Personal Preparation

When we take communion, most often it's Paul's words we use, his quoting Jesus, about the meaning of the bread and the wine at the last supper. Paul himself was not there, nor then numbered among the followers of Christ. He tells us that he received the teaching directly from the Lord.

He reminds us, as Jesus did, that taking it is for the sake of remembering the extreme acts the Lord did on our behalf. That history is preserved for us in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. What Paul adds, or the Lord through Paul, is the remembering not only of the Lord's great righteousness but our own unrighteousness. He commends and warns us not to take the Lord's supper in an unworthy state, but to first examine ourselves and bring any hidden thing to light, to repent of any sin, to confess and thereby receive the Lord's cleansing.

In other words, there are two parts to the ceremony. Both are personal and they need to be done in a certain order. Taking communion is to be preceded by self-examination and confession before the Lord.

This, as the rest of the passage indicates, is of far greater importance than we might realize, and with greater consequences. What we're commemorating, the Lord's death, is of the highest importance to him and we need to see it that way, too. If taken casually, we are risking judgment on ourselves. To drive the point home, Paul adds that it's for this failure that many in those early days fell sick and even died.

We do not see examples of this judgment of God continuing . . . likely due to his mercy and long patience with us. But what these words do convey is God's opinion of any kind of rebellion or lack of full honor to his holiness. This is what he is expecting of us at the taking of the cup and the bread. It's the Lord's death we're commemorating, and that for our sakes.

As often as we do these things we are to remember that, and also to remember our state and, if in any way impure, to bring that to him first.

It's something that matters to God. It matters to us.