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Paul called the Lord's Supper dinner
By the end of this guide you will be able to read 1 Corinthians 11 as the letter about a shared meal that it actually is, see who Paul meant by "the body," and sit down to eat with other believers knowing you are standing in three moments at once: Passover behind you, the cross at the center, and the wedding feast ahead.
By Tim Barber·
Photo by Nathan Haight on Unsplash
A study companion to the video
The “Lord’s Supper” Is WAY More Important Than You Thought
Watch it first if you can, then read with your Bible open.
Start here
This is a companion to the video "The Lord's Supper is WAY more important than you thought." It is for the person who has sat through a hundred communion services doing exactly what they were told, examining themselves, mourning their sins, feeling smaller with every cracker, and never once feeling like they belonged at that table. It is also for the person who loves Jesus and cannot find a room where they fit. If either of those is you, I wrote this with you in mind, and I think Paul did too.
Here is how to use it. Watch the video first if you can. Then open your Bible to 1 Corinthians 11 and keep it open beside you, because I am going to ask you to check things. Read "The teaching" straight through; it carries the whole argument on its own. Then work "The passages" slowly, with a pen, reading every quotation against your own Bible. Save "Questions to sit with" for last, and answer them on paper. Ideas that stay in your head evaporate. Ideas you write down have a chance of changing what you do at the next meal you share.
One thing before we start. Being right about the Lord's Supper does not save anyone. Faith in Christ saves you. I have friends all over the map on this: Anglicans, Catholics, Baptists, house-church people, and every one of them loves the Lord. I am going to argue hard for a reading I think the text plainly supports, and I want you to be convinced by the text, if you are convinced at all, and to stay kind toward everyone who reads it differently. I will not divide from a brother or sister over this, and I hope you will not either.
Why should you care? Because for nearly two thousand years the church has been handed a passage about a dinner table and taught to read it as a passage about private guilt. That reading has cost people something real: it has turned the most welcoming meal in the Bible into the moment in the service where they feel least welcome. If Paul was talking about something else, and I am convinced he was, then you get to put that guilt down and pick up something far better.
Up next
Now to the passages themselves. Read each one slowly, in full, with your Bible open beside you.
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Get the whole study guide
Seven more sections: the teaching, key terms, the glossary, every passage in full, questions to sit with, where to go deeper, and a PDF you can print.
The next step is a conversation. Bring what you wrote to the community, or go back to the video.
