Tag: Lord’s Supper

The Problem of Self Examination

 

 

Self Examination

One of the problems that occurs during the call for self-examination during the LORD’s Supper is that members of the body of Christ judge themselves subjectively, and then wrongly excommunicate themselves from the sacrament. In other words, they base their freedom to partake in the LORD’s Supper upon their own judgment of themselves, and their own feelings.

As G.I. Williamson and fellow committee members write:

By our calling for self- examination and “discernment” on the part of communicants as part of their preparation for each observance, we direct attention (perhaps unwittingly) away from the objective character of this sacrament.

People are making judgments about their subjective condition every time communion is celebrated, and as a result they often “suspend” or ”excommunicate” themselves on a week-by-week, or month- by-month basis.

And often the criteria for this evaluation are highly emotional and subjective. The effect of the whole is a tendency to obscure Christ, as the object of faith, from our view, and to hinder the very effectiveness of the sacrament in the life of God’s people which we are concerned to promote (Majority Report, Paedocommunion, OPC 55th GA, 1988.)

All of this subjective judgment  is based upon the following verse:

28 But a man must test himself, and in so doing he is to eat of the bread and drink of the cup. 29 For he who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself if he does not judge the body rightly. 30 For this reason many among you are weak and sick, and a number sleep. (1 Corinthians 11:28-30)

The problem is that far too many take this verse out of context and apply the verse to the entirety of the Christian life. What Paul is writing against is division in the church. This is one of the major themes and sins of the Corinthians. They were finding all manner of ways to divide themselves, when they were to be one body, and one in Christ.

Many Divisions

For example, the first critique that Paul makes against the Corinthians is that they have set up factions among themselves, some following Apollos, some following Cephas, and some boasting of only following Christ (I Cor. 1:11-17). There are many other issues as well that result in division, but those other issues are not the point of this post.

Continue reading The Problem of Self Examination

A Response from My Fellow Elder

I shared my last post, To Exclude Our Children from the Table, with the officers in the church, and Seth Crow, my fellow elder, sent the following reply. I think in really helps complete the larger picture of paedocommunion, and communion in general.

Here is what Seth wrote:

Yeah, I think that is a good point about hungry people wanting to eat. Like David with the show bread. Although, I think it is also important to maintain that this is our table and those outside have “no right to eat.” The washing is what prepares one for the feast.

Also, I know the “I got this” type person when it comes to self-examination. If the Lord’s Supper is a mutual eating – us of God and God of us – then the question would be whether we have any unconfessed sins that are weighing on our conscience. If we have confessed them, then we need to believe the proclamation of the gospel. If we are intentionally disregarding the Holy Spirit, then God is not pleased. It didn’t say that the people who died were the ones bringing dissension.

When the sin of Achan is committed, you don’t know who in the body will fall under discipline. I think the sin we most often try to gloss over is antipathy with those in the body. That really does need to be taken care of – not just between the person and God – but the two people before eating. Leave your gift at the altar, seek reconciliation, and then come back for the meal of peace and thanksgiving. Otherwise it isn’t the meal of peace and thanksgiving.

HOWEVER, God is not up there waiting to pounce. It would be easy for a conscience to always be worried about this sort of thing, so I like your general encouragement – just eat in faith. Especially in the Reformed world it is a necessary corrective. I just think the other needs to be brought up on regular intervals. We are also presenting our bodies to God. Is it a pleasing aroma? Only in Christ. But not if we are hiding sin and harboring dissension.

I thought your end point about excommunication was well said. If we are presenting the one man, the bride, to Christ in worship then it is wonderfully encouraging to remember that God loves kids, even the ones that have short attention spans and argue too much and are growing up. When it comes time for the meal they are hungry. We can be so much more fastidious than God. Not that He doesn’t care about discipline, He does, and our faithfulness to our children in bringing them up in the encouragement and admonition of the Lord is one of the things judged on Sunday. But, like you said, the message preached is “Let the little children come to me.”