THE LORD'S SUPPER AND TABLE
THE LORD’S SUPPER AND TABLE
The first great thing to ascertain with regard to the Lord’s supper is His own mind in instituting it. It was evidently to be in remembrance of Himself in His death. He addressed Himself to the eleven so thoroughly bound in heart to Him. It was a request which each heart there most eagerly responded to. To remember Him was the paramount feeling in their hearts. He asked those who were most willing to accede to His request.
A sense of His love would be engendered in us, as the remembrance of Himself in death for us was revived to our hearts. His love led Him to give up for us all things that He was divinely and rightly entitled to as a Man here; and the more this love, and the manner of it, comes before our hearts, the more are we attached to Him, and in heart dissociated from all that He surrendered for us. I would not call it a command; I feel I am asked by Him to do what my heart delights to accede to. The request is addressed to loving hearts, and hence the deeper and the fuller my remembrance of Him, in the hour when His love came out most fully, the more I am attached to Him. I do not say that I bind myself to think of nothing but His death. It is His death which draws my heart to Himself in this very special way, which results in the responsibility which the table expresses. The Supper leads me into His great love for me, and the table is my answer to it.
The remembrance of my Saviour in death for me so affects me that He is then more than ever before my heart in the depth of His love for me, a love which many waters could not quench; and I always find that when there is a real effect produced on me, I am then not so much occupied with the work which produced it (though the effect must carry with it the nature of the work), as with the One who did the work; and hence I believe the corn of the land accompanies the [p. 344] Supper, or follows it rather, as in the land, and as it did in John 14, which surely is the corn of the land, or Christ in glory. Confining the mind to the mere act of Christ’s death, though that be the door by which we enter into this new region, would be limiting me to that which produces an effect, and would not leave room for the range and scope into which the effect would lead me. Because when I enter by fresh remembrance of His death into His love for me, I feed on Himself in death and in glory; and I am in full purpose of heart to be identified with His death here, which is the table side. It is the very sense of enjoying Him in glory, to which I reach afresh, in remembrance of His death, that prepares me, in heart and taste too, to have the fellowship of His death here. I walk along the Jordan, but on the heavenly side of it. Thus death and glory are mine; glory where He is, and death where He was. As I recall His death, I am renewed in His love to rise to Himself where He is (the corn of the land), and I am prepared for the grave responsibility of being identified with His death in the place where He died for me.