Let a Man Examine

Friend,

This verse has kept many people away from the Lord's table. "Let a man examine himself" is often heard as an order to work out whether you are good enough to come. In the chapter where Paul writes it, it does almost the opposite.

I want you to see the meal he is describing. The church at Corinth ate a full supper together, which was a long way from a quiet service with a small piece of bread, and it had gone wrong in a particular way. Paul writes, "when ye come together in the church, I hear that there be divisions among you," and "in eating every one taketh before other his own supper: and one is hungry, and another is drunken." The people who had food were eating it in front of the people who had none. Paul's answer is fierce: "have ye not houses to eat and to drink in? or despise ye the church of God, and shame them that have not?" The self-examination he asks for is aimed at that table. In the next verse he warns against "not discerning the Lord's body." Readers have understood that phrase in two ways, as the bread or as the congregation, and the paragraphs before and after it are about how the believers were treating one another.

So do the examining Paul actually asks for. Before the bread is next handed to you, think of anyone in that room you have treated unfairly, and settle it with them before the plate goes round. If you are one of those who arrive with plenty, his instruction is plainer still: "tarry one for another." "And if any man hunger, let him eat at home," so that the meal in the church never becomes a show of who has more. Then notice how today's verse ends: "and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup." The examining is meant to bring you to the table. Christ gave His body for the whole church, and He welcomes you to eat there with the rest of His people.

Yours at the same table,

a fellow learner

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 308 is Known Completely (Psalm 139:2-3).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna, Year Two