1 Corinthians 10:17 Commentary and Bible Study

Paul takes the last mentioned of the elements and makes a point that he could have made with either of them. The bread which we break is the communion of the body of Christ because the one body of Christ is shared by us all.Hodge offers a literal translation of the verse which helps us understand it, and avoids Paul saying that by eating the same loaf, we are made one bread: ‘Since it is one bread, we the many are one body; for we are all partakers of one bread.’ The verb ‘we … are’ refers not to ‘one bread’, but to ‘one body’. There is one bread, one loaf, because the bread is a symbol for the one body of Christ. Hodge calls the idea that we are made one bread, ‘to say the least, an unusual and harsh figure.’ We are indeed one body, for the church is the body of Christ, and the individual members are all members of the same body, but we are not one bread. In the symbolism of the Lord’s Supper, the fact that there is one bread results in our being one body. Paul’s point is that the bread that we eat, whether it is split up into individual portions, or whether it is kept as a whole loaf, represents the body of Christ. His one body was offered up on Calvary, and the bread which believers partake of represents that one body which was given for us all. This is true even though there are many different loaves in many different local churches, all celebrating the Lord’s Supper at the same time. All of them are symbols of the same one body of Christ, so that by eating that bread we all partake of his one body. This bread is only a symbol of Christ’s body, and it makes the communicants a spiritual body, because the unity results not from a physical act of eating, but from a common faith in the effectiveness of the one Christ, whose body was sacrificed for us all. All true believers look to the same cross of Christ to take away their sins. The many believers in the world are united together by believing in the same Saviour of the world.