At the Lord’s Supper, we are to examine ourselves and judge ourselves rightly. But are we actually doing that when we focus on digging up every negative thing in our flesh? We need to view our flesh according to all that we are in Christ. We operate from the heavenly realm, not from the fleshly realm, and His power is in us to fulfill what He sent us in the flesh to do.

Download English Transcript

Show Notes:

The apostle Paul wrote concerning the Lord’s Supper that we should examine ourselves. But does that mean we focus only on the negative things of the flesh? If we examine ourselves, we should also see that we are not of this world just as Christ is not of this world. We should see that He sent us into this world just as the Father sent Him. We should see that we are the ones God chose before the foundation of the world to be with Him, to be in His image, to be in His likeness, to be filled up to His fullness.

It is important that we see ourselves correctly in relation to the flesh. Christ took on a physical body to minister to this world, and we have a fleshly body for that same purpose. He came in the flesh to be the firstborn among many brethren. That means we share in His sufferings in the flesh, but we also share in all that He is spiritually. This is the perspective Paul had when he instructed us to examine ourselves. Paul had not known Christ in the flesh. He only knew Christ as He is to us now in resurrection life at the right hand of the Father.

We examine ourselves according to that perspective. That means understanding the purpose for which God created us before the foundation of the world and sent us into the world to fulfill. That means understanding that Christ came in the flesh to die to the flesh and remove the flesh nature from us. That means understanding that we are with Him in the heavenly places, functioning in this world from that place of authority in the power of His resurrection. When we come before the Lord at the Communion table, let us do it in remembrance of all that He is to us and all that He predestined us to be.

Key Verses:

• 1 Corinthians 11:23–30. “He … eats and drinks judgment to himself if he does not judge the body rightly.”
• John 12:26. “Where I am, there My servant will be also.”
• John 17:13–18. “As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world.”
• Romans 8:26–39. “Those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son.”
• Ephesians 1:2–11. “He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world.”
• Philippians 3:20. “Our citizenship is in heaven.”

Quotes:

• “The Communion should be an experience that takes us back to the understanding of who we are because we are examining that reality in detail.”
• “We were foreknown by Him. But to be put into the image of Christ, it was necessary that we go through this time being in a human body because that is the image of Christ.”
• “Our eternity started before we landed in this realm of the material world, before we were born into this fleshly body.”

Takeaways:

1. Paul’s perspective was not from his experience with Christ in the flesh on the earth but from his experience with the resurrected Christ in the heavenly places at the right hand of the Father.
2. It is from this perspective that he told us to examine ourselves, not negatively according to the flesh, but according to what Christ is, what He has done, and what He is doing in us.
3. Just as we share in the flesh with Christ, we also share in the power of His resurrection and victory over the flesh.
4. Judging ourselves rightly means we are seeing ourselves as those predestined by God before the foundation of the world to be conformed to the image of His Son.

*Please use the drop down menu above to view page in a different language.