# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1855_S360
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

360 Exposition of 1 Corinthians etc.

what is given to those who partake in the Holy Supper with the bread and wine, but rather the relation of common possession into which they enter with one another through the partaking, he shows that those who sit together at the table of the Lord

a. partake of the body and blood of Christ;

b. therefore have communion with one another, whose possession is the body and blood of Jesus Christ, undivided and unseparated;

c. that therefore every Christian, not only in the given instance of partaking of the Holy Supper — even should this happen in unbelief — receives the body and blood of Christ, but is in possession of these gifts of grace as a partaker together with precisely those who have in common with one another the body and blood of Jesus Christ.

Whether they were not deemed worthy of all such graces at the table of the Lord, Paul has asked the Corinthians; he knows that they will answer "yes" to this. He could therefore at once have drawn the conclusion: you may not, then, sit at table with the heathen to eat meat sacrificed to idols. But the clever Corinthians would have answered him: what does it matter to us whether what we eat there is meat sacrificed to idols or not; we have nothing to do with the sacrifices to idols, we are simply going to meals with our friends and relatives. The Apostle therefore cannot yet draw the conclusion, but must first bring forward the proof that forms the second part of our section:

II. that in that they sit at the sacrificial meals of idols, they take part at the table of devils.

The whole discourse thereby takes on the form of a conclusion drawn from a juxtaposition of opposites (a syllogism). Just as one is accustomed to place such opposites side by side without a connecting word, so too the Apostle begins the development of the second member of the opposition (the minor) without a connecting word:

Verse 18. "Behold Israel after the flesh. Are not those who eat the sacrifices partakers of the altar?"

Paul directs his readers to the people of the Israelites, whom, to distinguish them from the Israel after the Spirit, that is, the people of Christians, he calls the Israel after the flesh (compare Romans 4). One Israelite, for instance Elkanah, offers a sacrifice; other Israelites, for instance Peninnah and her sons and Hannah, sit at table with him and eat the sacrificial meat; is it, then, only Elkanah who is in communion with the altar, who thus shares in common with the people Israel the altar, its divine services, and its blessings? do not those other Israelites also, by taking part in eating the sacrificial meat, share in common with Elkanah and the people Israel generally the sacrifice and the blessing of the altar? — The Corinthians must answer: yes, all who eat the sacrifices have a share in the divine service and the blessings of the altar. Very well then, Paul could now conclude, so those who helped to consume the idol-sacrifices also have a share in the