Chapter III: What Do They Mean? Or, the Danger of Eating and Drinking

UNWORTHILY.

In endeavouring to ascertain what the passage really means, our best course will be to refer at once to the context; for, however valuable be human explanations, there is no expositor of the Bible so good as the Bible itself. The word rendered “damnation” in the text, is translated “judgment” in the margin of our Bibles, and for the following reason. There are two sorts of judgments mentioned in the Scripture,—the chastisement of God’s children, and the final punishment of the wicked. Of these, the chastisement is laid on those whom God loves; “Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth” (Heb. xii. 6); but the final punishment is on the unbelieving. Chastisement is limited and proportioned to his people’s strength, whereas the final punishment is an unmixed cup of horror. Chastisement is for the improvement and sanctification of those who are to reign with Christ; the final punishment is for the vindication of God’s righteous law. And chastisement takes place here in the form of sickness, suffering, and sorrow; whereas, the final punishment is in eternal fire. Now, it must be allowed that the word “damnation” conveys the idea of this most awful and final punishment, and many minds have been thereby unduly alarmed upon the subject. But the context seems to teach us that the leading idea in the apostle’s mind was chastisement for he proceeds to say—“For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep. For if we would judge ourselves we should not be judged. But when we are judged we are chastened of the Lord that we should not be condemned with the world.” It is plain that he here speaks of chastisement. He says expressly, “we are chastened;” he describes it as temporal affliction in this present life; and he teaches that it is sent for the express purpose of saving us from final ruin, “that we should not be condemned with the world.” {13}

This, then, we are bound to regard as the accurate and literal meaning of the text; and, although there cannot be the slightest doubt that a man may, by the repeated abuse of holy things, and by approaching the Lord’s table in a worldly and carnal spirit, so sear and harden his conscience, that he may be truly said to eat and drink his own damnation in the most awful sense of the words, we venture to believe that such is not the meaning of this present passage, but that it describes the chastening of God’s children in this present life, not as the commencement of final ruin, but as a correction sent in mercy to prevent their falling into the irrecoverable condemnation of the wicked.

But whatever be the character of the judgments, the awakened conscience must tremble at the thought of “eating and drinking unworthily.” To be “guilty of the body and blood of the Lord,” is a sin so grievous, that if there were no judgment of any kind connected with it, the broken heart must shudder at the possibility of its heinous guilt. If there be any love of Christ in our souls, we shall not require the fear of judgment to awaken grief and horror at the most distant thoughts of such a sin. Converted men think more of sins than punishments.

We must inquire, therefore,