April 3, 2025
This coming Lord's Day we remember our Savior's death by obeying His command to eat bread and drink the fruit of the vine together. One of the names given by God to the Lord’s Supper is Communion. This covenant meal is called Communion because in it both our communion with Jesus and all spiritual blessings in Him, and our communion with His body, the church, are visibly represented. Paul uses the word koinonia (“sharing, fellowship, communion”) in I Corinthians 10:16-17, when he writes, “Is not the cup of blessing which we bless a sharing [koinonia] in the blood of Christ? Is not the bread which we break a sharing [koinonia] in the body of Christ? Since there is one bread, we who are many are one body; for we all partake of the one bread.”
As we eat and drink the Lord’s Supper, we are reminded and assured by God that through faith we commune/share in the blood of Christ and the body of Christ. We are participants in all that Jesus has accomplished by His incarnation, death, and resurrection. “Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin…” (Romans 6:4-6). Every grace that Jesus secured by His death and resurrection is ours through faith, and the Lord’s Supper is a tangible picture of our fellowship and communion in His finished work.
It is also a sign and seal of our communion with other Christians. We believe in the communion of the saints! As you eat this bread and drink this cup, you affirm that you are united not only to Christ, but to one another, and share in each other’s gifts and graces. As Paul says, the one loaf, and our partaking of the one loaf, is a picture of our oneness in the body of Christ; even as a loaf of bread is made up of many grains, so “we who are many are one body.” As we eat and drink we pledge ourselves anew to love one another, even as Christ Jesus has loved us and given Himself for us.
Do not take lightly the privilege you have to be in fellowship with Jesus and His body—and to eat the Lord's Supper with your spiritual family to remember this truth, and to commune with Him and with them.