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The Elements of
the Lord’s Supper
What Kind of Bread and Fruit of the Vine Are We
to Use?
Peter DitzelThe
first reaction many have to an article on this topic is that it is too picky.
After all, they reason, what difference does it make if we use leavened or
unleavened bread, wine or grape juice? The important thing is that we take
the Lord’s Supper. The details are unimportant. I
find it especially odd when I get comments like this from Baptists.
Concerning the ordinance of baptism, Baptists are concerned about such
“details” as who is baptized and by what mode (immersion only).
And this concern is right and proper. So why do so many Baptists balk at the
idea of being concerned about the details of the ordinance of communion? It
just does not make sense. Of
course, what really matters is whether God is concerned with such details.
So, before getting into my main points, I am going to show you that God is
concerned with details.
A God of Details
Those
who denigrate details have apparently not noticed that God is a God of
details. Think of the Creation. From the vast expanse of the universe to a butterfly
sitting on a flower, to the scales on that butterfly’s wings, right
down to the sub-atomic level, God is a God of details. He has woven every
minute detail together to work perfectly. God
is the same God of details in the Bible. When God showed Moses the pattern
for the tabernacle, He said, “And let them [the Israelites] make me a
sanctuary; that I may dwell among them. According to all that I shew thee,
after the pattern of the tabernacle, and the pattern of all the instruments
thereof, even so shall ye make it” (Exodus 25:8-9). God said it was to
be made “according to all that I shew thee.” Moses was not to
gloss over or compromise with the details. And there were details, many of
them. In the verses and chapters that follow, God told Moses the
measurements, the materials things should be made from, what they were to
look like, and precisely where things were to be placed. Were
these details important? Of course they were! Would the great Creator God of
the universe have given Moses these details if they were not important? One
of these details concerned exactly how the Ark of the Covenant was to be
carried. When, centuries later, David ignored that detail, it cost a man
named Uzzah his life (see 2 Samuel 6).
God
also gave details in the Pentateuch for exactly how the children of When
I was a young man and had no understanding of the Bible, I tried reading it
from cover to cover. I got as far as the details of the sacrifices in the
first few chapters of Leviticus. I kept falling asleep trying to read these
details, closed the Bible, and gave up reading it for a couple of years. But,
do you know, Jesus Christ is in those sacrifices. They picture in intricate
detail various aspects of His sacrifice. The details are important. Maybe
you think that such details are just Old Testament stuff; the New Testament
is not so detailed. Think again. In fact, read the New Testament again, this
time thinking in terms of details. Notice the dates, the timing of events,
the numbers, the places, the meaning of the names mentioned, the types of
diseases Jesus healed, the context of the miracles, who Jesus was talking to
when He said certain things, the place settings in which Jesus said certain
things, and so on. These details have meaning, and are part of God’s
intricate composition.
This
small article is, of course, not the place to discuss all of these details.
We are concerned here with only two details, the two elements Jesus
instituted for the Lord’s Supper.
The Bread
The
Bible clearly tells us that Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper when He
and His disciples were gathered to eat the Passover. Matthew 26:17 and 26
tell us, “Now the first day of the feast of unleavened bread the
disciples came to Jesus, saying unto him, Where wilt thou that we prepare for
thee to eat the passover?... And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and
blessed it, and broke it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat;
this is my body.” At this time in history, the terms Passover and Feast
of Unleavened Bread were often used interchangeably. As Baptist scholar A. T.
Robertson wrote, "The Passover was expanded to mean the entire feast
that followed, and vice versa." So,
as Matthew says, this was the “first day of the feast of unleavened
bread.” Mark 14:12 agrees: "And the first day of unleavened bread,
when they killed the passover, his disciples said unto him, Where wilt thou
that we go and prepare that thou mayest eat the passover?" Luke 22:7-8
gives this account: "Then came the day of unleavened bread, when the
passover must be killed. And he sent Peter and John, saying, Go and prepare
us the passover, that we may eat."
In
Exodus 12:18-20, God gives this command concerning the Feast of Unleavened
Bread: “In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at even,
ye shall eat unleavened bread, until the one and twentieth day of the month
at even. Seven days shall there be no leaven found in your houses: for whosoever
eateth that which is leavened, even that soul shall be cut off from the
congregation of No
leavened bread would have been found in the house in which Jesus and His
disciples ate the Passover. Obviously, then, the bread Jesus used had to have
been unleavened. But is this just a matter of circumstance, or is the fact
that Jesus used unleavened bread to represent His body a detail of
importance?
The
Symbolism of Unleavened Bread
In
the Old Testament festival, the Passover lamb was killed, roasted, and eaten.
This was symbolic of the substitutionary atonement made by Jesus Christ, the Lamb
of God, for the sins of His people. As part of this Old Testament type of the
reality that came with the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the Israelites were to
not eat leavened bread for the remainder of the week of this festival. This
was a symbol or type of the feast that Christians now live each day in
Christ. Paul explains the symbolism when writing to the Corinthian church,
which had been allowing a member to live openly in sin: “Your glorying
is not good. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump? Purge
out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are
unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us: Therefore let
us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and
wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” (1
Corinthians 5:6-8). Paul
uses the Old Testament symbolism of putting out leaven to tell the
Corinthians to put the sinner out of their midst. He likens leavening with
malice and wickedness, and unleavened bread with sincerity and truth. He
tells them that they are unleavened because “Christ our Passover is
sacrificed for us.” Christ has taken away our sins. Therefore, we are
sinless in God’s eyes. From
this, we see that leavening in the Bible represents sin. In Matthew 16:6 and
12, we see that Jesus used leavening to represent the wrong and sinful
teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees. In Leviticus 2:11, we find that
leaven was almost entirely forbidden in the offerings: “No meat
offering, which ye shall bring unto the LORD, shall be made with leaven: for
ye shall burn no leaven, nor any honey, in any offering of the LORD made by
fire.” These sacrifices represented the sinless Jesus Christ, and it
would have been improper to use leavening, which was a type of sin: “So
Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for
him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation”
(Hebrews An
exception is found in Leviticus 23, in the offering made on Pentecost:
“Even unto the morrow after the seventh sabbath shall ye number fifty
days; and ye shall offer a new meat offering unto the LORD. Ye shall bring
out of your habitations two wave loaves of two tenth deals: they shall be of
fine flour; they shall be baked with leaven; they are the firstfruits unto
the LORD” (verses 16-17). God orders these loaves to be made with
leaven because they represent God’s people. These loaves are offered
with animals that represent the sinless, perfect Christ. Offered with and
compared to Him, these loaves must be leavened, representing the blemish of
sin we still bear in our flesh. Similarly, beginning with Leviticus 7:11, we
read of the peace offering in which loaves of leavened bread, representing
the spiritual sacrifices of the saints, are offered with unleavened cakes and
wafers. Our spiritual sacrifices can be offered to God only when accompanied
by the sweet savor of Christ’s perfect sacrifice.
The Significance of the Unleavened Bread in the
Lord’s Supper
The
elements of the Lord’s Supper are symbols. Paul says of Jesus’
introduction of the bread in the Lord’s Supper, “And when he had
given thanks, he broke it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is
broken for you: this do in remembrance of me” (1 Corinthians I
think that no Christian would say that Jesus was sinful. To be a sacrifice
acceptable to God, to be our substitutionary atonement, Jesus had to be
sinless. He could not pay for our sins if He had His own sins. Speaking of
Jesus Christ, our High Priest, Hebrews 4:15 says, “For we have not a
high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but
was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” We
have learned that, in the Bible, leavening typifies sin. Unleavened bread,
then, typifies sinlessness. Leavened bread was never used in the Old
Testament offerings that typified Christ. And Jesus Himself used unleavened
bread when introducing the Lord’s Supper. What,
then, must we conclude? Only unleavened bread, picturing the sinless body of
our Lord Jesus Christ can properly be used as an element in the Lord’s
Supper. Although this may sound distastefully strong to some, to use leavened
bread in the Lord’s Supper is to not discern the sinlessness of the
Lord’s body, and, since that is inherent of the Lord’s body, it
is to not discern the Lord’s body. Of course, many do this in complete
ignorance, and I am certainly not setting myself up as anyone’s judge.
But once someone has this knowledge, I believe he or she should act on it.
The Fruit of the Vine
Paul’s
account of Jesus’ institution of the Lord’s Supper in 1
Corinthians 11 gives no indication of what is in the cup. But Mark and Luke
note that Jesus called it the fruit of the vine. Mark Obviously,
the fruit of the vine Jesus referred to was liquid, but was it grape juice or
wine?
The Questions
There
are several questions that must be answered to determine whether the fruit of
the vine Jesus used was wine or grape juice. These are:
1.
Is wine inherently evil?
There
are many who believe that wine that contains alcohol is evil, and Jesus would
never have used it. They say that positive references to wine in the Bible
are actually referring to non-alcoholic wine, or grape juice. If the Bible
contains an exception to what these people say, their argument falls apart. In
Numbers 28 we find such an exception. Here is a positive reference to wine
that, without any doubt, must contain alcohol. It is called “strong
wine.” In verses 2-8 we read, “And thou shalt say unto them, This
is the offering made by fire which ye shall offer unto the LORD; two lambs of
the first year without spot day by day, for a continual burnt offering. The
one lamb shalt thou offer in the morning, and the other lamb shalt thou offer
at even; And a tenth part of an ephah of flour for a meat offering, mingled
with the fourth part of an hin of beaten oil. It is a continual burnt
offering, which was ordained in mount Sinai for a sweet savour, a sacrifice
made by fire unto the LORD. And the drink offering thereof shall be the
fourth part of an hin for the one lamb: in the holy place shalt thou cause
the strong wine to be poured unto the LORD for a drink offering. And the
other lamb shalt thou offer at even: as the meat offering of the morning, and
as the drink offering thereof, thou shalt offer it, a sacrifice made by fire,
of a sweet savour unto the LORD.” The
Hebrew word translated “strong wine” here is shekar. The Brown, Driver,
Briggs, Gesenius Lexicon says this word means, “strong drink,
intoxicating drink, fermented or intoxicating liquor.” Yet, it was
wine. We know this because this sacrifice is referring to the same sacrifice
described in Exodus 29:38-41. But in that text, the word used for wine is the
ordinary Hebrew word for wine, yayin.
This is the same word that so many advocates for grape juice say means
unfermented, nonalcoholic wine when used in a positive sense. But, obviously,
it cannot mean this in this text because its parallel text calls it
“strong wine.” The word yayin
comes from a root word meaning to effervesce because of the bubbling that
takes place during fermentation. So, even the word yayin implies fermented wine, not unfermented grape juice. By
the way, this sacrifice was not just occasional. It was the continual burnt
offering, offered every day in the morning and again in the evening. As
should be obvious, the lamb pictured the Lamb of God, slain from the
foundation of the world, Jesus Christ. And the wine poured out—the
strong, fermented, alcoholic wine—pictured His blood shed for us. Here
is proof from the Bible that alcoholic, fermented wine pictured the blood of
Jesus Christ. And think about this: God did not give the Israelites a choice
about the liquid that was to be poured out in the sacrifice. It had to be
strong wine. If the priests performing the sacrifice had chosen to use grape
juice instead, they would have been guilty of disobeying God. God would have
rejected the offering, and He may have punished them for their innovation as
He had Nadab and Abihu. It
is significant that, when Jesus, referring to the contents of the cup at the
Lord’s Supper, said it was “shed for many,” all three
synoptic Gospels use the Greek word ekchunō
for the word translated in the King James Version as “shed.” This
word can also be translated “poured out,” just as the strong wine
in the daily sacrifice was poured out. This
example devastates the position that the Bible never mentions alcoholic wine
positively. It also shows that there is good reason to believe that other
positive references to wine (Heb. yayin),
including those where it is used in other offerings picturing Jesus’
sacrifice, also refer to fermented, alcoholic wine. Wine is not inherently
evil; only its misuse is a sin.
2. Could the fruit of the vine
in the Lord’s Supper have been grape juice?
As
mentioned earlier, Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper at the time of
the Passover. This feast was celebrated in the first month, sometimes called
Abib and sometimes Nisan. Hebrew months do not exactly correspond to the
months on our calendar, but Abib/Nisan occurs in the spring, around
March/April. Grapes are harvested in summer. At the time Jesus instituted the
Lord’s Supper, no fresh grape juice would have been available. But
could not grape juice from the last summer’s harvest have been
preserved until spring? The
proponents of grape juice for the Lord’s Supper insist that the
ancients knew how to preserve grape juice, but the evidence they present is
flawed. There is often a reference to the Roman statesman, Cato, saying in De Agri Cultura CXX, “If you
wish to have must [grape-juice] all year, put grape-juice in an amphora and
seal the cork with pitch; sink it in a fishpond. After 30 days take it out.
It will be grape-juice for a whole year.” But Cato’s De Agri Cultura is not the inerrant
Bible. In CLX of this same book, we can read how to cure any dislocation:
“Any kind of dislocation may be cured by the following charm: Take a
green reed four or five feet long and split it down the middle, and let two
men hold it to your hips. Begin to chant: 'motas uaeta daries dardares
astataries dissunapiter' and continue until they meet. Brandish a knife over
them, and when the reeds meet so that one touches the other, grasp with the hand
and cut right and left. If the pieces are applied to the dislocation or the
fracture, it will heal. And none the less chant every day, and, in the case
of a dislocation, in this manner, if you wish: 'huat haut haut istasis tarsis
ardannabou dannaustra.'” (See http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cato/De_Agricultura/L*.html .) Is Cato truly a source to be trusted? Several
other ancient methods of being able to have unfermented grape juice are
usually given, such as making juice from raisons or from boiled-down
concentrate. Perhaps some of these methods would have some success. But does
the Bible give us any reason to believe that Jesus was using raison juice or
reconstituted concentrate or a drink made from any of the other methods? No.
As we have already seen, wine—even strong wine—is what pictured
Jesus’ blood in the Old Testament sacrifices. The extra-biblical data
cited by the advocates of grape juice for the Lord’s Supper simply
cannot stand up to the plain biblical evidence. Critics
also say that grape juice, and not wine, must be the fruit of the vine
because wine is too many steps distant from the vine to be called its fruit.
These critics should then criticize God for inspiring Psalm 104:14-15, which
says, “He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the
service of man: that he may bring forth food out of the earth; And wine that
maketh glad the heart of man, and oil to make his face to shine, and bread
which strengtheneth man's heart.” Does bread come directly from the
earth? No. There are several steps of processing by humans between the grain
harvest and the loaf of bread. Yet, these verses say that food and wine and
oil and bread are brought forth out of the earth. If God can say this in
Psalm 104, why cannot Jesus call wine the fruit of the vine? Deuteronomy
7:13 is similar: “And he will love thee, and bless thee, and multiply
thee: he will also bless the fruit of thy womb, and the fruit of thy land,
thy corn, and thy wine, and thine oil, the increase of thy kine, and the
flocks of thy sheep, in the land which he swore unto thy fathers to give
thee.” Notice that wine is specifically listed as one of the fruits of
the land. For
some reason, the proponents of grape juice in the Lord’s Supper usually
assert that the bottled wines available today are much stronger than the
fermented wines of Bible times. They usually wind up saying or hinting that
modern wines are fortified. The facts about wine are easily found both in
print and electronically (on the Internet, for example, see the Wikipedia
articles on wine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine
and fortified wine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortified_wine),
but some people have continued to perpetuate this myth. Fortified wines are
wines to which additional alcohol has been added. This raises the level of
alcohol in these wines to 14 to 20%. These are, however, specialty dessert,
liqueur, apéritif, or appetizer wines. These include sherry, port, Objections
to the use of wine in the Lord’s Supper are almost unheard of before
the nineteenth century. Dr. Benjamin Rush (b. 1745 d. 1813), a Founding
Father of the The
temperance movement was especially popular among feminists and Methodists
(feminists, because they saw women as the victims of violence and broken
homes caused by drunkenness; Methodists, because they saw alcohol as a
temptation hindering people from attaining what they call “entire
sanctification” or “Christian perfection,” a completely
unbiblical idea). One
such Methodist was Thomas Bramwell Welch (b. 1825 d. 1903). Welch was a
physician and dentist in Four
years before, Pasteur had found that wine fermentation was the result of the
activity of yeast (before this, it had been thought to be the result of
purely chemical processes). He showed that it was the yeast microorganisms
that collected on the skin of the grapes as they grew that then caused the
fermentation when the grapes were crushed. If the grapes were grown under
wraps, or if the juice was drawn out of the skins with sterile needles, the
juice would not ferment. Also, if juice that had been sterilized with heat
was put into a flask with a swan-shaped neck, so that air could get to it,
but not dust, it would not ferment. But when the flask was tipped so that
some of the juice went into the neck and picked up some dust and was then
allowed to drip back into the flask, the juice began to ferment (see the
article here http://www.foundersofscience.net/interest1.htm
). What
Welch did was to quickly heat the grape juice to kill the yeast cells in it,
and then vacuum bottle it to prevent any more yeast from getting to it. His
son, Charles E Welch, who was also a dentist, successfully promoted "Dr.
Welch's Unfermented Wine" to other churches. Charles promoted the
product at the 1893 World's Fair in One
reason I point out this information about Rush, Pasteur, Welch, and the
temperance movement is to show that the questioning of wine in the
Lord’s Supper is indeed the result of an eighteenth-century medical
theory (addiction and, hence, abstinence) and a nineteenth century social
movement, is not soundly based on the Bible, and was only able to be put into
practice because of scientific advancements in microbiology. I will address
another reason below.
3. Which is purer, grape juice
or wine, and is grape juice a proper picture of Jesus’ blood?
Advocates
of grape juice in the Lord’s Supper maintain that, because it does not
contain yeast, grape juice is purer than wine and, therefore, is the more
fitting symbol of our Savior’s blood in the Lord’s Supper. Is
this so? Before
continuing, I want to say that I do not know of anything in the Bible that
indicates that the presence or absence of yeast in the fruit of the vine
Jesus used is of any significance. God told the Israelites to keep the Feast
of Unleavened Bread. He said
nothing of unleavened drink, and
the Bible does not even say that a drink can be considered leavened or
unleavened. Remember, there is no real sin inherent in yeast. We are dealing
with symbols that God instituted. One such symbol is leavened bread. Leavened
bread symbolized the sin in our lives. Unleavened bread indicated
sinlessness. In Bible times, bread was made by the sourdough method, so
leavening was not thought of apart from its effects upon dough and bread. The
children of The
information I gave above about the work of Pasteur and Welch show that the
idea that grape juice is purer than wine is wrong. Yeast cells are in the air
all the time and settle on the skins of grapes as they grow on the vine.
Freshly squeezed grape juice has these yeast cells in it. When the grape
juice is pasteurized and bottled, the yeast cells are killed. So, grape juice
is not inherently pure, but when it is bottled, it is sterile. What
about wine? Again, when the grapes are crushed, the yeast enters the juice.
The yeast then causes fermentation. Alcohol is produced as a result of this
fermentation. But when the alcohol content reaches about 10 to 14%, the yeast
cells are killed and the fermentation stops. The dead yeast cells settle to
the bottom as lees, and the clear wine is drawn off and bottled. If there
were still live yeast in bottles of table wine, the bottles would blow their
corks because of the gases given off in fermentation. So,
the question of whether grape juice or wine is pure is answered as follows:
Unpasteurized, unfermented grape juice contains yeast. The same is true of
juice made from raisons as raisons also have yeast on their skins. On the
other hand, pasteurized grape juice and wine are both free of live yeast, and
are, in that sense, pure. What
is most important, however, is what the Bible says or does not say. God never
forbade the use of wine during the Passover season. If God considered it to
be leavened with yeast, it would have been forbidden at this time. But the
Bible does not forbid it. Wine was a perfectly acceptable drink during this
festival and, hence, has God’s stamp of approval. Although,
as I pointed out, the question may not even have real significance, we have
now settled that grape juice and wine are both “pure.” Next, we
will ask which of them properly pictures Jesus’ blood. The answer to
this question is found in the Bible. I
have already pointed out that the drink offering of Numbers 28 and Exodus 29
pictured Jesus’ shed blood and was undoubtedly fermented, alcoholic
wine. In Numbers 28, God specifically orders it to be “strong
wine.” God also commanded wine to be used in other offerings (see, for
example, Leviticus I
think we would all agree that the color of the fruit of the vine in the cup
of the New Testament in Jesus’ blood was red. No other color would do
in representing Jesus’ blood. But is color the only link between the
liquid and Jesus’ blood? Read
Isaiah 25:6-8: “And in this mountain shall the LORD of hosts make unto
all people a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things
full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined. And he will destroy in
this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the veil
that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death in victory; and the
Lord GOD will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his
people shall he take away from off all the earth: for the LORD hath spoken
it.” The
definition of “lees” in Unger’s
Bible Dictionary says, “’Wines on the lees’ are wines
which have been left to stand upon their lees after the first fermentation is
over, which have thus thoroughly fermented, and have been kept a long time,
and which are then filtered before drinking; hence wine both strong and
clear; in which case it was used figuratively for the full enjoyment of
blessedness in the perfected kingdom of God (Isa. 26:6).” Earlier,
in another connection, I quoted Psalm 104:14-15. It says, “He causeth
the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man: that he
may bring forth food out of the earth; And wine that maketh glad the heart of
man, and oil to make his face to shine, and bread which strengtheneth man's
heart.” Can we not see here the oil representative of the Holy Spirit,
the bread a figure of the body of Christ, and the blood symbolic of the blood
of Christ? As wine in moderation physically gladdens the heart (I am not at
all here speaking of drunkenness), so the blood of Christ shed for our sins
is to gladden us. We
know that King David was a type of Jesus Christ. At David’s coronation,
the celebration included “…wine, and oil, and oxen, and sheep
abundantly: for there was joy in In
John 6:53-55, Jesus says, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye
eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.
Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will
raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is
drink indeed.” In
John 2, we read of the marriage in Cana of Galilee. A full explanation of
this, the first of Jesus’ miracles, would need its own article. But I
want to point out that it was a marriage feast, and the guests attended by
special invitation (vv. 1-2). This should remind us of the marriage supper of
the Lamb (Revelation 19:9), which is attended only by God’s elect. The
wine at the marriage in Those
who argue that Jesus would not have made the water into wine because so much
wine would have made the guests drunk are arguing from ignorance. The Bible
does not say how many guests were there, and it does not say how long the
feast lasted. Such feasts could sometimes last for days. I
do not want to belabor this point, and I do not want to turn this article
into an article on what the Bible says about the proper use of wine. That is another
topic. But if you will search the Scriptures, you will find wine used in
connection with joy, gladness, abundance, prosperity, and communion. The very
fact of its potency makes it the proper symbol of the power of Jesus’
blood to cleanse us from unrighteousness. Calvin, in his Genevan Catechism,
wrote in answer to why the blood of the Lord is figured by wine, “As by
wine the hearts of men are gladdened, their strength recruited, and the whole
man strengthened, so by the blood of our Lord the same benefits are received
by our souls.” To those who still want to do away with wine in the
Lord’s Supper because of its potential abuse, I’ll quote Luther:
“Do not suppose that abuses are eliminated by destroying the object
that is abused. Men can go wrong with wine and women. Shall we prohibit and
abolish women?” (as quoted on this page: http://www.allsaintspresbyterian.com/WineStudy.htm
). Even better, I will point you to 1 Corinthians 11:18-34. Paul heard that
some in the Corinthian church were getting drunk when the church came
together to eat the Lord’s Supper. He chastens them for their sinful
behavior, but he does not tell them to stop using wine.
But What About the Alcoholic in the Church?
When
this topic is discussed, the question will always be asked, What about the
alcoholic in the church? Should we not use grape juice for his sake? Certainly,
we should be concerned about every member of the church. Nonetheless, this
difficulty is based on an entirely unbiblical view of the condition of the
person in question. The
Bible knows nothing of alcoholism. It never says how to treat alcoholics and
never even uses the word. Why? Because alcoholism is a relatively modern
invention (the word was coined in 1860) that is in complete contrast with the
biblical view of drunkenness. As
I mentioned earlier, Dr. Benjamin Rush came up with the ideas of addiction
and of abstinence as the proper treatment. He considered excessive drinking
to be a disease. Today, although there is still debate, alcoholism is
generally seen as an addiction and often as a disease. The causes that are
suggested for the disease are a chemical or nutritional imbalance, a
neurological problem, a genetic predisposition, or a combination of one or
more of these. Various and sundry treatments have been devised for this
disease. Almost all of them involve complete abstinence. By calling excessive
drinking an addiction and a disease, modern medicine has placed it beyond our
moral control. Almost
as if the world were trying to make a reductio ad absurdum argument (disproof
of a proposition by showing an absurdity to which it leads when carried to
its logical conclusion), we now hear of food addiction, sexual addiction,
violence addiction, speed addiction, and so on. These are promoted as being
beyond the person’s moral control. In
contrast, the Bible speaks of sin and teaches that its roots are in our
depraved, evil hearts. Instead of the disease of alcoholism, the Bible talks
about drunkenness and condemns it as sin. It is not beyond our control,
especially when we call upon the power of the Lord to help us (Philippians Romans
14 is often given as grounds for using grape juice for the Lord’s
Supper. In this chapter, Paul instructs us how not to judge and offend a weak
brother. In verse 20, he says, “All things indeed are pure; but it is
evil for that man who eateth with offence.” Are we to then say that the
symbol Christ instituted for the Lord’s Supper is evil because someone
is offended by it? God forbid! The problem with using Romans 14 in this case
is that Paul is not addressing the specific issue of the ordinances. Since
I have already in this article introduced the idea of reductio ad absurdum, let
us try it here. Suppose a professing believer had a phobia to being dunked
under water? Should the church change the ordinance for him, even for just
one instance? Suppose there is a brother who will not drink not only wine,
but also grape juice? He says it looks too much like wine and might send him
on a binge. Now what? Do we substitute cherry Kool-Aid? But that, too, looks
like wine. Are we to consider using water instead? Where do we draw the line?
As this entire article has shown, we draw the line right at the beginning and
dare not change the symbols Jesus gave us. We
worry about offending the so-called “alcoholic,” but why do some
churches not care about offending those who want to do as Jesus told us? We
have our priorities topsy-turvy if we think that changing the elements of the
Lord’s Supper is the way to help a weak brother. Doing so does nothing
to strengthen the brother while it introduces unbiblical innovation in
worship. I sometimes wonder what would happen in these churches if a member came
to understand the proper elements of the Lord’s Supper and insisted
that those elements alone be used. Would he be put out of the church? How
could the church justify doing so if they justify using grape juice on the
grounds of not offending one or two so-called “alcoholics”? How
do such churches choose whom to give in to? Would they put Jesus out if He
insisted on the proper elements? Have they done so already? When
asked what to do when someone could not take the wine in the Lord’s
Supper, Martin Luther replied that the person should not take communion at
all “in order that no innovation may be made or introduced.” I
agree because the Bible agrees. Someone who cannot partake of the wine in the
Lord’s Supper lacks faith. Changing the element does him no favor; it
only keeps him in his weakness. Paul gives us instructions in 1 Corinthians
11: “Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of
the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. But
let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of
that cup. For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh
damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord's body. For this cause many are
weak and sickly among you, and many sleep” (verses 27-30). If
someone is so lacking in faith that he cannot take a tiny amount of wine that
symbolizes the blood of His Savior who died to give him the precious gifts of
forgiveness and eternal life, that person ought not take the Lord’s
Supper at all. Instead of changing what the Lord instituted, we ought to pray
for and with the weak brother, hold him accountable for his actions, and, as
long as he allows the church’s help and stays out of gross sin, the
members should stick with him as a to a brother. But if he continues to fall
into drunkenness, he needs church discipline. Also, if someone who is known
to have had a problem with drunkenness takes the Lord’s Supper, someone
should stay with him the rest of the day to make sure he does not fall into
sin. We
are indeed in great danger when we think that we know better than our Lord
Jesus Christ, who knew men and their weaknesses better than any of us, and
who instituted the Lord’s Supper with wine. To do so makes us the epitome
of legalistic pharisaism, and sets us up as judging God Himself! Are we more
moral than He? Whether it has been through ignorance or not, it is time to
repent of such arrogance and return to the elements of the Lord’s
Supper as they were given to us by the Lord. Copyright
© 2006 wordofhisgrace.org |
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