(This is the fifth in a series opposing paedocommunion, a practice started by some Reformed parents a few years ago in which parents require their infants and toddlers to participate in the Lord's Supper. Here are the first, second, third, and fourth in this series. For more on this subject, see the "Paedocommunion" tag.)
Editor's note: Some have been convinced by Jeff Meyers' simplistic and novel exegesis of 1 Corinthians 11 in which he concludes that the only sin that text warns us against is the sin of disunity by not having absolutely everybody in the church partake of the Lord's Supper. His position can be summed up by his astounding statement:
I don’t believe that this passage requires an inward act of contemplating and evaluating one’s sins.
The violence this does to the text should be obvious to any man who honors Scripture and fears God. The Apostle Paul gives several examples of ways to disqualify yourself and destroy the unity of the body in his first letter to the Corinthians, including just in chapter 10 grumbling, fornication, and idolatry. Each of these sins God judged and punished with the death of his people "as an example" to us. The Apostle Paul then warns us, in verse 21, "You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons."
Chapter 11 contains yet another warning against partaking while in serious sin—this time the sin of disunity. Where most paedocommunionists err is in their astounding assumption that "unity" is determined purely by the physical external sign of participation in the meal. Such a shallow understanding of unity dismisses as inconsequential the selfishness and jealousy that caused the incomplete participation in the first place. In other words, paedocommunionists who follow Jeff Meyers raise the importance of external conformity so high that one is forced to dismiss as unimportant the inward reality, what Scripture refers to as the circumcision of the heart.
At some point, we hope to address Meyers' treatment of 1Corinthians 11 ourselves. In the meantime, we hope that those who found Meyers' paper compelling will read this in-depth exegetical treatment of the passage in question by the respected exegete George W. Knight III, our Reformed friend and father.
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1 Corinthians 11:17-34: The Lord’s Supper: Abuses, Words of Institution and Warnings
by George W. Knight III
Introduction
1 Corinthians 11:17-34 is an important section in the letter to the Corinthians and therefore also an important section in the life and teaching of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and its Confessional Standards and Book of Church Order, as well as that of other Presbyterian and Reformed Churches. The Confessional Standards refer to these verses more than fifty times and especially to the warning verses over twenty times. It, therefore, demands our most careful attention...