As we celebrate the Lord’s Supper every week, take note that every exhortation, every confession, every charge is to be heard in this context, and this is how we are to fence the Table.
If you are a baptized believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you are not under the lawful discipline of His church, then you are welcome to come. The apostle Paul, however, warns that an abuse of the Supper does more harm than good. If you come cherishing disputes in your heart, if you do not care to discern the Lord’s body in the saints around you, then coming to the Supper in that way is a problem for you. If you cherish certain precious sins and keep them under your tongue, it is hazardous to put the bread of the Lord in your mouth alongside it.
These things are true. But the charge is not to refrain from the Supper. If you have been tangled up in some sin, do not refrain from the Supper. Rather, confess your sin before you come. Confess your sin as you come. Do not, on your own authority, remove yourself from the table. If your sin is serious enough that you think the elders should suspend you from the Supper, then ask them to do so. But do not appoint yourself the master of the feast. Private Christians do not have the authority to suspend themselves from the Table.
The true master of the feast has commanded you to confess and forsake your sin. And so this is what you must do. Do not forsake His food. Forsake, rather, what you foolishly thought was food. Do not confess as sin the pursuing of His life — confess the sin of cherishing death. So confess your sawdust bread, and take the bread of life. Confess your dishwater drink, and swallow the wine of life.