This is a participation trophy you want to win!
1 Corinthians 10:13-17 (NIV)
13 No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.
14 Therefore, my dear friends, flee from idolatry. 15 I speak to sensible people; judge for yourselves what I say. 16 Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ? 17 Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all share the one loaf.
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21 You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons too; you cannot have a part in both the Lord’s table and the table of demons. 22 Are we trying to arouse the Lord’s jealousy? Are we stronger than he?
Listen to passage & devotional:
Belgic Confession of Faith, Article 35: The Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper (Part 2)
This banquet is a spiritual table
at which Christ communicates himself to us
with all his benefits.
At that table he makes us enjoy himself
as much as the merits of his suffering and death,
as he nourishes, strengthens, and comforts
our poor, desolate souls
by the eating of his flesh,
and relieves and renews them
by the drinking of his blood.
Moreover,
though the sacraments and thing signified are joined together,
not all receive both of them.
The wicked person certainly takes the sacrament,
to his condemnation,
but does not receive the truth of the sacrament,
just as Judas and Simon the Sorcerer both indeed
received the sacrament,
but not Christ,
who was signified by it.
He is communicated only to believers.
Finally,
with humility and reverence
we receive the holy sacrament
in the gathering of God’s people,
as we engage together,
with thanksgiving,
in a holy remembrance
of the death of Christ our Savior,
and as we thus confess
our faith and Christian religion.
Therefore no one should come to this table
without examining himself carefully,
lest “by eating this bread
and drinking this cup
he eat and drink to his own judgment.”
In short,
by the use of this holy sacrament
we are moved to a fervent love
of God and our neighbors.
Therefore we reject
as desecrations of the sacraments
all the muddled ideas and damnable inventions
that men have added and mixed in with them.
And we say that we should be content with the procedure
that Christ and the apostles have taught us
and speak of these things
as they have spoken of them.
Summary
You didn't need to read today's passage to understand that even though you're a Christian, you remain subject to temptations. As Paul reminds us, temptations are common to mankind. But you did need to read today's passage to be reminded of God's faithfulness to you when you're in the midst of temptation. His faithfulness is such that He will provide a way out so that you can endure every temptation without falling victim to it.
Since your primary defense against temptation is God's faithfulness, it makes sense that that Paul implores you to flee from idolatry. An idol is anything that gets in between you and God, so an idol keeps God's faithfulness hidden from you, and you're left to try and endure temptations with nothing but your own feeble strength.
But Paul didn't write this passage just to make you feel warm and fuzzy in regards to God's faithfulness. This passage is a very serious warning. It's a reminder that when you fall into temptation, you're not just dragging yourself into sin. As one who's come to the Lord's Table, you've joined yourself to Christ; you've participated with Him, as Paul puts it here. That means that as you sin, Jesus is very much right there with you.
At the end of this passage, Paul puts it quite bluntly. For a person like you, who has participated in the body and blood of Christ, you can't simultaneously sample the food the demons offer you from their table. Rely on the strength the Lord has given you, which comes in no small part from the spiritual nutrition you've gained while participating at the Lord's table, to flee temptation.
Dig Deeper
Maybe at some point you or your children have taken home a participation trophy. That's the consolation prize handed out to those who came to the tournament but didn't win enough games to nab a real trophy.
Unfortunately that's the attitude that far too many Christians take to their experience at the Lord's table: they simply participated. They were there in the sanctuary, they ate the bread and drank the wine, but the experience was empty and hollow. They don't go home with the 'real' trophy.
You might know the Greek word Paul uses here that's been translated as participation. It's koinōnia. One dictionary defines this as "an association involving close mutual relations and involvement—‘close association, fellowship.’" Notice here that actual koinōnia requires mutual effort. Eating bread and drinking wine do not bestow some sort of magical power upon anybody who happens to consume them. Rather, the elements are simply an external picture of the internal bond present in those who are in koinōnia with Jesus.
This is the kind of deep participation that you're invited to as you come to the table. The Holy Spirit enables and equips you for this as you diligently prepare yourself for the meal as you come to understand the theology of communion and recognize how dependent you are on the body and blood of Christ for the forgiveness of all your sins.
ACKNOWLEDGE WHO GOD IS: Our Father, who is faithful and will not let us be tempted beyond what we can bear;
ALIGN YOUR LIFE WITH GOD'S WILL: Pray for a deeper understanding of communion so that through it you might better appreciate the koinōnia you have with Christ;
ASK GOD FOR WHAT YOU NEED:
Read the New Testament in a year! Today: 2 Thessalonians 1
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