Thoughts on the main thing

 The Apostle Paul’s message in First Corinthians 11 is surprisingly direct.

The greatest danger facing the church was not persecution from outside. It was selfishness growing inside. It’s amazing how all the issues that trip Christians up all these years later are the same basic issues that showed up immediately in the early church.

By the time Paul wrote to the believers in Corinth, their gatherings had become divided and unhealthy. Wealthier members gathered in exclusive groups with plenty of food, while poorer believers were left hungry and embarrassed. Instead of reflecting unity, the church reflected the same selfishness and status-seeking found in the world around them.

Paul’s response cuts to the heart of the issue.

The problem was not simply bad behavior.

The church had lost sight of the main thing.

And the main thing, Paul says, is what Jesus Christ truly means in everybody’s everyday life.

Not what people say publicly.

Not what they sing during worship.

But what Christ means when pride, anger, lust, selfishness, or division show up in your life.

To correct them, Paul brings the people back to the table and the Lord’s Supper.

On the night before His crucifixion, Jesus took bread and told His disciples, “This is my body, which is for you.” The bread symbolized that Christ Himself becomes the source of life for His people. Christians are not meant to live by self-effort, but through dependence on Him.

Then Jesus lifted the cup, representing His blood and the new covenant. The cup symbolized the death of the old self-centered life so that a new life could emerge.

That is the heart of the Christian faith:

The old life dies.

The new life begins.

He tells believers not to approach the Lord’s Table without counting on this.

Some in Corinth were treating it like an empty ritual while continuing to live selfishly and dishonestly. Paul says that attitude makes people “guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord.”

Paul warns that participating in communion carelessly turns it into an empty ritual. The issue was not become perfect first. No believer lives flawlessly. The issue was honesty.

People were expected to examine themselves truthfully, admit sin openly, repent sincerely, and receive God’s grace.

Paul even says some believers had become weak or sick because they ignored God’s warnings. His point was not that every hardship is punishment, but that God sometimes uses difficulty to slow people down and call them back to Him.

Pain often forces people to ask questions; success rarely does.

Am I drifting?

Am I becoming selfish?

Have I ignored what matters most?

Paul closes with a simple instruction: “Wait for one another.” In other words, pay attention to people. Care for each other. Let everybody catch up, at least in honesty. We all are together in God’s grace. There is no spiritual hierarchy. Act in all cases with love and humility. Wait for each other.

That was the missing ingredient in Corinth.

And it may still be the missing ingredient today.

We Christians can still become distracted by personalities, status, rituals, politics, divisions, preferences, and endless arguments.

But Paul keeps bringing believers back to the same foundation.

The bread.

The cup.

The death of the old life.

The birth of the new.

That is the main thing.

And if the main thing is lost, everything else eventually falls apart.

John Fischer