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During the Communion service, each of us will eat a very small piece of bread and drink a very small cup of juice. Physically, if that were all the food we ate each week, we would not live very long.
But this is not a meal intended to sustain us physically. The bread reminds us of Jesus’ physical body as he was tortured to death on the cross, and the juice reminds us of Jesus’ physical blood. But the result of what happened on the cross was a spiritual transaction: God’s wrath was satisfied.
Furthermore, it was a spiritual transaction when all of our sins were laid on him. After all, who laid my sins on Jesus while he was on the cross? I didn’t! Who laid your sins on Jesus while he was on the cross? Not you! You and I had nothing to do with it.
In 2 Corinthians 5:21, Paul taught that God made Jesus “to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (New Revised Standard Version). The answer to the question is God laid my sins and your sins on Jesus while he was on the cross. That’s what grace is. It is God extracting our sin from deep within our hearts, from the very core of our being, and placing all of that ugliness and filth on Jesus as he died on the cross.
We need the Lord’s Supper. We need the physical bread and juice to remind us of the awesome spiritual transaction God initiated as Jesus died.
We need the Lord’s Supper. We need the time to pause and reflect and to recall all of the ugly filth God has extracted from deep within us.
We need the Lord’s Supper so that we might recall the fact that changes us forever: We live in the death of Christ!
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