The Table of the Lord

For Paul, the Lord’s Supper tradition was not an anticipatory ordinance of God, like the Passover meal, but rather a voluntary act of meal fellowship, of faithful communal thanksgiving to God for the Salvation wrought by his Son.

Modern Christians and Communion
The following is a brief excerpt from my recent exegetical study on Communion.

Psalm 23:5–6
⁵ You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
⁶ Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Micah 6:8
⁸ He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love [mercy]¹, and to walk humbly with your God.

Matthew 23:23
²³ Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you ... have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness.

The evidence of the New Testament, and the history of the Early Church, is indisputable: Until the fourth century, the Lord’s Supper was a meal of faithful Christian fellowship and thanksgiving, wherein members left their diverse, worldly backgrounds at the door of the house of assembly, and came together as the family of Christ, the benefactor of the table, to rejoice in their having been shown mercy, that is, forgiven and set on the path of righteousness, and in their having been included in the Abrahamic inheritance of eternal life.

Regarding the institution of the Lord’s Supper for modern Christians, we look to the epistles of Paul, rather than the Gospels,² because he is the “apostle [of Christ] to the Gentiles” (Ac 22:21; Rm 11:13; Ga 1:15–16; 2:9: Ep 3:7–9), in order to know how to imitate him (1Co 4:16; 11:1; Pp 3:17, cf. 1Th 1:6; 2Th 3:7–8). It is Paul who says Christians were to “proclaim” Jesus' self-sacrifice through the worthy sharing of the Lord’s Supper “until he comes” (1Co 11:26). This is clearly a reference to the Parousia, which occurred in AD 70.³ So, Paul's requirement to observe the tradition is no longer in force. Nonetheless, we are still bound by the covenantal obligation to act with righteous familial charity whenever we gather with other Christians, whether we eat or not.

However, even for those Christians who believe that the Parousia is still a future event, it has to be seen that, for Paul, the Lord’s Supper tradition was not an anticipatory ordinance of God, like the Passover meal, but rather a voluntary act of meal fellowship, of faithful communal thanksgiving to God for the Salvation wrought by his Son, through the sharing of food and drink. Which is exactly how the Early Church celebrated it. The Laws of God are written in the Christian heart, so any time we perform a “good work,” it must be a voluntary act, that is, “from the heart” (meaning, “of the will”), and not imposed by an external authority, otherwise it is hypocritical, and therefore sinful. This is why Paul encourages the Corinthians to consider one another as brothers in Christ, rather than simply order them to behave themselves in church. A Christian is internally motivated, because he has the mind of Christ, so the promptings of his conscience are the only “rules” he needs to follow (1Co 2:14–16).

That observing the Lord’s Supper is not a command does not mean it is sinful, or wrong, to perform a Communion ritual, or to follow a particular denominational tradition. Like any church practice that is not in direct violation of Scripture, it would only be sinful if it were mandated on the grounds that it was commanded in Scripture. It was not; so that would be a lie.

Finally, while any tradition, aspect, or detail of the current practices of Communion is not inherently sinful, if it does not help to foster charitable, familial relations between those partaking in it, it is in danger of violating the spirit of the Lord’s Supper, and serious consideration should be made to have it modified, or discarded.

1.  The ESV reads “kindness” here for the OT Hebrew hesed, “covenantal-compassion, graciousness.” However, in the LXX, where the Gospels derive most of their OT citations, the Greek word used is eleos, which means “mercy” (Compare ESV Mc 6:8 with KJV, NIV, NKJV). I inserted “mercy” here to clarify that, in the next epigraph, Matthew's Jesus is referencing this OT verse.
2.  In context, the Gospel accounts are of Jesus “opening” the messianic significance behind the annual Passover seder to his disciples, then instructing them to eat all the future Passovers with this new understanding. Clearly, since the feast was dependant on the Temple lamb-slaughtering ritual, there were no more after AD 70.
3.  AD 70 is when the 2nd Temple was destroyed, which Jesus predicted in all three Synoptic Gospels (Mt 24:1-2; Mk 13:1-2; Lk 21:5-6). That day was the “Great and Terrible Day of the Lord” (Jl 2:31; cited in Ac 2:20), the “Final Judgement [of Israel],” the Lord’s so-called “Second Coming.”