One of the indicators that God is truly at work is the vitality of His people. But that vitality, the kind the world can see, is the second thing. The first thing is communion with God. Either we are brought into communion as we are first born again, or we are renewed in communion as we fellowship with Him, as we are doing here in the Lord’s Supper. This is where God restores us, renews us, and nourishes us.
We are saved by grace through faith, and not by works. But we are saved to good works, which God prepared beforehand for us to do. We do not work salvation into our own hearts. God works salvation into us, but when He does so, the first thing that starts to happen is that we work it out. God establishes the principle of new life in the soul, but what this means is that the soul must therefore act the way a living soul does. When God pours life into us, life pours out of us.
This is why God’s people should be characterized by vitality. And this helps us place this meal in an appropriate context. This is like an early breakfast, with a full day of work ahead of us. We are being fed, but we are being fed so that we might expend the grace we have been given.
We are hoses, not jars. God pours His grace into us so that it might flow through us, and out toward others in love and good works. He doesn’t fill you up with grace, seal the lid, and put you in a storage unit. The grace of God is to be expended in the world. Whatever you receive here—and what you are receiving here is beyond all mortal reckoning—you are to take with you in order to leave it out there in the world. When you run out, you can come back for more next week.
So come, and welcome, to Jesus Christ.