Why The Lord’s Supper is More Extraordinary Than You Thought

Posted on December 30, 2011 by Pastor Foley

Part XII of our series on Preparation

As we learned in our last post, Works of Mercy, absent being rooted in Works of Piety, result in acts of the flesh.  But when Works of Piety express themselves outwardly in Works of Mercy, the greatness of God is mirrored into the visible realm. And that’s very cool.

Christ himself modeled the Works of Piety throughout his ministry—this is the first half of the Great Commandments in Matthew 22:37, NIV, where Jesus said “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment.”

And Christ passes on the Works of Mercy to humanity throughout his ministry—this is the second half of the Great Commandment, in Matthew 22:39, NIV, “And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

Now, here’s the key point for today: The Lord’s Supper is extraordinary for many reasons, and one of the reasons is that through it you can see Jesus delivering all ten of the Works of Mercy to humanity.

The Lord’s Supper is inaugurated through the Passover meal recorded in Matthew 26:26-29; Mark 14:17-25; Luke 22:7-22; and John 13:21-30, but it is then enacted—meaning, it’s brought  to life—through Jesus from the conclusion of the Passover meal on through the Crucifixion.

Remember what we’ve being saying throughout this series: before we even think about doing the word to someone else, we must first hear how it has been done to us, by Christ.  And where we can see him doing all ten of the Works of Mercy is in the section of Scripture from the Lord’s Supper on through the Crucifixion.

The form of the Lord’s Supper that the church has most often used is what Paul received and passed on in 1 Corinthians 11:23-26, which I received and now pass on to you to practice this week in your family worship time. It goes like this:

 For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that he Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

I would encourage you to memorize this verse.  And as you do, I have a homework challenge for you: identify each of the ten Works of Mercy in the Lord’s Supper story, from the supper on through the crucifixion. Take your list of Works of Mercy (a list is in our last post) and ask yourself, “Where in the passion story do I see Jesus doing this Work of Mercy to others?”

Comment with your answers and next week we’ll compare answers!

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How Trying to Do Good Can Result in Bad

Posted on December 28, 2011 by Pastor Foley

Part XI of our series on Preparation

We concluded our last post by noting the importance of the Works of Mercy in training our body.

But before we continue, we need to make one thing clear that so often gets muddied in today’s change-the-world Christian climate.

We are not called to originate the Works of Mercy. That would yield what Paul in Galatians 5:19-21, NIV, calls “the acts of the flesh”:

“The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery;  idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.”

Initially it is hard to imagine how focusing on trying to do good could lead to all these bad things.

But James 1:17, NIV, says, “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.”

The root of trying to originate Works of Mercy (rather than pass on the ones we have received from Christ) is the Original Sin of Genesis 3:4: trying to be like God rather than carrying out our purpose of glorifying God by passing on what we have received from him.

We need to retrain our souls and spirits to receive and pass on good gifts, not to generate them. This is counterintuitive to the degenerate human mind.

When we “seek first his Kingdom and his righteousness” (that’s Matthew 6:33, NIV, which shows the body receiving from the soul and the soul receiving from the spirit, by the way), then our bodies receive all the good gifts they need. And our hearts are retrained to desire the good things God wants, and to desire to pass them to others in the way we have received them.

That means the body is the indispensable third part of the tripartite human form that mirrors God’s Trinitarian being:

  • body  – Christ, the visible image of the invisible God
  • soul – mind, will, and emotion in alignment with God’s will, passing things from spirit to body and from body to spirit, which corresponds with the Holy Spirit
  • spirit – the seat of the divine life unique to the human being, which corresponds to the Father

Notice how the proper relationship is for spirit to pass on to soul and soul to pass on to body (that’s our provision), and then for body to offer to soul and soul to offer to spirit (which is our worship). One is not above the other, contrary to the way we Greek-influenced Western types usually think about it, where we see body as lower and spirit as higher. But we’re modeled after the Trinity, so we need to derive our thinking about body, soul, and spirit from the relationships in the Trinity, not the other way around.

The Scripture makes clear that we are not to hurt ourselves or neglect our bodies, minds, will, or emotions. Instead, we are to receive and pass on the gifts for the soul and the body that God provides to us through the Holy Spirit. We’re to care equally for each of the three parts that compose us. That’s a message the church doesn’t share very often, unfortunately.

The Works of Piety are the good gifts for our soul that keep our mind, will, and emotions in proper relationship to our spirit (“hearing the Word”):

  • Searching the Scripture
  • Learning
  • Worshiping
  • Praying
  • Self-denial
  • Serving
  • Giving

The Works of Mercy are the good gifts for our body that keep it in proper relationship to our soul and spirit (“doing the Word”):

  • Doing good to your enemies
  • Sharing your bread
  • Opening your home
  • Visiting and remembering
  • Healing and comforting
  • Proclaiming the Gospel
  • Forgiving and reconciling
  • Making disciples
  • Ransoming the captive
  • Reigning

The Works of Piety and The Works of Mercy remind us that God’s grace is even greater than forgiveness—forgiveness is just one of many precious gifts he gives us so that we can accomplish our purpose of receiving and handing on to the visible realm all that he is and does in the invisible realm.

How does this shift in thinking keep good works from resulting in bad things?

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The Role of the Body in Christian Discipleship

Posted on December 26, 2011 by Pastor Foley

Part X of our series on Preparation

Christianity is a religion of incarnation. Jesus came in the flesh to the world God created. and we are bound for a new heavens and a new earth, where we will live in new bodies. Ours is not a religion of escaping or denying our bodies but rather a religion of our bodies achieving the purpose for which they were intended: Delivering into the visible realm that which Christ hands over to us in the invisible.

So it’s important to understand the difference between body and flesh.

Body is one of the three parts of the tripartite human being. The human is created in the image of God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The human is spirit, soul, and body.

The soul contains our mind, will, and emotions.

The spirit is the seat of God’s life in us.

God’s design for the human being was that Adam and Eve would eat the fruit of the tree of life and take his spirit into themselves. Instead, they partook of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which filled their spirits with sin and death. That sin and death spills outward into the soul, darkening our mind, will, and emotions, and bringing mortality to our bodies.

This is a progressive process in history, which may explain why human beings are shown to have shorter and shorter life spans in Scripture. Mercifully God steps in to arrest that process, giving us a basic life span. That can be lengthened somewhat, but to do so is always a fight. The march is toward decay and death. As Psalm 90:10 says, “The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away.”

When Christ is invited into an individual, that individual’s spirit is brought to life. Since the contents of one’s spirit reveal one’s parentage, Jesus says that those whose spirits are filled with sin and death are children of their father, the devil, while those with enlivened spirits are children of his father.

That entry of Christ into the individual human being is called justification.

The progressive movement of the spirit outward into the soul to transform the mind, will, and emotions is called sanctification.

That movement proceeds out into the body also, but the physical realm, where Satan was thrown down, is the seat of decay such that the old creation must be destroyed and a new creation birthed as a seed from the old. Same with our bodies.  That’s Hebrews 9:27: “It is appointed unto men once to die.” And 1 Corinthians 15 explains that our destiny is not to live as spooky disembodied spirits in heaven but rather to be resurrected with new bodies. That’s the basic Christian hope.

Now, God’s design is that he would continually pass into the visible realm through humans all of the gifts of heaven, and humans would receive these and pass them on to the creation.

Adam abdicates this vocation, but Christ comes as the Second Adam to re-establish it.

In God’s design, the spirit delivers to the soul all the gifts of God, and the soul passes these on to the body, which passes them on to the world.

Flesh is the reversal of that relationship. In this form, the world passes on “gifts” to the body, and the body passes these on to the soul. Whoops. Not good. Backwards plan.

Heart is an interesting word Scripturally. Heart is the reversal of flesh—body and soul in right relation to spirit, like in the following Scriptures:

“But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” (Galatians 5:16, ESV)

“But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.” (Romans 13:14, ESV)

“But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.” (1 Corinthians 9:27)

Our hearts need to be retrained. And that means training the mind, will, and emotions through the Works of Piety and training the body through the Works of Mercy.

The early church called this “training for the heavenly contest.”

How does this change the way you view discipleship?  

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