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Do I Have to Take Holy Communion to Be Forgiven?
The death of Jesus is at the heart of the Christian faith. The blood of Christ cleanses us from our sins (I John 1:7).
But how do I receive that forgiveness? Do I need to eat the bread and drink the cup in a service of communion to be cleansed of the stain of my misdeeds? And what happens when I sin again? Do I need to take communion again to have that sin covered?
Communion as a Time of Remembering (1 Cori 11:24-25)
When Jesus shared the Last Supper with his disciples, he instructed them to “do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19). The apostle Paul repeated this command from the Lord when he spoke to the churches about regularly celebrating the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor. 11:24–25).
Remembering the significance of Christ’s death is the heart and essence of celebrating the Lord’s Supper. The broken body and the shed blood of Christ are what make a relationship with God possible. This is due precisely to the fact that all of us were separated from God because of our sinfulness. There was no amount of good we could do, service we could render to God, or rituals we could perform that could endear us to him. The only solution was for a sacrifice to be offered that would be adequate to deal with our sin. God himself provided that sacrifice in his Son, Jesus Christ.
It is little wonder, then, that Jesus instructed his followers to remember his sacrificial death regularly when we gather together. To help us in our celebration of this event, he gave us two important symbols, bread and wine. We eat the bread (signifying the body of Christ) and drink from the cup (signifying the blood of Christ) to remember Jesus’s sacrifice for us that resulted in the forgiveness of our sins and enabled us to enter a close personal relationship with God.
When Jesus says, “This is my body,” as He points to the bread they would eat in remembrance of Him (Matt. 26:26; Mark 14:22; Luke 22:19; 1 Cor. 11:24), He is not saying that it is literally His body, but that the bread represents His body. It is similar to Him saying, “I am the gate for the sheep” (John 10:7 ). By this, He does not mysteriously become a gate and share the properties of a gate; the gate simply represents the fact that people need to enter a relationship with God through Jesus. The bread and wine are important symbols that help us reflect on His actual broken body and shed blood.
Communion is thus not a ritual that bestows forgiveness upon us. The Bible makes it clear that we receive cleansing, forgiveness, and salvation by putting our faith in Christ. This is brought out quite clearly in John 6:40: “For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life.” Similarly, the apostle Paul says in Romans 3:25: “For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed His life, shedding His blood” for us.
©alexanderthomas.org
