While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when He had given thanks,
He broke it and gave it to His disciples, saying,
“Take it; this is My body.”
Then He took a cup, and when He had given thanks, He gave it to them, and they all drank from it.
“This is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many,”
He said to them.
Mark 14:22-24 (NIV)
Now, I bet that you guys can guess just from reading these two verses what our topic for today is. That's right! Today, we're going to be discussing the Lord's Supper.
We take the Lord's Supper in remembrance of Jesus and His sacrifice. The bread or crackers remind us of how He died on the cross, in our place, to save us. The wine or grape juice make us thing about His blood, shed to give us salvation. Sometimes we may take this sacrifice for granted, like it didn't hurt because Jesus was God, but we've got to remember that He was just as much human as He was the Lord. Also, a perfect human had to die to save us from our sins, so Jesus was human. However, it had to be God who died if He were going to save all of us. A perfect human being could have saved one person, but only God could save everyone who would believe in Him.
More evidence that Jesus went through much pain and hardship is found in Luke 22:43, where it says that an angel from heaven appeared to strengthen Him. He needed strength, encouragement, and comfort as He went through all of this. One time, while at a talk in my church, I learned that Jesus was so worried about what He had to do that He sweat blood. The Bible says that Jesus was in anguish just before He was arrested.
As you can see from all this, it was extremely hard for Jesus to die in our place. But He did it. This is an exceptionally good reason to honor Him by participating in the Lord's Supper.
I just thought of a something. Can we take of the Lord's Supper incorrectly? Well, let's see what the Bible says:
So then, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the
Lord. Everyone ought to examine themselves before they eat
of the bread and drink from the cup. For those who eat and drink
without discerning the body of Christ eat and drink judgment on themselves.
I Corintians 11:27-29 (NIV)
“Whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner” - wait. Unworthy manner? What does that mean?
At my church here in Peru, before taking Communion, we are given a few minutes to pray. We pray that if we have transgressed and not yet repented, God would forgive us. This is how we make sure that we are not eating the bread or drinking the cup in an unworthy manner. You see, unworthy manner means that we are taking of the Lord's Supper without really meaning it. We are taking of it without thinking about what it means, what it symbolizes. I Corinthians 11:26, which comes just before the excerpt above, says that when we take Communion, we “proclaim the Lord's death until He comes.” If we sin and then proclaim Jesus' death by taking the Lord's Supper, we are saying that Jesus died for our sins – but we aren't repenting of those sins. If we do that, we are implying that we don't need to be forgiven for our sins. We are saying that even if Jesus hadn't died, we wouldn't have needed forgiveness from our sins. This is why we should, as the Bible puts it, examine ourselves before eating the bread and drinking from the cup. We don't want to dishonor Jesus and His sacrifice by taking of the bread and the cup in an unworthy manner. If we do, we will be eating and drinking judgment on ourselves, as we see in the last Bible verse of the excerpt above.
Please pray today that God would help you to never take the Lord's Supper without first admitting if you've sinned. Next time your church does Communion, this is your homework: ask the Lord to tell you if you've sinned without repenting. If so, confess your transgression, and He will forgive you. Then you can take the Lord's Supper freely, without conviction.
-Lydia Malec