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The Lord’s Supper is good news for the mental health of humanity. In fact, it is great news for the soul. It embodies truths that will one day heal all mental illness and all soul damage. It brings a message of reconciliation, forgiveness of sin, and eternal life into a world enslaved by separation, alienation, and death that manifests in depression, addictions, and anxiety.
The sacrament of communion calls us to remember that God has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son ~ Colossians 1:14. The elements that represent Jesus’ body and blood remind us that at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord ~ Ephesians 5:8.
So, those who participate in the Lord’s supper as redeemed children proclaim that they are no longer alienated from God but now are adopted into His forever family and they rejoice that they no longer languish in lonely darkness but walk in the light of life (John 1:4).
When and how did all this happen? When were we rescued from abandonment, rejection, and alienation—the scourge of the human soul and the focus of so much psychological therapy? How were we ushered into reconciliation, intimacy, and love? Let’s look back two thousand years to find out.
On Wednesday, April 1st, AD 33, two days before Jesus died, every human–dead, alive, yet to be born—was in a state of eternal separation from God. The blood of all the lambs and bulls sacrificed in the Old Testament could cover the sins of God’s people for a season, but it could never remove sin. It could never wash it away forever.
So, as of that Wednesday in AD 33, every man and woman who had lived, was living, or would ever live stood condemned in the courtroom of heaven, alienated from God. Sin, separation, and death were our future. Talk about depressing and anxiety producing! No wonder mental illness permeates the human race.
The next day, Thursday, April 2nd, AD 33, Jesus and His disciples remembered the Passover—the miraculous deliverance of God’s people from their bondage in Egypt in BC 1446 by way of the blood on their door posts and lintels. Unknowingly, Jesus’ disciples were also celebrating the future Passover, as it were, the miraculous deliverance of God’s people in future centuries from their own Egypt of bondage to sin and death.
The Old Testament Exodus from the land of slavery was only possible because of a Passover. God passed over the sins of His people because of the blood of lambs they smeared on the posts and lintels of their doors. God spared His people due to the sacrificial death of some animals. But they were not saved yet. God had only passed over their sins. The same righteous wrath that drove Adam and Eve out of the Garden was not yet satisfied, postponed until a future date.
Even the New Testament speaks of God’s passing over of sin back at the time of the amazing Exodus from Egypt. This passing over was not limited to the Exodus but applied to every sin covered by blood that did not belong to Jesus:
For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus ~ Romans 3:21ff.
You see, unless divine blood was eventually shed, the blood of mere animals was only a temporary covering that would eventually be stripped away on Judgment Day like worthless, peeling paint. God’s wrath against sin would remain. The terrible separation between God and humanity would stand firm, an impenetrable wall. God’s perfect, fiery holiness of character meant that nothing or no one could approach Him unless they, too, were perfect and holy.
Men and women from Adam and Eve up to that Thursday evening were destined for eternal separation from their Creator. What could be done? The blood of animals was insufficient. Our sin would never be removed, only covered and passed over. Picture a blanket being thrown over rotting flesh.
God had a plan all along.
On Friday, April 3rd, AD 33, the perfect sacrificial lamb died on the cross and removed our sin as far as the east is from the west–forever. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. As a father shows compassion to his children, so the LORD shows compassion to those who fear him ~ Psalm 103:11-13.
Through Jesus’ death and the shedding of His perfect blood, we were saved by God from God for God.
What does that mean?
Yes, we were delivered from sin, death, and the power of Satan, but we were also saved from God’s righteous anger against sin; the same sin and death that Jesus groaned over with anguish and anger, twice, when He stood outside Lazarus’ tomb . . . days before He would go to the cross and change everything.
God had a plan to send His Son to die as God to save us from God’s wrath against sin so that He might welcome us into His Presence as His sons and daughters. In a real way, God saved us from Himself. By dying for us.
On that terrible, awesome Friday, Jesus died, and His blood miraculously flooded back telescopically to Egypt to become the blood on the doorposts of the Israelites. His blood also flowed forward all the way to this very minute to become the divine sacrifice that saves us by God from God for God.
Just as God delivered His people from Egypt in 1446 BC by the blood of Christ shed in AD 33, so the Father engineered an Exodus for us who are alive today from the bondage of sin, death, unholiness, and His wrath through that same blood of Jesus.
Today, we stand before God with nothing between us and the Father because we have been made holy and perfect, indwelt by the righteousness of Jesus.
How did that miracle happen? On that Roman cross back in AD 33, the Father made Jesus to be sin—the One who knew no sin–so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.
Jesus took our sin and our penalty for that sin on Himself. He paid the legal price for our sentence. But something else happened besides Him simply taking our sin on Himself. He also gave us His perfect righteousness. On the cross, Jesus took, and He gave. He took our badness and gave us His perfection. It was the most unjust exchange in history!
To use Designer Therapy for Life language, Jesus solved the problem of the Two Things that has been mentioned in other posts. He removed the badness that plagues the human heart, and He filled the emptiness inside the soul with good things. He took our sin and badness on Himself as the perfect sacrifice, and He filled us with His righteousness as evidenced by the indwelling person of the Holy Spirit.
Of course, as mentioned above, Jesus also absorbed the Father’s just anger at sin, imperfection, and unholiness so that we might approach our Creator through the torn curtain and enter His presence never again to be alienated, abandoned, or alone. Never.
Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water ~ Hebrews 10:19-22.
So, next time you go to the Lord’s supper, remember that the breaking of Jesus’ body and the shedding of His blood on Friday, April 3rd, AD 33, removed everything that stood between you and intimacy with God. Those who know Him personally are now able to enter the Presence of the eternal God who has always been and will always be.
Spiritually, psychologically, and relationally we will never be alone again. Clean, restored, reconciled, we can now run to the sovereign, transcendent Father and call Him, daddy. The sacrament of communion will always remind us of the truth that God through Jesus provided an Exodus for us from sin, death, and separation so that we might approach Him in perfection and enter into a loving relationship with Him forever (Hebrews 10:14).
Communion is good for all that threatens your soul spiritually and psychologically. Celebrate it and remember the Two Things!