Month: July 2023

Not that we are surprised, but we should be encouraged, that Christ is the superlative example of all the gifts mentioned in Romans 12:6-8. We considered that all the endowments are in Him, the “fulness” is His, but we can actually go item by item in the list.

Jesus is the great and greatest prophet (Luke 24:19). No one ever spoke like Him, or revealed the Father’s will like Him. Jesus Himself is revelation, the Word of God.

Jesus is the most humble and most loving servant (Philippians 2:7). He lowered Himself, He washed feet, He went hungry and went out of His way to do unto others what they could not do for themselves.

Jesus is the truth, and the most clear Teacher of the truth (John 3:2). As for exhortation, He urged men to repent and believe; He admonished sinners and disciples to obedience.

Jesus has spent more than any other, doing miracles to give bread, giving Himself to salvation, generous and lavish and uncontaminated. Jesus leads, He rules. His mercy is glad, and He does not make us feel bad that we need it.

He ascended to the Father, which is why we eat and drink “until He comes.” And He’s given gifts to the church, to His body, that each part would work properly and that the body would grow and build itself up in love. We share in the From-Through-To-Him One, the Head of the body (Colossians 1:15-18), who made peace by the blood of His cross, even at the Lord’s Table together right now.

When Paul wrote about the many members making up one body in his first letter to the Corinthians, he started that instruction immediately after his admonitions about the Lord’s Supper. Communion implies sharing something in common, which implies that there is more than one to do the sharing.

We learn along with the Corinthians and with the Romans that not any individual has all the spiritual gifts/functions in himself. One part does not make a body (1 Corinthians 12:19), we are a body all together, and God has given us a measure, a portion, so that we can do our part.

This is not like Christ.

Commentators have properly called attention to the difference in respect of measure between Christ and the members of His body. He is “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14), it pleased the Father that “all the fulness should dwell in Him” (Col. 1:19), “in Him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge”. There is no measure to His endowments. (John Murray, on Romans 12:3-5)

We cannot think more highly of Christ than we ought to think. He is the Head, and from Him all our nourishment comes (Ephesians 5:29-30). He is the fullness of God who fills all in all (Ephesians 1:23). And He is the one we share.

The cup of blessing is a participation in the blood of Christ, we who are many are one body who partake of the one bread, the bread of life Himself (1 Corinthians 10:16-17).

Of course the only way we can present our bodies as a living sacrifice is because Christ took on a body, in which He lived without sin and with the humility of a servant, and in which He gave Himself as a substitute for sinners. So our offering to God does not save us, it is only because we are saved. We do not atone for our sins, we do not redeem anyone else, but because we are united to Christ in His death and resurrection we present our members for righteousness as part of our worship.

This pleases God.

Jesus is the Son in whom the Father is pleased, and we come as those united to Christ, those who are “in Christ.” We remember and rejoice that God has highly exalted Christ Jesus and bestowed on Him the name that is above every other name, and with our tongues we confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. With this God is pleased.

Though the ESV translates Romans 12:1 as “acceptable to God,” the word acceptable could be translated as pleasing to God. Living and holy sacrifices please God. So Paul prayed for the Colossians that they would be filled with the knowledge of God’s will so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, “fully pleasing to Him.”

This is not just some future status, it is the present process of believing and bearing fruit, of giving thanks to the Father for redemption in His Son and for transferring us into the kingdom of His beloved Son. Come, eat and drink in fellowship with God who is pleased to welcome you.

When Paul said that as often as you eat and drink the Lord’s Supper we “proclaim” the Lord’s death until He comes (1 Corinthians 11:26), who hears that proclamation?

We do. That is, believers in Christ continue to feed on the body and blood of Christ, and we don’t get past the edifying work of the gospel that Christ died for our sins according to Scripture. It is finished, and every member of Christ’s body around the Table hears it again.

But Paul probably didn’t limit the hearers of the Supper to Christians. Near the end of chapter 14 he acknowledged times when “an unbeliever or outsider enters” corporate worship, and should be able to “declare that God is really among you” (1 Corinthians 14:24-25). That’s connected with clear words of prophesy instead of uninterpreted tongues, and the clear love of each member of the body for the Head and for each other would also be “heard” through the proclamation in communion.

But even that doesn’t seem to be the extent of it. When the church gathers, and I’d think especially when she shares the bread and wine, she “proclaims” the love of Christ in His death and the “manifold wisdom of God…to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 3:10). There are “unsearchable riches of Christ” proclaimed in the gospel, and preaching brings to light God’s plan, “God who created all things, so that through the church” the cosmic powers might sit up and “hear” – so to speak – that in God’s wisdom they are doomed to pass away (1 Corinthians 2:6).

Jesus Christ and Him crucified is the end of fear for all who believe, the end of death for Christ’s people, and signals the end of rebellion at the proper time. We proclaim the power of His death when we eat the bread and drink the cup together.