Someone asked, "What's the difference between eating with faith and eating with unbelief? How can that make any difference in your health? So far as one's health is concerned, only physical factors make any difference, like the quality or quantity of the food eaten, or maybe eating too fast!"
Well, maybe we are not wise enough to explain it, but we accept the simple fact that the Bible states in 1 Corinthians 11:27-30: "Whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. … For this reason many are weak and sick among you, and many sleep."
The Good News Bible renders it, "That is why many of you are sick and weak, and several have died." In the Greek, the word "that" is not present, so that verse 28 reads in the original: "Let a person examine himself or herself, and so eat bread and drink of a cup." The "examining" has to do with "discerning" the Source of the food and drink we consume--the sacrifice of Christ. If we eat like arrogant pagans do, wolfing down our food in a spirit of pride ("I earned this! I deserve it!"), or in commercial haste ("Gotta hurry so I can make some more money!"), are we not degrading ourselves to the level of an animal that gobbles up its food with no awareness of Deity?
The Lord's Supper teaches the lesson that all of our food and drink is the purchase of His broken body and spilled blood; thus every meal becomes as a sacrament. Verses 23-27 say, Jesus "took a piece of bread, gave thanks to God, broke it, and said, 'This is My body, which is [broken] for you. Do this in memory of Me. ... This cup is God's new covenant, sealed with My blood. Whenever you drink it, do so in memory of Me.' This means that every time you eat this bread and drink from this cup you proclaim the Lord's death until He comes. It follows that if anyone eats the Lord's bread or drinks from His cup in a way that dishonors Him, he is guilty of sin against the Lord's body and blood."
"Guilty"?! What does that have to do with one's own personal health? Can't one be "guilty" and healthy at the same time? Paul says he thinks not. And David agrees. There is a distinct correlation between "forgetting not all [God's] benefits," having "all thine iniquities forgiven," and the healing "of all thy diseases." Enjoy your gourmet food, says David in Psalm 103, as you "bless the Lord, O my soul," realizing with deep gratitude that by His cross He "redeemeth thy life from destruction," and then "thy youth is renewed like the eagle's" (vss. 2-5).
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: August 16, 1999.Copyright © 2010 by Robert J. Wieland.
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