1. Who Ought to Go?
Thomas Houston
In whatever light we regard the Lord’s Supper, it is evident that particular qualifications are required in those who ought to partake of it. If it is viewed as a symbolical ordinance, it is indispensable that those who receive it should have some knowledge of the fundamental facts and doctrines which it symbolises. If it is set forth as a seal of the covenant, this implies that those to whom it is administered are really in the covenant, as we cannot properly seal what does not exist, or confer privileges on those whose names do not appear in the documents to which the seal is affixed. It cannot be a means of strengthening and confirming grace to those who are not already in a gracious state. Nor can it possibly assure persons of benefits flowing through Christ if they have not previously been united to Him by a living faith. It cannot assure them of their participation in the inheritance of saints in light if they have not been incorporated with them into one body in Christ.
From all this, it is evident that the sacrament of the Supper should not be carelessly dispensed to all who desire to partake of it, or to persons simply on the ground that they claim the Christian name, or make some profession of religion. The indiscriminate admission, so common today, of people of all kinds of character to sealing ordinances openly dishonours Christ, profanes
11The Apostles’ Doctrine of The Atonement, 1860, p 214.
12Man’s Relations to God, 1869, p 100.
1Taken, with editing, from Houston’s volume, The Lord’s Supper. He was a prominent minister in Northern Ireland who died in 1882 at the age of 78.
the most sacred mysteries, and tends to lull them in fatal delusion. As the Supper is a symbolical representation of the great truths of salvation through Christ, and is designed to be an open profession of faith in these doctrines, those who are ignorant or scandalous are plainly inadmissible to it.
The faith which is to be exercised and strengthened must be intelligent, and fruitful in good works. Those who are called to partake of the Supper should have a competent knowledge of the great fundamental truths of the gospel. If they are unable to discern the Lord’s body, they can only eat and drink judgement to themselves. Infants and very young persons, not being capable of understanding divine mysteries, are justly excluded from the sacrament, even if there is some evidence that the saving work of the Spirit has begun in them.
To receive persons to the Lord’s Supper goes on the principle that, in the judgement of charity, they are believers in Christ, and live a life that corresponds to the gospel. In the sight of the Master of the feast, only those who are friends of the Bridegroom are welcome guests – those who have “oil in their vessels with their lamps” and go forth to meet Him with their lamps trimmed. When the King comes in to see the guests, He detects in the thronged wedding chamber the single individual who lacks the wedding garment of His own righteousness and sentences him to utter rejection and dread punishment. None but true believers are entitled in God’s sight to partake of the Lord’s Supper. By faith they enter into “the bond of the covenant” and, in consequence, have a right to its seal. Through the same grace, they are united to Christ, the living Head of His body the Church, and are thereby fitted to have fellowship with Him and with His living members – saints on earth and in heaven.
But even believers may be unfit to partake of the seal of the covenant, and there are cases in which, by coming to the feast of communion, they aggravate their sin and incur God’s displeasure. Such an unsuitable state occurs when believers are in a negligent, slothful condition, when they are living in the allowed commission of any known sin, or cherishing enmity or malice against any. The Lord’s Supper is a feast of faith and love, and one can only partake of it aright when these graces are in exercise. The table of the Lord is holy, and those alone are made welcome to it who come with clean hands and pure hearts. As “Christ, our Passover is sacrificed for us”, we are to “keep the feast, not with . . . the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” (1 Cor 5:7,8). The direction is positive and explicit: “Let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread and drink of that cup” (1 Cor 11:28).
Due preparation for the observance of the Lord’s Supper requires us, on
the one hand, to guard against manifold dangers to which Christians are exposed and, on the other, to seek a suitable frame of heart and mind for its observance. Serious consideration of the obligation, nature and objects of the ordinances is required of all who engage in the sacramental service. The divine rule declared here is explicit: “I will be sanctified in them that come nigh Me, and before all the people I will be glorified” (Lev 10:3). “He that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him” (Heb 11:6).