Is drinking from one cup at communion required?
Below are all the verses used for teaching on communion (AKA the Lord’s Supper), specifically the cup. When you look at them, it’s clear the focus is on the contents of the cup and not the cup itself. And the teaching is clearly on remembering Jesus’ blood spilled for us during this event. There is no actual teaching on the cup itself. Jesus taught the disciples to remember him in this event, and then took a cup, blessed it, and told His disciples to drink from it to practice this teaching. There was no teaching on how to take the cup or anything about being united to each other in it. But some sincere people have focused also on the manner that they appeared to have taken the cup and say that we should always take it from one cup. I have no objection to people taking it that way but list 10 reasons below why I think this is a real danger to the church (generally speaking) if forced on people or called a sin issue. But first here are the verses.
26 Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.” 27 And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, “Drink of it, all of you, 28 for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. 29 I tell you I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.” Matthew 26:26-29
22 And as they were eating, he took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to them, and said, “Take; this is my body.” 23 And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, and they all drank of it. 24 And he said to them, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. 25 Truly, I say to you, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.” Mark 14:22-25
15 And he said to them, “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. 16 For I tell you I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.” 17 And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he said, “Take this, and divide it among yourselves. 18 For I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.” 19 And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” 20 And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood. Luke 22:15-22
Every day they continued to gather together by common consent in the temple courts, breaking bread from house to house, sharing their food with glad and humble hearts Acts 2:46
14 Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry. 15 I speak as to sensible people; judge for yourselves what I say. 16 The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? 17 Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. 18 Consider the people of Israel: are not those who eat the sacrifices participants in the altar? 19 What do I imply then? That food offered to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? 20 No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be participants with demons. 21 You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. 22 Shall we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he?1 Corinthians 10:14-21
23 For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” 25 In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.1 Corinthians 11:23-26
Reason 1) There is no need for us to be exactly literal of Jesus’ command for the disciples to drink from “the cup”. We can’t drink from that exact cup He had. And we don’t usually take other significant things of that event literal like taking it at Passover. The passages (the three Gospels and 1 Corinthians 11) are clear that this is a symbolic act so there is no need to be exact on anything other than what he clearly taught, and that was to remember His sacrifice in it. This is the only actual teaching in every passage related to the communion and it’s clear and strong in that teaching. There is no actual teaching or focus on the cup. And even his command to divide the cup is about the contents of the cup. That has to mean the contents of the cup since they didn’t actually divide the cup itself by breaking pieces off it. This is called a Metonymy where one thing represents another thing, like “God so loved the world” doesn’t mean the world itself, it’s talking about its people. In the same way, the cup represents what was in the cup, that “fruit of the vine” Jesus talked about. Now of course he did have to take a literal cup and, on the surface, seems to have told them to all drink from it (more on that in a minute). And those are the verses that are used for this “one cup” doctrine. But without any actual teaching on the literal cup itself, there’s no need to take that as teaching and partake of communion the same way. To demonstrate, leave out all the teaching on remembering His sacrifice in this event. Jesus just takes a cup and tells them to all drink from it. When they’re done, they’re all looking at Him in bewilderment because they don’t know why they just did that. And they sure wouldn’t know to repeat it. See, there’s no actual teaching in that command to “drink from a cup”. So we can see that the disciples were only thinking of Jesus’ teaching to remember Him in taking the cup, nothing about the cup itself. And that’s how we should take it. Now various churches may bring various community ideas into this event since it is so sacred, which is fine, but that’s not the focus in the scriptures. See point 4 below for more on how people have added things to this event.
2) Besides the Gospels, the only other scriptural source for this “one cup” doctrine is that there are verses in 1 Corinthians 10 and 11 (e.g. 1 Corinthians 10:16 and 1 Corinthians 11:26) which refer to the communion with “the cup”, in the singular tense. And this is something that the church continued to take, not just that first event. But calling the communion cup as “the cup” also fits fine with it being a symbolic reference to it, just like “the table” which is also mentioned (1 Corinthians 10:21). No one takes the table literally. There’s nothing that indicates this “cup” is literal or symbolic so this singular reference doesn’t make it clear either way.
3) In 1 Corinthians 11, Paul corrects that church for taking the Lord’s Supper in a lighthearted manner. It seems they incorporated the Communion as part of their normal church meal, but they weren’t waiting on each other and some were eating and drinking to excess, even drunkenness (the church had a lot of problems). It’s clear that they thought they were taking communion in this disjointed meal because Paul corrects them that they are NOT taking communion under these terrible conditions (this is in a series of corrections he has to give them). But it’s interesting that he never corrects them for not taking from one cup in this whole passage, which would have certainly been the strongest point he could make if it was a requirement. This problem wouldn’t have happened if they knew to drink from one cup and Paul could have easily rectified it by reminding them of this simple requirement. Instead, his argument is one of politeness to eat together and the need to take communion in a “worthy manner”. To do this, he reiterates Jesus’ teaching at that first communion to remember His sacrifice in it. He then gives them strong teaching and warnings to examine themselves for sin and take the communion in solemn remembrance of Jesus’ sacrifice. But again, not a word about taking from one cup, so that just doesn’t seem to be in the picture here and so it’s a strong point that this is not how Paul interpreted Jesus’ instructions.
4) I think it’s only Hollywood where I’ve heard that the actual Lord’s cup contained power. So the natural question for those who believe in “one cup” is why did Jesus want them to drink from one cup? This is where an additional teaching is mixed in: they say we should drink from one cup because it was important that the disciples remember their unity by drinking from one cup. But this unity concept is never taught. You can put that thought into 1 Corinthians 10:14-22 because it says we are one body when we take of “one bread”. The cup isn’t even mentioned and “one bread” is vague (it doesn’t say “one piece of bread”). It’s interesting that it says “we who are many are one body” so it’s a perfect example right there that the unity is symbolic and only figurative. The bread could be figuratively one as well, with no regard to if it’s broken when we take it or not. And you see that this is a passage about people participating in pagan temples and being united with demons, and so that verse 17 just means when we take the cup and bread, we are united with Christ in His body. So once again the focus of communion is remembering Jesus’ sacrifice. There are a lot of verses about Christian unity in the Bible but none referring to communion. In Contrast, baptism is actually referred to twice as something that unites us. One is Ephesians 4:5-6 and doesn’t specify what kind of baptism, but in 1 Corinthians 12:12-13 it says it’s the baptism by the spirit. 1 John 1:7 says we are united when we all walk in obedience. Romans 14 and 15 talk about being united by not disputing over “disputable matters”. So unity comes from these things, not from a ritual of sipping from one cup.
5) But even if you reject all this, you still don’t have to sip from one cup. We can actually all drink from one cup by pouring it into each person’s cup. We know that in John 4:12 it says Jacob drank from the well, but he most certainly used a different vessel to drink from it. So the Biblical principle of using a different vessel to drink from “one cup” is totally valid. So if the “one cup” was truly the important part, pouring it into our own cups would be fine (we can call this the “one pouring cup” doctrine). But people actually oppose this because they assume it’s not exactly how Jesus distributed it. So they really believe in “one sipping cup” (it is required that the lips touch the cup). But it’s interesting that we actually don’t know how they distributed it. Jesus just said “drink from it” and just like Jacob drank from that well with another vessel, the disciples could have drunk from that cup with other vessels. Sipping is never mentioned anywhere. My next point below shows how Luke 22 indicates that they probably did drink from multiple cups just like this. But let’s just say they all sipped from the one cup. They must have had incredible immune systems back then from all the things they used to do, and they had much shorter life expectancy. But the point is, you really can’t make the “one sipping cup” doctrine from either a direct teaching or even an example. It’s totally assumed, and that’s not how you define a clear doctrine. So it would certainly be hard to call the “one sipping cup” a sin issue. The Bible would certainly be clear to actually teach that we must all sip from the cup. At a minimum Jesus would have said, “sip from it all of you.” But we don’t find anything like that. It’s very possible at a minimum that God purposely left this detail out so it couldn’t be made a requirement, knowing that we would eventually discover that it was harmful to us.
6) Furthermore, the case for multiple cups can be made if you look at the account in Luke 22, in the natural reading of it. Did you notice that in verse 17 He tells them to divide the cup among themselves but with no mention of drinking? The drinking is done in verse 20.
And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he said, “Take this, and divide it among yourselves. Luke 22:17
In verse 18 and 19 He starts teaching them the new meaning of this meal, starting with the bread.
18 For I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.” 19 And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” Luke 22:18,19
Then in verse 20 they take the cup and He teaches about the cup.
And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood. Luke 22:20
Since they didn’t drink until verse 20, they had to have divided it up in separate cups in verse 17 to hold it. Luke is known to be the most carefully researched and detailed account of the gospels, so it seems only he caught this little preparatory step of distributing the cup first. The other Gospels just combine it into one step while drinking, a summarizing that is a very valid thing to do when writing in a commonsense vernacular. When scholars compare the Gospels they can tell that Matthew and Mark summarize a lot and sometimes Luke gives more details like this. e.g. Compare Matthew 9:18 with Luke 8:41,42. Matthew quickly summarizes this event, saying the daughter was dead at the beginning of the account. Luke gives a longer account and gives the extra details that she was alive when Jairus approached Jesus and he found out on the way that she had died. The same thing happens in the resurrection account. Compare Matthew 28:5,6 to Luke 24:2-4. You can tell by how it’s written that Matthew is summarizing and has the angel present from the beginning. He then invites them to come look inside the tomb. But Luke’s account is longer and gives the details that the women entered the tomb and then two angels appear. Same thing with Luke 7:6 compared to Matthew 8:5. Luke gives the extra detail that the centurion sent someone to give the message instead of coming himself directly. So it is very likely the same thing happened with the account of the communion, and Luke gives the extra detail of Jesus distributing the drink beforehand.
The first explanation to support one cup out of this passage, is that the two verses are referring to separate cups that each person took. This comes from the tradition of each person drinking from 4 cups during Passover. But this is not likely for the following reasons:
· This tradition is actually not anywhere in the Bible (not even in the Old Testament) but comes from a non-biblical rabbinic tradition, which Jesus always spoke against. Modern Messianic groups have assigned Messianic meaning to certain cups but that’s not even in the original tradition. It was a very non messianic tradition the rabbis came up with.
· It’s slightly possible that the oral tradition of 4 cups per person might have been in place when Jesus was alive but not likely. It was written in the Mishnah (Pesachim 10:1) around 150-200 A.D. (the end of the Mishnaic period). That is well over a century after Jesus died. And there is no earlier record of it anywhere in any document or early church writing before that.
· When I read Pesachim 10 I didn’t get a clear indication that they were actual separate vessels, but only drinking different cups of wine (which can be from the same vessel). In one place it says they can drink more between cups 1, 2 and 3 but not between cups 3 and 4 (remember that this meal took a while). That has to mean they refilled one of those vessels at one point, or brought in yet other vessels, which really doesn’t make sense unless there was a symbolic reason. The document is very detailed and would surely have mentioned the need for separate vessels and their purpose if that’s what it wanted. It’s likely that the different vessels started even later on after 200 A.D.
· There is certainly never any mention in the Bible of multiple cups at Passover for each person. And that would be a lot of cups (48 just for the 12 disciples) in an era where they didn’t have dishwashers and an abundance of cups or space for them (they probably didn’t stack like our plastic cups do J ).
· It would also be unlikely that Luke would refer to “the cup” in verse 17 and then “the cup” again in v20 for another cup. It would say “another cup” or the “2nd cup”, etc., not “the cup”.
So different cups is certainly not the natural reading. I can’t see any support for that except the desire to fit the “one cup” doctrine in this verse, or the desire to harmonize the Gospels, since some, with a strict legalistic technical Western mindset, may be uncomfortable with the idea that Matthew and Luke summarized events and left out a detail. But that should be acceptable because we clearly see summarizing in those other events. The scholars, when they compare the gospels, also see that Matthew didn’t write chronologically but probably by topic and he also “compressed narratives” when he would take separate events and tell them at the same time so they run together. Things like this are perfectly fine in the common sense style of writing they had back then.
Other people supporting the one cup doctrine in these verses have taken issue that it says, “Likewise the cup” not “drink the cup” in verse 20. So they interpret it to say they did drink in verse 17, before taking the bread. But the natural reading in verse 20 is that He taught on the cup and took of it, just like it says He did with the bread. Otherwise they drank without any teaching in v 17 and then he taught on the bread and took it and finally taught on the drink, which would be very odd. We should also consider that in every other account, without exception, the bread is taken first and then the drink.
Also, scholars have noticed the similarity in the account of Luke 22 and 1 Corinthians 11, see below. It almost seems that Paul had a copy of Luke with him or maybe even had it memorized. Many of the terms are the same. And when you compare them it’s totally clear that “likewise the cup” means, “in the same way he took the cup”.
19 And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” 20 And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood. Luke 22:19-20
24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” 25 In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”1 Corinthians 11:24-25
So the natural reading, especially when considering all the similar passages, is that the disciples distributed Jesus’ cup among themselves, then he taught on the bread and took it, and then taught on the drink and took it. And it got summarized in Matthew and Mark that they all drank from His cup, which is absolutely true. They just didn’t sip from His cup. And now it’s become a symbol and so we still drink from His cup today, we just don’t want to be too literal.
7) As a side note, and just to show how this gets out of hand, if someone thinks that Jesus actually taught that it is important to drink directly from one undivided cup, then why is it not important to eat directly from one undivided bread? Surely that would be just as important. If you say that’s just what He did and so we follow it, then you’re in my camp – that it wasn’t an actual teaching but just what he happened to do. But if it’s a teaching and somehow important to drink from one cup (e.g. to show unity as they say), then we should directly bite off a piece of the bread, not break it off and then eat it. Paul said we take of one bread. Breaking off a piece of bread before eating it is equivalent to pouring from one large cup into different cups. So, just as touching the lips to the same cup is important for it to be “one cup” so touching lips to the same bread is important for it to be “one bread”. Maybe you could take issue that dividing into different cups is different because you’re introducing other cups into it when you divide into other cups. So maybe you could pour a small amount of the drink into the palm of your hand because that would truly be completely equivalent to breaking off a piece of bread into your hand in the most legalistic and literal sense. I wonder if some would accept this palm thing as still “one cup” for those uncomfortable with sipping from one cup. If they still insist on sipping from the cup, they’d better bite off directly from the bread. But I hope instead that you can see it’s the wrong focus of what Jesus taught.
8) Looking at the scriptures, as I’ve done, is the only sure way to examine the issue, but I do want to pause for a moment and just discuss this from a common sense perspective. We can certainly be unified without sipping from one cup. There’s no need to do that. And the Bible doesn’t ask us to do rituals that are harmful to ourselves just to please God (it may be a byproduct of evil like persecution or working with sick people but there’s a need for doing that). That’s actually more in line with strange sects. There are people who actually handle snakes and drink poison to please God based on a vague reference to this in Mark 16. And sipping from the same cup to be united is actually pretty close to the infamous “blood brothers” unifying ritual of cutting your fingers and pushing them together to share each other’s blood. Sharing germs thru drinking from one cup is also close to the Hindu ritual of bathing and drinking from the “holy” Ganges River or Muslims licking the mosque. Contrastingly, all the Bible’s commands are for our health, like all the rules of the Old Testament that we now know are good for health (like washing hands in running water). I wouldn’t be surprised if drinking from the same cup violated one of these Old Testament rules (let me know if you find it). Another angle to consider, is this linking of the physical to the spiritual is very common to many religions and even some churches like the Catholic Church, which in its heyday had holy water, relics that you touch to forgive sins, certificate of indulgences to commit sin, and many superstitious things like gargoyles on buildings to deflect demons from coming down. But the God-fearing Christian churches starkly contrast these churches with their clear teaching on the spiritual symbology in all these things. The Bible is constantly using symbols and it seems that just about every one of them has been taken literal in some church group and caused division.
9) It’s easy to show that it was not one literal loaf and cup (vessel) by calculating the difficulty of the church in acts drinking for several hours from one enormous and unmanageable cup and loaf, with around 10,000 to 15,000 people. (In Act 5:12,13 it says they met together in Solomon’s Colonnade, which can easily hold this number of people.) This would certainly show that they didn’t drink from one cup and bread. But I’ve heard this explained away by the verse in Acts 2:46 that says they broke bread from house to house. We don’t know for sure this “broke bread” means communion, but if you take that interpretation to avoid this difficulty of one cup with a large church, then you have to believe it can be done in a smaller setting outside of the church service. So just take it from one cup with people who agree to do that with you. There’s no need to be divisive in the church over it to force everybody to do it. This large church proves that either it was not one literal cup or that it was meant to be taken in smaller groups.
10) Also, a couple points in passing, you may hear that multiple cups were not practiced until the 1800’s. But there’s a clear reference in the 4th century to “chalices” (plural) in instructions about communion in the Liturgy of Saint James. Also, you may encounter people who wish you to take from one cup out of love to appease their sensitive conscience. While there’s nothing wrong with this, this principle in Romans 14 and 15 is meant more for things that would truly cause someone else to sin, like eating meat in front of someone who has accustomed it with sacrifices to idols. Or drinking wine in front of an alcoholic. These things have a real draw to them so this makes perfect sense to avoid these things out of the law of love to avoid tempting them, because when they do them thinking it’s sin, it is sin to them. But this really shouldn’t be evoked just when there’s a difference of Biblical interpretation on an issue. Differences of interpretation on unclear issues would be covered by the beginning of Romans 14 where we are to not condemn each other over them (I.E. not argue or separate over them).
So in summary I think it’s pretty clear that there is no clear teaching to sip from one literal cup. Now if someone wants to do it that way, that’s great, but I think it should be one of the disputable matters of Romans 14 and not a divisive issue, and certainly not called a sin issue. I have another booklet that talks about what matters we should take a strong stand on and which ones we should agree to disagree on.