Frequently Asked Questions About the Church of Christ and Other Topics

LORD'S SUPPER

Question: "Why does your church eat the Lord's Supper every Sunday?"

One of the two major differences in worship between our church and most other religious groups is that we eat the Lord's Supper every Sunday (the other major difference is that we don't worship God with musical instruments).

The reason we do this is because we're determined to try and please God by precisely following the teaching of the New Testament. We're convinced that one of the things God has shown us in the New Testament is how He wants us to worship Him.

Actually, though, if you read through the New Testament, you won't find an explicit command from God which says, "Every Sunday you shall eat the Lord's Supper." You will, however, discover that the earliest churches clearly met on the first day of every week to eat this simple, spiritual "meal."

The clearest indication that they met on Sunday to eat the Lord's Supper is this statement that Luke makes in Acts 20:7: "On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul began talking to them . . ." It seems pretty clear from the way Luke says it that this church had a regular gathering on the first day of the week, and that the primary purpose of this gathering was "to break bread" (i.e., eat the Lord's Supper).

Another passage which clearly shows that the early church gathered every Sunday and ate the Lord's Supper is 1 Corinthians 11:20-21, 33. In these verses Paul rebukes the Christians of one congregation by saying, "when you meet together, it is not to eat the Lord's Supper, for in your eating each one takes his own supper first; and one is hungry and another is drunk" (v. 20-21). The purpose of their meeting together should have been to eat the Lord's Supper together -- but they weren't doing that properly. So, after rebuking them, Paul then instructs them, "So then, my brethren, when you come together to eat, wait for one another" (v. 33).

How does this passage show that they ate the Lord's Supper -- or were supposed to be eating it -- every Sunday? After all, nothing is said in these verses about when they were meeting together -- it just says that they were meeting together. Well, when we flip over a few chapters to 1 Corinthians 16, we discover how often this church was meeting together. In verse 2 of that chapter Paul gives this church the following instruction: "On the first day of every week let each one of you put aside and save, as he may prosper, that no collections be made when I come."

When you put the information from these two passages together, the logical conclusion was that this congregation of Corinthian Christians was meeting together every first day of the week -- that is, every Sunday (1 Corinthians 16:2) -- for the primary purpose of eating the Lord's Supper (1 Corinthians 11:20-21, 33).

Let me say one thing quickly about 1 Corinthians 16:2 if you happen to be reading from the King James Version of the Bible. In the King James you'll notice that the verse doesn't say "every week" or "each week;" it just says "Upon the first day of the week." Experts in the Greek language -- the language which the New Testament was originally written in -- tell us, however, that the words Paul actually used in this verse means "every" week or "each" week. That's why you'll see "every week" or "each week" in more recent translations like the NIV (New International Version) or the NASB (New American Standard Bible).

Since there is, then, pretty clear examples in the New Testament which show that the earliest congregations of God's people met together every Lord's Day to eat the Lord's Supper, we're convinced that we should follow their precedent. After all, they lived under the direct oversight of the twelve apostles of our Lord. So, every Lord's Day, and only every Lord's Day, we meet together to eat the Lord's Supper. Also, I might add, if you go back and read the writings of the earliest Christians who lived after the time of the apostles, you'll discover that the church continued this weekly eating of the Lord's Supper for at least two centuries.

If I had to sum up my conclusion about this, I'd probably say it like George R. Beasley-Murray says it. Dr. Beasley-Murray is an internationally known British Bible scholar and, interestingly enough, a member of the Baptist church. I say "interestingly enough" because he has some rather "un-Baptist" view of things (at least they would be considered "un-Baptist" by most Baptists in the United States). When he was once asked in an interview his views concerning the Lord's Supper, he said, "My own views as a young preacher speedily led me to the conviction that the primitive New Testament pattern of the weekly observance of the Lord's Supper was there and that there was every reason to follow it." Isn't that refreshing? -- we eat the Lord's Supper each Lord's Day just because that's the example we find in Scripture.

So, what would I say to those who refuse to follow the New Testament precedent for eating the Lord's Supper every Sunday? I would have to say, as kindly as possible, that there is no Biblical warrant for any other practice. Therefore, I'd tell them that it's impossible to know whether or not God will be offended by any other practice. And since we can't know for certain whether or not God will be offended by any other practice, I'd tell them -- again, as kindly as I could -- that, as one well-respected preacher said, "It is a wise, safe course to do it as the early Christians did, not annually, not semi-annually, not quarterly, not monthly, but on each Lord's Day."