Welcome back to the Ask Pastor John podcast. Pastor John, as you know, Scripture gives us pretty clear prohibitions around the Lord's Table, and given these parameters in the stern warning passages of the New Testament, a listener named Ruben writes in to ask this, "Pastor John, how do I know if I'm holy enough for the Lord's Supper?

Under what circumstances would a professing Christian not participate in the Lord's Table?" Let me suggest three answers, or three kinds of answer based on three different passages. First, you can know you shouldn't eat the Lord's Supper as a professing Christian if you've been excommunicated by your church. That's obvious.

But he asked, "What are the situations?" And 1 Corinthians 5, 9 following say, "I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people." Not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers or idolaters, since you'd have to go out of the world.

But, "Now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother." Now, that's what he asked about, "professing Christian." So here we have a professing Christian committing fornication, probably, somehow living in sexual immorality, or greed, or idolater, or reviler, drunkard, swindler, not even to eat with such a one.

So clearly they cannot be at the Lord's Table. So that's the first answer. If you've been excommunicated, you shouldn't eat the Lord—go down the street and eat the Lord's Supper at a loosey-goosey church. Number two. Second answer is that a professing Christian shouldn't eat the Lord's Supper if he's presently at that moment of communion service unwilling to renounce Satan and sin and humbly hold fast to Jesus as his supreme treasure and only hope in this life and the next.

And yes, I am assuming that genuine Christians can have moments like this. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 11 27—this is the key text—"Whoever therefore eats the bread and drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord." So you don't want to do that.

"Let a person examine himself then, and then so eat the bread and drink the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks"—second phrase—"without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself." So now I don't think the phrase "in an unworthy manner" means we ever deserve the Lord's Supper, but that there's a fitness or suitableness between the Lord's Supper and our condition, and that fitness is not perfection on our part.

Rather, it's a renunciation of sin and a making war on it, a renunciation of Satan, a hearty embrace of Jesus. That's the meaning of the Lord's Supper. The new covenant in the blood of Jesus is the forgiveness of sins. We heartily embrace Jesus as our substitute and our treasure and our sacrifice and our Lord.

And the other phrase, "not discerning the body," may refer to the body of Jesus represented in the bread, or it may refer to the body of Christ as the people of God. In either case, the implication is that we're failing to see and act on the sanctifying implications of the body of Christ for the body of Christ, and we're holding fast to some compromise with sin in the way we relate.

If that's true, then we shouldn't eat. Well, what should we do? And that leads me to my last suggestion. Matthew 5:23. So, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there, remember that your brother has something against you. Leave your gift there before the altar and go.

First be reconciled to your brother, then come and offer your gift. I think the clear implication is that if we find ourselves in a sinful relationship, holding fast to a sinful thought or a feeling or like a grudge, we should make reconciliation and sanctification a priority above eating the Lord's supper.

Get things right, and then come and eat. Now, let me end like this. Having said all that, I want to avoid the terrible situation. I saw it in Germany when I was there. Forty years ago, I saw 12 people taking the Lord's supper out of a parish of 10,000, and I asked the pastor, "Where is everybody?" And he said, "There's a long tradition here of being afraid to eat the Lord's supper." In other words, I want to avoid the terrible situation in which we become so perfectionistic that we're afraid to eat the Lord's supper lest we bring condemnation on ourselves.

Clearly, the Apostle Paul knew that we're all sinners, and he intended for us to regularly eat the Lord's supper. So if we're members of a true church in good standing, and if we're not holding fast to known sin but are renouncing sin and hating it and fighting it and turning to Christ as our treasure and hope and substitute and punishment and righteousness, then we should eat.

Amen. What a story from Germany. Wow. Thank you for those three answers, Pastor John, and thank you, Ruben, for the question. We really appreciate it. We return on Friday, and a listener wants to know whether or not John the Baptist encouraged divorce in Matthew chapter 14. It's an interesting story, and it's a question of its own that raises a lot of other questions that we'll need to raise first and find answers to.

And we are going to do that next time on Friday. You've been listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast with longtime author and pastor John Piper. You can find our audio feeds and our archive, and like Ruben, you can send us a question of your own all at our online home at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.

I'm your host, Tony Rehnke. We'll see you on Friday. Page 2 of 10 you you