# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1855_S359
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Exposition of 1 Corinthians etc. 359

imparts, the communion between God and men — in that God blesses and gives the cup and the men receive it — is the New Covenant; instead, however, of asserting this of that communion, it is asserted of that which effects or mediates that communion, namely of the cup. Such a manner of speaking therefore also occurs elsewhere in Scripture, not only in our verse 16.

But why does the Apostle speak in this way? why does he not begin thus: Do not we, who together drink the blessed cup which we bless, have communion with one another in the blood of Christ? and so forth — and, to add at once one further question, why does the Apostle not note, at least in the case of bread and cup, that we partake of them in common, thereby leading us more quickly and easily to the thought that through them we form a communion; why does he instead note, in the case of bread and cup, the activities by which God, through his servants, prepares the Supper? The answer is found at once by anyone who puts, in the place of verses 16 and 17, the very sentence we would have expected, together with the subordinate clauses that would indicate the common partaking of the elements: the vividness and force of the presentation are at once lost thereby. In that the Apostle begins, "the blessed cup which we bless," and so forth, he leads us with overpowering force into the very midst of the Christian congregation, just as it is celebrating the Holy Supper. We see the believers gathered around the table of the Lord; they have kept the love-feast together; the cup, indeed the cup of blessing, stands before the elder; he blesses it, but he is a servant of the Lord — the Lord himself blesses the cup through him, the Lord himself serves at table in the congregation — oh, what a blessed communion, in that they receive such a drink; it is the communion of the blood of Jesus Christ. — Wonderfully gloriously and movingly does the Apostle paint for his readers the table of the Lord, precisely by putting "the blessed cup which we bless," "the bread which we break" first, and attaching to them the assertion that belongs to the communion effected through bread and cup; abhorrence of participation in the sacrificial meals of idols he could arouse more surely and more powerfully in no other way than in this one.

The extraordinary abundance of thought that the Apostle expresses in the brief words of verses 16 and 17 compels us, for the sake of an overview, to cast a backward glance over the exposition attempted. The chief points of the whole presentation are the following:

1. In that the Apostle makes the object of the assertion (the subject) of both questions not the common partaking of bread and wine and the communion of Christians thereby effected, but rather bread and wine and the divine activity of blessing and breaking, he sets before his readers' souls, with vivid liveliness and great force, the table of the Lord, at which God himself serves at table.

2. In that he makes the assertion (the predicate) not merely that,