How Should Communion Change the Way We Treat One Another?

Communion should make us receive one another as fellow members of Christ’s body, not as rivals, burdens, or people beneath us.

The problem Paul confronts

In Corinth, believers gathered for the Lord’s Supper, but wealthier members ate first and freely while poorer members were left hungry. Their meal acted out division instead of Christ’s self-giving love.

So Paul says, in effect: if you humiliate the church’s needy members, you are no longer living out what the Supper means (1 Corinthians 11:20–22).

What the table declares

Jesus gave his body for us and poured out his blood to establish the new covenant (1 Corinthians 11:23–25).

When we eat and drink, we proclaim his death until he comes (1 Corinthians 11:26). That death creates one people:

• We come as sinners receiving mercy, not as people proving superiority.
• We belong to Christ and therefore to one another.
• The strong must make room for the weak.
• The materially secure must notice and serve those in need.
• Old status markers—wealth, education, race, influence—cannot govern Christ’s church.

“Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body” (1 Corinthians 10:17).

A searching question

Paul’s call to “examine” ourselves is not mainly a demand to feel miserable enough before taking communion. In this setting, it includes asking:

Am I recognizing Christ’s body—in the bread and cup, and in the brothers and sisters gathered with me?

That means refusing contempt, repairing what we can, waiting for one another, sharing generously, and seeking peace. Paul’s practical conclusion is wonderfully concrete: “wait for one another” (1 Corinthians 11:33).

Communion trains us to live as people who have been fed by grace—and who therefore do not withhold dignity, patience, or practical care from one another.