I Corinthians 11:27

First Corinthians 11:27

In First Corinthians 11:27-30 the Bible says, "Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup. For he that eats and drinks unworthily, eats and drinks damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body. For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep."

One of the problems with the Christians in the city of Corinth was that in the dinners that they had for the purpose of copying the Last Supper, they were simply having a big feast and they were not remembering the important symbolic meaning of what Jesus said and did at the last supper, when Jesus took the bread and said, "This eat in remembrance of me," and when He took the wine and said, "This drink in remembrance of me."

No one likes hypocrisy especially in reference to religion, and God does not like it either. That is why Jesus warned his disciples to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees. That is why Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount to be careful that you do not pray in order to be seen of men. And that is why there were such major consequences to the Christians in Corinth when they were not serious or genuine or thoughtful at the Lord’s Supper. A Christian should always be appreciative and mindful of all that Jesus suffered so that we could be saved from our sins. Once a person knows what Jesus did for them, there may be nothing worse than to fail to show appreciation, or to fail to remember the greatness of salvation. How much worse to not remember the greatness of the sacrifice of Christ even at the very taking of the Lord’s supper.

Because they did eat the bread and drink the cup of the Lord unworthily, they were guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. This is a great sin: it means to not show appreciation for the body that was pierced and the blood that was shed for you. This is the very sin that will be committed by those who are not allowed into the Kingdom of God. For those who will be cast out of the presence of God forever, there will be an accounting of many sins committed by them. The people who will go to hell will be the ones who will have understood what Jesus did for them, but who will have rejected it. They will have trampled underfoot the blood of Christ. They will have chosen their own way and the terrible consequences of their own sins, rather than becoming thankful for the sacrifice of Christ.

No wonder it is such a terrible thing if Christians should become forgetful of what God has done for them. What happens when a Christian sins? One of the things that happens is that the Christian becomes out of fellowship with God. There are negative consequences for sin, and all humans will experience the consequences of their actions, and this includes Christians. If a Christian does not learn to examine himself and to evaluate himself on a regular basis to see if there is some failure or some sin that needs to be repented of, then will come the chastisement of God into the life of that Christian. "Whom the Lord loves, He chastens." If we do not evaluate ourselves, then we are in danger of continuing in some kind of error. Therefore, the Lord chastises us in order to wake us up and in order to teach us so that we may do better and improve our lives.

One of the ways that the Lord chastises us is to touch our conscience and our spirit. If you have lost your joy, it may be because you have unconfessed sin. The Psalmist prayed and said, "Lord, restore unto me the joy of my salvation." Another way that the Lord chastises us is to touch our bodies. That is why this passage says that because of their unconfessed sins, some of them were sick and some had even died.

This teaching is very clear. Some sickness is a direct result of sin. If you have a sickness that is a result of sin, then part of the remedy is to confess your sins. That is why the book of James says, "Confess your faults one to another that you may be healed." Whenever you are sick, if you are a believer, you should ask yourself if your sickness is due to sin on your part or if it is due to something else. There are Christians who are sick because of their sinful actions or because of their sinful attitudes as was the case with some of the Christians in Corinth.

Not only can sickness be a consequence of believers doing the wrong thing, but death can also result. That is what is meant in First Corinthians 11:30 when it says that for this cause many sleep. "Sleep" means death. In First John chapter 5 it says that there is a sin unto death. In the book of Acts Ananias and Saphira died because they lied about how much money they had given. If a Christian goes on in sin and does not listen to the Lord’s attempts to awaken them to serve Him, the Lord may decide to take that Christian off the earth. After all, once we are saved, we are here to serve Him; and if we are not going to serve Him, then there is no reason to be here. There are people who die before their time because they are believers who got involved in some kind of sin or carnal attitude or human selfishness, and they did not repent of it, and it led to them being taken from the earth. The Christians in Corinth became involved with partaking of the Lord’s supper frivolously and without remembering the Lord’s death; and because of it some of them were sick and some of them even died.

First Corinthians 11:31-32 says, "For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world." These two verses of the Bible give one of the very important principles of scripture about how to walk with God in this world. There are only two ways to walk in fellowship with God. One way is to never sin. If you live every moment of every day first of all according to the greatest commandment which Jesus said is to love God with all the heart and all the mind and all the soul and all the strength; and if you also always live according to the second greatest commandment which is to love your neighbor as yourself; and if every single day you obey every one of the Ten Commandments; and if every day you also obey all the other commandments of the Bible: and if you do these things always and forever, then you will stay in fellowship with God and then you will walk with God. By the way, Jesus Christ is the only one who stayed in fellowship with the Father by that means.

If you sin, then there is only one other way for you to continue walking with God and for you to continue being in fellowship with God, and that is to live according to the principle that is given here in First Corinthians 11:30-31, "For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged. But when we are judged we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world." We have already heard about the chastening of the Lord that can result in sorrow and sickness and death. But if you are a believer and you fail, there is something that you can do to avoid the chastening of the Lord: judge yourself. When you judge yourself, you analyze your own actions, and you then understand what you have done wrong, and you ask the Lord to forgive you.

This is the same principle that is given in First John 1:9 that says, "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." The second way to always be in fellowship with God and to always walk with God is to confess your sins whenever you fail. With this principle the person who is the most consistent at walking with God is the person who is the quickest to recognize that they have failed and to go to God and ask for forgiveness. Christianity is based upon the forgiveness of sins. It is based upon the forgiveness of sins when someone becomes a Christian and is born again through faith in Christ, and it is based upon the forgiveness of sins for being able to continue to walk with God on a daily basis.

If you learn to turn from your sins, and to ask the Lord to forgive you of your sins on a daily basis, and even on a moment by moment basis if so needed; then you will always walk with God and God will not have to chastise you in order to wake you up, because First Corinthians 11:31 says, "If we judge ourselves, we will not be judged."

The reason that God is so willing to forgive us is because of Jesus. Jesus died for the sins of the world. Jesus taught us that there should be no limit as to how much we are willing to forgive our neighbor, obviously because there is no limit to how much or how often God will forgive us. Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. Grace and mercy is the reason that anyone will end up in heaven, and grace and mercy is the reason that anyone will be able to walk with God.

In First Corinthians chapter 12 Paul begins writing about spiritual gifts, and the importance of the subject of spiritual gifts is shown by the fact that chapters 12, 13, and 14 are dedicated to the subject. Paul introduces the subject of spiritual gifts by saying in First Corinthians 12:1-3, "Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers, I would not have you ignorant. You know that you were Gentiles, carried away unto these dumb idols, even as you were led. Wherefore I give you to understand, that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calls Jesus accursed; and that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost."

If we are going to talk about spiritual gifts; that means that we are going to talk about the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit has given to each believer one or more spiritual gifts, and the Holy Spirit works in the life of each believer so that these gifts will be developed, and so that each gift will be used in the service of God. The first work that the Holy Spirit did in the life of each believer was to bring us to God. Jesus said, "That which is born of flesh is flesh, but that which is born of spirit is spirit." If you believe in Jesus with saving faith, you were given that faith by the Holy Spirit. You were brought to Jesus by the Holy Spirit, and your eyes were opened to the truth about Jesus by the Spirit of God. Once you believed, that same Spirit gave you one or more spiritual gifts. And He has done the same thing for everyone else who has believed.

How can you tell if someone has the Spirit? What is the evidence of the Holy Spirit? The answer is given in the last part of First Corinthians 12:3 that says that "no man can say that Jesus is Lord, except by the Holy Spirit." The name of Jesus is a powerful name. The name of Jesus separates everyone in the world the one from the other. People who are unsaved ignore the name of Jesus, and some people, if they have gone far enough away from God, even despise the name of Jesus. But for those who are saved, and for those who will be in the Kingdom of God, there is no greater name. To them, Jesus is Lord. And they know this only because the Spirit of God has revealed it unto them.

After revealing Jesus to you, the Spirit of God will give you one or more gifts; but He does not give to every Christian the same gifts. First Corinthians 12:4-11 says; "Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord. And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God who works all in all. But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal. For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit; To another faith by the same Spirit; to another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit; To another the working of miracles; to another prophesy; to another discerning of spirits; to another diverse kinds of tongues; to another the interpretation of tongues; But all these work that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as He will."

Nine gifts of the Spirit are listed here. These are not all of the gifts of the Spirit. There are others given elsewhere in the New Testament. And there are other gifts that are implied because of what is written here. The nine gifts that are listed here are: 1. the word of wisdom, 2. the word of knowledge, 3. faith, 4. gifts of healing, 5. working of miracles, 6. prophesy, 7. discerning of spirits, 8. divers kinds of tongues, and 9. the interpretation of tongues. It is important to note that five of the gifts have to do with the use of words: the spoken word and the written word.

The first two gifts that are mentioned are the word of wisdom and the word of knowledge. The word that is translated "word" in both of these cases is logos, the same that is used for the word of God. These gifts have to do with understanding the word of God and teaching it. You must have the spirit of God in order to understand the Word of God, because the Word of God is a spiritual book and its truths can only be understood when the student is enlightened by the Holy Spirit. Every Christian is given a measure of this understanding, but to certain Christians is given a gift that goes beyond that which is given to others. It is given to them in order that they might feed other believers with the spiritual food of the Word of God. Jesus said to Peter, "If you love me, feed my sheep."

You must find out what the gifts are that God has given to you. It is God who has determined what gift each of us should have. That is why First Corinthians 12:11 says, "...dividing to every man severally as He will." Do not try to do something for which you are not gifted. Find out what your gifts are, and use them. Of this you can be sure, if you have been saved by Jesus, then you are an important person and a special person, because you have been gifted by God in order to serve Him and in order to help do the work of God. Do you know what the gifts are that God has given to you, and are you using them for His service?

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