Communion and Confession | 1 John 1
Brian Hedges | September 28, 2025
I want to invite you to turn in Scripture to the book of 1 John to begin with. We’re going to be in a handful of passages this morning, but we’re going to start in 1 John 1.
When we gather to worship, we often confess together the Apostles’ Creed, and one of the statements we make in the Apostles’ Creed is, “I believe in the communion of saints.”
I wonder if you’ve ever thought about that phrase. What do we mean by the communion of saints? Is that just another way of saying, “I believe in coming to the church potluck meals or the church picnic,” or something like that? I think a lot of times when we think about fellowship we think about sharing food together. That’s a wonderful thing to do, of course. It’s hard for us not to enjoy those times together, when we meet over a meal, we share a good meal together. But that’s not all that’s entailed in the communion of saints, in fellowship.
This word “communion,” or fellowship, as it’s often translated, is a word that’s actually translated from a Greek word that’s a very strong word, a very powerful word that is important in understanding the New Testament. I want to teach you this word. It is the word koinonia. Could you say that out loud with me? Koinonia. Alright, you’ve learned a Greek word this morning! It’s a word that’s actually a little broader than any of our words completely translate. It’s a word that carries the idea of both a deep spiritual—we might even say mystical—union that we have with one another, and yet it also is a word that entails very practical, concrete ways of partnering together in ministry. It’s a word that embraces both friendship and fellowship, both the communion we share through the Spirit as we together are united to Christ through the Spirit, but also the practical ways in which we partner together for the sake of the gospel.
Today, in this final message in our short little four-week series on the keys to biblical community, I want us to think about communion and confession. In the course of this series we’ve been talking about the “one anothers” in Scripture. We’ve talked about love and unity and the importance of loving one another and being united together in Christ and in the gospel. We’ve talked about service and hospitality and how important it is for us to serve one another and welcome one another into our homes and lives. Last week I really appreciated Brad’s sermon; it was an excellent exhortation from Scripture to speak the truth to one another in love.
Today we’re going to talk about this aspect of fellowship and one thing that’s embraced within it, confessing together and confessing to one another.
So, here’s the message in a nutshell. We could say that the communion of saints is embodied and expressed through the fellowship we share in four dimensions. Those dimensions are truth, light, mission, and then the fourth one, the Lord’s table, which in some ways is the visible expression of the other three. I want us to think about each one of those together this morning.
1. Fellowship in the Truth
So, number one is fellowship in the truth, and to begin I want to read from 1 John 1:1-4. As I read, notice the double use of this word “fellowship” or koinonia in verse 3. The apostle John is writing; he says,
“That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life— the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us— that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.”
That’s a remarkable passage that is written by the apostle John, the beloved disciple, the last of the original twelve disciples to finally die. So this is probably one of the later letters. John writes as the aged apostle. He’s known as the apostle of love, and he writes this letter in part to defend the historicity of the gospel.
He was writing in a context where there were false teachers who were beginning to say, “Jesus the Son of God didn’t really take on real flesh, it just appeared to be flesh.” They were denying the incarnation of Christ, so John, right from the beginning, says, “Listen, the things that we are declaring and proclaiming to you are things that we saw with our own eyes, we heard with our own ears, we touched him with our hands. The word of life was made manifest among us, and this is the way to eternal life. Our fellowship with the Father is through the confession of this truth, of the life of God manifest in Jesus Christ. I’m writing this to you so that you will have fellowship with us.”
It’s showing us something very important about this communion of saints. It’s showing us that our fellowship is a fellowship that comes through the common confession of truth, through a common set of beliefs that we embrace together. Fellowship is not just about being in the same room together. It’s not just about physical proximity. It’s about a common set of beliefs that bind our hearts together in unity.
Theologian Michael Horton puts it this way. He says,
“The catholicity and unity of the church is found only in fellowship with the triune God. These attributes of the church do not arise from the individuals or religious society but from the Father, in the Son, by the Spirit.”
It is our fellowship with God, through Jesus Christ and the Spirit, that unites us to one another, and there is no Christian fellowship without that.
It’s important that we understand this right from the beginning, and it’s important that we see that this unity in the truth is unity in the essentials of the gospel. You know, Christians argue about all kinds of things, and have argued about all kinds of things over the centuries, and that can be secondary doctrines, it can be political perspectives, it can be worship styles, whether you’re a hymn person or a Hillsong person. I mean, we could even argue about the temperature in the room! Some people like it cold, some people don’t like it so cold.
All of those things may be things we disagree on, but Christians are able to unite in a common set of essential, core beliefs. That’s what John is reminding us of here. It is that our unity is in the truth, our fellowship is in the truth.
I think, right from the beginning this suggests some things that we need to apply to ourselves. Let me give you a couple of these.
First of all, you just need to check your beliefs. Ask yourself this question: Do you really grasp the essentials of the gospel? Check your beliefs, and own those beliefs. Do you really believe the things that we confess together?
I recall a story I heard years ago about a man who was trying to figure out what a confessing Christian, a church man, believed, and he asked him, “What do you believe?”
He said, “Well, I believe what the church believes.”
“Okay. Well, what does the church believe?”
“The church believes what I believe!”
He said, “Well, what do you and the church believe?”
“We believe the same as each other!”
He couldn’t really articulate what he believed, and perhaps there are some here today that come to church, but you couldn’t really articulate the gospel. If someone were to ask you, “Could you tell me what Christians believe in a minute or less?” what would you say to them?
My hope is that you would say something similar to what John is saying here: that Jesus Christ, the word of God, was made incarnate among us; that he actually lived, the Son of God lived among us, was crucified for our sins, he was raised from the dead, and those who believe in him have eternal life.
Is your sense of solidarity and unity with other believers rooted in those glorious truths, the truths of the gospel, or have secondary issues crept into that space that should be reserved for the most primary things?
Here’s a practical thing you could do this week. Read through one of the historic creeds. Maybe do this with your family. Read the Apostles’ Creed. Read it out loud phrase by phrase, or read the Nicene Creed, and discuss those phrases and the truths that they represent. These are the things that all Christians believe, and these are the things that unite us together, and we have no fellowship with one another if we don’t have fellowship in the truth of the gospel.
2. Fellowship in the Light
But it’s not just fellowship in the truth. There is also, secondly, fellowship in the light. You can see how John states this in 1 John 1:5-7, which we’ve already read this morning for our assurance of pardon. Let me read these verses again.
“This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.”
You see, the truth is not only something to be believed, it’s something to be practiced. We practice the truth as we walk in the light of the gospel.
This is because God himself is light. That statement means that God is pure, that God is good, that God is holy, that God is the source of all that is good and pure and beautiful and holy in the universe. To walk in fellowship with him means we must walk in the light of his character. The opposite of that is walking in darkness.
Just think about the difference between light and darkness. Light reveals, light exposes; whereas darkness is a place where things can be concealed and can be hidden. So walking in the light implies here walking with a certain degree of honesty and transparency and purity in our lives, rather than hiding from God and hiding from others in sin and shame.
I’ve mentioned many times that my favorite film of all time is this beautiful, artistic film The Tree of Life. There’s a moment in this film where the protagonist of the film, a little boy named Jack, begins to descend into a life of darkness. You see it in the changes in his attitudes and his relationships. He’s harboring a deep resentment and anger towards his father. He becomes cruel to animals and to other children. He’s making fun of people with disabilities and those who have experienced harm. He’s really, really cruel to his brother. He even kind of gets on the borderline of voyeurism and really transgressing boundaries, and he’s descending into darkness.
There’s a moment in this film when he’s there with his mother, played by Jessica Chastain, and she’s looking at him intently. She knows something’s wrong with him, and he averts his eyes; he will not look in her face. He says, “Don’t look at me,” because he’s ashamed, because he’s hiding.
There’s an impulse in the human heart that wants to hide our brokenness from others. It goes all the way back to the garden of Eden. You remember when Adam and Eve had sinned against God, they had broken God’s command, they had eaten of the tree that God had forbidden them to eat; they were making the rules for themselves. And when the Lord God comes into the garden and calls out to them, “Where are you?” they are hiding from him. And Adam says, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, and I hid myself.” That’s the story of the human race, a story of hiding in sin, in shame, and in guilt.
As one scholar comments—Christopher Watkin—he says, “Protecting oneself from the gaze of the other; here seems to be Adam’s default way of managing guilt and shame.” Protecting oneself from the gaze of the other.
I wonder how true that is for many of us in church this morning, that rather than walking in the light, we’re walking in darkness. Rather than letting ourselves be known by a trusted brother or sister in Christ, we are covering what’s really in our hearts, hiding it and cultivating this hidden life.
But John tells us that walking in the light means confessing our sins. It means a certain degree of openness. Look at 1 John 1:8-10. He says,
“If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.”
Verse 9 has to be one of the greatest gospel promises in all of Scripture. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and he is just to forgive us and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” This is a promise that if we bring our sins to the Lord, we confess them, we acknowledge them to God, then God in his justice and in his mercy and faithfulness will cleanse us and he will forgive us.
This means, of course, that we must confess our sins to the Lord. But I think it also could imply that there’s a kind of confession that happens with one another. And if it’s implied here, it is explicit in James 5:16, where the apostle James says,
“Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.”
So this is one of those “one anothers” in Scripture, confessing your sins to one another.
Now, that’s a scary thing for us, and we need to clarify what this means and what it doesn’t mean. Here’s what it doesn’t mean: It does not mean that you must confess your sins to another person in order for God to forgive. You don’t have to confess your sins to a priest in order to be forgiven. It doesn’t mean that every sin you’ve ever committed needs to be confessed publicly to all. It doesn’t mean that if you confess all of your sins that you will receive physical healing from all your sickness and ailments. It doesn’t mean those things.
But it does suggest that mutual confession is a healthy thing. As Douglas Moo puts it, it is a “habitual practice that is greatly beneficial to the spiritual vitality of the church.” There’s something that we are called to…to share our lives together, to open ourselves to one another, to submit our lives to the gaze of someone else rather than hiding in the shadows all of our lives.
Listen to how Richard Foster talks about this in his book Celebration of Discipline. This is in the chapter on confession, which he views as one of the corporate disciplines of the church. This is powerful. He says,
“Confession is a difficult discipline for us because we all too often view the believing community as a fellowship of saints before we see it as a fellowship of sinners. We feel that everyone else has advanced so far into holiness that we are isolated and alone in our sin. We cannot bear to reveal our failures and our shortcomings to others. [That’s some of you right now.] Therefore, we hide ourselves from one another and live in veiled lies and hypocrisy. But if we know that the people of God are first a fellowship of sinners, we are free to hear the unconditional call of God’s love and to confess our needs openly before our brothers and sisters. We know that we are not alone in our sin. We are sinners together. In acts of mutual confession we release the power that heals. Our humanity is no longer denied, but transformed.”
I wonder if you’ve experienced that, if you’ve experienced the kind of spiritual and psychological healing that comes as you open yourself to someone else, and maybe you share one of the darkest parts of your life to someone else, and they gaze on you not with condemnation but with love and compassion, and they express to you the forgiveness that is found in Jesus Christ. That is a healing experience, and it’s something that all of us need at some points in our lives. It’s scary to us, because we’re not particularly good at admitting our weaknesses or confessing our sins. If anything, we’re better at confessing other people’s sins than confessing our own sins, right? But we need to learn to do this.
I want to suggest some application. I want to talk about when you should confess your sins to someone else and then give you some context for putting this into practice. There are two times, two occasions, when we should confess our sins to others.
(1) First of all, we should confess our sins when we sin in a way that hurts or breaks a relationship with someone else. So, if you’ve sinned in a kind of way that you know you’ve hurt someone else, they know that you’ve sinned against them, and there is now a coldness in the relationship or a distance in the relationship or the relationship is broken, that’s an occasion where there needs to be confession.
In fact, Jesus teaches exactly this in Matthew 5. He says if you come to pray—you bring your gift to the altar—and you “remember that your brother has something against you, leave the gift” and go reconcile with your brother, “and then come and offer your gift” to the Lord. There is a necessity in the church of keeping our relationships in good order and reconciling to one another, as much as it is possible for us. That means sometimes that when we’ve blown it, when we’ve said something in anger or we’ve said something that was hurtful or harmful or we have behaved in a way that has hurt someone else, then it’s necessary for us to confess that and to seek their forgiveness.
It’s not easy, but it’s as simple as going and saying, “You know what? When I said that to you the other day, I was wrong, and I sinned against you. I know that that hurt you, and I am sorry. Will you please forgive me?”
There are some you who probably need to do that with someone in this room, maybe someone in your family. That needs to happen, because you know you’ve wronged them, they know you’ve wronged them, and the relationship is broken.
Now, let’s just be clear. This doesn’t mean if you have a spiteful thought about someone that’s never expressed that you need to go confess that, or if you have a lustful thought about someone you go confess that. Don’t do that. That’s just creepy. There are some things that you confess to the Lord, not to the person you’ve sinned against. But when the relationship is broken, you confess and you seek restoration and reconciliation.
(2) Here’s the second occasion: When we are stuck in a cycle of sin, habitual sin, and we find that we need help because we can’t extricate ourselves from this cycle of sin by ourselves. And I think this happens often in people’s lives, where there’s maybe an addiction or there is a pattern of behavior, or maybe just stuck in certain attitudes. This can happen in relationships, it can happen in a marriage, it can happen in our private, personal life. In those cases, we do need the help of others.
The wisdom of John Calvin—I read this years ago when I was reading Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion. Calvin, of course, was a Protestant Reformer who was very critical of the medieval Roman Catholic church, and he talked a lot about confession, auricular confession. He critiques it, and he makes it very clear that we do not need to confess our sins to a priest in order to receive forgiveness of sins. He’s right in that. But he says, essentially (I’m paraphrasing), if you’re stuck, if you cannot break through and you find yourself stuck in sin, then you need to seek out a wise counselor or a pastor or spiritual director or friend. You need to seek out someone in order to receive help with that. There is, again, great power and great healing that can come in those moments.
Friends, I’ve had to do this in my own life. There have been a number of times when I have needed to share with someone else an area where I was struggling in order to get some counsel or in order to get some help. I remember many years ago, when Holly and I had much younger children, we were kind of in a period—we call those preschool years the dark ages. Those are hard. Some of you are in those. They’re hard. It’s very chaotic. There was a lot—we were stressed, we were adapting, adjusting to that; but what was happening was I had developed an anger problem, and that anger was coming out with some regularity and it was hurting Holly, it was harmful to our marriage. I wasn’t really making much progress with it.
Finally I went to a brother in the church who was a few years further down the road than me, and I told him what was going on, kind of laid it out. “What do I need to do?” He essentially said, “This is on you. You have to step it up. You have to become a more engaged husband and father, and you have to deal with these issues.” That was helpful to me.
All of us need to do this at some point in our lives, and when we do, and when we get the help that someone else can give, that’s when the breakthrough can come.
So there needs to be confession in these two contexts: when we’ve hurt the relationship and when we are stuck. When we do that and we receive the help and compassion, and maybe even the forgiveness, of someone else, there is great power for spiritual renewal and psychological healing in those moments.
There’s another moving scene in that film The Tree of Life. After Jack has done all these cruel things and he’s expressed great cruelty to his brother, whose name is Steve, he finally comes back to Steve and he’s trying to mend the relationship. He doesn’t really know what to do, but he says essentially, “I love you, you’re my brother, I shouldn’t have treated you that way.” He’s kind of offering, like boys do, “Why don’t you just hit me back? You can hit me. You can do something to hurt me.”
Steve refuses to do it. Instead, he looks him in the eye and says, “I forgive you,” and that relationship is mended and restored. Again, it’s powerful when that happens in our lives.
What are some of the contexts in which this then needs to be applied? Let me give you three.
(1) Number one, family life. For many of us, this is where it needs to start, because the people you’re sinning against the most are probably the people who live in your own household, right? So if you break the relationship by expressing yourself in anger or saying something cruel or calling someone a name or being unfairly critical, you need in those moments, or after those moments, to come back and repair the relationship. You need to confess it. You need to not sweep it under the rug; you need to acknowledge it, confess it, and restore the relationship, and do so without being defensive.
Parents, let me just say, this is one of the most tangible, practical ways that you can embody the ethics of the gospel in your family. It’s by acknowledging when you’re wrong and seeking forgiveness. You are putting yourself in the place of the sinner—which you are—you’re acknowledging that; and you are modeling how to repent.
I think years ago Holly and I realized that we were not going to be perfect examples to our kids, because we just blow it, and we have many times. But we realized that one thing we could do is we could model repentance for them by seeking their forgiveness. We’ve had to do that many, many times with one another and with them. Some of you need to do that.
So, if you are estranged from a child or a spouse or a parent or a sibling and you know the relationship is broken, you know there’s been a pattern of sin or you know that something happened that disrupted the relationship, you need to make that right. You need to confess your sins and seek forgiveness.
(2) Another context for doing this is in friendship. I think this is especially where it can be helpful when we’re stuck to just get the help of a friend. What kind of person would you look for if you wanted to confess a habitual sin problem and get help? I think you would want to look for someone who demonstrably in their life understands the gospel, someone who is able to speak to you clearly from the word of God, who can give you encouragement but also counsel. You want to look for someone who has spiritual maturity, someone who is marked by compassion, someone who is wise; but someone who also will love you enough to speak the truth into your life. There are those people around you. There are those people in the church. There are those people in my life and should be those people in your life as well.
(3) Then, finally, church life—small groups—is a place where, to some degree, this mutual confession can take place, as we bring our struggles into the conversation and we just acknowledge, “I’m really struggling with stress and with anxiety, and I’m not handling this well. I’m having difficulty trusting God in this. Will you pray for me?” Or, “We’ve been struggling in our marriage, and we need you to pray for us and encourage us and hold us up.” Find a context where you can make those kinds of honest acknowledgements normative in your life together with God’s people in the church.
This is walking in the light, fellowship in the light, as we confess our sins together, and it is part of the communion of saints.
3. Fellowship in Mission
Two more, and I will be briefer on these two, but I think they’re important to emphasize. There is, thirdly, fellowship in the mission of the gospel, because we do not exist for ourselves as a church. We exist for the sake of others, to glorify God and to point others to Jesus Christ. This word, koinonia, is a word that is used in that context as well.
You see this especially in Paul’s letter to the Philippians. I’ll just read a few verses from chapter 1, Philippians 1:3-5, and then verse 27. Paul says,
“I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, because of your partnership in the gospel [there’s the word—koinionia] from the first day until now.”
Then he gives this exhortation, which is kind of the thesis of the whole letter, in verse 27.
“Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel…”
It is a call for them to be unified together for the sake of the gospel, for the sake of the mission of the gospel. Paul’s writing this to a church that, maybe more than any other church, had supported Paul in his work as an apostle, his work as a missionary. They had given to him financially; he calls that part of the partnership. They had prayed for him and prayed with him. They had this deep bond that they shared together in the Spirit. And throughout this letter he appeals to this again and again and again.
I think we can think about this in both a negative way and a positive way. Negatively, there is the appeal to not let anything break up the unity that hinders the mission of the church. Paul does this in the letter to the Philippians. In fact, he actually names two women who were at odds with one another in Philippians 4. He says, “I entreat you to be in agreement with one another.” Be united to one another; agree in one mind.
In the same way, we need to agree together and be united together, because our united witness is a part of our testimony to the world. When the church is fighting, Jesus is not glorified and the world is not helped. They just look at these crazy Christians who are always squabbling among themselves. That is not what we should be like, and we need to be careful, even with things like our social media posts, that we do not critique one another before the eyes of the world. If you have something that you need to say to somebody, go say it to them personally and work it out, but don’t get into the online criticisms. It hurts our witness.
You remember this other movie—this is my third favorite movie—I had to use this one, because this is about fellowship. So, The Fellowship of the Ring, of course, my third favorite movie. Some of you are wondering what’s my second favorite movie! You can ask that in the meeting after church. My third favorite movie, The Fellowship of the Ring, is the story, of course, of Frodo and Gandalf and this group of various people—they’re from different cultures, they’re from different backgrounds, different experiences, but they are coming together with this common mission, and the mission is to fight off evil. It is to destroy the ring of power. You remember this? This is what binds them together. It’s kind of a journey movie, it’s a quest movie. They’re on this journey together.
But you remember that one member of the fellowship has this ambition that has taken hold of his heart, and the ring takes power over his heart. It’s Boromir, and it grabs hold so deeply for him that he eventually betrays the fellowship. He betrays Frodo and tries to take the ring for himself; and in doing so, the fellowship is broken.
Friends, that can happen in the church as well. It can happen when we start trying to build our own little kingdoms instead of prioritizing the kingdom of God; when we become turf-oriented and we are really concerned about our particular ministry, our particular domain in the church. We don’t even want anybody to sit in our seat that we sit in every Sunday! We get our feathers ruffled over that. Listen, that should not be the characteristic stance of the church. We should not disagree with one another; when we do that in those ways it hurts the mission of the church. So we need to guard against the things that negatively take us off mission.
But also, we need to pause and think about the ways that we can unite together for the sake of the mission as we share with others. Let me give you three ways to do that. This is how to partner with others in mission.
(1) Number one, pray, and pray together with others for unbelievers. Let me just ask you, and I want a raise of hands here, how many of you are, with some regularity, praying for either a very close friend or a relative or family member who does not know Christ? Let me see your hand. That’s almost every hand in the room. What if you just shared that with someone else sitting near you who raised their hand, and you started praying together, and you double the prayer power? It’s not just you praying for your lost adult child or your parent who still has never believed, but someone else is doing that with you. Together, you are partnering in prayer to pray for those who do not believe. It’s a way in which you can leverage the fellowship, the communion of saints, for the sake of the mission of the gospel, in prayer.
(2) The second thing you can do is serve together. Not all of us are equally equipped for every aspect of evangelism. Some of us—and some of you in this room are ten times better at this than I am—you’re inviting people to church all the time, you’re extroverted, you’re friendly, you’re reaching out; and you’re constantly bringing people into the church. God bless you. We need more of you.
But some of you find it difficult to get out of your shell. You find yourself tongue-tangled. You’re not good with words. But you’re great with setting up the meal or setting up for an event, or doing the behind-the-scenes work as we’re doing something like an outreach event, like our upcoming Treat Street. You’re great at those kinds of things. But listen, if everybody joins together, using their gifts and their skills in order to help us reach people who don’t know Christ, we’re all participating in evangelism, we’re all participating in gospel work. Some of you may do that by giving generously. Maybe you don’t have the words to preach a sermon, but you have the funds to support the work of the gospel around the world. So serving together, finding that gift, and using it.
(3) Here’s one another practical thing you can do: turn your shared interests into outposts for sharing Christ with others. It may be that you’re involved in sports, either for yourself or for your kids or family. It may be a gym membership, it may be a book club, it may be community theater. I don’t really care what it is, but if you are doing something as a part of your avocation, a part of your life, that’s a meaningful, non-work-related pursuit, why not do that with some other believers and then invite unbelievers into that friendship? In doing so, you’re building relationships and you’re giving unbelievers an opportunity to have a shared interest with Christians, get to know some Christians, and then you pray for gospel conversations to take place.
It’s exactly those kinds of things that lead to the kind of organic growth that can happen in a church as more and more people are hearing about Jesus and believing in Jesus; and it’s a part of our fellowship in the mission of the gospel.
4. Fellowship in the Lord’s Supper
Finally, one more, number four: fellowship in the Lord’s Supper. We take the Lord’s Supper, obviously, every week here at Redeemer, and there are a lot of reasons for doing that, but one reason is because the Lord’s Supper symbolizes for us all the things we just talked about. In the Lord’s Supper we show our unity in our common confession of faith (the truth of the gospel), our commitment to live together as people who are pursuing holiness and walking in the light, and our shared commitment to the mission of the gospel.
One reason I think this is so important to emphasize this morning is because this this word koinonia is used specifically in relationship to the Lord’s Supper in 1 Corinthians 10. Let me read just read two verses, 1 Corinthians 10:16-17. He says,
“The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation [there’s the word] in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?”
He’s saying when you drink the cup and you eat the bread you have koinonia with Christ, you have fellowship with Christ, communion with Christ. But then notice this. In verse 17 he says,
“Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.”
So he’s saying there’s not only this vertical dimension of fellowship and communion with Christ, there’s a horizontal dimension too; because when we share in this common meal we are showing that we are part of the one body of Jesus Christ, and it is a vivid symbolization and reenactment of the unity that we have in Christ as we come to the supper and we participate together in Christ’s body and blood. We are united to him, and we are united to one another.
I’ve been reading this year, very slowly, an academic study of Charles Spurgeon. It’s a book that’s really on the spirituality of Charles Spurgeon. The book is called Communion with Christ and His People, and the author’s argument in this book is that when you look at all the different dimensions of Spurgeon’s spirituality, including his view of prayer and his prayer of Christian activism and so on, every one of those elements boils down to this commitment to communion with Christ and communion with Christ’s people.
This week I was reading the chapter on the Lord’s Supper and came across this wonderful statement, a powerful description of what happens at the Lord’s table. I want to read it to you. Spurgeon said,
“No power upon earth can henceforth take from me the piece of bread which I have just now eaten. It is gone where it will be made up into blood and nerve and muscle and bone. It is within me and of me. That drop of wine has coursed through my veins and is part and parcel of my being. So he that takes Jesus by faith to be his Savior has chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from him. He has received the Christ into his inward parts, and all the men on earth and all the devils of hell cannot extract Christ from him. By our sincere reception of Jesus into our hearts, an indissoluble union is established between us and the Lord, and this manifests itself in mutual communion.”
Spurgeon was so committed to this, so passionate about this, that they had communion every week in his church, and even in older age, when he often had to spend months at a time in convalescence in the south of France, in warmer weather, because of all the diseases in his body, he would gather believers together in his little hotel rooms in order to celebrate the Lord’s Supper with them. It was a precious reminder to him of the union he had with Christ and the communion he had with the saints.
So friends, here’s the application. As you come to the table, approach the table as a communal experience, not just an individual thing. When you come to the table, it is not just a “me and Jesus” moment. It is that, but it’s more than that. It is a “we and Jesus” moment. That’s why we take the Lord’s Supper together as an assembled body of Christ.
Then, be reconciled to fellow believers. Restore broken relationships. It’s part of what we symbolize when we come to the table. If you are at odds with another believer in the church, you need to make that relationship right so that when you come to the table you’re not telling a lie by breaking bread together, but you are truly united in spirit and in relationship with those with whom you break bread.
So the communion of saints means much more than just potlucks or coffee breaks. The communion of saints means fellowship in the truth of the gospel. It means walking in the light and confessing our sins to one another. It means partnership in the mission of Christ. And all this embodied and expressed as we come to the table together.
This is the end of a short series. We could have spent many more weeks on this. But I want to just end with this exhortation to you, as we’ve thought for the last four weeks about these “one another” commands in Scripture. Why don’t you take inventory of your relationship with Christ and the church? Are you connected to other believers—not just in word, but also in relationships? Do you actually have friendships and relationships with other believers in the church? Are you committed to the life of the church, the ministries of the church? Are you giving yourself to that life of ministry as a part of the body of Christ? We are all called to this. The church needs this. God is glorified in it, and it’s part of what we mean when we say, “I believe in the communion of saints.” Let’s pray together.
Gracious God, we thank you this morning for your word. We thank you for these reminders of what it means to live in relationship with you and your people. We want to pray right now that your Spirit would show us anything in our own lives that needs to change. For some of us, Lord, maybe it means coming out of the shadows and sharing a struggle that we’re having with a trusted friend in the church. For some of us, Lord, it means an open confession, where we have sinned against others and we need to seek reconciliation and restore that relationship.
Lord, for all of us it means that we confess together our faith in Christ and in the gospel, and that we united our hearts in the mission to which you have called us. So we ask you, Lord, for the grace to do that. We pray that your Spirit would apply the word deeply to our hearts. We pray, Lord, that you would help us to put these things in practice, not out of guilt or shame but with deep gospel motivations, remembering that we are the beloved of God, that we are heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, that we are members of this family and that this is a place of grace and acceptance and forgiveness.
Lord, as we come to the table this morning, help us come with our hearts fully engaged as we seek you in worship and as we enjoy the fellowship that we have with Christ and with one another. We ask you to search our hearts in these moments as we prepare ourselves for the table, and we pray that you would be glorified in this time. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.
Brian G. Hedges
