Lamb of God, who was to bear the sins of the world ; so the Lord's Slipper is at once the commemoration of the death of Christ and a pledge of his coming the second time without sin unto salvation.
27. Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink .(this) cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.
This is the second inference. Wherefore^ i. e. so that, hence it follows. If the Lord's Supper be in its very nature a proclamation of the death of Christ, it follows that those who attend upon it as an ordinary meal, or in an irreverent man- ner, or for any other purpose than that for which it was ap- pointed, are guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. That is, they contract guilt in reference to the body and blood of Christ. See James 2, 10. The man who tramples on the flag of his country, insults his country ; and he who treats mth in- dignity the representative of a sovereign, thereby offends the sovereign himself In like manner, he who treats the symbols of Christ's body and blood irreverently is guilty of irreverence towards Christ. The idea that he is so evil that he would have joined in the crucifixion of the Lord ; or that he makes himself a partaker of the guilt of his death, does not lie in the words. It is also obvious that this passage affords no ground for either the Romish or Lutheran view of the local presence of Christ's body in the sacrament, since an insult to the ap- pointed symbol of his body, is an insult to his body itself Neither does the passage countenance the doctrine held by both Romanists and Lutherans, that unbelievers receive the body and blood of Christ. If they do not receive them, it is asked, how can they be guilty in respect to them ? By treat- ing them, in their appointed symbols, irreverently. It is not necessary, therefore, in order to the guilt here spoken of, either that the body of Christ should be locally present, or that the unworthy receiver be a partaker of that body, which is re- ceived by faith alone. In our version it is, " whosoever shall eat this bread and drink this cup ; " in the Greek it is (^) or, not and. And this the sense requires. The irreverent use of either the bread or the cup in this ordinance involves the guilt of which the apostle here speaks ; because the indignity ex- tends to the whole service.
But what is it to eat and drink unworthily f It is not to