Vol. XLI April 1, 2009 No. 4

The Divine Pattern for the Lord’s Church (3)

The Spiritual Sacrifices of the Assembled Church

by Tom McLemore

In the previous article, we established that according to the divine pattern the earliest Christians assembled every first day of the week. This is the Lord’s Day. What does the Lord desire that his disciples observe when we assemble every first day of the week? How can we know?

The idea of a divine pattern enables us to proceed with confidence. Thereby, we can fulfill the mandates of Hebrews 10:19-22 and 1 Peter 2:4-5 (please read these passages in your Bible). Note carefully what is suggested by the kindred facts that Christ is our high priest and all Christians form the holy priesthood that serves in the spiritual temple which is the Lord’s people (1 Corinthians 3:16; Ephesians 2:19-22). This arrangement powerfully and conclusively demonstrates that the Old Testament is not the Christians’ source of information concerning the observances of the Lord’s church which assembles every first day of the week.

While the activities of worship described in the Old Testament are shadows and types of “the good things to come,” Christ has brought us into the spiritual realities themselves which the former things shadowed and illustrated. For the Christian, there is no reason to revert to those former carnal ordinances. To do so is to forfeit our “...hope, a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters the inner shrine behind the curtain, where Jesus, a forerunner on our behalf, has entered, having become a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek” (Hebrews 6:19, 20). While the Old Testament is a source of theological information concerning the spiritual aspects of approaching the true and living God, only a failure to apprehend the transition from carnal to spiritual which Christ has made possible would lead one to consult the Old Testament to determine in what observances Christ’s assembled church should engage under his high priesthood. Only the New Testament of Christ can provide that information, and to attempt to add to it elements from the observance of fleshly Israel is to corrupt and violate the spiritual religion of Christ!

What, then, does the Lord desire that we do when we assemble every first day of the week? In what activities did the earliest Christians engage when they assembled every first day of the week under the direction of the Lord and his apostles? In other words, as the apostles guided the earliest Christians, as they taught them to obey everything that Christ had commanded them, and as they communicated that into which the Holy Spirit guided them, what was the resulting practice in all the assemblies?

It might be useful and helpful to orient ourselves to how this can be discerned from reading the text of the New Testament. In many cases, there will be only slight and passing references to activities so central and well known that there was no need to tarry in elaboration. In some cases, vital information will be given in details incidental to reports that focus on other concerns.

First, consider the evidence for the regular partaking of the Lord’s Supper on the first day of every week. From Acts 20:7 and 1 Corinthians 11:17, 18, 20, 33; 16:1, 2, we are able to see that the churches at Troas and Corinth partook of the Lord’s Supper every first day of the week (please read these passages in your Bible). Note that Paul’s statement, “When you come together, it is not really to eat the Lord’s supper” (1 Corinthians 11:20) indicates that the readers were supposed to be eating the Lord’s supper when they came together, but they were failing to do so. (The context describes the nature of the failure, but that is not our concern just now. Our concern is to establish the activity itself which an apostle taught as proper for the Lord’s Day assembly).

In Acts 20:7, the main event that the author desires to report is that Paul preached to the assembled church in Troas. He mentions the occasion and its routine procedure incidentally: “On the first day of the week, when we met to break bread, Paul was holding a discussion with them.” The very incidental nature of the detail indicates how well established the practice was in the minds of the readers. It was well known that the churches met on the first day of the week to partake of the Lord’s Supper (“break bread”). That explains why Luke phrases the fact as an incidental detail rather than putting it this way: “Now all the churches meet on the first day of the week, and they eat the Lord’s Supper every first day of the week when they meet. Therefore, when Paul came to Troas, he held his discussion during such an assembly.”

Furthermore, these facts explain why we should not be surprised that the New Testament does not contain such a statement as “Every church is hereby instructed to eat the Lord’s Supper every first day of the week.” It was so well-known and so well established, that the New Testament contains only incidental and correcting statements about it! Yet, for those of us who are greatly distanced from the world contemporary with the earliest Christians, these incidental and correcting statements provide implicit information we need to see the explicit truth, namely, that the early churches all met every first day of the week, and they ate the Lord’s Supper whenever they met on the first day of the week!

Assembling every first day of the week and partaking of the Lord’s Supper–this is our pattern. When Christ’s people follow it, he is pleased to dwell among us (Matthew 18:18-20; 28:18-20).

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