Why the Lord’s Supper is Only for Church Members

There is a special literary device in Hebrew scripture that you find occasionally, especially in the poetry passages.  This device is called a Chiasm. Since the writers didn’t have a way to put things in bold or italics, this was a devise to highlight and emphasize.  To understand how this devise works, think of it as a literary pyramid. You have several statements or words that build to a point, which is the idea or concept being emphasized, and then, after that, similar but different statements in a descending parallel fashion.  It is usually pictured as A, B, C, D, C’,B’,A’.   For instance Proverbs 10:15 says, “The wealth of the rich man is his fortress, but the ruin of the poor is their poverty.”  You can see it like this: 

A – The wealth

B – of the rich man

C – is his fortress

C’ – but the ruin

B’ – of the poor

A’ is their poverty.  

Why am I telling you this? Of course, I always want you to be a better Bible student, but today I need you to know the Chiasm because I want to use it to emphasize a concept that is sorely overlooked in today’s church.  Actually, there are two features I want to emphasize, because both of these go hand in hand. What I want to put before you is how the Lord’s Supper and Church membership go together. And the way I want to argue for this is by using a Chiastic structure.  I am going to build an ascending pyramid of who should take the Lord’s Supper, culminate that Chiastic pyramid with church membership, and then descend with why church membership is vital to all of the previous ascending statements.

I will give you my Chiasm, and then I will work through each part of it.  The question is this: Who is the Lord’s Supper for? 

A – It is for Christians

B – It is for Christians who are right with Christ

C – It is for Christians who are right with Christ which includes unity with believers

D – It is for Christians who are right with Christ which includes unity with believers in local church membership

C’ – If not a member, how can you say you are united with believers

B’ – If not a member, how can you say you are right with Christ

A’ – If not a member, how can you say you’re a Christian

It is for Christians

This is the most basic point that no one is going to disagree with.  The Lord’s Supper is a communion with Christ himself, celebrating the new covenant in his blood.  Therefore, it is only for those who are actually participating in the new covenant. Those who through repentance and faith have confessed Christ as Lord, and have the marks of saving regeneration, are the ones who commune with Christ and rejoice in his great saving work.  

It is for Christians who are right with Christ

While only Christians can take the Lord’s Supper, some Christians should refrain temporarily.  Why? So that they don’t die! Paul told the Corinthian church that some of them were sick and had even died because they were taking the supper in an unworthy manner. (1 Cor. 11:27-32) Because the Lord’s Supper is such a conspicuous outward act of a spiritual reality, to do so with unconfessed, unrepented sin is a high-handed act.  It is hypocrisy at its worst. The symbol of communion with Christ should not be taken while there is unrepented sin. Confess and repent of your sin, get right with the people involved, then in that right relationship with Christ, come back to the table.  

It is for Christians who are right with Christ which includes unity with believers

The Lord’s Supper is not only a picture of communion with Christ, but also a picture of communion with the body of Christ.  You can’t divide Christ from his bride. If you are not right with the bride of Christ, you are not right with Christ. This was the sin that Paul was referring to in 1 Corinthians 11 that led to some people dying.  There were factions in the Corinthian church, and when it came time for the Lord’s Supper some were getting drunk while others were left hungry. (1 Cor. 11:18-22) This was sin upon sin, and it all had to do with relationships among the believers.  Through most of this letter, Paul had been working to confront the divisive features of the church. One of the ways he did this was to point to the Lord’s Supper as a picture of unity. In 1 Corinthian 10:17, Paul says “Since there is one bread, we who are many are one body; for we all partake of the one bread.”  You can’t miss the picture. We are all eating from one bread. And that one bread sustains the whole body. When you eat food, you don’t eat just to supply nutrients to your kidney. Food nourishes all of the body at the same time. To eat the Lord’s Supper is to make a visible statement that you are walking in unity with believers.

It is the next point in which the real challenge begins to emerge.  Who are these believers that we are unified with? Is it the universal church or is it a local assembly?  And this brings us to the climactic point. 

It is for Christians who are right with Christ which includes unity with believers in local church membership

This is the place where I want to argue for what is called close communion.  This is different from a closed communion.   A closed communion means that only members of a certain local church can take the Lord’s Supper in that certain church.  Close communion is not that restrictive. Close communion means that the Lord’s Supper is only for those who are members of a gospel preaching church, wherever it may be.  

What is the main argument for this?  The main argument for this is the intersecting nature of the universal church and the local church.  The universal church and the local church cannot be divided. They are distinct, but they are not two separate churches.  The universal church is the combined number of every true Christian, dead or alive, whose name is in the Lamb’s book of life.  Jesus is building his church, and he is ever present with it. As he said, “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”  That word he spoke is the connection between the universal church and the local church. Just as Jesus is present with the whole church at every given moment, so also Jesus is present in the assembly of every true church in each local area.  We see this in the book of Revelation and the seven churches in chapter 1, which are called lampstands. Jesus is walking among the lampstands. (Rev. 1:12-13, 20) Each one is his church, just as much as the whole is his church. Therefore, the local church is the universal church in its local expression.  A local congregation is not one part of the church, it is the church in a particular place.  

Church membership is the climax.  It is the fullness of walking rightly with Christ and his people.  Therefore, the Lord’s Supper should only be given to those who are members of a local church.  There will be challenges to this. I want to address those in the next three statements of my Chiasm.  

If not a member, how can you say you have unity with believers?

Since the Lord’s Supper is picturing the unity of the body of Christ, what basis does a person have for taking it if he is not a member of a local church?  The most likely defense to be made is that they are united to the universal church. However, as we stated above, the universal church is expressed locally.  When a person refuses to join a local church in membership, they are refusing the universal church’s local expression. To reject or ignore the local church is to reject or ignore the universal church.  Jesus is walking among the lampstands of actual local churches and you are to be with one of those local churches when it gathers.  

And how should you be with a church?  Not in a way that says I’ve got nothing better to do.  You are to be with them in membership. You are to love the people of God so fervently (which is commanded), to do the “one-anothers” so fully (also commanded), and to submit to leaders so gladly (yep, commanded) that membership is the only proper answer.  You are not submitting to elders, nor are you loving others fervently if you don’t say, “This is the body that I am accountable to and with whom I serve.” 

If you are not united to actual people, in actual gospel work, in an actual local church, then your unity is absent at worst or superficial at best.   

But someone may say, “My unity with the church isn’t superficial.  I haven’t forsaken the assembly. I am with them every week as I have been for years.  I just don’t want to become a member.” What are we to think about those who regularly, even constantly, attend church?  Don’t the people of the church treat them as Christians and fellowship with them as Christians? Most probably do, but there is a problem with that.  While the people of the church do not need to jump to the conclusion that a person merely attending, even faithfully, is not a Christian, the church does say there is a problem.  The problem has to do with authority and accountability because attendance without membership is like being in a dating relationship. When a young man really likes a young lady, he seeks to spend time with her.  He might even spend lots of time with her. There is no authority and little accountability in that relationship and there is nothing wrong with that as it stands. But what if he wants to move in with her? She should let him know in no uncertain terms that marriage is required for that.  He has to commit to her and be accountable to her alone. So it is with church. Having people merely attend is normal. But perpetual attendance without membership is a problem, especially if that attender wants all the benefits without any commitment. Why are they not willing to join this body and be accountable to it?  Why remain on the outside? That is where unbelievers remain. There are features of the church that are reserved for those that are validated, accountable, committed and under the authority of the church in formal church membership. One of those features is the Lord’s Supper.

If not a member, how can you say you are right with Christ?

How do you know that you are walking in a right relationship with Christ?  Self-deception is real. Blind spots aren’t only in cars, they are also in hearts.  If you don’t think so, then you are in the middle of self-deception this very moment.  One of the most important ways to play close attention to yourself is to enlist the help of those who will join you in paying close attention.   By the way, this is what makes marriage so difficult. We have committed ourselves to someone who becomes increasingly willing to tell us where we are off base.  Church membership is like a marriage. It is a commitment with a group of people covenanting with one another to not let anyone leisurely stroll into destruction.  Church membership is committing to give and receive the help of those with actual God-given authority.  

To welcome someone to the Lord’s Supper who has not made the commitment to have their life be accountable to others will mean many will take the supper in an unworthy manner.  And, according to 1 Corinthians 11, what happens when they do that? God’s disciplining hand comes upon them. No church should be willing to participate in someone’s foolish self-deception like that. 

If not a member, how can you say you are a Christian? 

No doubt this point will cause the most consternation, and receive the most push back.  How dare I question the validity of someone’s salvation? Well, let me tell you how I will dare.  I have been doing evangelism for a long time and you know what I have found? Everyone thinks they are a Christian.  Just about everyone I speak with thinks they are doing just fine spiritually. The main job of evangelism is to first bring a person to the realization that they are enemies of God.  This is normally not easy, but it is the necessary first step of evangelism. But even in many churches, there are people attending who think they are fine when they are far from it. This is the state of most of western Christianity right now. 

Is there a God-ordained way that a person can know if he is a Christian?  There is not just one, there are two and both are needed. The first way is the self-examination that Paul called for in 1 Corinthians 13, and Peter called for in 2 Peter 1.  A person must be diligent to make their calling an election sure by asking if he is growing in obedience to God’s word, if he hungers for righteousness, if he loves God’s glory and God’s word, and if he loves the people of God.  The Sermon on the Mount, the letter of 1 John, and 2 Peter 1 are three places that concentrate on matters that testify of true spiritual life. As important as this is, it does not stand alone.  

There is a second God-ordained way to know if you are a Christian.  Jesus explicitly stated in Matthew 16:19 and Matthew 18:18 that the church is given the keys of the kingdom by which the church binds or looses.  This binding and loosing is a way to express an actual authority to validate a person’s living faith in Christ. When does a church validate the life that evidences new birth?  When they are received into membership and regularly welcomed to the Lord’s supper.  

But what about baptism?  Isn’t baptism when the church validates someone’s spiritual experience?  Baptism is when the church validates someone’s profession of faith in Christ.  When a person says he has repented of sin and trusted in Christ as Lord and his death for salvation, and the church finding no reason to doubt this, he is baptized.  But that is the ordinance of initiation. It never happens again. What is the proof that he is preserving in the faith year after year and not actually a false convert?  The proof is the continual validation from the church and its elders through membership. The church and its elders are validating that a person is faithfully walking in the Spirit and remaining accountable to the church when they are continually welcomed to the other ordinance; the Lord’s Supper.   

For a person to come to the Lord’s Supper and demand to receive it without being a member is to rip the keys of the kingdom out of the hands of the church.  But a person can’t do that. He cannot steal the keys and assert that he has self-validating power. Jesus gave those keys to the church and belong only to the church.  If a person is not willing to come under the church’s authority through membership, then the church should not be willing to give them the Lord’s Supper.  

In the highly individualistic mentality of the modern church, these things are hard to swallow. And surely some will be offended by such proposed actions.  But the church is always only accountable to her Lord, and the Lord has the right to define and run his church as he sees fit. He has spoken on these matters.  May we be faithful to trust and obey.