1 Corinthians 11:27-30 - This is why you are sick

11:27

Having looked at what the Lord's Supper should be about we now come to the errors. First Paul highlights the seriousness of it all. If we eat the bread or drink the wine in an unworthy manner we are sinning against the body and blood of Jesus. This is no trivial matter, but one that needs to be taken seriously.

11:28,29

So we must not eat it in an unworthy manner, we are to examine ourselves. Now, what does this mean in practice? It cannot mean that we are without sin, for the whole point of the cross is to deal with the problem of our sin. Instead, it means we are aware of our need for forgiveness, and are seeking to be more Christlike. These are things the Corinthians manifestly were not doing. Rather, they came with pride. “Discerning the body”, there are some who take this as referring to the church, but as throughout this section body has referred to Christ’s body, this seems unlikely to say the least. We need to recognise what the cross is all about, if we do not we are only bringing judgement upon ourselves.

11:30

So can sickness be a result of sin? The answer is clearly yes as Paul states here. The disregard for the Lord by the Corinthians was the reason many of them were falling sick. Now is all sickness a result of sin? Ultimately, again yes. The root cause of all sickness can be traced back to the fall. However, this does not mean that all sickness is a direct result of the person’s sin, but some sickness is. As often happens, we tend to go to one extreme or the other. Either we say that all sickness is a direct result of your sin, so if you are sick you must be guilty of something, and if only you were good enough you would never be sick. Such talk is unbiblical nonsense, but in reaction against it we then assume, at least implicitly, that sickness and sin are never related. Such talk is equally unbiblical nonsense.