# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1855_S355
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Exposition of 1 Corinthians, etc. 355

-can. The "judge ye what I say" is precisely the work by which the wise are to prove that they can draw conclusions. Paul therefore comes to them with nothing but questions, and presupposes their answers, so that they must strike and convict themselves with their own answers. Come, he says, you wise people, convict yourselves for once: consider

I. the grace of which you are accounted worthy by God, in that He lets you partake at the table of the Lord.

Verse 16. "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?"

That the Apostle demonstrates, precisely by pointing to the celebration of the Holy Supper, how participation in the idol-sacrifice feasts is not fitting, is natural, since both solemnities have the outward form of meals and can therefore be set over against one another; further, because for the Christian nothing testifies so firmly and fully to his share in the graces of our Lord Christ and to the fullness of the glory of these graces as does that most reverend sacrament. It also distinguishes the Christian, outwardly and visibly, from the heathen and unbelievers; and should this same Christian, so highly graced, wish to take part in the feasts of idol worship?

The Apostle mentions the cup of the Holy Supper first, because it was likely the first thing to present itself to his memory. In those days the Christians celebrated the Holy Supper in the course of their love-feasts, when the congregation sat down to table, as the Lord Christ did with his disciples on the night of the betrayal; the love-feast began with the distribution of the bread and closed with the partaking of the blessed cup. Partaken of, therefore, at a time when, through the whole preceding love-feast, the consciousness of loving fellowship in Christ must have been awakened, the cup readily made itself the first thing noticeable to the memory of those who partook of the Supper. We are accustomed, from the Gospel, to seeing the cup named for the wine contained in it; it is also a manner of speech that we ourselves use, and it arises from the fact that wine, like every liquid, requires a vessel so as not to be spilled. When the Apostle finally calls the cup which we bless the blessed cup, or, as it is literally translated, the cup of blessing, he thereby says that it brings blessing, just as, for example, in Romans 1:4, he calls the Spirit who sanctifies the Spirit of sanctification; but by this fullness of expression — that he speaks of the cup as such, as being blessed and as bringing blessing — he wins the hearts of his readers to an especially earnest consideration of the graces of which they become partakers through the Holy Supper.

The bread, which was passed around at the beginning of the love-feast, the Apostle brings forward in the second place, because, although otherwise just as important as the wine, it did not, on account of its position at the beginning of the love-feast, impress itself on the memory as vividly as did the cup. Not expressly noted—