# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1855_S358
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

358 Exposition of 1 Corinthians etc.

wherever it is mentioned, one also thinks of the fact that all Christians together partake of this one thing and no other. From this the Apostle then concludes that, because it is partaken of in common by all Christians, this bread of the Lord's Supper unites the Christians, however many they may be, into one bread, one body; "into one bread," the Apostle says first, but since one gladly ranks the living together with the living, he adds, as a closer determination and therefore without a connecting word (such as "or," for instance), "one body"..., thereby recalling passages such as 1 Corinthians 12:12ff., where the union of Christians with one another and with Christ as the head is set forth so vividly under the image of a body. The common partaking of the one bread of the Lord's Supper makes of the Christians a union like one bread, one body; that is the reason why Paul asserts of the bread that we break that it is communion; and let us add at once that the common partaking of the cup that we bless makes of the Christians a union, so that the cup that we bless may also very well bear the assertion that it is communion: such is the Apostle's statement in verse 17. We are certainly right in carrying over what is said here of the bread to the cup as well, in its own way: the Apostle makes the same statement, namely that it unites the Christians into communion, not expressly concerning the cup, because every reader adds it without difficulty; but that he speaks in this way precisely of the bread comes from the fact that it is spoken of in the second place, and hence the required grounding attaches itself easily to it. But is it already clear to us from verse 17 why Paul can make the assertion of bread and wine that they are communion? Certainly; we understand this, that bread and wine in the Holy Supper bind all Christians into a close communion, that wherever one is reminded of those elements of the sacrament, one also thinks at the same time that they form communion, and finally that particularly in verse 16 the thought of this effect of bread and wine in the Supper confronts us all the more vividly, because in the case of both it is noted what we do in fellowship with the elements in order to set them apart as sacrament, namely the blessing and the breaking, so that a definite pointer to the communion truly stands there. But it is always bread and wine together with the blessing and breaking that is what effects the communion, and to see this asserted of that which properly ought to have been asserted of the communion thereby effected — that seems to us at least not to be good German usage. And it is true, this manner of speaking is not German; all the more, however, is it Greek; the best of the ancient Greek writers would have taken no offense at it. Thus in Luke 22:20 it is said of the cup of the Supper that it is the New Covenant, because through the cup the blood of Christ is imparted ("in my blood"); now the New Covenant is the communion between God and men that has been established through the blood of Christ, and because God imparts this very blood of the New Covenant through the cup