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Humble Hero
Our Lord says, “When oppressed and afflicted for My sake and
the gospel’s, remember My love. That love is so great that I gave My
life for you. When your duties appear hard, your burdens too heavy
to bear, remember that for your sake I endured the cross, despising
the shame. Your Redeemer lives to make intercession for you.”
The Communion service points to Christ’s second coming. It
was designed to keep this hope vivid in the mind. “As often as you
eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death till
He comes.”
1 Corinthians 11:26
.
Christ instituted this service so that it could speak to our senses
about God’s love. There can be no union between us and God except
through Christ. And nothing less than the death of Christ could make
His love effective for us. Only because of His death can we look
joyfully to His second coming. Our senses need to be awakened to
lay hold of the mystery of godliness, to comprehend, far more than
we do, the atoning sufferings of Christ.
Our Lord has said, “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man
and drink His blood, you have no life in you. ... For My flesh is food
indeed, and My blood is drink indeed.”
John 6:53-55
. We owe even
this earthly life to the death of Christ. The bread we eat comes at the
expense of His broken body; the water we drink, of His spilled blood.
Never one, saint or sinner, eats his daily food, but he is nourished
by the body and blood of Christ. The cross of Calvary is stamped
on every loaf; it is reflected in every water spring. The light shining
from that Communion service makes the provisions for our daily
life sacred. The family food becomes like the table of the Lord, and
every meal a sacred service.
Concerning our spiritual nature Jesus declares, “Whoever eats
My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life.” By receiving His
word, by doing the things that He has commanded, we become one
with Him. “He who eats My flesh,” He says, “and drinks My blood
abides in Me, and I in him. As the living Father sent Me, and I
live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because
of Me.”
John 6:54, 56, 57
. As faith contemplates our Lord’s great
sacrifice, we receive the spiritual life of Christ. Every Communion
service forms a living connection to bind the believer to Christ, and
through Him to the Father.