LORD’S SUPPER & WATER BAPTISM (PART I)
By Akin Ojumu
“Please, how does the Holy Communion help a believer? When I take it, what should I expect? After I eat the bread and wine, what next?”
Those were the questions posed to me a couple of days ago. What prompted the questions was my comment on a video posted on Abel Damina’s YouTube channel. The said video was on a message preached by Abel Damina where he dismissively told his audience that the Lord’s Supper is of no value to them. According to him, if the Lord’s Supper were that important, how come Paul talked about it only in his letter to the Corinthians but never once mentioned it in the letters he wrote to the other Churches.
Before going into the nitty gritty of what I wrote in response to Abel Damina’s belittling of the Lord’s Supper, let me first share with you my response to the questions prompted by my comments.
Asking how the Holy Communion helps the Christian is not the right question you should be asking. Instead, a better question to ask is why we celebrate the Holy Communion, in the first place. When we view the Christian faith solely from the lens of “what do I get from this?” we are no different from the infidel.
Primarily, the reason we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, aka the Holy Communion, is because the Lord Jesus commanded us to do so.
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.””
The Lord’s Supper is a remembrance of what Christ did for us and a celebration of what we receive as a result of His sacrifice. As we eat the bread and drink the wine, we testify of His substitutionary atonement i.e., His vicarious death. We announce to the world that our God and Savior traded places with us. In exchange for our sinfulness, He gave us His righteousness. Christ died so that we, who are unworthy, may live.
2 CORINTHIANS 5:21
“For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.”
The accounts of the Lord’s Supper are found in all the four Gospels. You can find it in Matthew 26:26-29; Mark 14:17-25; Luke 22:7-22; and John 13:21-30. Likewise in the Epistles, Apostle Paul wrote concerning the Lord’s Supper in 1 Corinthians 11:23-29.
When the Lord Jesus said, “Do this in remembrance of me,” that is an explicit command that this was a ceremony that must be continued in perpetuity until His return (1 Corinthians 11:26). He was also letting us know that the Passover, which is a type and shadow of the death of the Lamb of God who would take away the sin of the world, was fulfilled in the Lord’s Supper.
If you appreciate what Jesus did for you, you won’t ask how the Holy Communion helps the believer. When you understand the price that was paid to save your soul from being eternally alienated from God, you’ll not hesitate to celebrate the Lord’s Supper.
Now, to the second part of the question:
“When I take it, what should I expect? After I eat the bread and wine, what next?”
The answer depends on what exactly you are asking. There are no esoteric experiences that follow the eating of the bread of the Lord’s Supper. Don’t expect to feel tingling sensations in your legs or electric current running down your spine when you drink the wine of the Holy Communion. Such made for TV melodrama doesn’t come with observing this sacred sacrament.
Besides the fact that it is an explicit command of Our Lord and Savior, which, in and of itself, should be enough for a follower of Christ, the Holy Communion is an ordinance that helps us to “see” spiritual realities that would otherwise be hidden from us. And in our seeing of these things our believing is strengthened.
The sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, like Water Baptism, is not only a visual demonstration of our faith in Christ; it also helps to feed that faith. It is a visible enactment of invisible realities. It marks us as members of a community; God’s community. The Lord’s Supper signifies, seals, and exhibits to believing partakers the benefits of Christ’s mediation.
Writing on what Lord’s Supper and Baptism do in the lives of the believers, Barry Cooper of the Ligonier Ministries said:
“Not just engaging our minds but also our senses. Not just memorializing what God has done for us in the past, but also emphasizing our status as His people in the present and anticipating our inheritance in the future. Building our faith that God’s promises are real and trustworthy. As the preaching of the Word makes the Gospel audible, so the sacraments make it visible, and God stirs up faith by both means.”
So, what exactly did I write in response to Abel Damina’s denigration of the Lord’s Supper that prompted the questions I was asked? Well, we’ll get to that next time.
You are an olodo writer.
ReplyDeleteSo the "lord supper" to you is exclusive to Christ right?
And you claim to be a bible teacher.
Dont you see it has always been the practice of the Jews.
Evening food is evening food, why are you making it a big deal.
You are the one even teaching nonsense.
I wasted my data and time reading this crap of yours.
Stop it and go read more on it plz.