A Meal With No Biting

Let us begin by acknowledging an unfortunate reality. The apostle Paul warns Christians not to bite and devour one another (Gal. 5:15), and he does this because this is what we are sometimes tempted to do. Christians are never warned off sins that were never going to be an issue. The warning says that we are not to bite and devour because the end result will be that we are consumed. So in this sense, Paul says not to eat one another in this way.

The only alternative to this kind of quarrelsome devouring is to learn how to partake of one another in love. In the verse just prior to this warning (Gal. 5:14), Paul says that the entire law is summed up in the command to love our neighbor. We must love our companions, and companions are those with whom we break bread.

So Christ eats with us here, and we eat with Him. But the Bible teaches us that when we eat together with others in love, this is a covenant love, and covenants depend on what is called partaking. This is koinonia-partaking. We do not just eat with Christ; He offers us His body and blood to eat and to drink. And Christ does not just eat with us; He partakes of us just as we partake of Him. This is a sacramental enactment of what is described throughout the New Testament as union with Christ. We are not just with Him; we are in Him.

Now if you are not learning Christ in this way, if you are not growing in Him in this way, there is only one other way to be—and that is the kind of person who bites, devours, quarrels, accuses. If that is what your home is like, then you are not partaking rightly here. If you are partaking rightly here, if you eat in faith here, you are learning how to resist biting and devouring in another way, in an entirely destructive way.

So come, and welcome, to Jesus Christ.