We know that we were bought with a price (1 Corinthians 6:20). There have been many people that were born into the world who knew guilt but who never knew that a sacrifice was made for their guilt. Christians are not those people. We have had the gospel preached to us, and many of us have believers in our family tree going back generations. Even if you do not have a long personal history, we live in a time and place dominated by the price paid on the cross.
Last Sunday was Palm Sunday. We remember when Jesus entered Jerusalem knowing that it was time to make the payment. He had been storing up payment for thirty years, blood, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot, that was completely without sin.
Paul told the Ephesian elders to work in light of this price.
Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood. (Acts 20:28)
Paul’s exhortation was to the shepherds, and Richard Baxter wrote an entire book rooted in the soil of this one verse titled The Reformed Pastor. As with Paul, Baxter addressed leaders, and here is one of his most pointed questions: “If sin be evil, why do you live in it? If it be not, why do you dissuade men from it?”
Let us borrow that and apply it to those coming to the Lord’s Table. “If sin be evil, why do you live in it? If it be not, why do you drink the purchase price week after week?” We have opportunity to confess our sin each Sunday earlier in the service, but we still don’t want to forget that we were bought with a price, His own blood, and so we also ought to pay close attention to ourselves and our sanctification.