communion

Not a Tableful of Metaphor

by Ben Zornes · Feb 15, 2023

The Lord’s Supper is an aid to our faith. But too often, that statement gets tweaked a few degrees out of plumb. It is mistaken thinking to imagine that this is just a helpful word picture, or clever illustration for understanding hard doctrines. But this is no metaphor. Nor is it one of many examples which are found in those mass produced books at Christian Bookstores: “5000 Sermon Illustrations to Make Your Congregation Go Aww.”

This is an aid to your faith, indeed, because you truly feast upon Christ in this meal. When you receive this in faith, you eat true bread and drink true wine. These are genuine signs that confirm that we belong to Christ who won us. A covenant bond is more than a clever simile. A covenant sign assures us the thing is true, the bond is genuine, all the promises will be made good. This is the earnest of our inheritance: eternal life, sustained by Christ, signified by this meal of bread & wine. That is what God has given you through Jesus.

Thus, this meal builds your faith. God builds up your faith, by feeding Christ to you. And as your faith is built up, it is in order that you might overcome by Christ. The Apostle John tells us this exact truth: “For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God (1 Jn 5:4-5)?”

So this isn’t just a tableful of metaphor. Here is the first taste of your victory over sin, the devil, and the world. So savor it. Drink it deeply. Christ has conquered, and made you a partaker of His conquest.

So come in faith and welcome to Jesus Christ

The Supper & the Antichrist

by Ben Zornes · Feb 8, 2023

When you gather around this table with your brothers & sisters in Christ, you are coming to the end of the world. This is how the world will end. You in Christ & Christ in you. All the saints (of all time) gathered round in fellowship with the Triune God.

But from the days of the Apostles until now, this inevitable end has faced opposition. John reminds the early church that the antichrist had, even then, gone out into the world, along with a swarm of antichrist clones. Now, the term Antichrist, in modern evangelicalism, brings to mind a character in a black suit, slicked back hair, with a smarmy smile and all the credentials required to sit in the globalist halls of influence.

The term Antichrist, however, could also be rendered “rival christ.” And while that term suits any number of wicked men throughout history, it should instruct us as to how to think rightly about the world’s end. The Supper memorializes the true Christ. The Christ who was incarnate. The Christ slain by Pilate & the unbelieving Jews. The Christ who was crushed by the Father’s wrath in your stead. The Christ who rose again by the Father’s power, and by that same power raised you from your dead works to share in the eternal life which Christ won for you.

This meal nourishes your faith that in Him, and in no rival, is life. Life in its full potency. Life without end. And rival-christs despise this message and oppose it. They want to be their own savior, they want life on their terms, they don’t want to bend to Jesus of Nazareth. But this meal proclaims that all knees will one day bend. For Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, died in our stead, and rose again to eternally reign over this world.

So come in faith and welcome to Jesus Christ…

Communion without Asterisks

by Ben Zornes · Jan 24, 2023

God commands us to draw near to Him. But if you look at yourself, you might be tempted to draw back. The only way to draw near to God is by first admitting how unworthy you are to do so. God must do something first in order for us to come into the blessing of His presence.

Our sinful actions and sinful natures must both be dealt with. He does this by justifying us freely by His grace, which we receive by faith alone. Faith isn’t a bare minimum good work which God requires before He’ll act with grace towards us. Rather, it’s the first in a long line of gracious gifts to us.

Baptism signifies your union with Christ. Meaning, your sinful acts are forgiven & your sinful nature is covered by the righteousness of Christ. Baptism into Christ grants you covenantal privilege to be drawn up into the pleasure of God. This meal assures us that God delights to bring us near, to bring us into the warmth of His presence without any asterisks over us. Listen to the Heidelberg Catechism’s words of comfort:

“it is to be so united more and more to his blessed body by the Holy Spirit dwelling both in Christ and in us that, although he is in heaven and we are on earth, we are nevertheless flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone, always living and being governed by one Spirit, as the members of our bodies are governed by one soul.”

Like a hand to the body, or the bone with the flesh, so by grace God has drawn you into union with Himself by Christ. You aren’t consigned to the dwell in the outskirts of glory. You are invited to the inner circle, because you are in Christ, and He is in You.

So come in faith and welcome to Jesus Christ…

The Freeness of God

by Ben Zornes · Jan 10, 2023

There’s a draconian lie that repeatedly rears its head. It lures us with the false idea that somehow God is obligated to operate according to our rules for Him. Man wants a god he can micro-manage in a direction which satisfies man’s own vanity project. A god he can maneuver. A deity who answers to him. Man wants to whistle up his godling in times of trouble, and then tell it to get lost when he wants to indulge his debauched desires.

But this covenant meal severs the head of that lie. Here is God’s unfiltered, full-potency freedom. This sign demonstrates the sovereign freeness of God. No one bound Him to bring about our redemption. No one manipulated the Almighty to agree to our deliverance. No one made puppy-dog eyes at the good Lord so as to bend His heart towards taking pity on sinful man.

Rather, this meal is God’s sign that our salvation––from front to back, side to side, end to end––is all His doing. He took our cause in hand, and brought about our deliverance. All of this according to the mysteries of the purpose of His grace.

We operate in a world of blackmail, manipulation, backroom deals, mutual backscratching. Not so with God. There was nothing you could bring that would compel God to act on your behalf; no dark secret which could manipulate the Lord into saving you. Rather, from the boundless storehouse of His grace, He freely chose to redeem you by the blood of His Son.

God is free. And in this freedom, He determined to bind Himself unto His saints in a covenant of free grace. He bestows upon you all His grace, and delivers you from all your sin. He freely came to you, that you might freely come to Him.

So come in faith and welcome to Jesus Christ…

You are Complete in Him

by Ben Zornes · Dec 13, 2022

One of the most common descriptions of those beset by grief, depression, or addiction is the sense of feeling empty. Both the unhinged hedonist who gobbles up every pleasure, and the perpetual pity-partier who sits pining in the echoing melancholy of a hollowed out heart are haunted by the emptiness.

One look at the cosmos makes it evident that God is a God who fills. The heavens are strewn with billions of diamonds, arranged into celestial, stained-glass pictures. The oceans, grasslands, rainforests, and skies teem with life of seemingly endless variety. You weren’t made for the void.

Paul describes Jesus this way: “For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.” But a full Christ who leaves you empty isn’t good news. The full Christ came in order to deliver you from the yawning gulf of damnation. Paul goes on to say, “And you are complete in him.”

All that Jesus did––from His Conception to Ascension––He did in Your stead. He emptied Himself that you might be made complete. But not complete apart from Him. The only completeness is found in Him who is the fullness of the Godhead bodily.

Christ was conceived in the womb of Mary, by the Holy Ghost. By this you know that He simultaneously shared in everything it is to be human (conception to death), yet He was human in an entirely different way. That is, He was human without the gaping black-hole of sin eating Him up from within. From the instant when the Son was Incarnated, He brought the fullness of God down into the emptiness of fallen man, and raised the husk of our humanity into the fullness of His divine glory. Here in His body & blood is fullness enough to fill all your emptiness, and grace for grace.

So come in faith and welcome to Jesus Christ…

Born to Die

by Ben Zornes · Nov 29, 2022

While our focus during the Advent season is upon Christ’s incarnation & birth, we should ever be mindful that He was born to die. As we come to this table, it should be noted that we are commanded to keep this Supper until Christ comes; and in our partaking of it, we show the Lord’s death.

There is poignancy in the Lord’s death. To state the obvious, death isn’t possible unless He was first born in the likeness of human flesh, and then lived a truly human life. And so, it’s the death of the Lord which we declare each time we partake of this bread & wine.

The church makes a corporate proclamation whenever we take this meal. We proclaim that God became a man and died. He died the death our sin deserved; He died so that one day death might be no more; He died in order that we might not die the second death.

The death of Christ, as Spurgeon once put it, is the hinge of history. This is the central moment of history. It demands your attention. It demands that you live accordingly. It demands that nothing can ever be the same. The world can’t be the same because the eternal Christ died for the sins of the world. Mankind must either partake of Christ by faith, or else partake at the demons’ table (1 Cor. 10:21).

And so, week after week, Lord’s Day after Lord’s Day, like the drumbeat of an advancing army, we proclaim the Lord’s Death. The death of the babe born in Bethlehem, the death of the Christ, the death of the King of the Jews, the death of Jesus of Nazareth. The Death which all peoples of the earth must reckon with. Here we proclaim it. Next week we proclaim it. Until He comes again we proclaim the death which defanged Death itself.

So come in faith and welcome to Jesus Christ…

Heading to the Basement

by Ben Zornes · Nov 22, 2022

Many treat this supper as a trip downstairs to the basement of self-examination. Whereas Scripture teaches that this is a heavenly staircase. You are mistaking the meaning of “examine yourselves” if you think it is a call to rummage around for the right set of spiritual feels. As if what God was really after in this Supper was you trying to impress Him with the knick knacks of self-righteousness found in a dusty box down in your heart, next the the old vinyl records and tarnished Little League trophies.

In one sense, this Supper presents a question to you. Are you in Christ? The answer to that is a simple yes or no. You aren’t in Christ if you try to answer that question by reaching for any variety of self-righteousness. Trying to rummage around for evidence that you have very pious feelings, or very good works, or an incredibly precise articulation of the ordo solutis is not how you should answer the question. Do you trust that Jesus was the Christ? Do you trust in Him alone for Your salvation? Do you believe that He was crucified & rose again according to the Scriptures? If you do, then come to the table.

The Supper isn’t an invitation to head to cellar and try to find some good works to impress God with, as if the Good Lord wanted you to be the evening’s entertainment at His feast. Rather, here is Christ. The fulfillment of Jacob’s Ladder, the bridge between God & man, the lone means to come before the Father and be welcomed with eternal Love. The Supper is an invitation to come further up, and further in. Christ in bread & wine brings you into Heaven’s courts. This is possible because by your baptism, by faith in Christ, you are in Him. And His promise to us is that where He is, we may also be.

So come in faith and welcome to Jesus Christ…

« Previous Page