The Genuine Nature Of The Lord's Supper

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B. The Genuine Nature of the Lord 's Supper (1 Cor.11:23-26)
Here Paul reminds the Corinthian Christians that the Lord’s Supper is the instituted by the Lord Jesus himself.
V.23a - Ἐγὼ γὰρ παρέλαβον ἀπὸ τοῦ κυρίου. As Whitherington points out that the Lord’s Supper was traditionally known involving in historical memory, which Paul immediately distinguishes between the Lord’s Supper and all pagan memorial meals, funerary rite. This indicates Paul 's receiving of direct revelation from the Lord Jesus concerning the institution of the Lord 's Supper service since Jesus himself is the ultimate source of the tradition.
V.23b - ὃ καὶ παρέδωκα ὑμῖν. This is the same term that Paul used in 1 Cor.11:2. Paul had founded the church in Corinth and had …show more content…

There are different views in how Jesus presents at the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. Brother Jeffrey Gross describes that “The Roman Catholic Church has used the term transubstantiation to explain the bodily presence of Christ in the sacrament… the real presence of Christ and change of elements of bread and wine.” Wayne Grudem quotes from Ludwig Ott – ‘Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma’ that says, “Christ becomes present in the Sacrament of the Altar by the transformation of the whole substance of the bread into His Body and of the whole substance of the wine into His Blood. ...This transformation is called Transubstantiation.” Lutherans view is termed as ‘consubstantiation’ that the “…bread actually becomes the physical body of Christ, but that the physical body of Christ is present “in, with, and under” the bread of the Lord’s Supper.” The significance or effect of this sacrament is fellowship of all the saints. Hence it is that Christ and all saints are one spiritual body, just as the inhabitants of a city are one community and body, each citizen being a member of the other and of the entire city. All the saints, therefore, are members of Christ and of the church, which is a spiritual and eternal city of God. It also fails to realize that Jesus is speaking of a spiritual reality. But other protestant Christians view it as a symbolic of the real elements, “… did not change into … nor did they somehow contain the body and blood of Christ… symbolized … and they gave a visible sign of the fact that Christ himself was truly present.” The third view is persuasive, because Jesus and the apostle remind the believers to observe it as symbol in remembrance of him. The views which are mentioned above fail to recognize the symbolic character of the Lord’s