John Calvin Commentary 1 Corinthians 11:23

"For I received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus in the night in which he was betrayed took bread;" — 1 Corinthians 11:23 (ASV)

Until now, he has been exposing the abuse; now he proceeds to show the proper method for rectifying it. For the institution of Christ is a sure rule, so that if you turn aside from it even a very little, you are off the right course. Therefore, as the Corinthians had deviated from this rule, he calls them back to it.

It is a passage that should be carefully observed, as it shows that the only remedy for correcting and purging out abuses is a return to God’s pure institution. Thus the Lord himself — when he was speaking about marriage (Matthew 19:3), and the Scribes brought forward custom and also the permission given by Moses — simply brings forward his Father’s institution as an inviolable law.

When we do this today, the Papists cry out that we are leaving nothing untouched. We openly demonstrate that it is not merely in one point that they have degenerated from our Lord’s first institution, but that they have corrupted it in a thousand ways. Nothing is more manifest than that their Mass is diametrically opposed to the sacred Supper of our Lord. I go further — we show in the plainest manner that it is full of wicked abominations; therefore, there is a need for reformation.

We demand — as Paul apparently did — that our Lord’s institution be the common rule, to which we are agreed both sides should appeal. This they oppose with all their might. Mark then the nature of the controversy today regarding the Lord’s Supper.

I received from the Lord. In these words he intimates that the only authority of any avail in the Church is that of the Lord alone. “I have not delivered to you an invention of my own: I had not, when I came to you, contrived a new kind of Supper according to my own whim, but have Christ as my authority, from whom I received what I have delivered to you, by handing it over.” Return, then, to the original source. Thus, by bidding farewell to human laws, the authority of Christ will be maintained in its stability.

That night in which he was betrayed. This detail about the time instructs us about the design of the sacrament — that the benefit of Christ’s death may be ratified in us. For the Lord might have committed this covenant-seal to the Apostles some time previously, but he waited until the time of his oblation, so that the Apostles might soon after see accomplished in reality in his body what he had represented to them in the bread and the wine.

Should anyone infer from this that the Supper should, therefore, be celebrated at night and after a bodily meal, I answer that, in what our Lord did, we must consider what he would have us do.

It is certain that he did not mean to institute a kind of nightly festival, like that in honor of Ceres, and further, that it was not his design to invite his people to come to this spiritual banquet with a well-filled stomach. Such actions of Christ as are not intended for our imitation should not be considered as belonging to his institution.

In this way, there is no difficulty in setting aside that subtlety of Papists, by which they evade what I have already stated about the duty of maintaining and preserving Christ’s institution in its simplicity. “We will, therefore,” say they, “not receive the Lord’s Supper except at night, and we will therefore take it — not when fasting, but after having dined.” All this, I say, is mere trifling; for it is easy to distinguish what our Lord did for us to imitate, or rather what he did with the intention of commanding us to do likewise.