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A Sharing in the Body of Christ
(2nd in the series of expositions on Communion delivered on July 23, 1978)
There are two important things in the church in terms of worship:
1. Preaching of God's Word
2. The Lord's Supper
All important elements of worship fall into the Communion. Communion is a participation as well as fellowship. We must understand Communion so that we can have the sense of worship which is closely related to the sense of oneness.
The bread and the wine are God's blessings to us. They are the symbol of God's blessing of life - the stable elements to sustain life. In the Middle East, water can't be drunk without being boiled, so wine is safer to drink and is a common drink in fact.
In Gen 14:18, Melchizedek brought out bread and wine to Abraham, which also are the symbols of the blessing of God which sustains life. In 1 Cor 10:16: "The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is only one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread." The word 'participation' is the same word as 'Communion' in the Greek original (koinwniva, 'koinonia'), which also means a very close fellowship, sharing, etc. This union can be compared with the marriage relationship in 2 Cor 6:14ff, which is the closest relationship between two people. Consider 1 Cor 10:18 again, "...are not those who eat the sacrifices partners in the altar?" If we eat at the altar, we have a share in God's people, i.e., we are being identified as God's people. On the other hand, if we partake of the food offered to idols, we are actually participating in idol worship, therefore Paul warns the Corinthians not to have anything to do with the external symbols of idol worshipping.
At the Communion we are participating in the blessing that God has given to us, which is the blessing of the life in Christ. The partaking of the bread and the wine is a symbolic action expressing our inner faith. Faith must find outward expression in action, work or deeds. All worship find their expression in the participation of certain elements. Eg. when you sit at the family table, it indicates that you are a member of the family, you can't go to another's house and eat without their invitation. So the participation at the family table is an expression that indicates that I am a member of the family, the same implication applies when we come to Communion.
Every time when we come to the Communion, we are stretching out our hands of faith and taking God's blessing of life made available to us through the bread and the wine. To prepare the wine, the grape have to be crushed, the blood of the grape is the wine. How did God make this wine available for us? Only through the death of Christ. How did the bread come to us? It is through the death of grain, being ground into pieces, then put in the high oven. God's blessing requires a high cost to God; it is never cheap.
So we come to the table, we come in worship and thanksgiving. (When we think of how much God loved us and how much it cost Him to provide this life for us, we should thank Him.) As we sit down at the table for thanksgiving, our hearts should be united together.
It also shows that we are constantly drawing onto the body and blood of Christ; we never cease to depend upon the blessing of life. Day by day we participate in His blessings. Salvation is not an one-act-in-the-past but is a constant feeding in Christ. Unless we are fed, we can't grow from strength to strength.
In Communion, we participate in the death [of Christ], i.e., we have a share in His death - not only the benefit of Christ's death but also the consequences of the death. To participate in His death means that as Christ died to the world, we should also die to the world. We can only get the benefit of Christ's death only by this participation. Notice the order: we participate in His blood, then in His body (i.e., the life of the body), then in His life (i.e., living forth the kind of life that Christ has given to us) until His life becomes our own life.
As a summary, we see that to participate in something means to take it in yourself (provided that it has been offered to you). The blessing of the new life is that we have been set free from the power of the world, we have died with Christ, we have participated in the blood of Christ and now we are participating in His life, that is, living a kind of a life which shows forth Christ. We also participate in one another, "we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread" (1 Cor 10:17).
Communion should be a time of worship through sharing, eg., the sharing of the life of Christ in you, the power of His death in you. We should take this opportunity and break down the formality between each other and share in such a way that we are able to feed one another, to enrich and encourage one another. In this way, we can enter into a constant progression of worship, and through this participation of Communion that the church can grow. Think what I can do to the needs of others, this is Communion in everyday life and fellowship with one another.
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Communion Series:
- Worship
- A Sharing in the Body of Christ
- God's Expression of Love to Us
- Pressing toward the Mark of the High Calling
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