1 Corinthians 10:17

For. Gr. hoti, here meaning “seeing that,” “because.” This word begins a new sentence, and the passage may be translated, “Seeing that there is one bread, we who are many are one body.”

One bread. This is an allusion to the fact that the communion bread is broken into many pieces, which are eaten by the believers; and as all the pieces come from the same loaf, so all the believers who partake of the communion service are united in Him whose broken body is thus typified by the broken bread. By partaking together of this ordinance, Christians show publicly that they are united and belong to one great family, whose head is Christ.

As material bread is one of the principal sources of nutrition for mankind, so Christ is the spiritual food of which all must partake in order to maintain spiritual health (see John 6:50, 51, 56, 57). There are many kinds of bread, made from different kinds of grain, such as wheat, barley, rye, corn; but there is only one spiritual bread that gives spiritual sustenance. There are not many different Lords and Saviours, but only one, and man cannot find his way to eternal life by any other means than through partaking of the Bread that came down from heaven in the person of Jesus Christ (see Matt. 24:5, 24; John 6:33, 53, 54; Acts 4:12; 1 Tim. 2:5, 6).