In the Akkadian myth, the god Marduk is said to have created men so that there was shining to feed the gods. By contrast, Genesis 1 ends with a menu, provided by God, so that man might feast.
God did not make man in order to satisfy His appetites, but in order that He might fill the hungry with good things.
Man did not come from the hand of God calculating and measuring; He was not told to stand aloof from God in silent contemplation. Man came from the hand of God, hungry.
In coming to God with hunger, man would find satisfaction, hope joy and contentment in communion with God.
But, Man chose to eat at the table of demons. And so sin entered the world and communion with God was broken.
This is what makes the Lord’s Supper so central to Christian worship. In it, God calls us back to the table and to renewed fellowship through the death of His Son.
In joining Jesus at the table we proclaim His death as the atoning sacrifice for our sin.
My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. (John 2:1-2)
In the Gospel, Jesus not only has the victory over our sins, but the sins of the whole world. Jesus death, is an invitation to all creation to have it’s hands washed and come to the table and find rest from its groaning and longing.
The Lord’s Supper, representing Jesus’ death, stands at the centre; but its effects – its power to Atone for sin – reach the ends of the earth.
Atonement a two sided coin. Propitiation and Expiation (1 John 1:9).
Propitiation means that the death of Jesus in our place turns God’s wrath for sin away from me and onto His Son as the means of forgiveness.
Expiation refers to the power of His death to cleanse me from the guilt, shame and stain of sin.
Why is this so important to the gospel?
Because for Jesus to leave us forgiven, yet still lying in my filth, would be no salvation. And so He undertakes to not only wash us clean from the stain and pollution of sin, but to lift is it of the mud. Out from under the dominion of sin.
In his rich book called The Plague of Plagues, written in 1669, a godly man by the name of Ralph Venning wrote this paragraph about sin:
In general, sin is the worst of evils, the evil of evil and indeed the only evil. Nothing is so evil as sin, nothing is evil but sin. As the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us, so neither the sufferings of this life nor of that to come are worthy to be compared as evil with the evil of sin. No evil is displeasing to God or destructive to man but the evil of sin. Sin is worse than affliction, worse than death, worse than the devil, worse than hell. Affliction is not so afflictive, death is not so deadly, the devil is not so devilish, hell is not so hellish as sin is. The four evils I have just named are truly terrible and from all of them everyone is ready to say, “Good Lord, deliver us.” Yet none of these nor all of them together are as bad as sin.
Sin is a stain (Psalm 106:39). Big, little, any, all sin defiles, pollutes, makes filthy, unclean, dirty, guilty and ashamed.
Therefore, the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, in order to be enough; in order to renew creation, must not only cancel sin, it must break the power of cancelled sin.
It must forgive and cleanse. It must pardon sinner and purify the heart. It must exonerate the guilty and liberate the soul.
Jesus’ death must be able to restore and liberate the whole world. The cursed ground, the decaying creation as well as the stain and shame of sin in my own heart.
He does this by drawing near.
This made His response to humanities’ need for cleansing from the guilt, shame and the stain of sin was provocative.
He came walking amongst, and dying for, a people defiled by sin. These are the people He eats with, goes fishing with, sits down and drinks with and goes to weddings with.
These are the ones He calls His friends.
The Pharisees’ objection to a lot of Jesus’ work was the apparent uncleanness of it. “If you touch that leper, you will become defiled and unclean.”
Yet, Jesus responded by touching as many as would let Him, as if to say, “No, if I touch you, I won’t become dirty; you will become clean.”
It is possible to acknowledge the forgiveness of sins and still keep God at arms length. But cleansing from sin, the washing of old wounds, requires intimacy, closeness and contact.
Jesus is neither shocked nor indifferent about our wounds. He will not shy away from us because we are unclean. His death forever changes the landscape of those it touches.
By His hands, by His wounds, this world is being washed and renewed. And we are being made clean.
Wholly trusting in Him, we are given freedom from the guilt and stain of defiling sin and receive from His hand the joy of a new identity.
Jesus did not wed His bride, wish her well, and leave her at the altar. He sustains our freedom and our new identity, free from the stain shame of sin – as we stay close to Him.
Though like the wanderer, the sun gone down, Darkness be over me, my rest a stone;
Yet in my dreams I’d be nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer, my God, to Thee, nearer to Thee!
And so we are called, day by day, everyday, to draw near to the limitless riches of God grace.
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