Today we are being invited by God to eat the bread and drink the cup. When we do it meaningfully it is going to be a great blessing in our life. None of us are worthy for this but by faith in Jesus Christ, God made us worthy. In 1 Cor. 11:26 Holy Spirit is explaining to us that “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes”. By proclaiming the Lord’s death in a meaningful way, we are proclaiming our great hope through His death. We have to continue to do it till the second coming of Lord Jesus Christ.
1. Living Hope of becoming like Jesus
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead (1 Pet. 1:3). God according to His great mercy caused us to be born again to a living hope. When we are proclaiming the death of Jesus Christ, we are confessing this living hope. We, as born again children fix our hope in the second coming of Lord Jesus Christ. “We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is. And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure” (1 John 3:2-3). Today through breaking of bread, God is refreshing this living hope to us. So every moment our goal is to be pure as Jesus is pure. The Holy Spirit will help us to do that.
2. Hope of having a victorious Christian life by overcoming all temptations
Jesus Christ has conquered sin and death through His death and given us grace to overcome every temptation by the help of Holy Spirit (Rom. 6:14, Heb.4:16). So by proclaiming the death of Jesus Christ we are getting a great hope to overcome all temptations, we are going to face in the future.
We can understand by looking in to God’s work from the beginning that He wants every human being to have a victorious life by overcoming all temptations. God is ready and is available to help us for that. God’s plan for Adam and Eve was to have a victorious life by overcoming all temptations raised by devil to disobey God. But Adam and Eve failed because they did not utilize God’s help and depended on their self in front of temptation by devil.
God showed His love and mercy towards Cain when he sinned. God told him that the sin is trying to make him a slave to sin. God encouraged him to master that sin. So God’s plan for Cain also was to have a victorious life by overcoming the sin. But as we know that Cain also failed miserably by depending on his self instead of depending on God (Gen. 4:6-7).
Jesus came in the fullness of time and shown His great love towards us. It is not only that He died for our sins but “our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin” (Rom. 6:6). God crucified our old self with Jesus Christ is one side of the truth. Other side of the truth is “Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Gal. 5:24). So when we proclaim the death of our Lord, it is giving us a great hope of a victorious Christian life even if we failed many times in the past.
3. Hope of bearing fruit for God through the married life with Christ
When we proclaim the death of Lord Jesus Christ, it is reminding and encouraging us about our marriage to Jesus Christ. “Therefore, my brethren, you also were made to die to the Law through the body of Christ, so that you might be joined to another, to Him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God” (Rom. 7:4). Every married couple on this earth wants to have their children. In the same way our marriage to Christ is for bearing fruit for God. So breaking of bread is giving us a great hope of bearing fruit for God in the coming days.
4. Hope of Growing as the body of Jesus Christ
God raised Jesus Christ from dead and made Him the head overall things to the church, which is His body (Eph 1:20-23). Jesus told His disciples (Church) to eat from the bread and drink the cup in remembrance of Him. So when the church is proclaiming the death of Jesus Christ, it gives a real hope to grow as the body of Jesus Christ in the coming days. “but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ, 16 from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love” (Eph. 4:15-16).
Holy Spirit is giving us the hope to grow up in all aspects in to Jesus Christ. So when we eat the bread and drink the cup meaningfully we are having a real hope of proper working as an individual part and to grow in love as the body of Jesus Christ.
So let us examine ourselves and the body rightly. “Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner, shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord. 28But a man must examine himself, and in so doing he is to eat of the bread and drink of the cup.29For he who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself if he does not judge the body rightly” (1 Cor. 11:27-29).
May God help all of us to live with the living hope in Jesus Christ.
