our sinless Creator. It did not come cheaply.
Barclay's paraphrase is justifiable because the life of the flesh is in the blood (Leviticus 17:14). The giving of that specific Life by His shed blood made possible the establishment of a covenantal relationship with God. This relationship is the fruit of Christ's sinless life and subsequent death. Passover portrays what makes salvation a reality for us because justification before God is its fruit. We can consider Christ's making this relationship possible the most important accomplishment of all that He has done through His death.
Our relationship with God is our salvation. We could have no salvation unless the relationship existed because we would still be cut off from God. Once established, this relationship must be developed and to be developed, it must be continued! "If you continue, you will become free," says Jesus. This begins the process of truly coming to know God, and to know God is eternal life (John 17:3).
Within the context of I Corinthians 11, a major point deals with people not properly discerning the sacred gravity of what the symbols represent. Some in Corinth were making a mockery of the Passover. The church members gathered for a meal, and some were getting drunk, others ate in a gluttonous manner, while a few received little food because others were hogging it all. What they did edified the body not at all! They experienced very little of the right kind of spiritual fellowship.
The apostle writes his epistle to correct a corrupt situation. His point is that, in doing what they did, they were not discerning the body and the blood of Jesus Christ. If they had truly understood their significance, they would not have acted in this manner. They were not properly interpreting and applying the meaning to their own lives. In treating Christ's sacrifice in a frivolous manner, their application especially went awry. They went through the motions of taking the Passover but without appreciating the reality that the symbols represented.
The word "unworthy" in I Corinthians 11:27 means "lacking in merit or worth." The Corinthians had no appreciation of the precious value of what the symbols represented to their personal salvation. They were missing the eternal character of what they were observing, caring little about who had died and grasping almost nothing of the love that went into His act. They were truly profaning the body and blood of Jesus Christ and putting Him to an open shame.
A major point of understanding about observing Passover is that our attitude toward Christ's sacrifice affects our approach to life in general. Above all, it will affect our relationship with the Father, as well as with one another, because the strength of our obligation to submit to Jesus Christ will be diminished. We will not feel it all that important to submit in obedience.
If God wants us to understand anything by our observing the Passover, it is 1) the tremendous costs it took to free us and to maintain that freedom, and 2) how far Jesus Christ, our Example, was willing to be "pushed" without giving in to sin in even the smallest of matters. Let us take Passover soberly, with the serious significance of what it represents at the forefront of our minds.
John W. Ritenbaugh
The Awesome Cost of Love
When we observe the Passover each spring, we each drink from a cup of wine. The wine symbolizes the blood of Jesus Christ, shed on our behalf, which accomplishes a number of tremendous things that we cannot do for ourselves. We tend not to focus as much on the cup, but it, too, is a foundational part of Passover's meaning.
When the Bible speaks of "drinking of the cup," it indicates that a person is also sharing in the consequences of whatever the cup contains. "Drinking of the cup" goes beyond merely partaking of the liquid but implies accepting everything that happens as a result. Thus, when the mother of Zebedee's sons petition Jesus to grant her sons positions of honor, He asks James and John if they are able to "drink the cup" that He is about to drink (Matthew 20:20-23). He implies that if they desire to reign with Him in glory, they have to be willing to also share in His whole experience, not all of which would be glorious.
In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus asks the Father to let that cup pass from Him if it were possible (Matthew 26:39-42). The cup of which He speaks is the cup He had just drunk from at the Passover. At that meal, He had identified the cup as "the new covenant in My blood" (Luke 22:20; emphasis ours throughout). By drinking from that cup, He had agreed to make the New Covenant, which required a perfect blood sacrifice that only He could fulfill. When we drink from that cup at Passover, we, too, agree to share in whatever results from that covenant, assenting to pay whatever it costs to become fully unified with Jesus Christ.
On the one hand, priceless blessings and promises come from that cup. But on the other hand, a price must be paid in this life, which can perhaps best be summed up with the word "suffering." Suffering is not a concept that we like to think about, and our mind resists it, even as Christ prayed that, if possible, that cup would pass from Him. However, when we become united with Christ through partaking of His blood, our lives with Him will involve suffering, just as His did.
To evaluate the depth of our convictions and the maturity of our faith honestly, it is necessary to understand what the Bible has to say about suffering. Because of the weakness of our flesh, we eagerly anticipate the Messiah's crown of honor but shy away from identifying with the crown of thorns that was thrust upon His head. We look forward to the white robes of glory but turn from the scarlet robe of mockery and ridicule placed on Christ. As one commentator put it, most Christians "would desire to share the glories and triumphs of redemption but not its poverty, contempt, and persecution." If we are merely seeking that crown of glory, hoping to skirt the less enjoyable parts of Christ's experience, we must ask ourselves whether we really understand and accept the Passover cup.
Even a cursory reading of the epistles shows a clear sequence: First, there is suffering, then there is glory—and we cannot have the second without some measure of the first (see Luke 24:25-26; Romans 8:17; I Peter 1:10-11; 4:13; Revelation 2:10).
Jesus Christ is the ultimate example of this sequence because only He has suffered and been glorified. Nevertheless, we can also look at the record of the heroes of faith, as well as the apostles and prophets, and realize that, throughout history, being chosen by God meant there would be some suffering involved. Just as day follows night, so our glory will not come until we have gone through darkness
David C. Grabbe
A Look at Christian Suffering (Part One)
I Corinthians 11:17-34 encapsulates the solution to a tragic story of gluttony, drunkenness, class distinction, and party spirit—all within the framework of the "love feasts" of a Christian congregation! Why were some guilty of these sins? Because, despite being converted, some of them neither loved God nor their brethren, which a reading of the entire epistle reveals.
To what does Paul refer them to correct their abominable behavior? To the Passover service and Christ's death! Christ's death is the supreme example of unselfish and sacrificial service in behalf of the undeserving guilty. It is the highest, most brilliant example of love.
Out of a beneficent good will, the Father and the Son freely gave of themselves for the sake of our well-being. For those of us still in the flesh, this beneficent goodwill results in our forgiveness, forging a foundation from which the same approach to life can begin to be exercised. When we can properly judge ourselves in terms of what we are in relation to Their freely given sacrifices, it frees us, not only to conduct life as They do, but eventually to receive everlasting life too.
Job confesses in Job 42:5-6, "I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees You. Therefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." Though Job was among the most upright of men, all his life he had held a wrong evaluation of himself in relation to God and other men. Yet when God allowed him to "see" himself, as He did the apostle Paul in Romans 7, Job was devastated, his vanity crushed, and he repented. Now, he was truly prepared to begin to love.
"Do this in remembrance of Me" has a couple of alternative renderings that may help us understand more clearly. It can be rendered more literally, "Do this for the remembering of Me," or "Do this in case you forget." God does not want us to let this sacrifice get very far from our minds. It is not that He wants maudlin sentimentality from us. Instead, He wants to remind us that it represents the measure of His love for us as well as of our worth to Him, that we always bear a right sense of obligation, not as an overbearing burden, but a wondering awe that He would pay so much for something so utterly defiled.
We are admonished to remember not merely the personality Jesus, but the whole package: His connection to the Old Testament Passover; His life of sacrificial service; His violent, bloody death for the remission of the sins of mankind; the sacrificial connection to the New Covenant; and who He was, our sinless Creator! This act becomes the foundation of all loving relationships possible to us with God and His Family because it provides us reason to hope that our lives are not spent in vain. In addition, it motivates us to do what we failed to do that put us into debt in the first place—to love.
Paul admonishes in verse 29, "For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord's body." To eat the bread or drink the wine in an unworthy manner is to treat His sacrifice with casual, disrespectful ingratitude—a better translation might be "without due appreciation, especially as shown by one's life." It means that the person who does this is not showing much love in his life because he is barely aware of his sins and the enormous cost of forgiveness.
Such a person is not really free to love because he is still wrapped up in himself. When we take Passover, let us strive to remember that our fellowship at that special time is with Him. The others there to participate in the service are at that time only incidental to our relationship with Christ. The focus is on Christ and our unpayable debt and subsequent obligation.
John W. Ritenbaugh
An Unpayable Debt and Obligation
Through the apostle Paul, God has made certain that all of the members of the Body of Christ recognize, not only the necessity of participation in this solemn memorialization of Christ's death, but also the careful preparation that is a key to proper participation. Each individual must scrupulously examine himself while recognizing the inestimable cost of what has been done on his behalf.
God has clearly shown what He expects from all the participants leading up to that evening. He does not intend for us to go through this examination process with a sense of self-condemnation. Rather, as the Greek word for "examine" indicates, God intends it to be an approval process of making an honest evaluation of how we are relating to the One who has paid the price for our lives, the One to whom we owe allegiance in our every thought and action. The other side of the coin is that, without proper preparation for the Passover, we bring condemning judgment on ourselves for not undergoing the preparation process with all our hearts.
God has given us an assortment of tools to handle this process, and probably one of the best is to go through Jesus' own words spoken in the last 24 hours of His human life. Of the 21 chapters in John's gospel, five of them (13-17), almost a quarter of the book, are detailed instructions from that one day, which we can use as a guide for our self-examination leading to the Passover. Jesus spoke these words either directly to His disciples or indirectly, as in His prayer to His Father just before He was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane to be tried and crucified.
We could focus on various points from these words to guide our personal examination as we approach that most solemn evening, but we will concentrate on one important and telling piece of our relationship with Him, as seen in our relationships with one another.
In John 15:11-19, in the middle of His last crucial directions to His chosen disciples on the night before He offered Himself for our sins, Jesus teaches:
These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full. This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends. You are My friends if you do whatever I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you. You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you. These things I command you, that you love one another. If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.
Of all the instructions Jesus gave to us on that night, this may be the most encouraging, and at the same time, among the most difficult for us to realize in our blossoming relationships within the church. God has ordained that we produce fruit engendered by a loving relationship among the friends of God in a world of those who are, through blindness, His enemies.
Out of the entire world, we have been chosen now to develop that friendship, not with the world, but with those placed in the love and friendship of the Body of Christ! This relationship, unique among the brethren separated from the world to Christ, is a critical part of the judgment God is talking about in I Corinthians 11:31. This should be a key element of our evaluation as we strive to keep the Passover in a worthy manner.
Are we really living up to the ordained responsibilities of the friends of God within our relationships with one another? Proverbs 18:24 reads, "A man who has friends must himself be friendly, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother." The deep meaning of this verse in Hebrew gets lost in the English translation. At first glance, it seems to say merely that to be a friend we need to be friendly, but a closer examination reveals it to be a clear warning to those God has separated from this world through Christ.
The exact translation of this verse has spawned quite a bit of controversy, but it is not difficult to see a clear tie between this verse and what Jesus tells those who are in a proper relationship with Him, as recorded in John 15. Those in a relationship with Him must have the same relationship with one another, a relationship that binds to Christ and separates from the world!
Mark Schindler
Passover and Friends United in Truth (Part One)
Some misunderstand verse 26, which says: "As often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup," by interpreting it "take it as often as you wish." But it does not say that!
It says "as often" as you observe it, "ye do show the Lord's death till he come." Even Jesus commanded, "This do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me" (verse 25). We do it in remembrance of the Lord's death - a memorial of His death. As you know, memorials are celebrated annually, once a year, on the anniversary of the events commemorated. So we observe the memorial of Christ's death annually. And just as often as each year comes around, we are to "show the Lord's death till he come," by keeping this memorial.
Christ instituted this ordinance on the eve of His death. It was the 14th of Abib, by God's Sacred Calendar, in the very beginning of the day. God starts days at sunset, not midnight. So, later that same day, after Jesus had gone out to Gethsemane, Judas Iscariot led the crowd to seize Jesus. Then He was crucified later that same day, in the daylight part of this same 14th of the month Abib.
By following the example of Jesus in observing this sacred ordinance at the same time He did - the very same time the Passover was forever commanded to be observed - we continue to remember His death, annually, on the eve of the crucifixion.
Some always question the meaning of Paul in verses 27-29 in I Corinthians 11. The apostle is not speaking about a Christian being worthy or unworthy to take it. It is speaking of the manner in which it is done. We take it unworthily if we take it wrongly, in the wrong manner. Once we learn the truth about its observance, and yet take it at any other time than when God says, then we take it unworthily. We take it unworthily if we do not accept the body and blood of Christ. So let's not take this most sacred ordinance to our condemnation, but take it worthily instead!
Herbert W. Armstrong
The Plain Truth About Easter
The apostle Paul tells the Corinthians that when it came time to take the Passover, they were in danger of eating and drinking judgment to themselves. Why? It was not that they were somehow failing to appreciate Jesus Christ's physical body, but because they were not being partial to His spiritual Body as a whole.
To make this practical, consider a principle of valuation. In the world, an object's value is primarily determined by what someone is willing to pay. An artist may claim his painting is worth a million dollars, but the actual monetary value comes when someone buys it. Thus, for fine art, furniture, and other expensive collectibles, records show how much it sold for as a means to gauge the value.
Consider the value that we have as individuals, based on what the Father and the Son together were willing to pay for us. Reflect on the incomparable worth of the blood of the perfect and sinless Son of God. Ponder the Creator's supreme act of condescension in donning the form of a flesh-and-blood human and then giving that life as payment. Rather than allowing us to receive the wages of our sin, He paid that debt with a currency impossible for a human to assess, which gives us some idea of our value to God.
Next, we should apply this incomparable value to someone else in the Body with whom we feel a close connection—perhaps a spouse or a good friend. God paid the same price for him or her because that individual incurred the same debt. Consider the value the Father and the Son now place on him or her based on what They were willing to pay.
Finally, we must take this exercise one step further. Perhaps there is some part of the Body—maybe someone in our own congregation—whom we know we should love but do not like very much. Consider the value we place on him or her, then consider the price the Father and Son have already paid for that person. How does our valuation compare with God's? Or is it more comfortable to regard some as outside the Body than to be partial to them (as 'discern'—diakrino—indicates)?
By not discerning the Body of Christ correctly, that is, by esteeming some members and despising others, the Corinthians were, in effect, signifying that Christ's blood—the life of the very Creator!—was worth more when it came to some parts of the Body than to others. Thus, Paul warns in I Corinthians 11:27-29, if they were not properly discerning the whole Body in their conduct throughout the year, they stood in grave danger because they would be unable to value and appreciate Christ's sacrifice in their fellowship with Him through the Passover. In not recognizing the God-given and inestimable worth of all the others in Christ, they were diminishing Christ! Just a few chapters before, Paul had written, "But when you thus sin against the brethren, and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ" (I Corinthians 8:12; emphasis ours).
The result of taking the Passover unworthily is that we come under judgment. As Paul points out, the sickness and premature death that God judged "many" with (I Corinthians 11:30) resulted from their making an improper distinction about—and being partial to—the Body of believers. (Note that in Greek, "judgment" here does not indicate condemnation.) That judgment includes the removal of protection, even as God did not protect the Israelites in Egypt from the death angel if they were not under the blood of the Passover lamb.
Paul does not imply that every illness or death has its source in an improper discernment of the Body. In John 9:3, Jesus reveals that the man's blindness resulted not from his or his parents' sin but to display the works of God in him. Sometimes, the "sins of society" lead more directly to disease rather than our own sins. Even so, numerous examples exist of God striking His servants (or their family members) with sickness or even death for certain sins. Even Paul (as Saul) was "judged" with blindness for a time for His persecution of the Body!
Thus, if we are not adequately judging ourselves (I Corinthians 11:31) about the value we place on all parts of His spiritual Body, and God deems it is time for Him to judge us instead (verses 29, 31), then partaking of Christ's sacrifice will not provide healing but the reverse. If we are in opposition to Christ through despising parts of His Body, His sacrifice will not be a blessing for us but more like a curse. His stripes will not heal us but rather indict us.
Still, if God has to judge us for not discerning the Body, it is for our benefit, keeping us from actual condemnation: "But when we are judged, we are chastened by the Lord, that we may not be condemned with the world" (I Corinthians 11:32).
It is impossible to appreciate and value the shed blood of the Savior at Passover while devaluing parts of His spiritual Body throughout the rest of the year. When observing the Passover, we must remember that just as we are in fellowship with Jesus Christ through symbolically eating and drinking of His sacrifice, we are also in fellowship with His spiritual Body. We need to keep in mind the value that He has placed on each of us through His redemption and the obligation we now have to value all the members of His Body.
David C. Grabbe
What Does 'Discerning the Lord's Body' Mean? (Part Three)
"Examine" (dokimazo) means to prove, to test, to determine if metal is pure. It connotes approval rather than condemnation. Our self-evaluation is an honest inspection to see if we are progressing as God expects us to. He wants us to see what the attitude of our heart is! Then we can take the Passover confidently with a right heart.
When Paul says "examine yourself," he is not referring to an "out-of-body experience," yet it could be likened to that. God wants us to stand to one side and look at ourselves, making an honest evaluation of our progress over the past year.
Some of us do not truly realize what a wonderful season the pre-Passover period is. We can fool ourselves all year long by rarely studying, praying sporadically, and maintaining our vices, but if we remotely care what God thinks of us, we are forced to face our true natures in this self-examination. God wants us to do this for our own good. He wants us to see what we need to work on and change.
He wants us to worship Him in Spirit and truth (John 4:24). He wants us to be honest in our evaluation. Though we often dredge up past problems and old feelings from childhood of which we have long ago repented, God wants us to examine our present state. We must look for flaws we have now and seriously and positively make the necessary changes in our lives.
John O. Reid
Time for Self-Evaluation
The "cup" symbolizes the blood Jesus spilled in sacrificing His life. God is saying that through the blood of Christ, He is "sealing" His agreement of salvation with us. Though He had already promised it, Christ's blood certifies His agreement to justify us in preparation for salvation (Romans 5:9-10).
Such a monumental sacrifice must be fittingly remembered! If Passover becomes a mere ritual or pious habit, it loses its significance because Christ is not really being remembered with understanding and appreciation. In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul describes the brethren as rushing through the service, their minds so focused on their own bellies that they were treating each other with selfish disregard. Passover's purpose is not just to remember certain historical events, but to grasp the point of Christ's death. If we fail to comprehend its meaning, we are much more likely to treat His death unworthily.
Paul covers three major subjects in I Corinthians 11 and the chapters surrounding it: 1) our relationship with God, 2) our relationship with other members of the church and 3) spiritual liberty. Their common factor—the unique means by which all three are made possible—is the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Christ, Our Passover
What is a worthy manner? It is not about our works. While works are important (Ephesians 2:10), they fall far short of what God is looking for at this time: "So likewise you, when you have done all those things which you are commanded, say, 'We are unprofitable servants. We have done what was our duty to do'" (Luke 17:10).
Two examples in Scripture looked to their works, and each proved to be unworthy:
The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, "God, I thank You that I am not like other men—extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I possess." And the tax collector, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, "God, be merciful to me a sinner!" I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. (Luke 18:11-14)
The one found worthy was not the one who compared himself and his works to others around him but the one who compared himself to God and realized how completely unworthy he was.
The other example is that of the Laodiceans:
Because you say, "I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing"—and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked—I counsel you to buy from Me gold refined in the fire, that you may be rich; and white garments, that you may be clothed, that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed; and anoint your eyes with eye salve, that you may see. (Revelation 3:17-18)
Like the Pharisees, the Laodiceans are blinded to the true state of their spiritual lives because they are making false comparisons. Thus, Christ judges both as unworthy. The paradox: As we increasingly realize our unworthiness, we move closer to developing a worthy manner.
In I Corinthians 11:27-31, Paul provides the essential first steps to avoid appearing at Passover in an unworthy manner: "let a man examine himself" and "if we would judge ourselves." The tax collector examined himself and judged that he was sinful. Both the Pharisee and the Laodicean failed by not comparing themselves to God—in fact, they see themselves as not bad at all!
Paul identifies in Romans 5:20 what will help us make the correct comparison and bring about the humble and worthy manner of the tax collector: "Moreover the law entered that the offense might abound. But where sin abounded, grace abounded much more." The apostle highlights the power of the law. When the law enters our lives, it manifests our sins by bringing to our attention how far off the mark we are. As we more deeply understand the law, where before we were unaware of our failures, we now see them everywhere in our lives. It seems our sins are growing exponentially, abounding, because, with the law illuminating our blind, darkened minds, we now see how grave our sin is. The law does not create sin but reveals with startling clarity what is already there yet previously hidden to the carnal mind.
No matter how bottomless our sin, as the last half of Romans 5:20 adds, more than enough grace is available to cover and forgive those sins—grace abounds much more. What makes possible that abundance of forgiveness and grace? The sacrifice of Jesus Christ. That is the cost to cover and forgive—the torture and death of our Creator.
Thus, a worthy manner begins with realizing the depth of our sin. However, our self-examination and self-judgment only prepare the mind for what should be our focus at Passover so that we can approach it worthily.
Pat Higgins
A Worthy Manner?
Other Forerunner Commentary entries containing 1 Corinthians 11:27:
Exodus 12:8
1 Corinthians 11:23-29
1 Corinthians 11:25-29