Who should receive Communion together?

We’ve arrived at the final question that this booklet will tackle. This may be one that you have struggled to understand in terms of how a church practices Communion. Take note that the answer to this question does not include any mention of whether a specific person is worthy to receive Communion. The answer to question 4 is different and separate from the answer to question 3. The goal remains that we would allow the practice of Communion at Crosspointe to be shaped by God’s Word rather than by our own personal opinions and emotions so that as a church we can be faithful to the desires and intentions of Jesus.

Matthew 26:29 was part of the answer to why a church should practice Communion. We begin with that verse to see how the Bible helps us to answer the question of who should commune together. When Jesus instituted or initiated the Lord’s Supper, He said that He would again share this meal with His followers. Jesus is referring to the eternal feast that all Christians will enjoy after He returns and the dead are resurrected and God’s Kingdom is fully realized. As mentioned in question 1, the meal that Jesus has given to the church provides a foretaste of the fellowship that will define our relationships with one another and with God when sin and death are no more. At that time, there will no longer be any questions about God. He will be fully known (1 Corinthians 13:12) so there will be no differences in what is believed and confessed about Him as there are now. God’s desire is to bring that eternal reality into the present time through the church’s practice of the Lord’s Supper. The Lord’s Supper is the church’s greatest moment of community, fellowship, oneness, and unity. The goal that the church should strive to attain in Communion is a maximization of oneness and unity. In other words, the church gathered at the altar to receive the Lord’s Supper should aim to resemble the church gathered at the eternal feast because it is that eternal reality that God wishes to create in our midst.

Again and again, the Bible calls for unity and oneness among the church. In John 17:20-23 Jesus prays on the night before His death that all who would believe in Him would be one. The unity of the church is further referred to as one flock with one shepherd (John 10:16), one body (Romans 12:5 and 1 Corinthians 12:12), one loaf of bread (1 Corinthians 10:17), and one body, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism (Ephesians 4:3-5). Unity is God’s desires for His people even now. In 1 Corinthians 1:10 Paul writes; I appeal to you brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree and that there be no divisions among you, but be united in the same mind and the same judgment. Paul does not call for unity because it would be beneficial for the church in his opinion. Rather, he reveals the intention of Jesus who is the Lord of the church: that there would be no divisions among us. Paul brings this discussion of unity into the practice of Communion in 1 Corinthians 11:17-18. He tells the church in Corinth that when they come together to share the Lord’s Supper they do so not for the better but for the worse because there are divisions among them. To get a broader picture you can also look at God’s instructions for the Passover Meal. Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper while He was celebrating the Passover with His disciples. In the Christian Church, the Lord’s Supper has taken the place of the Passover. But even with the Passover, God was concerned about who shared the meal with one another as is evident in Exodus 12:43-49 and Ezra 6:19.

The issue of oneness and unity for the church boils down to what it believes about God, what may be referred to as the doctrine or confession or teaching of the church. In this belief, the desire of God is that we would be united in mind and judgment. In the Bible’s first description of the life of the church, the teaching which has been passed down from the apostles (those who were eyewitnesses to the life and death and resurrection of Jesus) is the first thing mentioned. It is important to notice tin Acts 2:42, the church was devoted to the apostles’ teaching – singular! When the Bible talks about the doctrine of the church it does so in the singular. Examples include 1Timothy 1:10 and 4:16, 2 Timothy 4:3, and Titus1:9 and 2:1. The Christian faith is not a set of individual teachings from which we pick and choose the ones we agree with and the ones we disagree with. The unity that God desires includes the belief about who Jesus was and what He accomplished for us. But it includes more. God desires that we would be unified in the answer to these 4 questions and what we believe about Communion. God desires that we are unified in our belief about baptism and the Bible; about Creation and the return of Jesus and everything in between.

What this means in terms of practicing Communion at Crosspointe is that we should begin with and continue in the desire for a unified confession of faith. God’s desire for unity should be our desire and it should be reflected in our life together as church. To be faithful in this, our practice will be to gather at the altar to receive the Lord’s Supper with those who through membership in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and by personal profession of faith have demonstrated an agreement in doctrine and desire for doctrinal unity. As with the other sections, please don’t hesitate to ask me your follow-up questions.