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Lord’s Supper Instituted
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Our Lord says, When oppressed and afflicted for My sake and
the gospel’s, remember My love, so great that for you I gave My
life. When your duties appear severe, your burdens too heavy to
bear, remember that for your sake I endured the cross, despising the
shame. Your Redeemer liveth 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 ye
eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord’s death till
He come.”
1 Corinthians 11:26
.
Christ instituted this service that it may speak to our senses of
the love of God. There can be no union between our souls and God
except through Christ. And nothing less than the death of Christ
could make His love efficacious for us. Only because of His death
can we look with joy to His second coming. Our senses need to be
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quickened to lay hold of the mystery of godliness, to comprehend,
far more than we do, the expiatory sufferings of Christ.
Our Lord has said, “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man,
and drink His blood, ye have no life in you... . For My flesh is meat
indeed, and My blood is drink indeed.”
John 6:53-55
. To the death of
Christ we owe even this earthly life. The bread we eat is the purchase
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 sacred the provisions for our daily life.
The family board becomes as the table of the Lord, and every meal
a sacrament.
Of our spiritual nature Jesus declares, “Whoso eateth My flesh,
and drinketh My blood, hath eternal life.” By receiving His word, by
doing those things which He has commanded, we become one with
Him. “He that eateth My flesh,” He says, “and drinketh My blood,
dwelleth in Me, and I in him. As the living Father hath sent Me, and
I live by the Father: so he that eateth Me, even he shall live by Me.”
John 6:54, 56, 57
. As faith contemplates our Lord’s great sacrifice,
the soul assimilates the spiritual life of Christ. Every Communion
service forms a living connection by which the believer is bound up
with Christ, and thus with the Father.