Communion — Who Can Partake?

Communion — also called the Lord’s Supper or the Lord’s Table — carries a wide array of definitions depending on where you sit theologically. Before we can answer the question of who can partake, it helps to establish what we believe is actually happening at the table.

I hold to the third view. The juice was fruit of the vine — not wine — and the elements are simply a memorial of Christ’s sacrifice, not a means of meriting grace (1 Corinthians 11:2).

On the question of participation, there are likewise three main positions: open communion (anyone, including the lost, may partake), close communion (those from the same or like-minded church), and closed communion (members of that assembly in good standing only).

Using the scriptures alone — not tradition or church creed — I want to make the case that communion should only be taken in the context of the local church, and that a close communion position with a strong lean toward closed is the only conclusion consistent with what Paul actually teaches.

The Institution of the Lord’s Supper Was in a Corporate Setting

Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper during the Passover meal with His disciples — the foundational group who would become the nucleus of the early church (Luke 22:14-20). While this predates the Church Age, it was not a solitary or family event. It was a gathered assembly of called-out believers under Christ’s authority. That is the very definition of “church” from the Greek ekklesia — a called-out assembly.

Note the Greek: poieite — “this do” is plural, addressed to the group collectively. Christ instituted this ordinance before His disciples precisely because they would become the foundation and pillars of the early church, passing this practice to the assemblies that would follow (Ephesians 2:20).

This ordinance transitions into the Church Age as a memorial for the assembled body, carried forward by the apostles into local assemblies.

Paul’s Instructions in 1 Corinthians 10 and 11 Tie the Lord’s Supper to the Assembled Church

The clearest biblical teaching on the Lord’s Supper is found in 1 Corinthians 10 and 11, where Paul both defines the theological meaning of communion and corrects its abuse in the local church at Corinth.

In chapter 10, Paul establishes the corporate and unifying nature of the ordinance before he ever addresses the Corinthian abuses:

This passage is foundational. The single loaf represents the single body — the assembled church. To partake of the bread is to declare unity with the body of Christ gathered in that place. It is not an individual act; it is a corporate confession. This is what makes the abuses of chapter 11 so serious: the Corinthians were contradicting with their conduct what they were declaring with the ordinance.

Moving into chapter 11, watch how Paul uses the phrase “come together” — sunerchomai — as a repeated anchor:

Sunerchomai en ekklesia — “come together in the church” — refers to the local assembly. “Into one place” underscores physical assembly. Paul opens the corrective section with the problem of division and closes it with the same. The topic never changes.

There is no provision here for observing the Lord’s Supper outside this context — not in homes apart from the assembly, not in small groups without church oversight, not individually. The emphasis throughout is on corporate remembrance, examination, and judgment (1 Corinthians 11:28-31). The relationship of the local church is what gives communion its weight.

Self-Examination Is About Unity, Not Personal Sin

This is perhaps the most practically significant and most commonly misread point in the entire passage.

The context of examination is the divisions tearing the church apart. The self-examination Paul calls for is not a private inventory of personal sin. It is a reckoning with one’s relationship to the body: are you contributing to division or to unity?

“Discerning the Lord’s body” carries a dual weight. It refers to recognizing Christ’s sacrificial body in the bread — but in context, it also speaks to discerning the church as His body. Paul explicitly identifies the church as the body of Christ in multiple places (1 Corinthians 12:27; Colossians 1:18; Ephesians 4:12). The risen Christ Himself equated persecution of the church with persecution of Himself: “I am Jesus whom thou persecutest” (Acts 26:15). To fail to discern the body is to come to the table while the body is fractured and divided.

Paul brings it full circle as he closes the chapter: if you merely want to eat, eat at home. If communion were simply about personal spiritual nourishment, that would be sufficient. His point is that it is not — it is about the assembled body coming together in unity. If that unity is broken, the ordinance is corrupted.

What About Acts 2 and the Breaking of Bread?

Some appeal to Acts 2:42 and 46 — where believers broke bread “from house to house” — as evidence that the Lord’s Supper was observed outside the formal gathered assembly. This deserves a careful answer.

First, the text does not explicitly state that these were communion observances. Many gatherings of believers, then and now, center around food and fellowship without constituting the Lord’s Supper. The breaking of bread in these verses is best understood as common meals shared in the context of fellowship.

Second, even if one argued these were communion observances, the Jerusalem church had exploded to over three thousand members (Acts 2:41). Any observance among those believers would necessarily have been under the oversight and authority of that same church body.

This is the critical distinction between the house churches of the New Testament — referenced in Romans 16:5, Colossians 4:15, and Philemon 1:2 — and mere home observance apart from the assembly. Those were local assemblies: constituted, organized, accountable bodies of baptized believers. Home observance apart from the assembled church is not that.

The false doctrine of the “universal church” is what makes casual or private communion seem theologically acceptable. It blurs these distinctions. Scripture knows nothing of a disembodied, invisible church administering ordinances.

No Biblical Precedent for Communion Outside the Local Church

Throughout the New Testament, church ordinances — baptism (Acts 2:41; 8:36-39) and the Lord’s Supper — are administered in the context of local assemblies. There is not a single example of believers observing the Lord’s Supper in isolation, in family settings, or in para-church groups apart from a constituted local assembly.

For the biblicist who holds to “thus saith the Lord,” the silence of Scripture is itself instructive. We do not add where God has not spoken.

Theological Implications and the Logical Position

In this church age — the age of grace (Ephesians 3:2) — the local church is “the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Timothy 3:15). Ordinances symbolize Christ’s work and our unity in Him, and they require the oversight of qualified elders (1 Timothy 3:1-7) to prevent the abuses Paul corrected at Corinth.

Allowing communion outside the local church risks one of two errors: it either becomes a sacrament — a means of grace detached from the assembled body, as in Roman Catholicism — or a casual personal act, emptied of both its memorial purpose (“ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come,” 1 Corinthians 11:26) and its unifying purpose (“we being many are one bread, and one body,” 1 Corinthians 10:17).

Biblical separation (2 Corinthians 6:14-18) and order (1 Corinthians 14:40) demand that this sacred act be guarded within the autonomous local assembly, not diluted in ecumenical or private contexts.

The Bible presents the Lord’s Supper as a church ordinance for the assembled body, emphasizing unity, discernment, and accountability. Observing it outside this context lacks scriptural warrant and contradicts the established pattern of 1 Corinthians 10 and 11.

As a biblicist, I hold to “thus saith the Lord” and seek to build every position on the foundation of His Word alone — guarding against traditions that veer from God’s revelation, and against emotionalism that clouds biblical discernment.