The Lord’s Supper is not impotent. The Lord’s Supper does not need our protection. If I were standing up here with an enormous lion, I do not expect that I would get many questions after the service, wondering “how I protected it.” In fact, I might not get any questions at all. But if I did, the questions would be along the lines of “how may we be protected from the lion?”
Now this is strange. How can the Lord’s Supper, which is given to us for blessing, be thought of this way? The Lord’s Supper is not endangered by our sin; rather, the Lord’s Supper is dangerous to our sin. But how may we reckon this danger and at the same time see the Supper as a place we are to approach gladly, freely, with boldness, with simplicity and singing?
The Lord’s Supper is not dangerous to the children of God, but it is dangerous to that which threatens the children of God. That it, the Lord’s Supper deals with their remaining sin. It does so potently, powerful, disruptively, and in all holiness. If we have made an accommodation with sin in our lives, nothing is more intrusive than this meal. If we have surrendered all sin in principle, we approach gladly. We are no more threatened by how God deals with us here than a patient is threatened by having a life-threatening cancer removed.
But many professing Christians have worked out an accommodation between their sin and weekly attendance at church. Many generations have learned to tune the preachers out, often with the connivance and help of the preachers themselves. But when the messages deal with sin, and we come to close the deal every week with the Supper, which also deals with us, what are the two possible responses? One response is repentance, and the other is disruption, anything that might change the subject.
Here God deals with us. Not by argument, or charges, or finger-pointing, and not by recriminations. God deals with us in grace and love, and nothing can stop Him.