05 Jun How to Take Communion With Deep Meaning
SEEING GOD’S PICTURES IN THE CELEBRATION OF COMMUNION
God has created the physical world to picture spiritual truth
Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God. But only those who see take off their shoes. The rest sit round and pick blackberries. Elizabeth Barrett Browning
This is a poetic way of saying that God is a picturing God, that He has created the physical world in such a way as to help us see spiritual truth.
For example, the infinity of space is a picture of the infinity and eternality of God.
When Adam and Eve died physically, it was a picture of the fact that through sin, we die spiritually.
Winter is a picture of death. Springtime is a picture of resurrection. The earth is alive with life in the summertime. Things grow, produce new life, bear fruit. But then fall comes and things begin to wither. Eventually, the earth “dies” in the winter. It is cold, barren, lifeless, dark.
But… in early spring, trees begin to bud, flowers break through the cold earth’s crust. Grass begins to green. Life returns to the earth.
Seeing this makes it easier for us to believe that when we die, we will have new life, eternal life, in heaven. As Martin Luther said, “The promise of resurrection is seen in every new leaf of spring.
The Old Testament sacrificial system is a picture of what it takes for us to be forgiven of our sin.
When Old Testament worshippers killed a lamb, it was a clear picture to them that what happened to the lamb, physically, should be happening to them spiritually, and would be, if it were not for the lamb.
It was a picture of the fact that if a guilty one wants to live, an innocent one must die in his place.
The Old Testament sacrificial system was also a picture of the sacrifice that Jesus was going to make for us in the New Testament. The endless succession of sacrificial lambs was a picture of the future Lamb of God who would be the final, the ultimate sacrifice for our sin.
This leads us to communion. Communion is a God-given picture of our redemption in Christ.
The bread is a picture of Christ’s body. On the night in which Jesus was betrayed, He took the bread and he said, “Take and eat. This is my body” (Matthew 26:26).
When we eat the bread, we are saying that we accept the truth it represents, that we believe in Jesus, who sacrificed His life that we might live.
The cup is a picture of the blood of Christ (Matthew 26:28). After eating their Passover meal, Jesus took the cup and said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”
The new covenant is this: if, by faith, we believe in and receive Jesus as our God and savior, our sin and death can be placed on Him and His righteousness and eternal life can be placed on us (John 1:12).
When we drink the cup, we are demonstrating and reminding ourselves that, by faith, we have accepted and entered into the new covenant brought by Jesus’ blood.
So, communion is intended to picture for us, and to remind us, that Christ died for our sins and offers us a covenant of eternal life.
Scripture says that as often as we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes (1 Corinthians 11:26). In observing this divine meal, we receive this central truth of all eternity from those who have gone before us, and we pass it down to those who come after us.
This message will never be lost, partly because of us, as we pass this picture of communion down from generation to generation until Jesus returns.
And, seeing God’s pictures in communion can help us take our part and celebrate it with deep meaning.
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