the Fourth Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
Our Daily Homily - Volume 3
1 Corinthians 11:29—Eateth and drinketh judgment unto himself, if he discern not the body. (R.V.)
How many humble and earnest souls this verse, as rendered in the A.V., has kept from the blessed enjoyment of the Lord’s Table! They did not understand the nature of the sin which the apostle was describing; they were terrified by the word damnation, and they felt that it were better to forego the privilege than risk the peril.
The difficulties will, however, largely disappear, when we understand the disorders that disgraced the Corinthian Church, and which arose from the abuses of the love-feast which preceded the Lord’s Supper. At that repast each disciple was expected to put the provisions he had brought with him into a common stock, from which all shared alike. But at Corinth, the rich and their friends ate of their luxuries; the poor were allowed to go without. After such an introduction, the Church could not approach the Lord’s Table with that appreciation of the solemnity and tenderness of the ordinance which could alone consist with the holy memories of the betrayal night.
The eating and drinking unworthily arose from not discerning the Body. This does not refer to the Lord’s Body which was broken for us; but to his Body the Church. "The bread which we break, is it not a communion of the body of Christ, seeing that we, who are many, are one bread, one body?" (1 Corinthians 10:16-17). We eat and drink unworthily when we fail to discern that the poor, and weak, and simple, who belong to Jesus, belong also to us; that they are members with us; and that we are bound to share our gifts and graces with them for the glory of our common Lord. The one thing which disqualifies us from joining in this feast of dying love is our refusal to feel and manifest love to all in the Body.
