A Free Church Form for a Virtual Lord's Supper

Senior Pastor: Welcome to our Lord’s Supper celebration at Lakeside Baptist Church. We invite our members to gather physically with any members who reside in your home. We invite you to gather virtually with your whole church while using the elements physically distributed or available to you.

Would you bow your heads and pray? Ask the Lord to forgive you any unconfessed sin. And confess your faith in his Son’s death for your sins and his resurrection for your life.

(Pause.)

Teaching Pastor: Then and Now: Consider ancient Israel then. When the Israelites were enslaved in Egypt, God called them to live forward into freedom. However, He first confined the entire nation to single households so as to protect them from the tenth plague, which would devastate the Egyptians.

Consider the New Testament church now. Called into existence by the grace of God the Trinity, the early church practiced “breaking bread in their homes” (Acts 2:46). Likewise, Paul believed he could be “absent in body” yet commune together with the church “in spirit” (Col 2:5; 1 Cor 3:5; cf. 1 Thess 2:17). Exigencies may bring the body of Christ together in a different way.

Senior Pastor: The Israelites were ordered to sacrifice a flawless animal and spread its blood with a hyssop branch at the entrance to their homes (Ex 12:22). Hyssop was later used to purify the people (Lev 14). The Lord promised to protect the firstborn of Israel’s families due to their faith (Ex 12:13). This was the first Passover meal.

Teaching Pastor: Note the similarities between the Jewish Passover and the Lord’s Supper commanded by Christ for the church’s continual celebration. The Gospels tell us that during the Passover Jesus instituted the Supper (Mark 14:12-26). John says they used a hyssop branch to offer Jesus sour wine as he finished his sacrificial work upon the Cross (John 19:28-30).

Senior Pastor: Before his betrayal and crucifixion, Jesus used the bread and the cup prepared for the Passover to create a new memorial. The bread and the cup deepen the meaning of the Passover’s matzah and wine.

 I.     The Bread

Teaching Pastor: As the Israelites were commanded to use unleavened bread (Ex 12:14-20), so Jesus took unleavened bread (Matt 26:17). Paul writes, “Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover Lamb, has been sacrificed” (1 Cor 5:7; cf. Mark 8:15).

Senior Pastor: The matzah bread is a picture of Yeshua and what he did for us. Look at how it is striped. It is written, “He was wounded for our transgressions; he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed” (Isa 53:5).

(Senior Pastor lifts and unwraps the bread.)

Teaching Pastor: Look at how the matzah is pierced. It is written, “They shall look upon me whom they have pierced” (Zech 12:10b). 

(Senior Pastor breaks the bread and distributes it to both while Teaching Pastor continues to read.)

The middle matzah from the Unity was broken, just as Jesus was broken with suffering and death. It is wrapped in white cloth, just as his body was wrapped in linen. His body was confined for a short time in the grave, but he was freed on the third day from the grip of death. 

Senior Pastor: At the last supper, Jesus said, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19). 

Let us now eat the bread, remembering the broken body of the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. 

(Both eat the bread, signaling the congregation to join.)

 II.     The Cup

Teaching Pastor: Just as Moses instituted the old covenant with the sprinkling of blood (Ex 24:8), so Jesus instituted the new covenant with his own “blood,” which was “poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matt 26:28).

Senior Pastor: The four Passover cups rehearsed the four promises of God to Israel. With the third cup, it was said, “I will redeem you with an outstretched arm” (Ex 6:6-7a). 

(Senior Pastor fills the cups and distributes to both while Teaching Pastor is reading.)

Teaching Pastor: Just as the sons of Egypt suffered for the sins of Egypt (Ex 11:5), so the only begotten Son of God suffered for the sins of his people (Matt 27:54). 

Hebrews says, “By faith he kept the Passover and sprinkled the blood, so that the Destroyer of the firstborn might not touch them” (Heb 11:28). 

Just as the blood of the Passover lamb provided national salvation for the old covenant people of God in Egypt, so the blood of Jesus Christ provides eternal salvation for all who enter the new covenant by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.

Jesus said, “this is my blood of the covenant” (Matt 26:27b-28a).

Senior Pastor: This is the cup of redemption. It stands for the blood of the Passover lamb. After the supper, Jesus said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you” (Luke 22:20).

Blessed are you, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who creates the fruit of the vine. 

Let us drink with thankful hearts, remembering the Messiah’s sacrifice for us.

(Both lift the cups and drink, signaling the congregation to join.)

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NOTE: This Form for the Lord's Supper was crafted for use in exigency by Lakeside Baptist Church of Granbury, Texas, and was first used on the evening of Easter Sunday during the COVID-19 Pandemic of 2020. Elements were made available beforehand by safe distribution.

For theological and pastoral reflections on the use of the Lord's Supper in a virtual format, please consult the contributions of the following Baptist theologians:

• W. Madison Grace, The Lord's Supper Online
• Steve R. Holmes, Can We Celebrate an Online Eucharist? A Baptist Response, Part 1, Part 2
• Bill Riedel, Practicing the Ordinances in a Pandemic

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Is Communion for Sinners?

Recently, a friend passed me the link to a video promotion for a DVD entitled "Communion." It is an interesting video (and painfully slow, so be warned!) It is interesting in that the author(s) seems to present the Lord's Supper as indiscriminately intended for all sinners. But this is too simple of a solution, and does violence to the biblical witness.

It is an indisputable truth that all human beings, other than Jesus Christ, are tainted by sin. This is what makes us worthy of the eternal punishment of death. Death, of course, is separation from God. And the Son of God took on our humanity in order to suffer the penalty of death for us on the cross and rise from the dead so that we might have eternal life. Christ came to save sinners from sin and its consequence of death, which ends in eternal punishment away from the comforting presence of God. One is saved through being born again, which accompanies faith in Him and repentance toward God (John 3).

Unfortunately, the video's author, in this short promotion, presents the Lord's Supper as being intended for all sinners indiscriminately. But is this the case? Is communion intended for all sinners? Absolutely not!

When the Corinthian church demonstrated a penchant for gross immersion in the sins of the wider culture of their day, Paul rebuked them in no uncertain terms. The point he repeatedly made in the Corinthian correspondence was that the Lord's Supper was to be reserved only for the regenerate church. Those who were still infatuated with the sinful culture of Corinthian paganism were reminded that communion with God and communion with the devil are incompatible (1 Cor 10:20-21). The Corinthians were warned that they must be separate from the world: "'Come out from their midst and be separate,' says the Lord, 'and do not touch what is unclean; and I will welcome you'" (2 Cor 6:17).

In other words, I believe that, according to Scripture, the ordinance of communion, practiced by the churches at the direct command of Jesus Christ, is to be reserved for sinners who have been born again and are pursuing a life of repentance. Are the unholy invited into communion with the Holy One? Yes, indeed. But, first, there must be a transformation prior to communion. Sinners must repent and believe; otherwise, they are still sinners subject to the judgment of God. Moreover, such repentance from sin and faith in Christ must continue to characterize the Christian's life.

Paul warned that those who continued in sin are subject to divine judgment precisely because they were unrepentant sinners. "For he who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself if he does not judge the body rightly" (1 Cor 11:29). The body must be judged. "The body," of course, is a common Pauline metaphor for the church. Individual Christians, in other words, must examine their own consciences (1 Cor 11:28), and Christians in the local church must hold one another accountable for one another's doctrine and conduct (1 Cor 11:29).

A concrete example in Corinth occurred with a young man involved in gross sexual sin. The speech of the Corinthian church had become so saturated with vice that she overlooked a situation by which even the pagans would be shocked (1 Cor 5:1). But rather than pass over the matter in silence, or make excuses for it, Paul called the church to take immediate action. As an Apostle, Paul recognized the need for the congregation itself to exercise governance through the application of discipline. The church must repent of its habit of condoning gross sin and excommunicate the sinner. When the church gathered, it must remove the sinful person "in the power of the Lord Jesus" and return him to the realm of Satan, i.e., the world (1 Cor 5:2-5).

The action of the Corinthian church in disciplining the unrepentant sinner was necessary, in spite of the difficulty it might bring to all involved. Yet, the difficulties were worth what seems to have been the result. Rather than continue condoning sexual sin, the majority of the Corinthian church seems to have obeyed and applied church discipline. This resulted in getting the sinner's attention, bringing to him great sorrow, and as a result, he repented. Paul then called the church to restore the repentant sinner to fellowship (2 Cor 2:1-9). Through discipline, an unrepentant sinner who thought he was already a Christian but did not act like it, was brought to repentance and faithfulness towards Christ.

My friends, our churches must seek to maintain their public purity. On the one hand, the church will never be perfect until all Christians gather (for the first time as one) at the marriage supper of the Lamb (Rev 19:7-8). On the other hand, the members of the church are commanded by Christ to help one another towards repentance and a faithful lifestyle even now. If an individual Christian will not repent of publicly-known sin, then he or she must be excluded by the church (and only by the church--there is no room for elders arrogating to themselves the power of church discipline) for the purpose of loving redemption (Matt 18:15-17).

Let it be clearly noted that the intended outcome is, ultimately, the redemption of the sinner. Punishment is entirely in the purview of God alone, but loving discipline is given by the Lord to the church to practice when necessary. The church is to separate from unrepentant sinners in order that they might prompt one another through the covenantal life of the community to follow Christ completely.

So, we come back to the question prompted by the subject video: Is communion for sinners? Yes, but not without discrimination. Communion is only for sinners who have been born again. We know we are truly born again only because we are repenting of sin and are seeking to live lives faithful to the high call of Jesus Christ in discipleship.

Perhaps the video that prompted this short essay goes further into these matters. Unfortunately, the website does not clarify. I hope the full content is better than the presentation available publicly, for what they have posted online presents a highly distorted picture of the scriptural witness. For more on the biblical understanding of the regenerate church practicing close communion, see the Baptist Faith & Message 2000 articles on the church (art. 6) and on baptism and the Lord's Supper (art. 7).

Jesus is the Lord of His churches, which means that He is to be followed in what He commands them.

The Family of Christ

Then His mother and brothers came to Him, but they could not meet with Him because of the crowd. He was told, “Your mother and Your brothers are standing outside, wanting to see You.” But He replied to them, “My mother and My brothers are those who hear and do the word of God.”

Luke 8:19-21 (HCSB)

Yesterday, Sunday afternoon, my two oldest sons were late on their homework and were diligently seeking to finish their work before Monday. However, a kink was thrown into their plans: the evening service at our church was scheduled to celebrate communion. I explained to the oldest boy that Christ commanded us to celebrate the Lord's Supper until He comes again and that our church practiced communion at set times but with less frequency than my own desire. There was no way any of us were going to miss out on obeying the Lord's command when given opportunity. Without delay, the three of us packed into the car and joined my wife with the other three children for worship.

Over the last two years, during previous celebrations of communion, I was in the practice of whispering to my youngest son, who is now a 9-year-old, what the Lord's Supper means. The Lord's Supper is a memorial celebration performed as a communal confession of the atonement of Christ worked upon the Cross. The fundamental reality of the body broken and the blood that Jesus Christ, the sinless one, voluntarily poured out on behalf of our sins is powerfully represented in the bread and the cup. The accompaniment of the visual practice with the audible Word has a powerful effect upon the observer of this second of the great Christian ordinances.

But participation in the second of the great ordinances commanded by Christ for His church to practice in its worship is reserved for those that have been born again and witnessed to that regeneration through participation in the first of the great ordinances commanded by Christ for His church: baptism. Previously, my youngest son had requested permission to participate in the Lord's Supper in our church. He understood the meaning of the Lord's Supper and his Christian faith prompted him to desire to participate in this great communal confession. Unfortunately, he had not yet followed Christ in the first public act of a Christian believer: baptism by immersion. He was definitely part of my family, but not yet visibly part of the family of Christ, and Jesus Christ had set certain standards for membership in His family, standards over which we have no authority to dispense or alter.

In our age, as in previous days, there is a thoroughgoing antinomianism at work with regard to the commands of Christ. This is true with regard to personal ethics and with regard to communal ethics, ecclesiology. Indeed, whole churches have bought into ecclesiological antinomianism. They dispense with the commands of Christ in mission and in communion. Mind you, many individual members do so out of ignorance, but disobedience is still disobedience, whether performed by churches or by individuals, who have been misled by churches. The family of Christ is identified not by blood kinship, but, according to Jesus, it is composed only of those who "hear and do," that is, "hear the Word" and "do the Word." The antinomian confesses that he or she has heard God's Word, but then refuses to carry out God's Word.

Antinomians, whether individuals or organized into communities, have the fundamental problem that they say they know Christ but then dispense with His commands entirely or alter His commands to their own liking. This hypocrisy is usually excused through some type of man-made theological innovation: for instance, in the doctrines of baptismal regeneration, covenantal infant baptism, sprinkling or pouring rather than immersion, etc. More closely to home, this hypocrisy is often propagated by those who hold (correctly) to the Reformation doctrine of justification by grace through faith alone. The problem these sincere Christians have is that they seem to forget that true discipleship is not just properly confessed in word, it is also properly confessed in deed, both personally and communally.

The Great Commission of Jesus Christ explicitly includes the practice of baptism, and the ordering given by our Lord and subsequently practiced by the apostles was that baptism succeeds faith but precedes further instruction in our Lord's commands (Matt. 28:18-20: 1-going, 2-making disciples, 3-baptizing, 4-teaching all things commanded by Christ). "Baptism," of course, means "immersion" in the original Greek, so proper Christian baptism occurs after conversion and is by immersion. As with the Lord's Supper, the visual act of Christian baptism accompanied by the confession, "Jesus is Lord," is a powerful memorial to one's personal faith in the God who is Jesus, who died and rose again. This is the way Jesus intended it to be and those who dispense with His commands by attenuating the Great Commission or by altering its order will stand before God to give an account of their disobedience.

Baptism is the first act of the public Christian life and thus should be obeyed before one is able to participate in the other commands of Jesus Christ for His churches, including the Lord's Supper. Again, note the order laid down by Jesus: 1-going, 2-making disciples, 3-baptizing, 4-teaching all things (inclusive of the Lord's Supper) that Christ has commanded. When I explained this to my son, he accepted the biblical order of close communion, a logic confessed in my own denomination's Baptist Faith & Message. However, it took some time before he was able to overcome his fear of standing before the church to request entrance into the church covenant and the right of participation in the Lord's Supper.

I praise God that my son overcame human frailty by the power of the Holy Spirit and obeyed Christ by requesting public baptism in the name of his Triune Lord. I praise God that I was prompted last evening to remember His command that we participate in the Lord's Supper until He comes again (Matt. 26:26-29 and par.; 1 Cor. 11:23-26). After the service, I asked my oldest son, "Aren't you glad we obeyed Christ and came to see your brother profess Him as Savior?" His reply, of course, was in the affirmative, though the homework still remained to be done.

I praise God that my family of blood kin includes members of the family of Christ, too. I praise God that He has given us the grace of salvation, a grace confessed visibly and necessarily in the grace of obedience. I praise God that He has led our church to recognize that baptism is to precede communion and that it is a confession and not a magical rite that is disconnected from the individual human will. (I also praise God that He has led our church not to affirm those improperly baptized, for to affirm an error is to participate in that error.)

Oh, Lord, help us to hear your Word clearly, and do your Word diligently! And where we have erred, please illumine the Bible so that we may understand correctly and empower us by your Spirit so that we may live correctly! I thank you that You have led my son into Your family, whose Father is so much superior to his earthly father. Your ways truly are effective. Your truth truly is invincible.