What does communion mean?
Question 09063
The word “communion” carries a weight that many Christians feel instinctively but struggle to articulate. It appears in our church life as the name for the Lord’s Supper, yet the biblical concept behind it reaches far deeper than a monthly or weekly observance. Understanding what communion actually means requires attention to the language Scripture uses and the relational reality it describes.
The Biblical Word Behind “Communion”
The English word “communion” translates the Greek koinonia, which carries the fundamental sense of sharing, participation, or partnership. It appears in Paul’s account of the Lord’s Supper in 1 Corinthians 10:16: “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?” The ESV renders koinonia here as “participation,” but older English translations used “communion,” and the word has remained attached to the ordinance ever since.
Koinonia is not a passive word. It does not describe merely being in the same room or holding the same membership card. It describes an active sharing in something real. When Paul speaks of communion in the blood and body of Christ, he is saying that believers who take the bread and cup are actively, personally participating in the benefits of Christ’s death. They are declaring their share in what the cross accomplished. The Lord’s Supper is an act of communal identification with Jesus in His sacrificial death and with one another as those who belong to Him.
Communion as Relationship
The concept of koinonia extends well beyond the Lord’s Table. Acts 2:42 describes the early church as devoted to “the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship (koinonia), to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” Fellowship here is not tea and biscuits after the service. It is a shared life rooted in shared faith, a common participation in the grace of God that binds believers to one another because they are bound to Christ. Paul uses the same word in 2 Corinthians 13:14 when he speaks of “the fellowship of the Holy Spirit,” and in Philippians 2:1 when he refers to “participation in the Spirit.” John writes in 1 John 1:3 that “our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.” The consistent biblical picture is that communion describes a living, active, relational reality that flows from a believer’s union with Christ and overflows into union with other believers.
This is why the Lord’s Supper carries such significance. It is not an isolated ritual but the visible, tangible expression of an invisible, spiritual reality. When the church gathers around the bread and the cup, it is enacting its identity as the body of Christ, participating together in the benefits of His death, and looking forward together to His return. Paul makes this explicit in 1 Corinthians 11:26: “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”
Communion and Self-Examination
Because communion is participation rather than spectacle, it demands self-examination. Paul’s warning in 1 Corinthians 11:27-29 is sobering: those who eat and drink “in an unworthy manner” bring judgement on themselves. The Corinthian church was treating the Lord’s Supper as an occasion for social division and self-indulgence, and Paul tells them plainly that some among them had become weak and ill, and some had died, as a consequence of this dishonour (1 Corinthians 11:30). The call to “examine himself” (1 Corinthians 11:28) is not a call to sinless perfection before participating but a call to honest reckoning with God and with one another. Where sin is unconfessed and relationships are broken, the communion is disrupted, and the ordinance becomes a hollow performance rather than a genuine act of participation.
So, now what?
Communion is far more than a church ritual. It is the visible expression of the believer’s share in Christ’s death, a declaration of belonging to Him and to one another, and a forward-looking proclamation that He is coming back. Every time the bread is broken and the cup is shared, the gospel is preached without a sermon being delivered. The question for every believer approaching the table is not whether they are worthy in themselves, because no one is, but whether they come in honest faith, with a heart that has been examined and a life that is being yielded to the Lord whose death they proclaim.
“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?” 1 Corinthians 10:16
