What Happened to Communion? | Theocast

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Hi, this is Justin. Today on Theocast, we are asking the question, what happened to communion? If you listened to last week's episode, you know that we asked the question then, what happened to baptism?

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And had a conversation about the ways that the evangelical church typically views that sacrament and how it's a little bit different, maybe a lot a bit different than how

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Christians viewed it through history. Well, the same is true of communion. So today John and I are going to consider the Lord's Supper.

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Why did God give it to us? What is it for? And the answers to those questions might surprise you.

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We hope that you find it to be very encouraging and hope -giving because for many of you, frankly, the

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Lord's Supper has probably been something that's produced anxiety rather than giving you assurance and nourishment and sustenance and strength.

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So be encouraged in the Lord Jesus Christ and what He has done for you today. Over in SR, we're going to try to be helpful to people who are in a context where the

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Supper is maybe not practiced as regularly. And we're going to give some thoughts there in general about reformed worship. So stay tuned.

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If you'd like to help support Theocast, you can do that by leaving us a review on iTunes and subscribing on your favorite podcast app.

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You can also follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Plus, we have a Facebook group if you'd like to join the conversation there.

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Thanks for listening. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ.

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Conversations about the Christian life from a confessional, Reformed, and pastoral perspective. Your hosts today are

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John Moffitt, who is pastor of Grace Reformed Church in beautiful Spring Hill, Tennessee.

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I'm Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in also beautiful Asheville, North Carolina.

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John, it's good to be with you behind the microphones, man. We're here on a Wednesday. It's been a holiday week, a little bit unusual week for us,

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I guess, in that regard. Sometimes when you have an extra day off, it can compress the rest of the week.

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I'm sure you're familiar with the things that I'm speaking of, but we're doing well and are glad to be able to talk about our topic for today.

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When you think about days off, I mean, Justin, you and I both take Mondays off, and so Fourth of July fell on a

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Monday, and it's kind of like, well, that's a bummer. That's a bummer.

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Wednesday is now the first day back in the office, and it just means there's a lot more to do in three days' time. Here we go.

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We are excited about a series we're doing on the means of grace.

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We talked about what baptism is last week, and obviously we're not doing this in any kind of order, but we are going to attempt to finish this and talk about preaching and prayer and fellowship as the other means.

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These are important because, Justin and I would say, it's the resting heart rate of the

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Christian life. This is what God has given us. This is why I love the word ordinary. It's how we are to ordinarily live within the sphere of God's grace.

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That's why we call it ordinary means of grace. Unfortunately, what has happened is that communion, like baptism, has shifted from being this ordinary means by which

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God grows and sustains us and cares for us, and it has become something that is a negative experience for people.

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They become anxious. They worry about their position. They worry about their actions.

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We're going to kind of look at what happened because of things like revivalism and pragmatism and what has happened to communion or the

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Lord's table, however it is that you want to use that. Then we're going to look at it from a biblical, historical perspective and how it should be something that is celebrated in a way that excites our faith, not necessarily brings dread.

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It's true, Justin. I grew up in a context where we did not take communion on a regular basis other than probably once a quarter.

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If you missed it for whatever reason, you missed it. I know of people who would miss it on purpose because they didn't feel like they were worthy or ready.

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I know when the Passion video movie came out, a lot of people would watch that Saturday night before taking communion as a reminder.

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It became a very heavy moment for the congregation.

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The biggest thing was just the self -examination, being able to really examine myself and see, am

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I coming in a worthy manner, which I didn't even know what that meant other than I hope I hadn't done something horrible the last week, last month, or the last quarter, however long it had been, going into it.

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You have these quiet moments before communion where you're confessing your sins, and it's really between me and God.

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We're going to get to the word communion in a minute, and I love that word, but that communion isn't me between you and God.

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It's different, but that's the experience most people have. They're okay if they've grown up in a church where the

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Lord's Table isn't taken often. They're fine with it because it's not been a positive experience for them. Justin Perdue grew up in a church where the

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Lord's Table was not practiced or observed very often. At one point in my life, the only times that I remember really doing it was

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Easter Sunday and then Christmas Eve of all times. The Christmas Eve service is not even a

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Lord's Day service. The Easter Sunday service was when you would have as many visitors as you would ever have.

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It's a very interesting strategy and approach to it, and it might convey some of the misunderstandings that exist in many contexts.

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For a portion of my young life, it was a situation where we would observe the

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Lord's Supper once a quarter, like you were saying. I want to maybe double down on some of the things that you said.

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We acknowledged this last week in our podcast on what happened to baptism. And in even asking these questions, what happened to baptism, what happened to communion, we are trying to communicate that the way in which the average evangelical would be thinking about these sacraments, or in particular, the way that the average evangelical has been taught to think about these sacraments, is not what

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Christians, certainly in the Reformed tradition, have always believed. There are some good biblical confessional things that we can say, which is the second portion of today's podcast.

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It's helpful to point out some of these things that I think will resonate with many of the listeners, even at the level of our experience.

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We have turned the sacraments, being baptism and the Lord's Supper, wholesale into things that are about our faithfulness to God before they are ever about His faithfulness to us.

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It's about our devotion, our dedication, our sincerity, maybe some kind of personal fervor and intensity within us.

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In particular, now thinking about the Lord's Supper, like you said, I think that the

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Lord's Supper is one of the most anxiety -producing experiences for many believers, for many well -meaning saints.

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The table is anxiety -riddled and anxiety -producing. It's this time where I need to make sure, like you said, hyper -introspection.

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I need to make sure that I'm coming to the table in an appropriate manner, that I'm not coming in an unworthy way.

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Nobody really knows how to define that. What we assume it means is multiple things.

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I better not have sinned greatly in the span from the last time that I took the supper to now, because if I did,

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I probably shouldn't come. I need to work myself up into some kind of emotional frenzy where I feel appropriately grieved over my sin, and I feel an appropriate amount of intensity in terms of my devotion to God and my desire to be godly.

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If I can't get myself into that right emotional framework, then maybe I shouldn't come. It becomes this frightening thing where we are waiting on God to judge us and drop the hammer because we are not doing well enough and we're not feeling the way we should.

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As I'm just saying this, John, we'll maybe talk about this more in a minute, how pietism and revivalism, two historical movements and two methods of thought, streams of thought in the

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Christian church, it's obvious how these things have affected this. It's because of the emphasis on what we feel and the emphasis on a hyper introspection.

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I just want to reiterate that we have turned the supper into something that is about my faithfulness and our faithfulness to God.

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Then it raises all kinds of questions like, well, what is the supper for? Is this just like a badge of our discipleship?

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Is this something that we're doing for God? Is this like a godliness check?

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Are we doing well enough and we're just trying to evaluate that four times a year or once a month?

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Is that the value of the table? Justin Perdue is a question that I love asking.

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It was asked of me years ago when I was contemplating the means of grace.

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What's more important, the sermon on Sunday or the Lord's table? Everyone would always pick the sermon.

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They would always say, well, the sermon is the most important thing. That's because they have never seen the biblical perspective of the table because the answer should be yes.

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They're of equal value because the table cannot come to us outside of the means of the word.

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They must be together. This is why even the confessions and the reformers talk about this, where you cannot separate the two.

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Now listen, there's a lot of reasons why we got to where we're at today. One, it's lack of confessionalism.

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Two, pragmatism. Every Sunday, talking about the death of Christ for your sins doesn't work well in a church that's trying to promote this progress of the

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Christian life and this happy celebratory. It's all about progress and moving forward.

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Think about television churches, these big churches. The reason why they don't want to do communion is that it's not a high point of life.

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You have pragmatism, then you think about revivalism, where revivalism then uses as an opportunity to manipulate people and to control them.

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Not only that, it changes the outcome. The reason why

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I was given the explanation of why we don't do this more often was because we don't want it to become meaningless like the

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Roman Catholic Church. It was always a response to the Roman Catholic Church. Justin Perdue To which I would say, well I guess we shouldn't preach every

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Sunday. I guess we shouldn't read the Bible every Sunday or sing every Sunday because those things are going to become meaningless.

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We don't talk about anything else when it comes to the elements of corporate worship. I want to go back to a word we've been using and then

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I have an illustration that I think would be helpful here. Communion means common union.

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We gather because we all are in common union with Christ. We all have a commonality amongst us that the

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Spirit lives within us and all the benefits of Christ's resurrection are ours. Forgiveness of sins and inherited righteousness.

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To rightly receive the Lord's blessing of encouragement and faith, all of that has to happen within a particular way.

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In other words, you and I cannot just take bread and juice and think to ourselves, I am now in receiving communion from the

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Father because that is not true. It is regulated by Scripture that it happens within the local body administrated by the elders by means of the

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Word. In other words, we can't just all come in and silently sit there and say, no, the gospel must be preached.

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Calvin makes a very strong argument for this. If it's not preached, then it's of no value. It must be with the

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Word. The point of it is we are in common union, meaning that there is a sense that we like to individualize that moment where it's between me and God.

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The nature of it is that we together are realizing that we are brought together because of what

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Christ has done. As I hold the bread and as I hold the wine, I'm looking at my brothers and sisters in Christ who are also holding the bread and holding the wine.

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We are about to receive this encouragement of faith and strengthening of our faith.

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Justin Perdue I think that we have obviously seen a loss of an understanding of the real presence of Christ in the

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Lord's Supper. That's not debatable. I think most people who would understand themselves to be evangelical, if you were to ask them, what are we doing when we come to the table?

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I think the most anybody could say is that we're remembering what Christ did for us. We need to do it in a worthy manner so we don't eat and drink judgment on ourselves.

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Those are probably the things that people could say. When I use the language of real presence, what

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I am saying is that I'm just a historically Reformed Christian. I understand that the

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Lord Jesus Christ is really and spiritually present with His people.

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Through the bread and wine, He ministers to us in our need. He blesses us.

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We receive from Christ as we take the bread and the cup. People don't think in these terms, because that sounds

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Roman Catholic. It sounds sacerdotal, but it's not. Jon Moffitt Just to project in there, we would accept that from the preaching of the

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Word. As a human being speaking the Word, we would agree that God uses that to powerfully bring

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His Word into our hearts. God communicates His blessing through the frailty of a man.

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He also communicates His blessings through means such as bread and wine. Justin Perdue Even here,

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I don't mean to launch us down this road and we won't do this now. Maybe this is another podcast for another day if we wanted to.

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But the Lord has always conveyed spiritual blessing through physical means. He's always been about that.

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It shouldn't wig us out as reformed Protestants that the Lord would convey grace to us received by faith through the physical means of bread and wine.

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It's not controversial. The Lord is present to meet us in our need. We're going to talk about that more in just a minute, but I think it's obvious that most people don't think in these terms.

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That, to me, is probably a factor into the consideration of why the supper is not practiced as often as it is.

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If you understood it to be that, a means of God's grace where the Lord ministers to us and meets us in our need and nourishes us spiritually, and He's really present with us when we do this,

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I think the burden of proof would lie with those who say, yeah, we shouldn't do that that often. It's not that important. To be very clear, the

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Scripture does not prescribe a frequency in terms of how often we are to practice the Lord's table. But for us, we understand means of grace, the primary two being word and sacrament.

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We want to administer those regularly in the assembled church on the Lord's Day. From my perspective, and John, I know you'll agree, for my money, the best way to respond to the preaching of the

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Word is to come to the table. We don't need altar calls. We don't need all this nonsense.

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We come to the Lord's table to receive Christ there. We do a call every Sunday to focus our hearts and minds on remembering what

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Christ has done for us so that we might receive from the Father food. This goes back to John 6.

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Also speaking of John 6 and the idea of food, I'm going to be preaching on this, and we're going to do a podcast on this soon on prayer.

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But when Jesus says, give us this day our daily bread, I do believe he is referencing not a physical realm of sustaining, but a spiritual realm of sustaining.

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God sustains us through spiritual means. How many thousands of Christians throughout the years have died from starvation?

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It wasn't because they were in disobedience, it was because they were in obedience to God. We have to be used as an example of manna in the wilderness as the provision of God.

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Jesus even says, as the manna has come down from heaven, so have I. I'm manna. I am your provision.

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I am the thing that sustains you. Justin Perdue is involved in a conversation about manna.

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He had just fed people miraculously, and people would come to him again for bread. He starts this conversation about what they really want from him and all this kind of stuff.

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People start to raise, our fathers were fed in the wilderness by God with bread from heaven. He's like, let's talk about the manna.

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The manna was actually about me because I am the true bread that's come down from heaven. He then goes on to talk about how anybody who's going to live needs to feed on him, needs to feed on his flesh and blood.

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John and I do understand that the table is in view there. But what Christ is communicating most fundamentally is that he is our food.

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He is our nourishment. He is our sustenance, like you just said. I think the parallels are really striking when you think about the manna and then you think about Christ.

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The people of God in the old covenant were sustained as they sojourned in the wilderness by bread that came down from heaven.

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We now, in the new covenant, as we sojourn in this world on our way to the celestial city, we are sustained by the bread that's come down from heaven, namely

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Christ himself. We receive him by faith in the word, and then we come and receive him and all of his benefits by faith in the bread and the cup.

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If you're new to Theocast, we have a free ebook available for you called Faith vs. Faithfulness, a primer on rest.

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If you've struggled with legalism, a lack of assurance, or simply want to know what it means to live by faith alone, we wrote this little book to provide a simple answer from a

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Reformed confessional perspective. You can get your free copy at theocast .org

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slash primer. Jon Moffitt Well, it's something that we carry with us until he returns because we will no longer need, you know, literally he says,

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I give you this thing until I return, right? There's this great illustration that kind of helped me in understanding

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Victor Hugo's famous book, Les Mis. I'm not going to go through the whole story, but there are two characters that I think is important here.

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So, Jean Valjean is this criminal who spent, you know, 20 years in prison. He finally gets out, can't find anybody to give him any job or any anyways, but the bishop finally gives him grace.

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He lets him sit, eat at his table, sleep at his bed, and in the middle of the night, Jean Valjean says, what a fool this bishop is.

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I'm going to steal all of his silver, and I'm going to go and start a new life for myself. And well, you know, obviously

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Jean Valjean is not very smart because he ends up getting captured again by Javert, the law in the story.

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Javert is the law. The bishop is grace in this story. So, they bring him back to the bishop, and he says, he has stolen all your silver.

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And he's like, oh, I am so sorry, gentlemen, for the confusion. This is the bishop. I'm so sorry for the confusion, gentlemen.

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Jean Valjean, did you not remember to take the candlesticks, which is the most valuable thing that the bishop owned?

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And he gave him these two candlesticks. And of course, he says, sorry, gentlemen, for the confusion, but my friend here, he is free to go.

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And so, Jean Valjean leaves, and the bishop, the last thing he says to him, he says, use these, basically grace, use this to change your life, which is interesting at the very end of his life.

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And a lot happens at the end of the story. And Jean Valjean ends up learning how to show grace and give mercy. And that's kind of what the story is about, is law and mercy.

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At the end of his life, they're talking about how he dies. It's beautiful.

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And behind him, he's sitting in this chair, and behind him on the mantle on the fireplace are two candlesticks glowing.

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And that's the scene by which he dies. And the way at which word it is, basically, he dies in the light, in the presence of grace.

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So, he never sold those candlesticks. He held on to them because they were the constant reminder of what it is that changed him and what he received.

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And it's an amazing picture of communion in that we are given this constant glow of grace every week where we get to be reminded of, because in the story it was, here's grace, and then they messed up, and here's more grace.

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And that's like, I love what James says, but he gives more grace. Communion is that more grace every week, right?

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We come and we live in the light of God's grace. So, we are remembering not what we have done for God.

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This is why he says, do this in remembrance of me. We are remembering what God in Christ did for us, and in that remembrance, the

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Spirit comes and strengthens us. Justin Perdue In one sense, we are remembering when

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God remembered us. Whenever God remembers anything in the

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Scripture, it's not just a cognitive thing. When God remembers his promises, he acts. He's acting based on his promises.

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I pointed out that acting upon his promise in the history of the world is not only the coming of Christ in his perfect life, but then the culmination of that perfect life in his sacrificial death for us.

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So, we're remembering when God remembered us in that regard. I think the language that Jesus uses even when he institutes the

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Lord's Supper, for example, in Matthew and in Luke is really good because you get language about the covenant.

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The fact that this is the new covenant in my blood, that's Luke 22 .20.

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This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood. So, the new covenant is established by the blood of Christ.

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That's something that should be on our minds even as we come and partake and receive. In Matthew's Gospel, in Matthew 26, he breaks the bread and says, take and eat, this is my body.

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He took a cup and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them saying, drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.

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That also should be on our minds as we're coming to receive the bread and the cup.

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As surely as I put the bread and the cup in my mouth, Christ died for me. I am a part of the new covenant in Christ's blood and my sins are forgiven on account of him.

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That's what we're doing as we come. I'm going to read a little bit of language from people who have died long ago, but this might be good fodder for conversation for us.

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Then we'll even look to our own confession and some of the language that's contained there. This will probably carry us through to the end of the regular show, just in thinking about the gift that the

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Lord's Supper is to us from the Lord. John Calvin, many know, pastored in Geneva.

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In that church's liturgy for the Lord's Supper, we would read these words. Let us understand, therefore, that this sacrament, talking about the

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Lord's Supper, is a medicine for poor spiritually sick people. We see only bread and wine, yet we do not doubt that he accomplishes spiritually in our souls all that he demonstrates to us outwardly through these visible signs, namely, that he is the heavenly bread that feeds and nourishes us for eternal life.

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Calvin also elsewhere wrote that to demand perfection in order to receive the

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Lord's Supper is ignorant and stupid. He says it would make it useless and superfluous because it was not instituted for the perfect, but for the weak and feeble, so as to awaken, prompt, rouse, and exercise whatever their faith and love might lack.

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Justin, even going back to that for a moment, I know we glossed over this, but the word common union is a play on that.

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What's the one barrier that would keep you from the table if you have aught with a brother?

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That's what it is. We're communing together, receiving of the Father. How is it that you can receive grace, but you're unwilling to show it?

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That's why Paul says don't do that. Don't take this in a way that you're showing favoritism for yourself.

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We need to discern the body of Christ, meaning we need to consider our brethren as we're coming to the table.

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I'd like to read a real quick quote from our own confession. This is where Justin and I find a lot of confidence.

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This is chapter 30 on the Lord's Supper in the London Baptist Confession. The opening paragraph says this,

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The Supper of the Lord Jesus was instituted by Him the same night He was betrayed. It was to be observed in His churches to the end of the age as a perpetual remembrance and display of the sacrifice of Himself and His death.

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It is given for the confirmation of faith of believers. That for our assurance.

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It's so good. It is given for the confirmation of faith of believers in all benefits of Christ's death, their spiritual nourishment and growth in Him, and the further engagement in and to all the duties they owe

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Him. The Supper is to be a bond and pledge of their communion with Christ and each other.

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There is so much packaged in there, and we've already unwrapped some of it. Justin, why would the

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Reformers, the writers of our confession, see this as a confirmation of faith? It is so opposite of modern -day

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Christianity. We look to us as the confirmation of our faith, and the Reformers say we look to Christ as the confirmation of our faith.

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Reformers use this kind of language about the preaching of the Word as well. How are disciples confirmed in the faith? It's to have the mercy and love and grace of Christ extolled to us.

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To have the power and the office of Christ extolled to us. How are we confirmed in the faith?

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To have the bread and the wine given to us, so that we might participate in the body and the blood of Christ through this bread that we break and the cup that we drink.

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It confirms us in the faith. Justin, if you're a person of character, you cannot participate in good conscience unless you believe in reality.

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I believe in reality that Christ did die for my sins, that His blood was shed, and that I am a part of the new covenant.

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Therefore, I receive that. That's the confirmation of faith they're talking about. Unless you're not a person of character, if you're trusting in the gospel truth that it's communicating, it's a confirmation of your faith.

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Justin Perdue No, amen. It's a confirmation of the faith of believers in all the benefits of Christ's death. This is, again, getting into that participation language.

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We participate in the body and blood of Christ in the supper. What does that mean? It's that spiritually speaking, the

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Lord Jesus Christ ministers to us, feeds us, and we're going to talk about that nourishment piece in a minute, but He is communicating to us spiritually the benefits of His death.

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What are those? Why do we need Jesus? This is a question I ask my children on a regular basis.

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Why do you need Jesus? The two things that we can say immediately are forgiveness of sins and righteousness.

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The benefits of His death start with that. The forgiveness of sins, righteousness under the law, and resurrection is coming as a result of those things.

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But the benefits of His death are those two things, forgiveness and righteousness. It's confirming us in the faith in all of those benefits.

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Every time we come to the table, the Lord Jesus Christ is reminding and blessing and giving grace to that end.

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We would be confirmed in that. Like I said a minute ago, as surely as you take this bread and this cup, your sins are forgiven.

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As surely as you take this bread and you are just in the eyes of God because of Him. The reason why it needs to be remembered is that the human heart wants to find means to claim,

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I did this. As Ephesians 2 says, so that no one may boast, communion was offered by the

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Father through Christ saying, remember how you were brought into relationship with the

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Father. It is a confirmation because it pushes you outside of yourself and looking to Christ, which there's a second aspect to it.

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It says it gives a confirmation of faith of believers in all the benefits of Christ's death, their spiritual nourishment and growth.

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Let's start with nourishment. When we think of nourishment, we think of being healthy to be fed.

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This is why it's called a means of grace in that there is a way in which

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God sustains His believers. We're going to get into this some more as this series goes on, but I have to stop and say we do not see the ordinary means of grace as the means of our nourishment.

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We love to individualize this. It's me and my discipline that is the means of my nourishment.

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If you look at every ordinary means of grace we've done so far, which is baptism, that is not an individual act.

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Communion is not an individual act. Preaching taught word is not an individual act.

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I'm going to quote our dear friend Steve Meisner when he says, quoting about being a good

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Berean, a good Berean is not one who individually goes to the Word to confirm the words.

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They did it together. It was a corporate exercise. The point of it is God is always using the gathered body and His means to nourish us.

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We just love to say, no, it's my individual efforts. It's my own discipline. It's my own whatever it is you want to put in there.

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I'm sorry, but as of right now, the promises of Scripture are coming to us as a corporate gathered body.

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We receive the food of the Word. We receive the food of the table on the

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Lord's Day. It is how the Lord sustains us in this life. Like I said, I love the parallels between Israel in the wilderness and the manna and the saints in the new covenant, sojourners, exiles, feeding on the

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Lord Jesus Christ, being sustained in this pilgrimage until we are brought home finally. We are nourished and we're grown in the faith.

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How many people would ever answer that? What's happening in the Lord's Supper? Part of my growth in the faith is the fact that I come to the table each

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Sunday. I've been baptized and I come to the table every Sunday. This again is an ordinary means of grace perspective.

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We understand that our theology, our piety, and our practice are grounded in the local church.

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In particular, our piety is realized through the ordinary means of grace.

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How do you grow and become more godly? How do you become more pious? How do you further engage in and to all the duties that you owe the

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Lord Jesus Christ? How would you go about doing that? You come to the table for that reason.

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We have made the table about our godliness when in reality the table was given to us by God for our godliness.

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It's a paradigm shift. Justin Perdue is talking about the godliness of a person and he says if you're not doing these actions, you've forgotten.

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You've been cleansed from your former sins. Gospel amnesia. Right. Gospel amnesia. Jesus says in order you don't forget, remember this.

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You think about Philippians 2. If you see the benefits of being in Christ, consider others more significant than yourself.

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This is where the writers of the Confession get this. Ephesians 4, walk in a manner worthy.

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These are the duties that are required of you. Walk in a manner worthy of calling to what you have been called with gentleness, meekness, and patience.

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When you think about if you're struggling in your obedience, if you're struggling to glorify God and loving others, if you're struggling to be satisfied in Christ in the will that he has for you, we are instructed by Scripture to be using the means of grace, aka communion, to sustain us and grow us so that we can do the duties that are required of us.

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To be clear, these are not duties to confirm our salvation. These are not duties to earn favor with God.

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They are the reflection of the nature. This is why we say they are born out of gratitude. What is it you are looking to?

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The gift of the gospel through the means of the table as your motivation to obey the

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Father. Last thing it says in our Confession about the table that I think we want to talk about for a moment is this.

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This is the last sentence of 30 .1 in the Second London Concession. The supper is to be a bond and pledge of their communion, so common union with Christ and each other.

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This again is why you don't take the Lord's Supper individually. You wouldn't take it by yourself someplace.

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You would take it with the body of Christ because the supper is about our union with Christ and our union with one another.

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We use the language a lot in our church. We all cling to one another as we cling to Christ. That's the picture of it.

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This is the language of 1 Corinthians in a number of different places. We've already picked up on 1 Corinthians 11 and how when

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Paul says that if somebody comes and eats and drinks without discerning the body, what he's meaning is you're not discerning the body of Christ.

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That's what it is to take the supper in an unworthy manner. But then in 1 Corinthians 10, I want to pick back up on this language, 1

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Corinthians 10, 16, and 17. The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ?

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The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.

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This idea of our union with Christ and our participation in the body and blood of Christ is inextricably tethered, according to the

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Apostle Paul, to our union with one another as Christ's body. It's a beautiful picture of how we together come with a collective sense of our need of Christ.

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We together come to receive the bread and the cup as a sign of our union with Christ, the forgiveness of our sins and righteousness in his name, and our union with one another as his people.

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It's so good. It's very edifying. Jon Moffitt It is. In that last phrase, again, it just goes against everything that we have been trained in.

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The supper is to bind us together as believers. We individualize it.

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This is why I say, look to your left, look to your right, and realize we are being bound together through growth and sustenance.

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Together, we are receiving from Christ, not individually. When someone asks you, Justin, how is your faith in Christ doing?

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Our thought is individually. For instance, if I were to say, how is your family doing?

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You wouldn't think about yourself. You'd think, well, I'm with my wife and my children. That's how we should think about our faith.

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How is my family doing? How are we as a body? He describes you as one body.

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Communion is just another reminder that you are not alone. At least, you're not supposed to be. You're not supposed to be doing this by yourself.

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There is so much more we can say, and we'll say, so I'm going to throw it over to Justin. Justin Perdue So, we're about to head to some additional content time known as the

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Semper Reformanda Podcast, or SR for short. For the cool kids, they say SR, I think.

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What this is is some additional content Jon and I record each week for our members, for people who have partnered with Theocast to support the ministry.

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If you're curious about how you could become an SR member, you can find all the information about that over on the website

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Theocast .org. I think it's pretty straightforward. You guys are bright, and you know how to navigate a website.

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We're confident in that. There's a lot that you're privy to if you're an SR member, not just this extra podcast, but an app, an

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SR community that's being built of brothers and are wrestling through the same things you are and are learning and growing together.

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It's a really sweet environment, really encouraging. People answer one another's questions. It's like Facebook, but better.

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That's what I always say. I encourage you to consider becoming an SR member today if you're not already. Then you can hear whatever

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Jon and I are going to talk about pertaining to the Lord's Supper. Jon Moffitt I think we should talk about what if you're in a church that doesn't take it every week, how do you handle that?

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I think we should talk about that. Justin Perdue We could give that a go, maybe amongst other things. We'll see. The Lord knows.

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Anyway, we're grateful for you tuning in today. We hope you were encouraged by this conversation. If there's one final takeaway from us, remember that baptism and the

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Lord's Supper, both as sacraments that God has given us for our benefit, are about his faithfulness to us, not our faithfulness to him.