Biblion Bible Commentary
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On the Night He Was Betrayed
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
23 For I received from the Lord that which also I delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night in which he was betrayed took bread. · WEB
The oldest written account of the Lord's supper is produced to correct a dinner party — and its setting, its words and its horizon all rebuke what Corinth was doing.
For I received from the Lord that which also I delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night in which he was betrayed took bread 1 Corinthians 11:23.
This is the earliest written record of the institution, set down before any of the Gospels, and Paul presents it as received and handed on rather than composed. The parallel accounts agree closely Matthew 26:26–28 Mark 14:22–24 Luke 22:19–20.
And the first thing he supplies is the setting: on the night in which he was betrayed. It is not a chronological nicety. Corinth's meal had become an occasion for treating fellow members as inconsequential; the meal it derives from was instituted on the night one of his own handed him over, and he gave bread to the man who did it. The circumstances of the first supper are themselves an argument about the conduct of the later ones.
When he had given thanks, he broke it and said, "Take, eat. This is my body, which is broken for you. Do this in memory of me" 1 Corinthians 11:24.
For you is the heart of it — a death undergone on someone's behalf. And in memory of me sets the meal's purpose: it looks back to an accomplished event. What the Corinthians were treating as their own supper 1 Corinthians 11:21 is a memorial of somebody else's self-giving, which is why the selfishness was not merely bad manners but a contradiction of the subject matter.
In the same way he also took the cup after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink, in memory of me" 1 Corinthians 11:25.
The cup is identified with the new covenant — the covenant Jeremiah had promised, written on hearts, with sins remembered no more Jeremiah 31:31–34. Covenants in Scripture are ratified by blood Exodus 24:8 Hebrews 9:18–20, and this one is ratified by his own. A covenant meal is by nature corporate: it constitutes a people, which is precisely what the Corinthian practice was dismantling.
For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes 1 Corinthians 11:26.
The verse gives the rite three tenses at once and each is a rebuke to this church. It proclaims — the meal is a sermon in action, and Corinth's version was preaching something false. It proclaims the Lord's death, the very thing the letter opened with as the end of all boasting 1 Corinthians 1:18. And it runs until he comes, which is the tense a congregation that thought itself already reigning had lost 1 Corinthians 4:8. The table is not a possession to be enjoyed but an announcement made in an interval, by people waiting.
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