For the one who prepares a defense for a conversation that will never happen.
You're standing at the sink on a Tuesday evening with a plate in one hand, and there's half a loaf on the counter about eighteen inches away, and you've been composing an argument.
The argument is quite a good one. It has three parts to it. It explains why an ordinary supper in an ordinary kitchen is a legitimate setting, it anticipates the two obvious objections, and it finishes with a reference to the New Testament that you went and looked up on purpose last month.
You've been assembling it for about six minutes while the water goes cold.
Now ask yourself the obvious question, which is the one you've carefully avoided. Who, precisely, are you planning to deliver this argument to? Name the person. Give the occasion. Say where the two of you will be standing when the defense becomes necessary.
There isn't one. There has never been one. You've spent six minutes preparing for a tribunal that has no members, no venue, and no interest in convening.
Paul delivered what he had received, and he addressed it to a household rather than to a committee that would approve you. The written word hands it straight to believers in their houses, and the Spirit has not appointed an assessor since.
The Tribunal Has No Members
Take the imaginary hearing seriously enough to dismantle it properly, because a thing left vague retains its authority.
Try to picture the person who objects to this. Most people, when they attempt it, discover that the figure is a composite: partly somebody from years ago, partly an institution, and partly a general atmosphere of disapproval with no face attached to it at all.
A composite has considerable power precisely because it cannot be answered. You cannot check its reasoning, you cannot ask it a question, and you certainly cannot satisfy it, because it holds no actual position that could be satisfied in the first place.
This is why the argument you have been assembling keeps getting better and never gets finished. An argument improves indefinitely when nothing external ever tests it, which is the condition of every case prepared for a hearing that will not be held.
Real people, by contrast, are answerable. If a living believer genuinely objected to what you're doing at that counter, you could ask them why, consider the reply, and either agree or disagree. That conversation would take about ten minutes and it has never once been offered to you.
A composite objector cannot be answered because it holds no position. The written word addresses real households rather than imagined tribunals, and the Spirit is at work in the actual kitchen you're standing in.
Which Also I Delivered Unto You
Here's the passage, and the chain of custody described in it is the interesting part.
For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, That the Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed took bread: And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me.1 Corinthians 11:23-24 (KJV)
Received of the Lord, delivered unto you. That's the whole chain, and it has exactly two links in it. Paul got it from Christ and handed it to ordinary believers in a fractious, disorderly, argumentative congregation in a trading city.
There's no third link in which a qualified body examines an applicant and then releases the practice to them. The delivery is direct, and it is addressed to the very people who would be doing it in their own houses.
That matters because Corinth was not a well ordered congregation. If ever there were a case for adding a filter between the instruction and the people, that was it, and Paul added none.
Paul wrote that to believers who were making a considerable mess of the whole business, and it reaches past them to a kitchen with the washing up half done.
The chain has two links and neither of them is an examining body. The written word delivers it straight to believers, and the Spirit has kept the delivery direct.
Take, Eat
Look at the two words in the middle, because they are addressed to somebody and it is worth establishing who.
Take, eat. Both imperatives, both plural in the original, both handed to the people sitting at the table with bread in front of them.
Those two words are the entire qualification procedure. There's no preliminary clause about standing, no examination of circumstances, and no requirement that the room be of a particular description. The instruction assumes a person with bread in reach and tells them what to do with it.
You have bread within reach. It is eighteen inches from your left hand, sitting on a counter, beside a sink with cold water in it and a plate still in your fingers.
Take and eat are the whole qualification, addressed to whoever has bread in reach. The written word puts both words in the imperative, and the Spirit brings them to a man at a sink.
I Am Not Telling You Nobody Has Standing to Speak
Be careful, because an argument that dismisses all correction would be worth nothing.
Believers do have standing with each other, and a person who loves you and knows you has every right to raise a concern about how you are handling something. If such a person raises one, take it seriously and weigh it properly, and be grateful that somebody cared enough to say it.
Nor am I saying the Corinthian correction doesn't apply. Paul goes on to warn that chapter's readers about doing this carelessly and without discerning what it is, and that warning is for you as much as for them.
What I want off you is the tribunal. Not the accountability. Not the seriousness you've brought to it.
Six Minutes of Water Going Cold
Here's the turn, and it's in what the six minutes actually cost.
You spent them at a sink, holding a plate, arguing with a person who does not exist. In that time the water went cold, the loaf sat eighteen inches away untouched, and the evening moved on without you.
That's the real expense of the tribunal. Not the anxiety, which is bad enough, but the ordinary minutes it quietly consumes at counters and sinks and kitchen tables, several times a week, for years.
And here's what makes it worse and also easier. The hearing can be dissolved unilaterally, tonight, by you, because you are the only member of it. Nobody has to be persuaded and no permission has to be sought, since the entire body consists of one person holding a wet plate.
You are the only member of a tribunal that has cost you years of minutes. The written word delivered this straight to you, and the Spirit has never once convened the hearing.
Declare this over yourself
You are in Christ and Christ is in you, so what follows is not a claim made out of your own authority. It is agreement, said back to God in His own words, while the Holy Spirit carries it. How He orders the rest of it is His to decide, and He answers in His own way and in His own time.
You speak here as somebody Christ has joined to Himself, which is why this is agreement and not a performance. The Spirit carries it, and what He does next is not for you to decide.
Say it once, plainly, where you are.
Paul delivered what he had received, and he addressed it to a household rather than to a committee that would approve me. Scripture says that he received of the Lord that which he also delivered to them, and that the chain has two links in it, neither of which is an examining body. The Spirit has kept that delivery direct. I am not defending anything to a tribunal with no members in it. I spent six minutes at a sink arguing with a person who does not exist, while the loaf sat eighteen inches away and the water went cold. I take and I eat, which is the whole of what I was told to do.
Stories in these messages are illustrations unless marked as testimony.
This message is free. Nothing here is locked, nothing is for sale, and nothing is being asked of you.
1 Corinthians 11:23-24
This message is free, and always will be. There is nothing to unlock, nothing to subscribe to, and nothing you owe for having received it.
