What lessons can a divided church learn from the 1st century church?

Members of my church’s men’s and women’s groups take turns writing devotionals each week, going through books of the Bible verse by verse. We are currently on 1 Corinthians.

When my turn came up the other day, my assigned passage was 1 Corinthians 11:17-34. It’s about correcting abuses of the Lord’s Supper, also known as communion.

As I studied the passage, I was convicted about the need for unity in the Church (with a capital C).

Unity. I used to cringe at that word.

I’d seen it misused by leaders to silence those who spoke up about problems. “For the sake of unity…” How many cover-ups have been instigated “for the sake of unity”?

I confess – unity with other Christians is not something I’ve sought lately. In fact, I’ve been intentionally isolating myself from some Christians and distancing myself from the world of evangelicalism. I didn’t want to stand in unity with the motley crew of individuals identifying as Christian.

But my wife wisely reminds me that Satan would love a divided Church more than anyone.

A kingdom divided cannot stand. And these days, the Church has been divided like never before.

We were already segregated along a number of lines – denomination, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, geography – and now, politics has drawn deeper lines between Christians, even within individual congregations.

Division has been a problem in the Church since the early days. The Apostle Paul addresses it in 1 Corinthians, appealing for unity. What can we learn from his letter to the Corinthians?

The following is based on the devotional I wrote on 1 Corinthians 11:17-34:

Notes

The Greek word for “body” used in this passage is sōma. It refers to the body of Jesus in verses 24 and 27. It is also used in verse 29 (“discerning the body”).

This is also the same word used throughout 1 Cor. 12, when it talks about believers being different members of the body of Christ. Sōma can be used literally to refer to a body or corpse of a person or animal, or it could be used figuratively to refer to a society or family; a social body.

This is significant because the Apostle Paul is addressing divisions in the church at Corinth, calling for unity.

One way that the church was divided was in their observance of the Lord’s Supper. At the time, those with the means might have been bringing lavish meals to eat on their own, or, per social customs of the day, those with a higher social status might have been served by their hosts first and given the best of the food while those with a lower status may have been served later – or not at all (vv. 21-22).

Either way, what they were doing was not the Lord’s Supper, at least not the way it was intended to be (v. 20).

Paul encourages the members to think of others and take the Lord’s Supper as a community. He admonishes them to remember that the Lord’s Supper is not about satisfying one’s appetite, but about Christ’s sacrifice of his sōma (vv.22-26).

Application:

Taking communion isn’t just communing with Jesus; it is also communion with the body of Christ all over the world.

Because of Christ’s sacrifice – his sōma broken and his blood shed for us – we, the church, are united as one sōma.

All believers are members of the same body, regardless of race, nationality, socioeconomic status, gender, or any other labels that the world uses to divide people. All who follow Christ are united as members of one body – whether we like it or not.

Whether we agree with one another or not.

And we’ll be stuck together for eternity, in the presence of God, whether we want to be or not.

When we partake of the Lord’s Supper, we are in communion with the entire body of Christ, of which Jesus is the head (Col. 1:18). If we fail to consider other members of the body – those who are persecuted in faraway lands, those whom we disagree with, those who are less resourced than we are, even those whom we might be in conflict with – we risk taking communion selfishly, like the Corinthians who got drunk while their brothers and sisters went hungry (v. 21).

If we were to take communion without concern for other brothers and sisters in Christ, we would be taking communion in an unworthy manner, for we have not discerned the sōma (vv. 27-29).

The next time I partake of communion, I will reflect on what Jesus has done – not just for me, but for all who call Him LORD. The unity we have by His sacrifice for us should overshadow anything else that would foster division in the church.

I said should. We’re not there yet.

Our pride gets in the way. 

All too often, we mortals allow our biases, grudges, and selfish desires to rule over us instead of allowing Jesus to.

We still have a long way to go. But we can start one step at a time.