Paul’s savage class critique in 1 Corinthians

If you’ve ever been to a Christian church, there’s a good chance that occasionally you’ll have experienced an unusual ritual involving bread and grape juice: the Lord’s Supper, or as we’ll refer to it, Communion. Depending on the denomination, your experience may vary wildly. You may be offered a cup that everyone collectively sips out of, accompanied by a piece of bread. Others will offer a small cup with a cracker.

So, what is Communion?

Communion is depicted in three of the four New Testament Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke). This was the meal Jesus and His disciples shared on the eve of Jesus’ crucifixion. It was a meal inundated with prophecy and symbolic meaning.

The early Christians, in remembrance of this, began a practice that would be called Eucharist (Greek for “thanksgiving”) and later, “The Lord’s Supper” or “Communion”. The first historical record of Communion is in the apostle Paul’s first letter to the church at Corinth. Paul says, “For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread,and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me’” (1 Corinthians 11:23–25, NRSVUE¹). 

a very Corinthian Communion

By all accounts, the church at Corinth was highly stratified, consisting of at least one public administrator (Erastus), a Jewish synagogue leader (Crispus), several respected heads of households (Chloe, Stephanus, Titus, Justus and Phoebe), merchants (Priscilla and Aquila) as well as a collection of unnamed people belonging to the “destitute” class (those who were either labourers or lived in subsistence and slaves).²

Unlike today’s large churches, early Christians gathered to worship mostly in homes. The Corinthians’ host would have likely been Gaius, a wealthy man who had been Paul’s travelling companion and one of his first converts. 

Modern archaeology has uncovered in Corinth the existence of Roman villas that contained a large dining area called a “triclinium”. It would have been set up with tables in a long “U shape”, with participants sitting on the ground. Adjacent to the triclinium would have been several rooms that could have accommodated those who didn’t fit in the main space. In typical Roman convention, the host with his honoured guests, friends and family (fewer than 10) would have sat in the triclinium itself, with other guests dining in the adjacent rooms. The destitute would have eaten in the atrium and were served the worst of the food.³ 

It appears that the Corinthians dined according to these social divides.

the heart of the problem

If you’re noticing a class imbalance here, you’re on the same wavelength as Paul. When he writes 1 Corinthians 11, he’s angry. “For when the time comes to eat, each of you goes ahead with your own supper, and one goes hungry and another becomes drunk” (1 Corinthians 11:21).

Imagine going to dinner at someone’s home and when you arrive, you are ushered into a room with only the people in your social class.

In the main dining area with the most sumptuous feast are the rich and powerful.

Next door in the living room, the middle class with a lesser version of that meal.

Then, in the front entryway with the shoes and jackets, the poor who are forced to dine on the scraps. It’s a disturbing arrangement—yet this simply was Roman convention.

This is why Paul later says, “Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be answerable for the body and blood of the Lord” (1 Corinthians 12:27). In other words, the Corinthians’ willingness to divide themselves along the societal lines of the “haves” and “have nots” was a shameful indictment of Jesus and the Church for whom He died. Those who follow dehumanising Roman conventions will be held to account.

Communion is the ‘bridge that connects the two most important events in redemptive history’—the resurrection and the second coming

the first Communion

We know that Paul is modelling this meal off the last dinner Jesus had with His disciples. This begs the question then, what is the meaning of the Lord’s Supper, according to Jesus? When He spoke about His body being broken and blood being spilled “for you”, He meant several things at the same time. 

First, Jesus allowed His body to be beaten, bruised and ultimately killed so you could be made whole: mind, spirit and body. As Paul later said, the “wages of sin is death”. In other words, the logical endpoint of a life lived in the corrupting influence of sin is destruction. It’s not your fault—you were born in it. But Jesus doesn’t want that end of the story of you. That’s why He didn’t stay dead. As Paul follows up in the same passage, “But the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord”.

The hope of the resurrection can be your hope too when you become a follower of Jesus—that death isn’t the end and you can look forward to the day when all things are made new—a day that Jesus promised is coming, soon. Even better, you and I have the opportunity to have abundant life now. The past, present and future all collide in the Communion service.

Second, Jesus didn’t just die for you alone. He died (and rose!) for the sake of the Church—His body. Paul compares the diverse community of believers to a body in the next chapter: “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ” (1 Corinthians 12:12). In the Church, each person is of equal value—no matter their social status, talent or wealth. Communion is an opportunity to remind ourselves of who we are and who God is. Just as each Christian belongs to Jesus, so too do they belong to each other.

why did Jesus need to die at all? 

The truth is, no matter how good you think you are, there are areas of your life you’d rather not think of. I don’t mean the time you told a little white lie or cheated in Monopoly. There is shame in the darkest recesses of each of us that make us feel worthless; wounds that threaten never to heal, regardless of whether they were of your doing or were done to you. When you partake in Communion, you participate in a symbolic practice—yet a practice that has very real effects.

As one commentator put it, Communion is the “bridge that connects the two most important events in redemptive history”⁴—the resurrection and the second coming. In the resurrection, Jesus dealt with your shame, so you no longer need to live enslaved by it in this life. In the second coming, He will destroy it forever, fulfilling His promise to “cast all our sins into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7:19). 

1. Scripture quotations are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition. Copyright © 2021 National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. ↩︎
2. Wright, NT, & Bird, MF, The New Testament in Its world: an Introduction to the history, literature, and Theology of the First Christians. Zondervan Academic, 2019. ↩︎
3. Ángel Manuel Rodríguez, Andrews Bible commentary: light, depth, truth. New Testament. Andrews University Press, 2022. ↩︎
4. Ibid. ↩︎