The Lord’s Supper

The reason why the Lord’s Supper held such a significant place in the early church is because it embodies the major features of the Christian life. The emblems we see, the bread and the wine, at the Lord’s Supper are broken and drunk as a shared experience (Matthew 26:26; 1 Cor. 10:16). The broken bread points us to the humanity of Jesus. The Son of Glory took upon Himself the form of a servant. The Almighty hovered Himself by becoming a man. The bread, being the most basic and lowly of all foods, points to the humanity and availability of our Lord. By taking on our humanity Jesus Christ because accessible to us all, just is the most readily available food for everyone, both rich and poor.


The Breaking of Bread also reminds us of the cross upon which our Lord’s body was broken. Bread is made from crushed wheat and wine is made from the pressed grape; both elements represent suffering and death. Yet, the Breaking of Bread does not only depict the suffering and death of Christ. It also shows forth His resurrection. The grain of wheat has gone into the ground, but it now lives to produce many grains like unto itself (John 12:24). While we eat the representation of His flesh and drink the representation of His blood through the Supper, we obtain His life (John 6:53). This is the principle of resurrection—Life coming out of death.

The revelation of the resurrected Christ is also bound up with the broken bread. When the risen Lord ate with His disciples it was bread that He broke with them (John 21:13). In like manner the resurrected Christ appeared to people on the Emmaus road but their eyes were not opened to recognize Him until He broke the bread (Luke 24:30-32). The Lord’s Supper reveals Christ to us.

The testimony of the oneness of Christ’s Body is also embodied in the Breaking of Bread. Recall that there was only one loaf that the early Christians broke. Paul writes, “Because there is one loaf, we, who are many are one body, for all partake of the one loaf” (1 Cor. 10:17). “There is one Body” …such company thus owns no other membership than that of the one Church, the Body of Christ, to which Christians belong by the operation of the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 1:22-23; 1 Cor. 12:12-13). It is the Lord’s Supper that is the symbol of this unity and the Scriptural observance of this memorial feast is really the expression of Christian unity (John Reid, 1987).

Thus the Lord’s people gather together and bear witness of their oneness of life in Christ and in the Body of which He is the Head. It is in this way that every evidenced believer is welcome to enjoy Christian privilege and fellowship according to Scriptural simplicity and order. When Jesus celebrated the Passover, which was the first Lord’s Supper, He offered the wine cup to His disciples with the word, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20). By this action, the Lord was pointing out this one fact; the Supper was a covenant meal wherein His disciples revisited the common memories they shared and celebrated their new identity in the Messiah.

Today when we celebrate the Lord’s Supper as a meal we are remembering the covenant we have with God in Christ. We are participating in the shared memory of what Jesus has done for us and we are proclaiming our new identity in Him. Water baptism is the Scriptural mode of our initiation into the Christian faith and the Lord’s Supper is a reaffirmation of our initial commitment to Christ. Through it, we reaffirm our faith in Jesus and our identity in Him as part of the new creation. It possesses past, present, and future implications. It is a re-proclamation of the Lord’s sacrificial death for us in the past. It’s a re-declaration of His ever-abiding nearness with us in the present, and it’s a re-pronouncement of the Hope of glory—His coming in the future.

In other words, the Lord’s Supper is a living testimony to the three chief virtues—faith, hope and love. Through the Supper we re-ground ourselves in that glorious salvation that is ours by faith. We express our love for the brethren as we reflect on the one Body, and we rejoice in the hope of our Lord’s soon return. By observing the Supper, we “proclaim (present) the Lord’s death (past) until He returns (future)” (1 Cor. 11:26). Through the Supper, the Holy Spirit reveals the living Christ to our hearts anew and afresh. By it, we reaffirm our faith in Jesus and membership in His Body. Through the Supper we sup with Christ and His people. For these reasons the early Christians made it an important part of their gatherings. Suffice it to say that the Lord Himself instituted the Supper (Matthew 26:26), and His apostles handed it down to us (1 Cor. 11:2). It is a spiritual reality.

For the first followers, the Lord’s Supper was not an end in itself, but means of communing with the triune God. The ties that bind are relationships, nor rules. The “light of the world” is not the message of Jesus. Jesus Himself is the light of the world. In the observance of the Lord’s Supper, the redeemed of the Lord, as His local Body, corporately express Christ. For He is the Message on earth.

Our faith is not a commitment to a course, it is the acceptance of an invitation to join Jesus on His journey and to live life in the mystery of God made flesh. To the believer the contact is the content. When we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, we are indeed celebrating the life of Jesus who is the Good News.

T Cyprian Kia

Spiritual Gifts are Divine Investments in You: Be Accountable

     There are many things wrong with the church today just as there have been many things wrong with it throughout the centuries since Jesus came to establish it.  In some places the churches are not true to the teaching of the Scriptures. They have imposed their own views of God’s program, will, and nature on the Bible. They pick and choose the part they want to believe and cast aside the others.

In other places, the churches have lost their vision for mission and evangelism.  All their energies are expended in caring for their own members.  Their horizon reaches only to the back pews of their own buildings. They behave as though Jesus had died only for them, or as though men and women are going to heaven regard less of what they believe.

The others things visibly hurting the church are divisions that stem from racial bigotry, heresies that grow out of Biblical ignorance, personality cults that celebrate human achievement, compromise with pagan valves in sexual and marital matters. All these give the church a clinical rating that ranks with some of the sickest persons in an intensive care ward.  These problems weaken the church’s mission, but what debilitates the church more is the neglect of spiritual gifts in the body of Christ. The situation in thousands of assemblies and gatherings is literally tragic. It is sad, despite Christ’s strong warning.  Matthew 25:14-30 speak specifically to the tragedy that God’s people suffer when they do not make the most of the gifts that God has given them. The story is in the parable of the talents whose familiar theme is found in the text;

1)      the tragedy of abused accountability;

2)      the tragedy of missed opportunity;  and

3)      the tragedy of lost joy.

No account of the discovery and cultivation of our spiritual gifts can be complete if we fail to note the damage done when those gifts are neglected.  The people in the parable are one key to its message: a master and three servants. That relationship speaks of accountability. Servants must answer to their master in all details of their life and work. We make a great mistake when we mix our role with God’s; He sets the term of our work. He is in all things the Master, our task is not to make the rules, but to obey by saying “yes” to the rules He has already made.

Jesus began His parable thus: “For it will be as when a man going on a journey called his servants and entrusted to them his property to one he gave five talents, to another two to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. “(Matt. 25:14-15).  Who decides who would get the five, the two and the one? The master, of course, only he knew that servants well enough to determine how much property each of them had ability to handle. There was no squabble among them, no elbowing each other for the largest share, no badgering the master for an extra talent. They recognized his right to decide. They had no property of their own, nor any power to acquire it. Their share was determined by His grace and by that grace alone. We are accountable to the Master’s grace.

The master’s grace placed them under obligation to make the best possible response. What they had not earned or deserved had been put in their trust, their only acceptable answer was to use it well. The Master of the Church gives these gifts of the Spirit to the Body as expressions of His grace. We do not chose which gifts we receive or how many. These matters are up to Him. Most importantly, we cannot chose not to use what He has given us.

There is a purpose why He lavished His grace upon us. This fact is made clear in the master’s rebuke of the servants who had hid his own talent (matt 25:276-27). It tells us that God’s grace in our lives is counted as an investment. It is not just to be conserved. That was the wretched servant’s mistake. He did not realize that grace is a seed to be planted for further growth. He did not understand that God’s blessings are not for hoarding, but for multiplying as we put them to work in the lives of others.

That servant could not plead ignorance. He knew precisely how demanding the master was. But he misapplied the knowledge that he had. He was defensive, not aggressive. He took no risks in using the master’s grace and, in so doing, took the greatest risk of all; he neglected his accountability to the master’s purpose.

The gifts of God’s, Holy Spirit are precious and true. And the Lord of the Church demandingly wants them treated as such. They are not like gold to be stored in Fort Knox, nor like Rembrandts’ paintings to be hung in a well-guarded museum. They are fuel to be converted into spiritual power, they are ore to be refined into useful tools, and they are seedlings which will grow into fruitful trees.

The grace of God granted this servant was an opportunity to expand and grow as a person; he missed all that because he was fearful and unduly cautious. God gives more, when we use well what we have.  Part of the servant’s tragedy was that he missed his opportunity for greater blessings. The Master’s command was harsh; “Take the talent” he said “from him, and give it him who has will more be given, and he will have abundance, but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away” (Matt 25:28-29).

The greatest responsibilities, the larger privilege, the expanded service, the enhanced growth, all of these chances were missed because the servant misread his master’s instructions. Sadly he lost the chance he had; so his single talent had to be forfeited.  Unused gifts may lead to disqualification from God’s service. Who dare take lightly any spiritual gift bestowed upon us by the risen Lord Jesus.  He is Lord of all. Wisdom demands that we discover what gifts God has given us and to diligently use them in full submission to Him. It is not about doing things for God or being active, busy and involved.  Rather it is about letting God do things through us. Let us not cripple the Church and turn the body of Christ into losers because the Holy Spirit gifts have not been put to work for God’s purpose. Joy follows when we purposefully use our spiritual gifts in service for Him. Let us therefore, walk humbly before our God and be accountable to Him for the spiritual gifts we have received so far.

Living Under the Headship of Christ

When a person’s life is beautified within by Christ’s presence, that life provides a radiant reflection of Him in all they do and say. The Christian life displays Christ before the world. Christ’s presence within produces a longing to be with all those who love and adore Christ with a pure heart. The Christian life, therefore, should not be driven by a mindset of organized religion. If we do, it would be morphed into the incarnation of man’s efforts to capture God and put Him in a house of human construction. This would result in our gathering as a people of God and at a location as a man-made institution which would be completely at odds with the fundamentals of Jesus’ life and message. God cannot be confined by limitations of our human mind.


The problem is not about where we gather, but in losing sight of why we have gathered and truly understanding what we have become in Him. We were once dead, but are now quickened by the Holy Spirit into life. We are now being fitted into a habitation of God. Therefore, individually and collectively we are now God’s space to encounter humanity; where God now receives true worship and adoration (Genesis 28:1-22; 1 Peter 2:5).

“Welcome to the Living Stone, the Source of Life. The workmen took one look and threw it out. God set it in the place of honor. Present yourselves as building stones for the construction of a sanctuary vibrant with life, in which you’ll serve as holy priests offering Christ approved lives up to God. The Scriptures provide precedent. Look, I am setting a stone in Zion, a cornerstone in the place of honor. Whoever trusts in this stone as a foundation will never have cause to regret it. To you who trust Him, He’s a stone to be proud of, but those who refuse to trust Him, the stone who the workmen threw out is now the chief foundation stone. For the untrusting it’s a stone to trip over, a boulder blocking the way.” (1 Peter 2:1-9, The Message).

The Holy Spirit that quickened us into living stones is the Spirit of Christ. Christ, therefore, is the Chief Cornerstone in God’s place of rest; the Church. In our collective expression of God’s resting place, Christ is the Head and our lives as believers should be lived totally and only in response to His leading and direction in our daily walk. (Ephesians 2: 16-20, 1 Peter 2: 4-6, 9).

In the first century the cornerstone was the first stone that was laid in the foundation. It was also the main stone of the building. It aligned and united all the other stones together. Each of the stones in the building was measured by the cornerstone. The building had to be in complete conformity with the cornerstone or else it could not be approved. Jesus Christ is the main stone, the Cornerstone in the foundation of God’s house; all things are measured by Him, united in Him and conformed to Him (1 Corinthians 3: 9-11).

What this tells us is that Christ, being the Chief Cornerstone, is Head of the collective expression of our Christian life on earth. Christ, therefore, should be allowed to make the decisions in our lives and in our midst. In reality, this means that the members of a local expression of the Lord’s body, the Church, should respond to their Head, which is Christ, through the collective view of the Body rather than through a few human persons who happened to be in a position of prominence. In other words, the Body of Christ, in union with the Head, expresses the Lord’s mind better as a collective then as a few making or taking decisions for the rest of the collective.

When the collective, under the headship of Christ, address problems and solve them, they learn the truth of being built together as one and discover what the Cross was in the process. The Cross is the instrument of death. It’s the principle whereby we lay down our own life in order that the Lord’s life may be fully expressed. The Cross means death to self, our ambitions, our preferences, our agendas, our opinions, our desires, and our wishes (Matthew 16:24, Mark 8:34-35, Luke 9:23-24). For what reason?, one may ask. So that Jesus Christ can have His preference, His agenda, His opinion and His desire. Body life is built on the principle of the cross. It is built on the resolute decision to live by the Lord’s own words: “Not my will, but Yours be done.”.

Jesus Christ, when given the rightful place in the heart and walk of His followers would become the visible expression of Him and the house of His rest. This corporate human expression is the house of God. The final criterion of that house is that when they gather together as believers, God is present as a witness and proclaims His pleasure. The individual in this collective has abandoned himself in Christ’s hand, committed to a shared life with others under His exclusive Headship, leaving all decisions to Him.

This is a high calling of our Christian life (Colossians 2: 19); a life that is lived in trust and dependence upon the unseen Christ who dwells within us. He is the Head and this is what it means to live under the headship of Christ as a believer.

The Christ of God

Christ of God is a dynamic Savior and a powerful Lord who can help us know that our lives are in His control. He is the only One who can liberate us. He can set us free once and for all from the wretched feeling of being lost.

The Christian life is a constant struggle until we have a one to one encounter with the preexistent, preeminent, personal, all-powerful Christ. Christ who is able to control our lives existed in eternity before time and creation. He was co-equal with God the Father. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1-2). These opening words from the Gospel of John help us catch the magnitude and majesty of the preexistent Christ. As the Word, He was, and is, the generative power of the universe, the One through whom all things were made at the Father’s command.

The One we like to think of as a Friend, Teacher, our Good Shepherd, is also Christ the Word, the uncreated creator of universes within universes, who created life on the planet earth. When the Father said, “Let us make man in our image,” (Genesis 1:26), humankind was thus created. Life Himself brought life into being. The Father was the instigator, the Son, the implementer, and through the ages made us and who came to remake us. He was born among us so we could be reborn.

In His humanity Christ revealed how life was to be lived under divine control. As the son of God, He called His followers to faithful and obedient discipleship. As Immanuel, God with us, He left no ambiguity about who He was. With authority He said, “Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58) asserting His preexistent oneness with Yahweh. With equal force He spoke with power and declared that He is “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6).

Joseph's Two Sons

Manasseh and Ephraim were two fine young men with a great heritage. They were Jacob’s grandsons, but they shared in the inheritance with Jacob’s other sons. Thus Joseph actually had a double portion of the inheritance, and his sons were joint-heirs with him. He who is both Lord and Christ (Acts 2:36) has a double relationship with His chosen ones. He is our elder brother (Romans 8:29), and we are the children whom God hath given Him (Isaiah 8:18; Isaiah 53:10). He is called “the mighty God, the everlasting Father” (Isaiah 9:6). He who is the Alpha and Omega (Jesus) said that the overcomer shall be His son (Revelation 21:7).


Ephraim was both a son to Joseph and a younger brother to Manasseh. In this picture we see Joseph as a type of the Father and Manasseh as a type of the elder brother. The life of Joseph the Father was imparted to both the elder and the younger brothers, and they are joint heirs together of his inheritance. When the two brothers were brought to Jacob for his blessing, he laid his hands upon their heads and began to prophesy. His eyes were dim, and he could not distinguish one from the other, but by the leadership of the Spirit he crossed his hands, and placed his right hand upon the head of Ephraim, the younger brother. He explained that this one would become a multitude of nations (Genesis 48:15). Thus the younger son was set ahead of his elder brother and given a greater work to do. The “son of the right hand” or that one who received the blessing with the right hand laid upon his head, received greater authority and power.

As we consider who our elder brother is, this idea seems absolutely outrageous and heretical, but I call to your attention what Jesus said in John 14:12-13…”He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also, and greater works than these shall he do, because I go unto my Father.” He indicates that this brings glory to the Father. Notice He did not say “more” works (as some present day evangelists say is now true), but He said “greater works.”

All evidence from the sacred record reminds us all and points to the fact that the manifestation of Jesus Christ, as Head of His body in this earth will be greater than what men saw when He walked the shores of Galilee (with the exception of His redemptive work on Calvary which cannot be duplicated or excelled).

Common Human Temptation

All our temptations are but diminutive demonstrations of our desire to hug center stage. They are beguiling enticements to insure power, to play God, king of the mountain, lord of our own lives.
Try that on for size. Think of the temptations you have had in just the past years. Didn’t they involve side-stepping some spiritual or moral law of God? Start with the basics. Begin with the first commandment, “You shall have no other gods.” All the rest of the commandments focus on the danger of breaking that fundamental spiritual law. We can make a false god out of controlling our use of time, people, the family, truth, sex or things.
The producer and director of that production is Satan. He is a fallen angel who tried to hug center stage. Having lost his place in glory, he is busy recruiting and casting power-hungry people in roles that usurp the spotlight in their life story. He delights in getting us to seek the glory rather than glorify Christ. But center stage is where we get the worst case of feeling at loose ends because we cannot cope with the pressure. It’s inevitable; we were never meant to be there in the first place.
Temptation to get and keep control are distracting loose ends. They keep pulling us away from our central purpose of glorifying God and doing what we know He has called us to do. And now the central question: Is Christ also Lord of these loose ends of temptation? Always remember when you are being tempted that you are seeking to hug the center stage. Stop! You’re not the star. Christ is.