The following "Question" was asked by a member of the congregation at Grace Community Church in Panorama City, California, and "Answered" by their pastor, John MacArthur Jr. It was transcribed from the tape, GC 70-23, titled "Questions and Answers--Part 51."  A copy of the tape can be obtained by writing, Word of Grace, P.O. Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412 or by dialing toll free 1-800-55-GRACE. Copyright 2001 by John MacArthur Jr., All Rights Reserved.

Question

I have a question regarding the Lord’s Table. You made reference this morning to a person perhaps not taking the Lord’s Table if they haven’t been baptized. We have the admonition that we should examine ourselves, and then afterwards, there’s a warning about we’re not judging the Lord’s body correctly. And you made reference tonight to Hebrews 10. Sometimes I’ve heard a person say that they didn’t take communion because they’ve realized there’s something wrong and they wanted to fix it or they wanted to do something about it; and others say that the reason we examine ourselves is to be, you know, as honest as we can about our sin, but as long as we confessed it, then we really--we’re all lenient, you know. We can’t make moral rectitude of ourselves before we take communion. So, how would you apply this?

Answer

Yeah, good question, I would say, “what you can do something about, do something about before you take the table.” If you can do something about it to make it right, do that! There are some things that you don’t need to do anything right about. I mean, you just need to stop doing wrong. But when there is something that can be rectified, some place where restoration can occur, that needs to be done.

Question (continued)

And how does that apply to the warning about not judging the Lord’s body?

Answer (continued)

Well, I think it’s the idea that if you know that there is some breach that you can make right, there is something that you can do that is right, some act of obedience like baptism, some terrible offence against someone or you know someone has against you, you can go and make it right, that that’s important because if you don’t do that, you have trivialized that to some degree and you’ve trivialized the Lord’s Table and there may be chastening in that.

Added to Bible Bulletin Board's "MacArthur’s Questions and Answers" by:

Tony Capoccia
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