Holy Communion

Another important area I would like to address is Holy Communion. In this blog post, I have extracted key points in Pastor Prince's book 'Health and Wholeness through the Holy Communion'.

What I was taught in a traditional church was that I would need to confess all my sins before partaking the communion or else I will be eating and drinking God's judgment upon myself. First Corinthians 11:29 says 'For he who eats and drinks in an unworthily manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord's body.'  Sometimes I was not sure if I have confessed all my sins and hence I would rather not take the Holy Communion.

Actually other than remembering that Jesus' body was broken for us and His blood was shed for our forgiveness of sins, I was not totally sure why I was partaking of His body when I came to the Table. And precisely that was the reason why many sincere believers were not receiving the divine life of our Saviour, causing them to be weak and sick and to die before their time. First Corinthians 11:30 says 'For this reason many are weak and sick among you, and many sleep.' Sleep here means death, not bodily rest. If this is true, the opposite would be true too. If we do discern the Lord's body, we will walk in his divine health and wholeness.

How then do we discern the Lord's body? First we must be clear that the body and the blood should not be treated as one. The wine, which is His blood is for our forgiveness of sins. The bread, which is His body, is for our healing. in Mark 7:26-28, Jesus referred healing for the Greek woman's daughter as children's bread. When we partake of the Lord's body, we are partaking of His divine health for Jesus was never sick. He was vibrant, full of life and full of health. So when Jesus said 'Take, eat; this is My body', He was imparting His life, health and wholeness to their bodies. His body was beaten, bruised and broken (symbolised by the Matzah, the flat bread eaten during Passover) so that our bodis can be whole.

What does it mean to partake in an unworthily manner in case we bring judgment upon ourselves? In First Corinthians 11:29, Apostle Paul said that if we eat and drink unworthily, we bring judgment to ourselves. The word 'unworthily' is an adverb, which means it modifies the verb. In this case, 'unworthily' describes the action of eating and drinking, not the person eating or drinking.

So Paul was not saying if you are an unworthy person, don't partake of the Lord's Supper. (In fact, the blood of Jesus already made us worthy before God!) He was saying that we should not partake in an unworthily manner which means taking the Holy Communion when we don't understand the significance of the Lord's body. In such cases, the Holy Communion can easily become a ritual if we don't understand the significance of the bread. Hence most believers (like me in the past) missed out on the blessings of health and healing. Not only that, by failing to discern the Lord's body, we are making Jesus' work on the cross ineffective and powerless.

Jesus told us to have Communion often, so there must be something powerful about it. His blessings of health, wholeness and preservation of life abound at His Table. We do not need a pastor to conduct the Holy Communion. Once we are believers, we are priests (1 Peter 2:9). We can partake of the Lord's Supper at home. In the church, pastors do it because they are the spiritual authority over the people and there must be some order in how they conduct things. Outside of the church, we, as royal priests, are qualified to partake on our own, as often as we wish to.