COMMUNION-THE ORDINANCE OF REDEEMING LOVE
God's love was in evidence and His redemptive plan came into focus when He found Adam and Eve trying to hide from His presence in their fallen and frightened condition. God gave them the verdict that they would now need to suffer for their sin but, in substance, He added that Deity would suffer with them, and for them, in acts of redeeming love that would climax in the suffering and shedding of the precious blood of the very Son of God (Gen. 3:15). Approximately 4000 years later while hanging on Calvary's cross the heel of the Seed of the woman was literally bruised for our iniquities as the head of the serpent was being crushed.
From the time of God's promise to Adam, until time shall be no more, redeeming love has been and will continue to be the central theme of God's message to man.
The shedding of the innocent blood of the Son of Man—who was also the Son of God— to redeem the guilty sons of men was aptly typified in an unceasing flow of blood from innocent creatures throughout Old Testament times. From the shedding of innocent blood (to provide coats of skins to adequately cover the sinful, shameful nakedness of Adam and Eve) to the shedding of the blood of the last innocent Passover lamb for the upper room feast of Christ with His disciples, multiplied thousands of sacrifices were slain.
It was on the night of that last Passover feast that Jesus instituted the symbolic communion service to replace the typically instituted Passover service of Old Testament worship. The following day, on the great day of the world's atonement, the innocent Son of God, Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us. All previous sacrificial blood found its adequacy, its fullness, and its completeness in the blood of this once for all Passover Lamb.
Just as the Old Testament Passover feast had pointed back to Israel's Passover lamb of deliverance and forward to Christ, the world's Passover Lamb so the Communion now points us in remembrance to Calvary and in hope to His blessed coming again.
In addition to the historically backward look and the prophetically forward look, this sacred service also points us to an inward experiential look and to an outward compassionate look. As we look inward into our hearts in a personal examination and find a true peace there, we know that this is peace through the blood of his cross. Furthermore, we are told that as often as we partake of Communion we are to show ye (marginal reading) the Lord's death till He come. Truly, the dying love of Jesus for the salvation of all mankind should constrain us to an active showing of His death to those who know Him not, lest they become victims of the righteous terrors of the Lord.
The appropriateness of the Communion symbols—the broken bread and the fruit of the vine, is indeed note-worthy.
His body was broken in numerous ways and in different places. As the reproaches and contradictions of sinners were laid upon Him, His agony was so great that His heart and blood vessels were broken (Psalm 69:20), and great drops of blood from the broken blood vessels oozed out of the sweat pores and fell to the ground. His back and His cheeks were broken when He gave His back to the smiters and His cheeks to them that plucked off the hair (Isaiah 50:6). His head was broken and bruised when they plunked the crown of thorns on His brow and hit Him over the head with a reed. His hands and His feet were broken when they nailed His dear body to the cross, and finally, His side was broken when it was pierced by a cruel soldier's spear.
The bread of Communion, broken in the hands of man and shared among men, is to remind us of Christ's body being broken in the hands of man so He could share Himself with man.
With each breaking of His body there was the shedding of His precious blood which cleanseth us from all sin. The vine from which the Communion cup is filled is a type of Christ, (John 15) and that juice therefore beautifully typifies the blood of Jesus.
Since Christ offered Himself once for all time, and no further shedding of blood is necessary; our Communion emblems, unlike those of the Old Testament Passover, are provided without any further shedding of blood. Therefore, they are true symbols of that body which was once broken and that blood which was once shed.
To transubstantiate the bread and the cup into the literal body and blood of Christ, and thus have the sacrifice of Christ re-enacted in every mass service as the Catholics claim to do, is denying the sufficiency of the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ to save to the uttermost them that come unto God by Him. With this concept, in every mass service they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh and put Him to an open shame. Our Anabaptist reformers broke with both the Catholics and the Reformed Churches on the point of the observance of mass.
To substitute something like coffee and cake for the symbolic emblems, as we have been told some Mennonites are doing, may be equally as serious. To do so may well compare with the (Leviticus chapter 10) offerers of strange fire who were consumed by the fire of God's judgment.
The seriousness and sacredness of the Communion is seen in the fact that the Bible calls for a period of examination of our hearts prior to partaking of the emblems, and warn, that we may eat and drink condemnation to ourselves if we are not properly prepared for the Communion.
The importance of its observance is seen in this that as often as we observe it we do show the Lord's death till He come. To become careless in partaking of the Communion would be virtually saying that we no longer base our hope in the death and blood of Christ, and that we are no longer looking forward to His glorious return.
If an Israelite simply neglected sharing in one Passover feast, he was to be cut off from his people (Num. 9:13). The Communion should certainly be no less important to us than the Passover was to the children of Israel.
The theme of Communion is not only for time but for the ages to come. The marks of the wounds of our Lord's body were visible in His immortal body after His resurrection and will doubtless be in evidence in the Glory World as an eternal witness of the immaculate sacrifice of Christ. The Worthy Lamb that was slain will be circumferenced with redeemed ones who will be eternally thankful for the redeeming love of God.
“O love that will not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in Thee;
I give Thee back the life I owe,
That in Thine ocean depths its flow May richer, fuller be.”
Aaron M. Shank
Myerstown, Pa.
April 1975