“FOR FORGIVENESS OF SINS”
A COMMUNION MEDITATION
By Jack Cottrell

“While they were eating, Jesus took some bread, and after a blessing, He broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, ‘Take, eat; this is My body.’ And when He had taken a cup and given thanks, He gave it to them, saying, ‘Drink from it, all of you; for this is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for forgiveness of sins’” (Matthew 26:26-28).

This is Matthew’s inspired record of some things Jesus said as He was establishing the church practice called communion, or the Lord’s Supper. Notice that He includes a reference to “the covenant.” In a previous meditation I explained what the concept of covenant has to do with the Supper. We saw that a covenant is a mutual or two-way promise, in this case between God and us. God’s promise to us is this, that through the blood of Jesus we are forgiven. Our promise to God is that we will love and trust and serve Jesus Christ forever. We entered this covenant agreement in our Christian baptism; we are under that covenant at this very moment.

I. The covenant is all about the forgiveness of sins.

Here we are focusing specifically on God’s covenant promise to us, that He is forgiving our sins (note the present tense) through the blood of Jesus Christ. What exactly is forgiveness? We should remember that it is the same thing as justification; to be forgiven is to be justified. So, what is it? Forgiveness is about the penalty that is due to us because of our sins. Sin is a debt (Matthew 6:12) because it puts us in the position of owing God a penalty for breaking His laws. What do we owe Him? How can we pay this debt? By spending eternity in hell.

“Forgiveness of sins,” then, is the forgiveness of this debt. God is saying to us that we do not have to pay Him what we owe Him; He is wiping the debt off the books. The debt is forgiven: “No penalty for you!” (which is how I usually define justification). “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). No condemnation! No penalty! No hell!

The main point that Jesus is making here, though, is about the connection between forgiveness and His blood that was poured out “for forgiveness of sins.” The question here is this: since God is a righteous and just and holy God, and since He must always uphold His word and His law, how is it even possible for God to forgive our sins? God is not only a God of love (1 John 4:8); He is also a God of wrath (Hebrews 12:29)—and He must be true to both sides of His nature (Romans 11:22). So how can He forgive our sins, thus fulfilling His love for us, and at the same time be true to His holy wrath?

When Jesus says His blood “is poured out … for forgiveness of sins,” He is answering that question. So what does the blood have to do with forgiving our debt of eternal punishment? Jesus is telling us that God is morally able to forgive our sins, because in shedding His blood—which is a kind of shorthand for the entire suffering Jesus went through before and on the cross—Jesus was paying our debt of eternal punishment FOR us! In His agony He was suffering the equivalent of eternity in hell for the entire human race. Praise His name! (See Romans 3:24-26.)

II. What does “forgiveness of sins” have to do with the Lord’s Supper?

It is not just incidental that Jesus, in instituting the Lord’s Supper, connects His blood with the forgiveness of sins. Our very partaking of the bread and juice is somehow related to the forgiveness of our sins. What is this connection? This is an important question, because many people have a very serious misunderstanding of it.

What is this false view? It is the idea that when you partake of the Lord’s Supper on the Lord’s Day, you are in that moment receiving forgiveness for all the sins you committed during the previous week. The implication of this is that you leave the Lord’s Supper a forgiven person with the promise of heaven, but the very next time you commit a sin you are back under the wrath of God and the penalty of hell. God’s deal with you, though, is that He will withhold that wrath as long as you make it to the Lord’s Supper the next Sunday—then He will wipe your sins off the books.

This is simply false. It is a terrible misunderstanding of what it means to be justified or forgiven. When you receive salvation in Christian baptism, it is not just your sins that are forgiven; you personally become a forgiven person! In that moment you come under the blood of Christ (Isaiah 61:10; Romans 4:6-8), and you stay under His blood as long as you are trusting in the One who shed it. Your sins do not separate you from the forgiving grace of God. Thus you come to the Lord’s Supper already forgiven! You do not receive any more forgiveness when you partake of the bread and juice; you are already 100% forgiven.

We should notice that Jesus does not say in this text that the Lord’s Supper is “for the forgiveness of sins.” He says His blood was shed for forgiveness of sins. Let us not distort His words.

What DOES the Supper have to do with forgiveness of sins, then? I will mention three things. First, though the act of taking the Lord’s Supper does not make us forgiven, in a real sense it keeps us forgiven. That is because, in reference to forgiveness, its main purpose is to keep our faith strong. And it is our ongoing sincere faith that keeps us forgiven. It’s like the difference between going to an automobile dealer and buying a car, and going back to the dealer for maintenance on that car. This maintenance keeps the car running. This is what we are doing when we are present for the Lord’s Supper: we are not “buying a car” every week; we are getting a regular “lube and oil change” for our faith.

How does the Supper function that way? This is the second point: the Supper keeps our faith strong by reminding us on a regular basis that it is JESUS who has made forgiveness possible. “In remembrance of Me” includes using the Supper to keep Jesus before our minds and hearts constantly.

The third way the Supper is connected with forgiveness is that this is the ideal time to focus on thanking God that our sin-debt has been paid, and thanking Him that Jesus paid that debt for us. Our sin-debt has been paid, but now we owe to God an eternal debt of thanksgiving.

While the communion service is taking place now, you can do two things. As you are sitting there waiting for the emblems to come to you, and before you consume them, you can be thinking about your sins, and how they are under the blood of Jesus, and why there is no hell waiting for you because of them. Second, especially when you pick up the cup and drink it, be thinking with all your heart: “THANK YOU, JESUS!”