Am I Holy Enough to Take Communion

00:00:00.000 | Welcome back to the Ask Pastor John podcast. Pastor John, as you know,

00:00:03.120 | Scripture gives us pretty clear prohibitions around the Lord's Table, and given these parameters

00:00:09.520 | in the stern warning passages of the New Testament, a listener named Ruben writes in to ask this,

00:00:14.960 | "Pastor John, how do I know if I'm holy enough for the Lord's Supper? Under what circumstances

00:00:20.560 | would a professing Christian not participate in the Lord's Table?"

00:00:26.160 | Let me suggest three answers, or three kinds of answer based on three different passages. First,

00:00:35.120 | you can know you shouldn't eat the Lord's Supper as a professing Christian

00:00:41.680 | if you've been excommunicated by your church. That's obvious. But he asked, "What are the

00:00:50.480 | situations?" And 1 Corinthians 5, 9 following say, "I wrote to you in my letter not to associate

00:00:59.440 | with sexually immoral people." Not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world,

00:01:04.960 | or the greedy and swindlers or idolaters, since you'd have to go out of the world.

00:01:11.280 | But, "Now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother." Now,

00:01:19.360 | that's what he asked about, "professing Christian." So here we have a professing Christian

00:01:25.680 | committing fornication, probably, somehow living in sexual immorality, or greed, or idolater,

00:01:33.120 | or reviler, drunkard, swindler, not even to eat with such a one. So clearly they cannot be at

00:01:40.320 | the Lord's Table. So that's the first answer. If you've been excommunicated, you shouldn't eat

00:01:48.240 | the Lord—go down the street and eat the Lord's Supper at a loosey-goosey church. Number two.

00:01:56.720 | Second answer is that a professing Christian shouldn't eat the Lord's Supper if he's

00:02:04.240 | presently at that moment of communion service unwilling to renounce Satan and sin and humbly

00:02:15.520 | hold fast to Jesus as his supreme treasure and only hope in this life and the next. And yes,

00:02:22.880 | I am assuming that genuine Christians can have moments like this. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 11

00:02:31.680 | 27—this is the key text—"Whoever therefore eats the bread and drinks the cup of the Lord in an

00:02:38.480 | unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord." So you don't want

00:02:44.640 | to do that. "Let a person examine himself then, and then so eat the bread and drink the cup.

00:02:51.760 | For anyone who eats and drinks"—second phrase—"without discerning the body,

00:02:58.480 | eats and drinks judgment on himself." So now I don't think the phrase "in an unworthy manner"

00:03:04.560 | means we ever deserve the Lord's Supper, but that there's a fitness or suitableness

00:03:11.280 | between the Lord's Supper and our condition, and that fitness is not perfection on our part. Rather,

00:03:19.200 | it's a renunciation of sin and a making war on it, a renunciation of Satan, a hearty embrace

00:03:28.080 | of Jesus. That's the meaning of the Lord's Supper. The new covenant in the blood of Jesus is the

00:03:33.840 | forgiveness of sins. We heartily embrace Jesus as our substitute and our treasure and our sacrifice

00:03:41.200 | and our Lord. And the other phrase, "not discerning the body," may refer to the body of Jesus

00:03:49.920 | represented in the bread, or it may refer to the body of Christ as the people of God. In either

00:03:56.960 | case, the implication is that we're failing to see and act on the sanctifying implications of the

00:04:06.800 | body of Christ for the body of Christ, and we're holding fast to some compromise with sin in the

00:04:14.800 | way we relate. If that's true, then we shouldn't eat. Well, what should we do? And that leads me

00:04:22.160 | to my last suggestion. Matthew 5:23. So, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there,

00:04:31.520 | remember that your brother has something against you. Leave your gift there before the altar and go.

00:04:39.200 | First be reconciled to your brother, then come and offer your gift. I think the clear implication is

00:04:45.200 | that if we find ourselves in a sinful relationship, holding fast to a sinful thought or a feeling or

00:04:52.640 | like a grudge, we should make reconciliation and sanctification a priority above eating the Lord's

00:05:02.560 | supper. Get things right, and then come and eat. Now, let me end like this. Having said all that,

00:05:10.160 | I want to avoid the terrible situation. I saw it in Germany when I was there. Forty years ago,

00:05:16.000 | I saw 12 people taking the Lord's supper out of a parish of 10,000, and I asked the pastor,

00:05:24.000 | "Where is everybody?" And he said, "There's a long tradition here of being afraid to eat the Lord's

00:05:29.040 | supper." In other words, I want to avoid the terrible situation in which we become so perfectionistic

00:05:36.560 | that we're afraid to eat the Lord's supper lest we bring condemnation on ourselves. Clearly,

00:05:43.680 | the Apostle Paul knew that we're all sinners, and he intended for us to regularly eat the Lord's

00:05:51.600 | supper. So if we're members of a true church in good standing, and if we're not holding fast

00:05:58.320 | to known sin but are renouncing sin and hating it and fighting it and turning to Christ as our

00:06:05.280 | treasure and hope and substitute and punishment and righteousness, then we should eat.

00:06:13.200 | Amen. What a story from Germany. Wow. Thank you for those three answers, Pastor John,

00:06:17.600 | and thank you, Ruben, for the question. We really appreciate it. We return on Friday,

00:06:23.840 | and a listener wants to know whether or not John the Baptist encouraged divorce in Matthew chapter

00:06:29.760 | 14. It's an interesting story, and it's a question of its own that raises a lot of other questions

00:06:35.040 | that we'll need to raise first and find answers to. And we are going to do that next time on

00:06:40.720 | Friday. You've been listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast with longtime author and pastor

00:06:44.640 | John Piper. You can find our audio feeds and our archive, and like Ruben, you can send us a question

00:06:50.240 | of your own all at our online home at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn. I'm your host, Tony

00:06:57.920 | Rehnke. We'll see you on Friday. [End of Audio]

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Am I Holy Enough to Take Communion

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