FROM MY NOTES ON COMMUNION Instead of writing a note, I figured I would share part of my sermon notes directly:
NO TRANSUBSTANTIATION
Here’s what the Scriptures say:
1 Corinthians 11:24–26
“And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me.
After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me.
For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come.”
So don’t get mixed up in this false doctrine that this becomes his body. Paul didn’t believe that. He quoted Jesus that said, “This is my body,” but then in the very next verse it says, “Eat this bread.” Also in verse 27, “whosoever shall eat this bread…”
In the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15, the Bible says says in v. 20 “But that we write unto them, that they abstain from pollutions of idols, and from fornication, and from things strangled, and from blood.” Pastor James made it clear—we’re not drinking blood. That’s already been forbidden.
So Paul knew the bread and cup only represented Christ’s body. It doesn’t become Christ’s physical or spiritual body. It is to “shew the Lord’s death till he come.”
NO OPEN COMMUNION
We practice a closed communion based on the repetition of the phrase “when ye come together” in 1 Corinthians 11. Also in chapter 10 it says in verse 17, “For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread.”
Meaning, this is a uniting time as one bread and one body.
And if we’re somehow uniting with every Christian out there, as if we’re all one united bread, well that links me doctrinally with people who are apostate. A few verses later it says, 1 Corinthians 10:21, “Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils…”
So either we’re united or we’re not. And I believe the unity he’s speaking of here is the unity of the local church’s doctrines.
When there’s church discipline, it’s at the local church level, and that disciplined one is removed from the communion. So if a person can be removed from communion, I just see that as the church exercising jurisdiction over the church membership only, not over all Christians in the world.
So that’s why we practice the Lord’s Table with our church family—those who are baptized members of Calvary Baptist Church. Not that we don’t love others, but it’s just that God’s given us the responsibility to guard our communion.
And it’s clear to me that to remove someone from communion, he must have been part of it in the first place.
No local church could kick someone out of communion with some universal, invisible church. Church discipline and communion only make sense at the local level of God’s church.
–Pastor Ryan