'The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a communion of the blood of Christ? 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, for we are all partake of the one bread.'
Let them consider. When they partake of the cup of blessing, the wine of the Lord's supper, does it not bring them into oneness with the blood of Christ? They drink of Him by faith (John 6:35). Is it not a sharing in His death? This 'cup of blessing' is based on the third of the four cups in the Passover meal. It is the cup which He described as symbolising the new covenant in His blood. By partaking of it in His presence at the Lord's Table they renew their oneness in the covenant and in His sacrifice for them. They represent themselves as crucified with Christ, and as partakers in His death and resurrection. It is a partaking in, a communion with, a participation in, a uniting with, what the blood of Christ shed for them symbolises and represents. They are revealing that they are spiritually one with Him, in His death and resurrection, and in His life.
When they break the bread and partake of it, does it not bring them into oneness with the body of Christ, into participation in that body of which they have become a member by being baptised into Christ (1 Corinthians 12:12-13)? The one bread represents Christ, Who is the Bread of Life (John 6:35). By eating of the broken bread they become one bread together, as the bread was one, and by partaking of that one bread, indicate that they are the one body, the body of Christ, which that one bread represents. Here we have the heart of why the church is the body of Christ, because they are united with Him in His body (see 1 Corinthians 12:12-27; 1 Corinthians 6:15; Romans 12:5; Ephesians 1:23; Ephesians 5:29-30), the one body, partaking of the one bread (John 6:35). He is one body and they are one body in Him.
This idea is central to the New Testament concept of the body of Christ. It does not so much teach that He is the head and we are the body, but that He is the body, and that by uniting with Him in His body through faith we also become the one body with Him (Ephesians 2:15-16). Thus in 1 Corinthians 12 some members of the body include the eyes, ears and head because they are all part of His one body (1 Corinthians 10:16; 1 Corinthians 10:21).
The thought is of spiritual oneness with Christ and with each other. All are one in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:28). In spiritual oneness we have died with Christ. We have been broken with Him. But in His resurrection we are all made one together. All is put right. And that is what eating the bread symbolises.
We are not His body in a physical sense. Nor are we united with His body in a physical sense. Nor do we eat of His physical body. It is through what He has done in His body through the cross, that we are united with Him (Ephesians 2:14-16), and this is by faith. We are 'eating' what He is for us. We are united with what He did for us. It is as though we died and rose with Him. We are conjoined with Him.
(There is of course a way in which Christ is described as the Head, but that is not in contrast with the body, but in respect of His full Headship as Lord over all and over His church. It does not signify that He is not Himself the body with which they are united, for He is. The ancients did not see the body as just controlled by the head, but as controlled by the heart, liver, kidneys and bowels).
Note on the Body of Christ.
The idea of the body of Christ begins with teaching concerning the literal body of Christ. Thus when Jesus at the Last Supper took the bread and broke it and said, ‘Take, eat. This is my body.' (Matthew 26:26). ‘Take you, this is my body.' (Mark 14:22). ‘This is my body which is given for you, do this in remembrance of me' (Luke 22:19). ‘This is my body which is for you, do this in remembrance of me' (1 Corinthians 11:24), He was clearly pointing to His death on the cross in a physical body and equally pointing to the fact that they could nourish themselves from Him and His death. He was symbolising spiritual participation in the body of His flesh as the crucified One.
It is hardly necessary to point out that someone who was alive and well at the time could hardly have meant this to be taken literally. The bread could not be His body for He was still in His body. To claim that it was His body in a ‘mystical' sense is to make such an idea meaningless. Such a ‘mystical body' would not be His body in any meaningful sense of the term. It would not in fact be to declare a miracle but to argue a literal and factual impossibility, a contradiction. It would be to play with words. If we mean (rightly) that it was a symbol, a representation, then let us say that.
What Jesus in fact simply meant was that the bread was to be seen as representing His body symbolically, just as in the Passover, of which Jesus' words were a parallel, the leader took bread and said ‘this is the bread of affliction which your fathers ate'. Such a person did not mean that it literally was that bread of affliction, but that it represented it, it symbolised it. What he actually meant was, ‘this is to remind you of, and symbolises, and allows you to partake in, by inference, by thought transference, the bread of affliction'. Each time they ate they as it were entered into the experience of eating the bread of affliction. And in the same way each time we eat the bread at the Lord's Table we enter by inference and by thought transference into the experience of His crucifixion, confirming that we are united with Him in His death, and united with Him in His body.
Our being members (individual parts united in one) of the body of Christ Himself is likened to the union between a man and his wife in marriage (Ephesians 5:28-29) and in sexual relations (1 Corinthians 6:15). These relationships make a man and his wife ‘one flesh' (Genesis 2:24), acting as one in all things with the wife being totally responsive to her husband. It is the closest possible spiritual union, and in the ideal the closest possible spiritual co-operation. Its closeness is expressed in 1 Corinthians 12:12. It is Christ Himself Who is immediately represented in terms of the church as members of His body. The body is Christ. So in ‘the body of Christ', Jesus Christ and His people are conjoined as one.
End of note).
Being then made one with Him, and partaking in His death and resurrection, can they go as members of His body (taking Christ with them) to participate in meals in the presence of, and dedicated to, demons? Can they take Christ's body into heathen temples to participate in its functions? Can they so degrade Christ? And showing oneness in the covenant of Christ by drinking, can they not see that by partaking of the sacrifice to idols they are also showing covenant oneness with them by partaking? Do they really wish to compromise Christ and what He has accomplished?