How to Come to the Lord's Table

To come to the Supper without knowing the Lord, believing in Him, and having joined yourself to His Body, the church, would be to eat and drink in an unworthy manner. Similarly as Paul has already made manifest, to eat and drink as if it was your own Supper, acting in a profane manner is also to come in an unworthy fashion.

The way the Corinthians were coming, even though they were adult members of the church, was a repudiation of the supper and seriously called into question whether they really were believers.

That is why Paul calls upon them to examine themselves, to see if they really are in the Lord, or if they have only been playing at being Christians. Did they simply view this as a ritual snack, some bread, some wine, some words? If so, then as he points out, they did not discern the Lord's Body in the meal, they did not understand the importance to them of what the bread and wine symbolized and they did not rightly partake of communion.