# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1855_S364
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

364 Exposition of 1 Corinthians etc.

a. The circumstance that the Lord's Supper and the sacrificial meal of idols are set alongside one another by no means compels us to transfer what holds true of the Lord's Supper to the idol-feast as well, or the reverse. One says: surely at the idol-sacrifices no one partakes of the body and blood of the devils — certainly not; but because this does not hold true of the one meal, must it therefore not hold true of the other meal that its participants partake of the body and blood of Jesus Christ? That both practices are placed alongside one another rests in this: that both have the form of a meal, both bear witness to the fellowship to which the participant belongs, both also exert particular effects upon their participants — but to conclude from the effect of the one to the effect of the other, to determine the effect of the one from the effect of the other, no one has the right to do. One need only think of the juxtaposition of Adam and Christ in Romans 5, where Paul most clearly and forcefully brings out that the grace proceeding from Christ far surpasses sin in power and abundance, so that the case does not stand the same with grace as with sin. Even in form the two meals agreed very little: the heathen one in particular was a sacrificial meal, whereas Paul does not recognize the Holy Supper as a sacrificial meal, though the expositors have often sought this Roman error in Paul's words. In order to prove that those who eat the sacrifices are partakers with those who sacrifice at the altar of idols, he points back not to the Holy Supper but to the Jewish sacrificial meals — which he would surely not have needed to do had he held the Lord's Supper to be a sacrificial meal. Despite this dissimilarity he sets the two meals side by side. Finally, if he had desired agreement between the effects of the two meals, why then does he speak, regarding the Lord's Supper, of communion in the body and blood of Christ, since his purpose would have been perfectly achieved with "communion of Christ"? That agreement was of no concern to him; what concerned him, rather, was to display the glory of the graces of the Holy Supper, so as to fill his readers with horror at participation in the sacrificial meals of idols.

b. The opinion that the body of Christ in the Holy Supper is as far from us as heaven is from earth is most decisively refuted by Paul's discourse. He ascribes to the guests at the Supper the body and blood of Jesus Christ as a present good, exactly as he explains in Romans 10:6–8 that the word of God is in the mouth and heart of Christians; to seek the word of God far off, as it were in heaven, would mean wanting to fetch Christ down from heaven, since he is in fact with us — what then does it mean to seek the body and blood of Christ at the Supper far off in heaven, when God's word gives them to us as our own along with the present bread and wine? Not merely for momentary partaking but even for lasting possession are they given to us, as Paul teaches; and yet are we to believe that our soul would have to soar up into heaven in order to partake of the body and blood of Christ in the Supper? That one should prescribe to the Lord Christ that he must remain only in heaven, far, far from the earth