This week, we will consider the question – who is the Lord’s Supper for?
Last week, we saw that the Lord’s Supper is the ordinance or sacrament of ongoing fellowship in the New Covenant assembly, the church. It follows, then, that the Lord’s Supper is for those who have fellowship in the New Covenant, that is, who are members of Christ’s body, the church. The ordinary order then, is baptism (ordinance of entrance into the New Covenant assembly) followed by the Lord’s Supper (ordinance of fellowship within the New Covenant assembly). Our statement of faith puts it this way, “The Lord’s Supper is open to all who have been born again, but we encourage believers to be baptized before they share in it.”
The Lord’s Supper is a gift of Christ for His people. This is why we fence the table here at Grace and explain that this meal is for those who have trusted savingly in Christ and not for unbelievers. Unbelievers are welcome to visit and see what we do (there are no secret rites of Christianity), but the Supper is not for them because they are not united to Christ by faith.
But we can go a little deeper. The Lord’s Supper is for God’s repentant and pilgrim people. Paul warns in 1 Corinthians 11:17-34 about taking the Lord’s Supper in an unworthy manner and thereby making oneself guilty concerning Christ’s body and blood. He says that the one who partakes in such a way “eats and drinks judgment on Himself.” The basic way that one partakes in an unworthy manner is by doing so in defiant, unrepentant sin. To continue in such-high handed sin is to contradict the very message of the Supper, which is of Christ’s body broken and blood shed for our sin.
This is one part of church discipline is to bar the one disciplined from the Lord’s Supper, because he is living in unrepentant sin. So, the Lord’s Supper is for God’s repentant people. We come to partake of it, not because we are perfect and have no need of grace, but precisely because we have sinned and need the grace of God! In the Supper, we are pointed to where that Grace may be found – the broken body and shed blood of our Savior.
This ordinance is also for God’s pilgrim people. By this I mean, God’s people viewed as sojourners on this earth, looking forward to and awaiting an eternal inheritance. One theologian, Bastiaan Wielenga, put it this way,
[The Lord’s Supper] is a foreshadowing and symbol of the eternal marriage banquet with the glorified Son of Man. For the exhausted pilgrim, it opens the way for a future of endless joy that no eye has seen, nor ear has heard, nor has entered into the heart of man.[1]
As we partake, we are reminded that we are still on the way and have not yet arrived. But the Lord’s Supper strengthens us to press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus (Phil. 3:14).
[1] B. Wielenga, The Reformed Lord’s Supper Form: A Commentary.
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