Luke 1:35 — The angel answered and said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy Child shall be called the Son of God.
Acts 2:36 — “Therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Christ—this Jesus whom you crucified.”
We are considering the Lord's Supper as a sermon, and thinking about some of the messages it proclaims to us. This time, we want to focus on the fact that the Supper presents the sinfulness of sin to our gaze. This may not be obvious at first sight, for it is inferred from other messages the Table declares.
In our previous devotional, we saw that the table declares the sinlessness of Christ. The bread that is used is free from the leaven that symbolized evil and corruption to the Jewish mind. So Christ was born of a virgin and lived a Holy life. No one could justly accuse Him of sin, for He had none (John 8:46). He was the unblemished and spotless lamb of God (1 Peter 1:18-19). No deceit was found in His mouth (1 Peter 2:22) and when He was reviled, He did not revile in return (1 Peter 2:23) - He was full of grace and truth (John 1:14). There was no unrighteousness in Him (John 7:18) - He is the radiance of God's glory (Hebrews 1:3). In everything that He did, and thought and spoke, He was good, kind, wise, true, faithful and loving.
We turn from this very brief study of the beauty and the holiness of the Savior to see what mankind (of which we are a part), corrupted and perverted by sin, did to Him. We took this man of unparalleled holiness and unleashed upon Him our hatred - because His light shone into our darkness and exposed our sin. We took this man of unequaled humility and in our pride we spat upon Him and ridiculed Him. We took this gentle and meek Son of God and vented our fury on Him with such violence that His face was disfigured more than any man's (Isaiah 52:14). We took this One Who, by being everything that we ought to be, showed us what sin has made us, and we beat Him, crowned Him with thorns, mocked Him and nailed Him to the cross, from which He cried out to God for our forgiveness.
Do you want to see how sinful sin is? Take a look at what we did to Jesus. It wasn't a quick and quiet assassination (though that would have been bad enough) - our hearts desired the longest and cruelest death imaginable for Him because our hatred against Him was so intense. We wanted Him out of our lives, yes, but we wanted more than that. All our malicious, spiteful contempt had to be let loose on Him.
But the Table affords us another view of the sinfulness of sin. We see it not only in what we did to Jesus, but in what His own Father did to Him on the cross. It was then the sins of His people were charged to Him. See how repulsive He became to the Father, Who had once called Him "My beloved Son". See how the darkness covered Him on the cross as the light of the sun could not penetrate the darkness of those events. Hear Him cry out in agony, "My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?" He was forsaken by His heavenly Father. Instead of the comfort of God's fellowship and eternal love, Jesus received His wrath in full measure. The peace and love that had existed between the man Christ Jesus and God the Father was torn in shreds. Could it be that the Holy Spirit, poured out on Jesus without measure, could remain present to His senses, given the weight of sin and corruption that He bore? He was left alone to suffer in our place.
Do you want to see how sinful sin is? Take a look at what God the Father did to Jesus, His only Son. And we have to believe that this was no more than the sin He was bearing justly deserved. God did not lash out in an uncontrolled rage when confronted with the sin that Jesus was now charged with. This was measured and just punishment, provoked by God's infinite hatred of sin. God could not have fellowship with Jesus as long as He bore that sin - so He put Him out of His presence and punished Him in His wrath.
The Table is ever a bitter sweet meal for the saint - showing us the depths of our sin and all that Jesus had to endure because of it, but showing us also that He came precisely to undergo that suffering so that we might be set free. Can you stay away from the Supper when such depths of love and mercy are proclaimed here?
