Enjoying Christ for Our Fellowship with All the Saints
One-minute Bible study
Please pray over these verses.

1 Corinthians 10:3-4, 16-17
3 And all ate the same spiritual food,
4 And all drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank of a spiritual rock which followed them, and the rock was Christ.
16 The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the
fellowship of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the fellowship of the body of Christ?
17 Seeing that there is one bread, we who are many are one Body; for we all partake of the one bread.
 
Chapter 10 reveals the enjoyment of Christ through the types of eating the hidden manna and drinking the living water from the cleft rock. We feast on Christ as our portion at the Lord’s table by eating and drinking Him as our life supply. This enjoyment makes us one with Him and brings us into fellowship with all the saints.
A few more minutes
Please prayerfully read through the following portions of ministry related to this crucial point.
The main point in chapter 10 is the enjoyment of Christ for our fellowship with all the saints. The beginning of this chapter refers to the eating and drinking by the children of Israel. “All ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank of a spiritual rock which followed them, and the rock was Christ” (vv. 3-4). They ate the manna and drank the water from the rock. At the end of verse 4, Paul indicates definitely that this is a type, because he says, “The rock was Christ.” The manna must therefore also be Christ, and the living water must be the very Spirit that comes out of Christ, the cleft rock. These two items are for enjoyment.
 
In verses 14 through 22 of this chapter the Lord’s table is mentioned. According to the context of the entire chapter, our enjoyment at the Lord’s table should equal the Israelites’ enjoyment of eating manna, the spiritual food, and drinking the spiritual drink, the living water. Today we enjoy the Lord’s table, where the manna is the bread on the table, and the spiritual drink is in the cup on the table. In all these verses are many good points that are defined either in the footnotes of the Recovery Version or in the Life-study messages. God’s people should be a people of enjoyment. Their enjoyment is of God Himself embodied in Christ. In the Old Testament the very God was embodied in manna and in the spiritual drink that came out of the rock. Then in the New Testament God is embodied in the bread and the cup. We eat Him, we drink Him, and thus we enjoy Him. This is for our fellowship of the blood of Christ and of the Body of Christ. This means that we have fellowship in the Body and that we have fellowship in the blood by our eating and drinking. When we enjoy the Lord by eating and drinking Him, we have the fellowship with all the saints. Our fellowship with all the saints is in our enjoyment of the Lord. (Elders' Training, Book 6: The Crucial Points of Truth in Paul's Epistles, ch. 3, section 3)
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Going deeper
Please read or listen to these materials for an in-depth study of this crucial point. 


Further reading:
Life-study of 1 Corinthians, msg. 49
Life-study of 1 Corinthians, msg. 50
The Enjoyment of Christ for the Body in 1 Corinthians, Ch.2, section 2


Radio broadcast links:
Broadcast 41, The Lord's Table (1) and (2)


Footnotes from Recovery Version of the New Testament:
1 Corinthians 10:3, footnote 1

1 Corinthians 10:4, footnotes 1 and 2
1 Corinthians 10:16, footnote 1
1 Corinthians 10:17, footnotes 1 and 2
1 Corinthians 10:18, footnote 1
1 Corinthians 10:21, footnote 1


Study questions:
  • What is Paul’s deep thought regarding the matter of eating based on the principle that eating is a kind of fellowship or participation?
  • Listen to radio broadcast 41, from the 17:50-minute mark to the end. What is Paul’s consummate thought here concerning the full significance of the Lord’s table revealed in 1 Corinthians 10?
Works Cited
 
Lee, Witness. Elders’ Training, Book 6: The Crucial Points of the Truth in Paul’s Epistles. Anaheim: Living Stream Ministry, 1985. www.ministrybooks.org
All verses and excerpts © 2019 Living Stream Ministry.
Used by permission. Reproduction is prohibited. 

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