What is communion for?

[AI translation] I already said last Sunday that today, in the teaching on the so-called means of grace, we will talk about the other sacrament, the Lord's Supper. It is not a problem that we did not take communion in our congregation now, but last Sunday, and it is good that a week has passed since we last took communion, because in this way we can measure the whole of our lives since then by the practice of taking communion, what the taking of the body and blood of the Lord has meant to us, how we experience the effect of communion in our everyday lives, and what good has this holy act done for our daily lives?We saw last Sunday that the problem with the sacrament of baptism is that we have relegated it to our childhood, and in adulthood we no longer even think about being baptised: the problem with Communion is that we relegate it to the church, and later, in the struggles, temptations, difficulties, tasks and joys of the following days of the week, we no longer even think about having taken Communion on Sunday. Our spiritual attitude is usually that Communion is the end of something, namely a church service that has gone on long enough. It was beautiful, it was touching, but it is over, and then something else begins: life with all its thousand problems begins. And that's not how it should be! It should not be the end of something, but the beginning of something: at the Lord's table, filled, strengthened, nourished, life begins again with its thousand problems and troubles, but in a different, more Christian way than before. Because if not, why did we take communion? We should also celebrate Communion more in the light of our behaviour in the secular life, that is, with the awareness that we live our daily life coming from the Lord's table. The nourishing power of this holy hospitality should radiate outside the church, the light of the festive hours should shine into the rest of our lives! For otherwise, our communion is not only of little value, but downright harmful and dangerous!
Here is what the apostle Paul wrote to the church at Corinth: "Is not the cup of thanksgiving which we bless our communion with the blood of Christ? So the apostle Paul says that the wine we drink is our fellowship with the blood of Christ; the bread we eat is our fellowship with the body of Christ. By our participation in faith in these virtues we have entered into the power of Christ's redemptive death, and the power of Christ's redemptive death has flowed into us. This means, first of all, that in that bread and wine we receive from God the merit and result of Christ's death: the forgiveness of sins. That bread and wine is the testimony of our debt that has been torn away. Though God might see my whole life as a ruined and lost life, He sees it as something else: as one who has been acquitted before His judgment seat! And this is not my work, not my merit, but the work and merit of Christ. Communion is as visible a sign, as a seal, of the forgiveness of sins received, as the reassuring handshake and kiss after reconciliation.
In fact, according to this Scripture, Communion means even more than that: it means not only union with the merit and effect of Christ's redemptive death, but union with Jesus Christ himself. He Himself once said, "He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood, dwells in me, and I in him." (Jn 6:56) Think of Christ making you partaker of His divine nature through that bread and wine, just as the vine and the branch on it are one body and one sap. The branches are connected to the vine in such a way that they are part of it. It cannot be said that the shoots are rooted in the vine, but the connection is much closer. When a plant puts its roots down into the ground, it absorbs the nutritive forces, but the ground is something quite different from the plant. But the rod is completely one with the plant, in organic community, the same life force flows and circulates in both. Such is the intimate and intimate communion of life which Christ creates with those who eat His body and drink His blood. "The cup of thanksgiving which we bless, is it not our communion with the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not our communion with the body of Christ?"(1 Cor 10:16) This is a mystery that can only be referred to in such a familiar phrase: I in Christ and Christ in me.
Here, in short, is the essence of communion: full forgiveness of sins and being filled with the life of Christ. Well: is that what we have? Is this really what happened to us at the Lord's table? What have we experienced of it in the last seven days? It is a absolution from God followed by a complete break with forgiven sin on our part. That is, deliverance from recognised, specific sins, a visible cleansing in our actions and in our whole conduct. To hope for ever-renewing forgiveness for ever-renewing sins: an impudent abuse of God. To be forgiven in Christ and remain in sin: a mockery of God's grace! This is what the apostle writes very harshly to the Corinthians when he says: "You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of the devils; you cannot partake of the Lord's table and the table of the devils." (1 Cor 10:21) How shall I make you understand what a terrible, what a shameful duality this is: partakers of the Lord's table and of the devil's table? Unfortunately, we can only visualize in externalities. Imagine, for example, a pastor in a robe, preaching from the pulpit and distributing bread and wine from the Lord's Table, then going to a pub in the same robe, getting drunk, fighting, singing obscene songs and bawling in the street. We'd all shudder. But it is far more horrifying if someone, wearing the invisible white robe of Christ's forgiving merit, continues to commit the same sins as before. To such conduct Paul says: "Or do we provoke the Lord to anger?" The grace that man abuses becomes God's wrath and judgment upon us! Beware, brethren! Do not provoke the wrath of God against yourselves. It is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God!
Holy Communion is not only a liturgical act in which we occasionally bathe our souls in a lukewarm, pleasurable devotion, but also a concentrated, condensed form of Christian life, a continual re-immersion and reaffirmation in the life of which Jesus Christ is the centre. In Communion, we are prepared and reinvigorated for the continuation of an unmistakably Christian life, lived out with even greater devotion. To walk in ways beyond our strength, Christ nourishes us with His blood and body. I have experienced this strengthening effect of the Lord's Supper so many times in dying people! The soul, weary with death and trembling with death, was reconciled, comforted, strengthened by the power of this heavenly food and drink, and set out on the most difficult journey. But Jesus wants to prepare us not only for death, but also for life, with this food of strength which he distributes at this table. He distributes Himself, to transmit His life through our actions, our words, our feelings. More and more, Christ wants to make us into people who, like the sunlight on a stained glass window, are illuminated by the light of Jesus Christ. Oh, how the people around us long for this light! Have they received any of it through you? And if not, why did you take communion?
"The cup of thanksgiving which we bless, is it not our communion with the blood of Christ? Is not the bread which we break our communion with the body of Christ?" The communion with Christ which Communion establishes is practically realized in full, dissolved fraternal communion with men. Here, at the Lord's Table, as I have said many times, by sharing in the body and blood of Christ, we literally become brothers and sisters, one body and one blood in Christ. Spurgeon once related an interesting experience in this connection: he was attending a Lord's Supper service and sitting in the pew with people he did not know. Soon afterwards, he met one of the men sitting next to him on the street. He approached him and asked, "Dear Sir, how are you? The man he addressed was quite touched and thanked Spurgeon for the confidence with which he had addressed him, and invited him to join him immediately for a cup of tea. A friendship was formed between them which was never broken again, either in time or in eternity. - Yes, that is how our communion with Christ should continue after the Lord's Supper, new bonds of brotherhood and friendship should be woven here in the church, among ourselves. Let us take deadly seriously what the apostle says: that if we are together at the Lord's table here in the church, in devout family fellowship, and then we think of each other again outside with suspicions, hidden passions, resentments - we provoke God to anger! Whoever does not have in his heart, in the fellowship of the body and blood of Christ, a dissolving of his angry, hateful, distrustful feelings towards another person, not only has not benefited from the Lord's Supper, but has been harmed by it!
Brethren, you cannot be guests at the Lord's table and at the devil's table at the same time! You have provoked the Lord to anger! The brotherly fellowship that communion brings us together in, let us not leave it here in the church! Outside, too, we are bound together in holy union by communion with the blood and body of Christ! We are bound together not only with those who share communion with us, but with all people! There is a law which every living creature on this earth is bound to obey. It is the law of selfishness, whose great commandment is this: Love thyself above all else. It is a terrible, deadly law! It is the cause of all misery in human coexistence: war, suffering, competition, crisis, hatred. He who obeys this law will himself perish. But Jesus, precisely by willingly submitting to the law, struck it down. His broken body and blood is the testimony that He loved others more than Himself - even His enemies. Those who are in fellowship with Jesus are freed from the law of selfishness. You are called to put into practice and live the law of Christ, the great commandment of love, in contrast to the law of the world! Against all! In the small, insignificant, uninteresting events of life as well as in the great things.
The process by which Christ strengthens us with His broken body and shed blood is called, in short, sanctification. Sanctification is not about convulsive effort, not about doing something breathtakingly great, but about the exercise of love for people, the proclamation of the gospel in action, the outworking of Christ in us. That is what He gave Himself to last Sunday, and that is what He gives Himself to again and again in His broken body and shed blood, here at His table!
Amen
Date: 6 May 1956.