I Cor. 11:27 ... "Whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner, shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord."
On the night He was betrayed and arrested, Jesus kept the Passover Feast with His apostles in an upper room somewhere in Jerusalem. At a certain point in the ceremony Jesus took some unleavened bread, broke it and said, "This is My body which is for you, do this in remembrance of me." Then He took a cup of wine, and after He had sipped from it, He said, "This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me." With these words Jesus established a memorial to His sacrificial death by which He atoned for the sins of all people. This solemn meal was established to be observed as an act of worship by Christians as long as time shall last, for in the verse previous to the text above, it is proclaimed that "as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until He comes." Since the death of Jesus was uniquely important to God, as indeed it is also to us, we bear a grave responsibility to observe it in the manner which God approves. We must not be like the Corinthians who modified the ceremony to suit their own desires and vanity. In this passage we are shown three vital requirements set by God that we must be careful to meet lest we keep this holy feast "in an unworthy manner" and become "guilty of the body and blood of the Lord."
First, we must observe the Lord's Supper with a backward look. Nearly twenty centuries have passed since that day when Jesus was nailed to a cross, suspended in the air, and suffered excruciating pain for about six hours before He died. Time tends to obscure the meaning of events, and to many people now the death of Jesus is about as relevant as the death of Sekhemkhet, third pharoah of the Third Dynasty in 2643 B.C. This distant king's death has absolutely no bearing on anyone today, but the death of Jesus means everything to everyone! He died to pay the penalty of death that is due us for our sins. Had He not done so, we would each have to die for them ourselves. Every few years I review the history of the 170 pharoahs; most people, however, never do. But every day of the year I review Jesus death for me. And every Sunday Christians around the world come together in their congregations to look back 2,000 years to the day when a loving Lord died for them. For both when He blessed the holy bread and the holy cup, Jesus said, "Do this in remembrance of Me." That is the backward look.
Second,. we must observe the Lord's Supper with a forward look. According to I Cor. 11:26, when we keep this memorial, we "proclaim the Lord's death until He come." Our assemblies each Sunday for this observance proclaim to the community about us that the Lord we worship is going to return some day to terminate the world and summon all men unto judgment.
Third, we must observe the Lord's Supper with an inward look." We must turn our attention inwardly upon our own heart to determine how far off from the image of Christ it happens to be. Our text does not demand that we be "worthy" to participate in this supper. If that were the case, no one could every take part. The essential idea in this command is for everyone to "examine himself" to discover the sin within him, sin that is removed only by the death of Jesus which we commemorate in this holy meal.
