“Nevertheless, when we are judged in this way by the Lord, we are being disciplined so that we will not be finally condemned with the world.”
1 Corinthians 11:32 (NIV)
This passage contains a sobering warning for every Christian who observes communion in an assembly of Christians. Paul reminds us that an assembly of Christians at the communion table is really an assembly around the Person and Work of Christ. When we participate in communion without discerning that He suffered judgment at the cross in order that we might find grace, then we eat and drink judgment on ourselves. Instead of us receiving life through our spiritual union with His body and blood, we receive judgment and death. This not a magical situation with magical bread - rather Christ is present with us in a special way as we together remember Him through the eating of bread and drinking of the cup, and Christ Himself is the One who judges us. It is a tendency of prideful humans to forget that Christ was put to death in our place, because of our sin - and for Christians who fall into the habit of living in sin while still ritually observing a remembrance of the death of God’s Son for our sin - that tendency is deadly. Yet even in the act of judgment on believers, grace is being exercised for this judgment is our deliverance.
I appreciated what our Elder Mark Baxter shared this past communion service at Parkdale - that as we together in community participate in the bread and the cup, each of us has a personal and private encounter with Christ, and that if we use that personal and private encounter with Christ to confess our sins and receive forgiveness for those sins, we glorify our Lord who died for those sins.
May we glorify our Lord not only at communion services but each and every day as we dwell in spiritual union with our Lord.
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