Luke 22:19 — And he took bread, and when he had given thanks he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”
We are beginning a new section in our survey of the reasons God has given us in His Word for us to make good use of the various means of grace He has provided. We have already considered prayer, the reading and preaching of the Word, and fellowship. Now we are going to reflect on the Lord's Supper for a few weeks. We'll think about what it is and what it does, and from that will flow quite naturally an understanding of how we should participate in it.
First, though, we must start with something that is absolutely fundamental, and which provides the only incentive we should ever need for participating in the Lord's Supper - the Lord Himself commands us to do so! This ought to come as no surprise, since we have seen the same thing with all the other means of grace. The Lord knows that we need grace (the influence, comfort and power of His Holy Spirit) to live for Him in this world, so He has carefully arranged several sources by which we might obtain it. To underline the fact that grace is essential for us, He makes it clear that our use of these sources is not optional.
This is easy to see from our passage above. Jesus does not say, "Think about doing this in remembrance of me." He does not say that if they feel like remembering Him, doing this might be one way to do so. Rather, He gives them a command - "Do this!"
It is very important that we begin our study at this point, because we live in days when we can read commands in Scripture and re-process them so they end up as optional activities for us.
For example, we can spiritualize our disobedience by convincing ourselves that we should pray about whether to come to the Table or not. We turn our participation into a spiritual quest, hunting and seeking for some indication we think we need from the Lord in order to eat the bread and drink the wine. But Jesus doesn't say, "Pray about whether you should do this in remembrance of me." He says, "Do this!"
We can turn the Table into something that is only intended for super-saints. We see the sin in our hearts and we loath ourselves and we decide we are not good enough to come to the Table. But Jesus doesn't say, "If you are good enough, and have reached a high enough standard, do this in remembrance of me." Rather, He says, "Do this!" If we are not practicing sin, but are seeking to be rid of it, then we are disobeying the Lord by not coming to His Table to receive the very grace that will help us in our struggles!
Perhaps we know (correctly) that in order to take the Supper we should be joined in membership to a local fellowship of believers. This is where the Supper can be rightly administered (the elders making every effort to ensure the participants are believers who are not under discipline for practicing sin). Yet we shrink away from joining any church for one reason or another. The result is either that we never take the Lord's Supper, and so disobey Christ's clear command in the passage above, or that we take the Supper with a church we are unwilling to join with in membership. Since (as we shall see) the Supper has much to say about the unity of the Body of Christ, we can hardly expect to receive grace from the Lord if we are determined to remain separate from a fellowship of believers!
So let's examine ourselves in the light of this simple but very clear command of our Savior. We must take the Lord's Supper if we belong to Him and we are not practicing sin. There are no ways to circumvent the words, "Do this!" that do not result in us disobeying Him and robbing ourselves of the grace and the blessings He wants to give us at His Table!
