Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of Lord’s Supper in this address from The Gospel Coalition Sermon Library
“In the following directives I have no praise for you, for your meetings do more harm than good. In the first place, I hear that when you come together as a church, there are divisions among you, and to some extent I believe it. No doubt there have to be differences among you to show which of you have God’s approval.
When you come together, it is not the Lord’s Supper you eat, for as you eat, each of you goes ahead without waiting for anybody else. One remains hungry, another gets drunk. Don’t you have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you for this? Certainly not!
For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.’
For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. Therefore, 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. A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep.
But if we judged ourselves, we would not come under judgment. When we are judged by the Lord, we are being disciplined so that we will not be condemned with the world. So then, my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for each other. If anyone is hungry, he should eat at home, so that when you meet together it may not result in judgment. And when I come I will give further directions.”
Someone has said that the four most disputed words in the entire history of the church are “This is my body.” Certainly historically, that little clip of four words has engendered massive disputations and arguments. It would be possible this evening to take a sort of historical survey of the principal interpretations that have been put on those words.
Instead of doing that, I want to outline six elements in the Lord’s Supper, which, it seems to me, are mandated by this passage and a few verses from the chapter before. Regardless of your background, surely we must agree on these points.
1. The Lord’s Supper serves as a center and symbol of Christian unity.
First Corinthians 11:17–22. It’s important to catch the flow of the argument here. From about 1 Corinthians 7:1 on, the apostle Paul often resorts to what is sometimes called a “Yes, but …” argument. That is, he not only has to deal with certain kinds of pastoral problems in the church that have been addressed to him in a letter, but the church is divided over most of them.
He discovers he must not only give to them the answer to their questions, but he must do so in a pastorally-sensitive way that doesn’t just polarize the people who are already polarized enough. So he tends to say to one faction, “Yes, yes, yes, but …” Then he says to the other faction, “Yes, yes, but …”
So to the more ascetic element in 1 Corinthians 7, he says, “Yes, it is good for a man not to touch a woman. Celibacy has its strengths, but …” Then he says, in effect, “On the other hand, there’s another whole side to this whole thing. One man has this gift. One man has another. Besides, marriage is honorable in all,” to use the language of Hebrews, and so forth.
He comes to the matter of tongues, for example. “Yes, yes, I speak in tongues more than all of you, but in the church, I’d rather speak five words in a known tongue than 10,000 words in an unknown tongue,” and so forth. This “Yes, but …” argument percolates through so many of his arguments from chapter 7 on, precisely because he’s a wise pastor.
So it is startling when you come to chapter 11, verse 17, and find no “yes.” It’s all “but,” as it were. He says, “In the following directives I have no praise for you …” There’s no yes, only condemnation. This particular area in which he has only condemnation is, of all things, the Lord’s Supper. Now what’s going on here?
It’s important to remember that in the ancient Roman world, they ran on a 10-day week. In the Jewish world, of course, they ran on a seven-day week, but in the Roman world, for much of the time that we know of, they ran on a 10-day week. That meant that Christians who met on the first day of the week on a Jewish cycle were necessarily competing with the off days of the 10-day cycle for most of their Lord’s Day celebrations. This is one of the reasons why the early church tended to meet very early in the morning and very late at night.
So if they were meeting late at night, you can guess what happened. Those who were independently wealthy could show up at any old time. They didn’t have quite the clock accuracy that we have today, but they were independently wealthy and could show up at two or three in the afternoon, or whatever. They would bring along their sandwiches, their prawn cocktails, their caviar, and a bottle of Beaujolais, and they would have some fellowship together.
Then, of course, a little later on, you’d get the independent business people, who could knock off a little early, and then the freedmen: ex-slaves, workers, and citizens who were not slaves or bound in any way. Maybe they could get there at seven. Then, of course, there were the slaves. When could they get there?
Well, it depends on what kind of slave. In the ancient world, slaves could be almost anything. They could be learned private tutors who could presumably knock off a little earlier, but some slaves were manual workers, or maybe they were the slaves who had to put out the cat before going to bed, and they could only get there right at the very end. Whereas others had brought their chicken sandwiches and stale crusts and so on, when the lowest of the slaves showed up, they couldn’t bring anything.
By this time, of course, the fellowship is in pretty good heart. They decided to meet for a whole meal together before they actually got to that which the Lord himself had commanded: a small rite with bread and wine. Now there’s a whole meal together, at least for those who get there early. So you have a description of what takes place. “When you come together, it is not the Lord’s Supper you eat …” No siree, you’re enjoying your prawn cocktails and your caviar.
“… as you eat, each of you goes ahead without waiting for anybody else. One remains hungry …” The people who get there last. “… and another gets drunk.” Now you come to the part of the service where you actually have the Lord’s Supper. Where is the unity in all of this? “Don’t you have homes to eat and drink in?” The Lord’s Supper isn’t primarily about satisfying your physical needs. That’s not what it’s about.
“Do you despise the church of God by this? Humiliate those people who come and don’t have anything?” Paul is blistering. “What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you for this? God forbid, certainly not!” Then by the end of his discussion, he comes up again, in verse 13, “So then, my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for each other. If anyone is hungry, he should eat at home, so that when you may meet together it may not result in judgment.”
In other words, he gets rid of all of this “table fellowship,” if all it’s going to do is generate more animosity, resentments, bitterness, feelings of superiority and inferiority, inclusion, and exclusion. This rite that is supposed to be a center point of Christian unity has become the focal point for division!
Now we don’t have exactly the same problems today. If, on the other hand, we come together nurturing all kinds of resentments and miserable attitudes, one toward another, it’s pretty difficult to see how this central rite of the church, the only ongoing, enduring rite that Jesus gave, the only repeated rite that Jesus gave …
Baptism, yes, at the front end, but it’s a once-off thing in any Christian’s life. This is the only enduring rite that Jesus himself commissioned in the entire church. Shall it become a point, therefore, where we mask our resentments, nurture our bitternesses, and so forth? God help us if that’s what it becomes.
In the earlier chapter, however, chapter 10, there is something more that’s said, I think something that is sometimes misunderstood. This is in the context of a long discussion, from 8:1 all the way to 11:1, of meat offered to idols. We don’t have the time to pursue that discussion tonight, but what Paul certainly forbids is participation in any pagan formal worship experience, any pagan worship act, that has us participating with pagans in the adoration of their deities. He won’t have anything to do with that.
So he says, in chapter 10, verse 14 of the NIV, “My dear friends, flee from idolatry. I speak to sensible people; judge for yourselves what I say. Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf.
Consider the people of Israel: Do not those who eat the sacrifices participate in the altar? Do I mean then that a sacrifice offered to an idol is anything, or that an idol is anything? No, but the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God, and I do not want you to be participants with demons.”
Now that needs just a bit of unpacking. Verse 17 is clear enough. There is a sense in which the bread we eat represents Christ’s body. “This is my body.” The body that was broken. But in one metaphorical usage, the church is the body of Christ. So then, by a kind of extension, this bread that symbolizes Christ’s body broken on the cross may also represent Christ’s body which is the church.
So that’s how verse 17 operates. “Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf.” We all partake of this one loaf and benefit from Christ’s body, and we are the body. There is a sense in which the one loaf from which we partake is to signal our unity, but there’s more than that.
Verse 16 of the NIV: “Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ?” The word rendered participation is almost everywhere else rendered in the NIV as fellowship. There’s no little preposition “in” there. This should really be rendered, “Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a fellowship of the blood of Christ?”
If you render it “a participation in the blood of Christ” and then “a participation in the body of Christ,” it gives the feeling that somehow, by ingesting, you participate in something. What is meant in the context, as becomes very clear in the next paragraph, is that the cup of thanksgiving, the rite itself, signals, circumscribes, and constitutes a fellowship of Christ: a fellowship of the blood of Christ and a fellowship of the body of Christ.
To use the examples, then, that are given in verse 18: “Consider the people of Israel: Do not those who eat the sacrifices participate in the altar?” Now that doesn’t mean that they ingest the altar. The point is that it’s a fellowship of the altar. They constitute a people circumscribed by their participation in the altar.
“Do I mean then that a sacrifice offered to an idol is anything …” That is, when you slop down some sort of sacrifice before a stone idol does that somehow transmute the elements? “… or that an idol is anything?” He’s just finished saying that, at the end of the day, an idol is nothing. It’s just a piece of stone or a piece of wood.
Yes, but in the act of this religious homage in a pagan context, the pagan participants see that there are other gods, demonic powers, behind those representations. “The sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God, and I do not want you to be …” Here, he uses the same word root again. “… participants with demons.”
You’re not a group of fellowshippers. You do not constitute a fellowship circumscribed by demonic worship. That’s not what you are. You’re Christians. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons too. You cannot have a part in both the Lord’s Table and the table of demons.
We’re a fellowship of the Lord’s Table. We’re a fellowship of the Lord’s blood. We’re a fellowship of the Lord’s body. In fact, all genuine Christians participate in this one body. We all partake of the one loaf. The whole emphasis here is that this religious act circumscribes us, defines us, and constitutes us a one-fellowship people of God, bound up with this rite, which is going to be unpacked by the apostle in the next chapter.
It is not suggesting that we somehow ingest Christ or ingest Christ’s blood and somehow, thereby, participate in him. That is a problem of English translation. It is simply not what the text says. We are a fellowship of the blood of Christ. We are the fellowship of the blood of Christ. We are the fellowship of the body of Christ. It is a rite that serves as a center and symbol of Christian unity.
2. The Lord’s Supper is a time to remember.
First Corinthians 11:23–25: “I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.’ ”
Now the view that emphasizes remembering, with respect to the Lord’s Table, is often dismissed as the “minimalist view.” It is thought to be just too cerebral. There’s nothing of grace in it. You just sort of sit around and remember. There’s more to it than that, however. Don’t forget that the institution of the Lord’s Supper was built off the Passover rites. The Israelites gathered year by year, once a year, to remember, on the appropriate date, the Passover. What did they do? They remembered. By remembering, it was a kind of covenantal renewal.
They remembered when the Lord had passed over the people of Israel in Egypt who had put blood on the doorposts and on the lintel. The angel of destruction passed over the people, and the people were spared while the firstborn of all those not protected by the blood was killed. Then the people of God exited from Egypt, crossed the Red Sea, and became a fledgling nation in the wilderness on their way toward the Promised Land. Year by year, year by year, they celebrated the Passover and remembered.
Now when I was a boy, I hated the hymn “Tell Me the Old, Old Story.” It goes, “Tell me the old, old story of unseen things above, of Jesus and His glory, of Jesus and His love.” Now the reason I hated it was especially because of the next line. “Tell me the story slowly, as to a little child.” Now when you’re 14, you don’t want anybody to tell you anything slowly, and certainly not as to a little child.
Moreover, I had been brought up in a Christian home. I had been taught the Bible from my earliest days. My first conscious memory is sitting in the bathtub, being “done” by Dad. When my mum did it, it was efficient. When my dad did it, I got Bible stories. He always reviewed the last one and then carried on from there. Let me tell you, the story of Naaman in the bathtub is very effective!
So I felt I knew the old, old story, thank you. I didn’t need anybody to tell me. So I didn’t like that hymn. As I’ve grown older, however, it’s gradually dawned on me how much we need the repetition of the old, old story. You see, in the average church, what is there to discuss? Well, teaching on marriage, the home, rearing the family, the structures of covenantal relationships, what worship is, the attributes of God, and the Ten Commandments.
Then we also need some discussion of apocalyptic: what is coming in the future, the promise of the new heaven and a new earth. Then, of course, you’re going to change the constitution so you have to have some teaching on elders and deacons and structures in New Testament churches and bring in some crazy character from Chicago or someplace to help out in that respect.
Then eventually, of course, you have other things. You have to put on a new roof, so you don’t have the lights falling down on your head, and somebody is going to argue about the color of the carpet, and on and on and on. All of these are legitimate things, but somewhere, along the line, the cross is so far back in the background that, well, it’s sort of presupposed, but it isn’t at the pulsating center anymore.
In one sense, this is one of the most shocking paragraphs in all of the New Testament. There is Jesus on the night of his betrayal, the day before he goes to the cross. He has to tell his followers … as he is about to die for them and suffer the most horrible shame and the curse of his Father in unimaginable agony that they might be forgiven … he tells them, “Don’t forget me. Do this in remembrance of me.” Yet if we’ve been Christians for a while and know ourselves at all, we know how easy it is to forget, don’t we? “Do this in remembrance of me.”
In fact, it does fit into a larger structure. You see, the old Passover remembered the old covenant. It was linked to the old covenant. Now Jesus says, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood.” This is a rite, like the old rite, that remembers the inauguration of the new covenant in the same way the Passover remembered the inauguration of the old covenant. From Jeremiah 31 on, six centuries before Christ, the prophets had looked forward to the dawning of a new covenant.
In this new covenant there would be ample forgiveness of sins for all the people of God, finally dealing with sins; the pouring out of his Spirit upon men and women so that they would all know him within that covenant, from the least to the greatest; and no longer any mediating priests or mediating kings or mediating prophets. It would be a new covenant in which God stamps his law on their hearts. It would all be secured, finally, by Christ’s death. He inaugurates it now, as he goes to the cross, and he says, “Do this in remembrance of me.”
Within that framework, if you put yourself in the disciples’ place, he takes the bread (they still don’t really understand much about the cross; they certainly don’t understand the resurrection) and he breaks it. He says, “Do this in remembrance of me.” He takes the cup and drinks it, and he says, “Do this in remembrance of me.” This inaugurates the new covenant. They don’t really know what’s going on. Then he dies. Three days later, he rises again. He talks with them for weeks before he finally ascends and leaves them behind.
Now so many of the pieces come together, and they reflect on that night when he said, “This is my body which is broken for you.” In the light of their witness of the cross, in the light of what they saw on Calvary, in the light of the night when they fled Golgotha, do you really think they focused all their energy, then, on the bread? I don’t think the first Christians could understand it in any other way than a symbol-laden act akin to the symbol-laden act of the Passover.
They didn’t look back to the bread. They looked back to the cross and remembered that on the night before Jesus had actually died … just as the Passover feast was celebrated before they actually got out of Egypt, in anticipation, in an act that they would only understand afterward.… Jesus instituted a rite, which was to be remembered again and again and again. “Do this in remembrance of me.” It was to point to Christ’s broken body. It was to point to his shed blood. It was to force them, in a simple rite endlessly repeated, to remember.
3. The Lord’s Supper is a proclamation of Christ’s death.
First Corinthians 11:26: “For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” The verb that is used for proclaim is one of three verbs commonly used in the New Testament for the articulation and proclamation of the gospel. So often, what we do with the Lord’s Supper, in some churches, is invite everybody who is not a member or anybody who is not a Christian to leave now. This is now a purely in-house matter.
Well, we shall soon see that it is an in-house matter. It is for Christians only, but apparently, in the ancient church, it was also an opportunity to proclaim Christ. It became a kind of visible word. It was a proclamation of something. I can introduce you to churches where, in fact, in mixed assemblies with Christians and non-Christians present, whoever is leading takes just a few moments to say something like this:
“If you’re in off the street tonight and you’ve never seen a Christian Communion service, you’re going to think this is a little bizarre. So let me explain what’s going on here. We believe that Jesus gave his body to bear our sin, that he shed his blood, giving his life that we might be forgiven. He gave us a simple rite, like this, by which to recall corporately what he gave that we might be forgiven.
Now if you’re not a Christian, don’t take the elements. It’s a kind of contradiction in terms for you to say, ‘I remember,’ when you don’t remember. You don’t know the Lord. You ought to watch, however, how Christians think about the death of Christ and want to be drawn back to that death again and again, on which they fasten all their hopes for reconciliation to God, for the removal of their sins, for forgiveness, and for their hope of eternal life. We remember. So watch now, as the church of Jesus Christ, the people of God, remember his death.”
It thus becomes a kind of visible proclamation to unbelievers who are present. It can be a very powerful proclaiming, evangelistic thrust. So it is a center and symbol of Christian unity, a time to remember, a proclamation of the Lord’s death, and …
4. The Lord’s Supper is a temporary ordinance.
We read, again in verse 26 that we are to do this until he comes. A little later on in the history of the people of Israel … after the experience of the exodus and then, eventually, the experience of the exile where the people were scattered all over the world … they incorporated into their Passover rite these words: “Next year in Jerusalem. Next year in Jerusalem. Next year in Jerusalem. Next year in Jerusalem.”
There is a sense in which we say, “Until he comes. Until he comes. Until he comes.” For, in the new heaven and the new earth, we are not going to be celebrating the Lord’s Supper anymore. Will we then have to be reminded of the wounds of the Lord? Will we then have to remember his death?
We will have been so been transformed that we are no longer tempted by sin or defection. We will no longer sing, “Prone to wander, Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love. Here’s my heart, oh, take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above.” We will no longer have some rite which will call us to remember, for we will remember forever. Because of that, this is a temporary rite, which itself anticipates the Lord’s return. “Until he comes. Until he comes.” It is a temporary ordinance.
5. The Lord’s Supper provides regular opportunity for spiritual and moral self-examination.
First Corinthians 11:27–29: “Therefore, 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.” Now it is very important to recognize that “in an unworthy manner” describes the approach. It’s an adverb describing how you approach. It is not an adjective describing the person.
This does not say, “Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord and is unworthy …” It doesn’t say that. It says, “Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner …” What is an unworthy manner? Well, for a start, it is saying, “I remember the death of the Lord, his broken body on my behalf, offered up to pay for my sin,” while I am nurturing all kinds of sin within. That’s an unworthy manner. It’s essentially deceit and lies. It’s an unworthy approach.
I can never be worthy of the body and blood of Christ, but a worthy manner of approach is full of contrition and self-examination. That’s what the text goes on to say. “A man ought, therefore, to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup.” Failing to do this, we’re told in verse 27, makes a person guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. That has been understood in three ways, primarily, in the history of the church.
A. You are sinning against the body and blood of the Lord that are constituted by these elements.
I don’t think that’s what the text says at all. I don’t think that these elements are viewed as literally the body and blood of Christ at all.
B. You are sinning against the body of Christ; that is, the church.
Some, in the context of the earlier part of the chapter, take it to mean that the body, here, is the body of the church. These people have been sinning against the body of Christ, in that sense, by the way they have drunk their Beaujolais and had their little feasts of “fellowship” that have, actually, excommunicated, relegated to some marginal, peripheral part of the church, all those who were too poor to come early. In that sense, they’ve been sinning against the body of Christ.
Well, I could just about believe that, except that the text says, in verse 27, “Therefore, 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.” In the New Testament, sometimes the church is called the “body of the Lord,” but the church is never called the “body and blood of the Lord.” So I don’t think that’s the right explanation either.
C. You are sinning against the real body and blood of the Lord.
I think that the right explanation is just very simple. You are sinning against the real body and blood of the Lord: the Lord Jesus who hung on the cross. If you come to this Table, where you’re supposed to remember, and you say, “I remember the body and blood of the Lord,” when deep down inside, you are nurturing resentments, sin, arrogance, prayerlessness, lust, hatred, and gossip, and you say, “I remember,” then you’re sinning against the body and blood of the Lord.
The Lord hung on the cross. He hung on the cross for you, and you remember while you nurture all this sin? You’re sinning against Christ’s body. You’re sinning against the cross. You’re sinning against his sacrifice. You say you remember, and you spit in his face by nurturing your sin. That’s what’s going on here.
“A man ought to examine himself, therefore, before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord …” That is, recognizing the body of the Lord that is being remembered by this rite. “… eats and drinks judgment on himself.” In other words, this rite is meant to be a call to self-examination and repentance.
Now do not misunderstand me, please. I am not suggesting, I am insisting it is not the case that this means we are to approach the Table sinlessly perfect, or something like that. That would be a question of making us worthy. That’s not the issue. The question is the manner of our approach. The manner of approach must be self-examination and confession of sin. Otherwise the rite itself becomes not only a farce, but a blasphemous farce. We are claiming to remember that by which we are saved, while, in fact, deep in our lives, we prefer our sin.
In other periods of the church, people sometimes took the Lord’s Table very seriously indeed. Some denominations have the Lord’s Table only once a year. They wrote books like How to Prepare for Communion, in which there was a time of general examination and confession and so forth. Now of course, this can turn into some sort of introspection, looking inwardly: “Have I confessed all of my sins?”
Eventually, that can turn into some kind of horrible introspection that is so charged with self-examination that you forget that at the end of the day, this is also a time of release! Christ has died for us! Yet that freedom does not warrant the kind of carelessness with which we sometimes approach the Lord as if this Table were a bit of magic to bless us for the week. This is a time for self-examination and repentance.
6. The Lord’s Supper can be dangerous.
First Corinthians 11:30–32: “That is why …” That is, because some have not examined themselves. “… many among you, are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep. But if we judged ourselves, we would not come under judgment. When we are judged by the Lord, we are being disciplined so that we will not be condemned with the world.”
Paul holds that at least some of the ailments in the congregation at Corinth are bound up with their nurtured sin while still they are approaching the Lord’s Table. Now it is important to say a couple of things here. Nowhere does the Bible teach that all illness, or the like, is the direct result of an immediate sin.
The Lord Jesus himself gives us a wonderful counterexample, for example, in John 9, where a man born blind evokes the question from the disciples, “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he should be born blind?” One wonders what was in their heads. Did the baby commit prenatal sin that he should be born blind? Jesus says, “Neither. This occurred for the glory of God.”
We should not be so foolish to think that every illness is the direct result of a particular sin, but we should not be so foolish to think, either, that it may not be. In fact, as a general term, both in Scripture and in the pages of history, it is when the church is closest to revival times, when it is closest to massive growth, to the impartation of the Spirit in massive revival, then that is also when, by and large, judgment falls most quickly too. Look at Ananias and Sapphira.
When the Lord so withdraws that he lets the people of Israel in the Old Testament, or the church, go their way and says, in effect, “Well, if that’s the way you want it, go ahead,” and withdraws his chastening hand of judgment, as he withdraws his blessing, then a church descends into a kind of downward spiral of coldness, harshness, apathy, and death. There may be no judgment, but there’s no discipline either. Finally, there’s no commitment, and finally, no faith.
In this day of philosophical naturalism, we are not always prepared to recognize that spiritual failure may be met by God by actual illness and even death. I hesitate to tell you this next story. I really hesitate, because it’s almost too spectacular. Moreover, I wasn’t there. It was told to me by a man who was there.
This was a very godly man who taught me systematic theology in Toronto. When I had him as a teacher, he was 60 years old. I had him in the late 60s. He tells of the time when, 30 years earlier, he was just a young man pastoring a church in the outback of Australia. He was assigned to a small Baptist church in a rural community in the outback, where it was the only church in town. So although it was nominally a Baptist church and confessional and all the rest, it was sort of the town church in some ways, too.
People just went there in those days because they did. He went there and tried preaching the gospel. He tried to be faithful to the Lord. He soon discovered that this was a wild, frontier town with the elders in the church participating in all kinds of moral turpitude and financial shenanigans. The whole place was an outback Peyton Place. It just was not a very happy situation.
When he tried to exercise discipline, it was impossible. All the leaders in the church were on the other side, in any case. He tried to preach the gospel and saw one or two people converted, but that was it. After about three years, he was single, in any case, as well as a bit lonely and discouraged.
He finally started praying, in tears of real loneliness and anguish, sometimes prostrate on his face, “Lord God, you put me in the wrong place. I can’t handle this. I’m not doing any good. I’m not seeing anybody converted. I’m not getting anywhere. I wish you’d just take me out of here and put me into someplace that’s within the domain of my capacity. Bring in someone here who is a real man of God with unction and fire and power. Or you clean up the church. There’s nothing I can do with this.”
He prayed along those lines daily, often in tears. After three months, he started having funerals. He had 34 of them in this small village, mostly leading people in the church, in the following three months. He had 34 funerals and, the next year, baptized 200. Now don’t misunderstand. I told you I was reluctant to tell you this story. I don’t want this to turn into a bit of magic. Nor am I suggesting this is the first procedure. You go and pray this too quickly, and you might be the first to go!
Yet at the same time, it is important to remember that we serve a God who is holy. The worst thing that can happen to us is that he should not discipline us at all. That’s what this text says. It says, “When we are judged by the Lord, we are being disciplined so that we will not be condemned with the world.” It is a good thing to face some of the judgment of God.
God help the church where he just lets them go on their own way and there’s no judgment anywhere: no discipline, no judgment, nothing, no sanctions, do what you like! Pretty soon, you have a dead church. That means, then, that the Lord’s Table is a place that can be dangerous because we serve One who says, “I am the Lord. My glory I will not give to another. To this man will I look: he who is of a contrite spirit and who trembles at my Word.”
The flip side of all of this, of course, lest we end up with just fear, is that this is a place, then, for remembering the boldness of access we have in Christ. Christ did die, and we remember. Our sins are forgiven, and we remember. We are called to be children of the Living God, and we remember. We are heirs of the new covenant, and we remember. We remember. Amen.
