Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2872
“For as often as you eat this bread, and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death till He comes.” 1 Corinthians 11:26.
This solemn ordinance has been instituted and perpetuated to commemorate the death of our Lord Jesus Christ, but there is no ordinance to commemorate His life. One reason for this is because His death implies His life—when you commemorate His death, you testify that He lived. Another reason is that the Christian’s life, better than any ordinance, is the proof that Christ lived and the testimony to this world how He lived. A Christian should so act that worldlings would be compelled to ask, “By what power, by what energy, is he actuated to live in a style so superior to that of his fellows?” The answer he should always be prepared to give is something like this, “I live thus because Christ so lived and it is no more I who live, but Christ who lives in me. The love of Christ compels me, so that I am sweetly and blessedly compelled to live, not unto myself, but unto Him who loved me and gave Himself for me.” The proof that Christ came into the world should be that His followers are holy! Let their character be blameless and harmless, their conduct so devoted and so full of self-sacrifice that it shall be a constant memorial of that Redeemer whose name they profess. If the mind of Christ is in His people, it will make them so far superior to other men that it must be inferred that some superior energy is in them and that superior energy is none other than the love of Christ.
They should also so live that if any ask them how Christ lived, they may be able to say—not in words, for that might encourage pride, but in effect—“He lived as I live.” It has been well said that ungodly men do not read the Bible, but they read it as it is translated into the lives of Christians. The actions of Believers are, to the worldling, the means of judging what our religion really is. Men of the world do not sit down and study our creeds, but they trade with us in the common business of life—and if we trade dishonestly, they judge that our creed is wrong and that our religion is not true. They do not wade through our Bodies of Divinity to balance our arguments and test their value by the rules of logic—they have a shorter and more practical test than that. If our religion makes us upright in our conduct towards others and compels us to fear God in all that we do, then they pronounce our religion to be good. But if, on the contrary, we profess that we believe in Christ and yet can habituate ourselves to foul and degenerate behavior, they at once conclude that our religion is a thing of nothing. Brothers and Sisters, I repeat it, that Christ did not institute a memorial of His life because He would have yoube the living memorials of Himself. He has not left us any ordinance in which His acts, His words, His thoughts can be set forth before the eyes of men in visible signs—He has done better than that for He has made you to be His signs and ordinances! “You are My witnesses,” says the Lord. If the Spirit of God is in you, you are the testifiers to the world of the holiness and the purity of the Character of your Lord!
Our text tells us that the Lord’s Supper was instituted by Christ as a memorial of His death. I am going to speak, first, concerning that of which the ordinance is a memorial—Christ’s death. Then, to point out how the ordinance itself shows forth the Lord’s death till He comes. And then, thirdly, to show how we, in this ordinance, rather than the ordinance itself—that we, in the ordinance, do show the Lord’s death till He comes.
Allow me to observe, however, that the retrospect gives us only one aspect of this ordinance, for it also distinctly holds out a very blessed prospect. We are taught, as often as we celebrate it, to look for our Lord’s Second Coming. Our text contains a very strong and a very lively anticipation of His Second Advent and of His Personal’advent, too. Many
persons say that Christ is certainly coming again, but that He is coming spiritually. This way of putting the matter seems to me to be a subterfuge. A man who is already here cannot be said to be expected to come. And it is certain that Christ is, at this moment, spiritually-present with His people. His own declaration is, “Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them.” He is never absent, spiritually, from His Church. He still walks among the golden candlesticks. I cannot see, therefore, how it can be consistent with the ordinary meaning of language to say that He is to come spiritually.
My Brother, you believe that Christ is to come spiritually. Suppose that is true, what will be the result? Why, the Gospel will be better preached, more sinners will be converted and may I not also add that the ordinances will be better observed? Do you think that if Christ should come spiritually into this world, as you say He will, this ordinance would be taken away? “No,” I think I hear you say, “certainly not. If Christ shall come spiritually, Believers will be more attentive to His commands than they ever have been—they will be still more strictly obedient to His Word and will.” Just so, but my text says they are to show His death, “till He comes.” That seems to me to infer that, when He comes, the ordinance will be no longer observed. When He is here in Person, I can see adequate reasons why the memorial of His First Advent should be dispensed with. But if His Second Advent is not an absolute reality, I can see neither Scriptural nor logical reasons why this ordinance should cease to be observed at His spiritual coming, whatever that expression may mean!