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…
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