1 Corinthians 10:16-17

“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? 17. Seeing that there is only one bread, we, being many, are one body: for we are all partakers of one bread.” The Holy Supper is, in the New Testament, the corresponding action to the feast which completed the peace - offering in the Old. The sacrifice once offered, the Jewish worshipper with his family celebrated a sacred feast in the temple court, in which the priest participated, and in which the part of the victim not consumed on the altar was eaten in common. It was in a manner the pledge of reconciliation which the Lord gave to the sinner on his restoration to grace. So the victim sacrificed is eaten by the believer in the Lord's Supper in token of reconciliation, and the result of this act is the formation of a real communion on the part of the worshipper, first with the victim (1 Corinthians 10:16), then also with all the other worshippers (1 Corinthians 10:17).

As in the second proposition of 1 Corinthians 10:16 the accusative ἄρτον, the bread, is an attraction arising from the following ὅν, Meyer, Hofmann, Holsten, etc., have thought that it must be so also with τὸ ποτήριον, the cup, in the first proposition. But this reason would only be valid if the proposition relative to the bread was placed first; reading the text as it stands, it is impossible to take τὸ ποτήριον otherwise than as a nominative.

The genitive εὐλογίας, of blessing, must contain an allusion to the famous cup of the Paschal feast, which bore the name of cos habberakia, the cup of blessing; it was the third which the father of the family circulated in the course of the feast; he did so while pronouncing over it a thanksgiving prayer for all God's benefits in nature and toward Israel. Jesus had reproduced this rite in the institution of the Holy Supper, but substituting, no doubt, for the Israelitish thanksgiving a prayer of gratitude for the salvation, higher than the deliverance from Egypt, which He was about to effect by His death, the foundation of the new covenant. The meaning therefore is: “The cup over which the Lord uttered the thanksgiving which we repeat when we celebrate this ceremony.” Some give the genitive εὐλογίας an active meaning: “The cup which produces blessing.” Heinrici compares, in an analogous sense, Psalms 116:13: “the cup of salvation,” and Isaiah 51:17: “the cup of fury;” he thus explains this complement: “The cup which contains the blessing of Christ.” This meaning is less natural in itself; and next, it does not answer to the meaning of the corresponding Hebrew expression. There is only one reason that might lead us to accept it, the desire to escape a tautology with the following phrase: which we bless. We could not escape from this awkwardness if, with Meyer, we regarded this last expression as only the explanatory paraphrase of the τῆς εὐλογίας, of blessing. Such a repetition would be superfluous. Besides, Paul would have required to say in this case ὑπὲρ οὗ (for which), and not ὅ, “ which we bless.” This pronoun in the accusative shows precisely that these words contain a new idea. It was not only God that was blessed for this cup, the symbol of salvation; but the cup itself was blessed as representing that which Christ had held in His hand when He instituted the Supper and said, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood.” The complement: of blessing, expresses the idea: “May God be blessed for this cup!” and the words: which we bless, this: “May this cup be blessed to us!” Comp. the phrase Luke 9:16: He blessed the loaves. It was by this blessing or consecration of the cup as a figurative sign of the blood of redemption that the cup became to the consciousness of the Church the means of participation in the blood of Christ.

The plural: we bless, alludes to the amen whereby the Church appropriated the formula of consecration. In the age of Justin (middle of the second century), it was the presbyter, presiding over the assembly, who performed this act; we cannot say whether it was so already in the apostle's time. The Didache (Διδαχή) of the Twelve Apostles, describing the ceremony of the Supper (chap. 9), tells us nothing on this head.

In the principal proposition, the notion of being (ἐστί) is certainly not the essential idea in Paul's view, as if he wished to insist and to say: “is really. ” In this sense the word ἐστί would have required to be placed first both times, before the predicate κοινωνία, the communion. The emphasis is on the predicate: the communion. By this term κοινωνία, does the apostle mean to designate a material participation in the blood of Christ, or a moral participation in its beneficent and salutary efficacy for the expiation of sins? In the former case we must hold, that as the instantaneous effect of the consecration, a physical act is wrought, either in the form of a transubstantiation, which makes wine the very blood of Christ, or in that of a conjunction of the blood with the wine of the Supper. But if the real blood of Christ was in one of these two forms offered to the communicant, this so essential element of the rite would certainly have been wanting the first time it was celebrated when Jesus instituted it; for His blood being not yet shed could not be communicated to the apostles. The reference, therefore, could only be to the blood of His glorified body. But the Apostle Paul expressly teaches that blood, as a corruptible principle, does not enter as an element into the glorified body (1 Corinthians 15:50). The two theories, Catholic and Lutheran, seem to us to be overturned by this simple observation. On the other hand, the apostle's words cannot merely denote, as some commentators have supposed, the profession of faith made by the communicant in the expiatory virtue of Christ's blood, and the thanksgiving with which he accompanies this profession. What does Paul wish to prove by appealing here to the analogy of the Holy Supper? He wishes to demonstrate, by the salutary influence which the communion exercises over the believer's heart, that demons exercise a pernicious one over him who takes part in the heathen sacrificial feasts. The Holy Supper is not, therefore, according to the apostle's view, a simple act of profession and thanksgiving on the believer's part. It is, at the same time, a real partaking of the grace purchased by Christ, and which He communicates to the devout soul of the communicant. This conception is a sort of intermediate one between the two opposite views which we have just set aside, a conception of the kind which Calvin sought to formulate. Especially as to the cup, the communion is an effectual partaking in the expiation accomplished by the blood of Christ and in the reconciliation to God which is thus assured to us; it is our taking in possession that remission of sins, of which Jesus Himself spoke when handing the cup, and by which we are placed in the pure and luminous atmosphere of Divine adoption.

The accusative τὸν ἄρτον, the bread, is explained by attraction of the following pronoun ὅν (Matthew 21:42). It is occasioned by the fact that the bread is here contemplated in its close relation to the act as a whole; the bread only appears as broken.

The words are not used in connection with the bread, nor with the thanksgiving, nor with the act of consecration, but solely with the breaking of it. It is so, undoubtedly, to avoid repetition; for the bread also was consecrated with thanksgiving. This appears from the passage of Justin in which he calls the Holy Supper: ἡ εὐχαριστηθεῖσα τροφή, the Eucharistic nourishment, for which thanks are given, as well as at a yet earlier period, from the Doctrine of the Twelve Apostles, in which there is express mention of the double thanksgiving for the cup and the bread in the primitive Jewish Christian Churches.

The plural κλῶμεν, we break, either suggests the moral participation of the whole church in this act which the president performed in memory of Jesus breaking the bread for the disciples, or it supposes a form such as prevails in the Churches where every communicant himself breaks off a piece of the bread which passes from one to another. The term κοινωνία, communion, is repeated in connection with the bread; it is, in fact, the notion which unites the two acts in one, and from which has arisen the ordinary name of the sacrament, the communion.

Holsten thinks he can apply this word to the relation formed between believers by participation in the Supper. This is to do violence to the term which denotes the inner side of the participation of believers in the sacrament; comp. 1 Corinthians 1:9. The idea of the relation between communicants will not come till 1 Corinthians 10:17, as a corollary from the idea of their union with Christ. It is to get at the same meaning of κοινωνία that some commentators, such as Erasmus, Zwingle, etc., have here applied the term σῶμα Χριστοῦ, the body of Christ, to the Church, the community of those who believe in Christ. This explanation is as untenable as Holsten's. It is incompatible with the parallel proposition relative to the blood of Christ; in this connection it is quite certain that the body of Christ can only denote the physical organism which Christ possessed here below, an organism represented by the bread broken in the Supper, and of which the blood, taken literally, was the life. The believer's communion with the body of the Lord adds a new element to communion with Christ, founded on participation in His blood; the latter is participation in a benefit purchased by Him, that of reconciliation; the former is participation in His person, the assimilation of the very substance of His being. In the blood, represented by the cup, we contemplate and apply to ourselves Christ dead for us; in the body, represented by the bread, we appropriate Christ living in us. Our communion with this body broken for us, and then glorified, is therefore of a more intimate, more direct, more living nature than communion with the blood. St. Paul himself has expressed this profound fact in all its force and reality in the words: “It is no more I that live, but Christ that liveth in me” (Galatians 2:20). No doubt this fact is above all of a spiritual nature; it is His holy person whom His Spirit makes to live in us; but this spiritually holy person is at the same time a corporeally glorified person, and Paul himself teaches us that we are in a living relation to it, similar to that by which our natural descent unites us to the first Adam (1 Corinthians 15:48-49). Participation in His glorified body thus follows from communion with His holy person by the power of the Spirit. If it is so, we find here, though Holsten seeks to show the contrary, the same group of thoughts as in John, when, in chap. 6, Jesus speaks of the necessity of eating His flesh and drinking His blood to have life and to be raised again at the last day (John 6:39-40; John 6:44; John 6:54). It is true, John uses the word flesh rather than body. But this is because he means to designate the substance as related to the idea of eating, which is naturally the dominant one in the context (following the multiplication of the loaves); whereas Paul speaks of the body, as an organism, and that in relation to the notion of breaking, which is particularly prominent both in this passage and in 1 Corinthians 11:24. This shows no difference of view, but only of relation.

It has been asked why in our passage the cup is placed before the bread, while in chap. 11, and in the institution of the Holy Supper, we find the opposite order. Meyer answers: Because the idea of bread afforded a transition to that of the flesh of the Jewish and heathen sacrifices, immediately to be spoken of; Hofmann: Because wine played the principal part in heathen feasts, and so required to be put first. Edwards, nearly the same: Perhaps because the sacrificial meals were rather συμπόσια than συσσίτια. I incline to think that Paul, speaking here in name of the Christian consciousness, puts the blood first, because it is expiation which faith appropriates in the first place; while the bread is placed second, because it represents the communication of Christ's power and life, which follows faith in reconciliation by His death. The opposite order was required by the circumstances of the institution of the Supper; see on chap. 1 Corinthians 11:24 seq.

Vv. 17. From the communion of every believer with the Lord, Paul deduces the communion of believers with one another; we shall see with what view. This verse may be construed grammatically in three ways. The first and most obvious would be to make the ὅτι, seeing that, relate to the preceding verse, while understanding the verb ἐστί in the first proposition: “...is the communion of the body of Christ, seeing that there is only one bread.” Then, taking this construction as granted, it might be applied also to what follows: “(and) seeing that therefore we are one body, we who are many.” So Meyer, Osiander, etc. According to this interpretation, the communion of Christians with one another would be here alleged to prove the communion of Christians with their Head in the Holy Supper. The construction is not tenable: 1, because the existence of two parallel propositions not connected by καί, and, would be without example in Paul's writings; 2, because the verb ἐστί, is, could not be understood in the first proposition; it would require to be expressed as corresponding to the ἐσμέν, we are, in the second; 3, because the proof would be defective. The communion of Christians with Christ in the Holy Supper cannot be demonstrated by the communion of Christians with one another, because this second fact is much less evident to the Christian consciousness.

The second construction also makes the ὅτι, seeing that, dependent on 1 Corinthians 10:16, but makes the two substantives one bread and one body two coordinate predicates of the many: “seeing that we, the many, are one bread, one body;” so Holsten. What a strange mode of expression: we are one bread! The more so, as Meyer observes, that the term bread can only be taken here in a figurative sense; otherwise there would be a tautology with the following proposition: “We are all partakers of one bread.” But if the word bread is taken the first time in its mystical sense, why add to it the expression: one body? In no sense can the apostle conclude from the fact that all communicants partake of one bread, that they all become that bread!

We must therefore have recourse to a third construction, the only admissible one, as it seems to us; it is that followed by the Vulgate, Calvin, Beza, Rückert, Hofmann, Heinrici, etc. The conjunction ὅτι, seeing that, is the beginning of a new sentence; and the subordinate proposition: “ seeing that there is one bread,” is regarded as dependent on the following proposition, which is the principal: “Seeing that there is one bread, we, being many, are one body.” The logical nexus which unites these two propositions is explained by the following sentence: For we are all partakers of the same bread. The communicants, by all receiving a piece of the same bread, are thereby bound, morally speaking, however numerous they may be, into one spiritual body; for this bread of which they all partake has been solemnly consecrated to represent one and the same object, the body of Jesus. The bond which thus unites them to Jesus as their common Head, unites them also to one another as members of the same body. Here is a subsidiary consideration which the apostle adds to the main argument, indicated in 1 Corinthians 10:16. And indeed, by taking part in the heathen sacrificial feasts, the Corinthians would not only separate themselves from Christ, to whom they were united in the Supper; they would also break the bond formed by this same ceremony between them and the Church, the body of Christ.

In the use of this term σῶμα, body, Paul passes from the literal sense (the Lord's body), 1 Corinthians 10:16, to the figurative sense (the Church), 1 Corinthians 10:17; this passage is natural because of the close relation between the two notions. If we become one and the same spiritual body with one another, it is because we all participate by faith in that one and the same body of Christ, with which we enter into relation in the Supper.

The verb μετέχειν, to partake, is usually construed with a simple genitive; it takes here the preposition ἐκ, of, from: “We all receive (a piece which comes) from the same bread.” This term differs from the more inward expression κοινωνία, communion, in that it denotes external participation in the bread of the Supper. It is obvious that we cannot, with Rodatz and Heinrici, understand the words one body in the sense of: “one body with Christ. ” For the matter in question in 1 Corinthians 10:17 is the breaking of the bond which unites believers to the Church as a whole.

The apostle quotes as a second example the Jewish sacrificial feasts.