Narcissism and Nobility

Meditations on 1Corinthians

No. 20b

Discerning the Lord’s Body

1Cor 11.17-34

How do we move forward?

We must go back to the Bible.  I submit that the early medievals were much closer to what the Bible teaches, and that we need to throw off the whole paradigm bequeathed to us by our late medieval forefathers and return to the earlier paradigm, according to which the point of the Lord’s Supper is to confect the corporate body of Christ out of individual members, to take we who are many and make us one body, the body of Christ (1Cor 12.27) — or as Peter puts it, to form God’s temple out of living stones (1Pet 2.5).  Paul’s statement in 1Cor 10.16-17 supports this paradigm:

The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?  For we, though many, are one bread and one body; for we all partake of that one bread.

The purpose of us all partaking of the one bread of the Lord’s Supper is to make us, who are many, one bread and one body.  What body of Christ is the focus and purpose of the Lord’s Supper?  The corporate body of Christ, the church.  As we noted before, both the historical body of Christ and the eucharistic body of Christ, the bread, are broken to form the church, the corporate body of Christ.

Why is this so important?  God, in Christ, is reconciling all things to Himself.  He is doing this by gathering all things in heaven and earth together in Christ, the new Adam, the new man.  This entails putting all things under his feet and making Christ the head of a new human race, a new humanity, the church.  In the church, God displays His manifold wisdom to heaven and earth, to all principalities and powers.  (Col 1.18-20; Eph 1.10, 22-23; 3.10.)

(To be continued.)