Christmas, Communion and Suffering

Sunday morning’s gathered worship time on December 6 included communion at Christmas time, and it was a sweet, strong experience.  I pray that all of it was pleasing to our Lord!

The preaching and teaching was from Hebrews 1 and 2, a wonderful text to contemplate as we prepared to share around His table for communion.  Statements like these leapt off the page as I called you to consider Jesus:

“Since therefore the children (the children God has given to Christ, Heb. 2:13) share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death He might He might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil…” (Heb. 2:14).

“But we see Him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death…” (Heb. 2:9).

“For it was fitting that He (God) for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering…” (Heb. 2:10).

This is overwhelming for me.  God’s Son, the Prince of heaven, the Co-Creator of all that is and the Mighty God (Isa. 9:6) took on flesh and blood—this is Christmas truth--so that “He might become a merciful and faithful High Priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people” (2:17) by “tast[ing] death for everyone” (2:9) and suffering  on behalf of those whom the Father sanctified (set apart) to be His brother (2:11), as the Offerer of the Blood Sacrifice God required to assuage His wrath against His people’s sins (propitiation).  This is Communion truth.

Christ—humiliating Himself from the place of honor in the heavenlies!  Christ—suffering unspeakably to prove perfection of His obedience and sacrifice!  Christ—for the glory of His Father! (John 17:1)

Have you considered Jesus and the degree, breadth and depth of His sufferings for your sake?  Horatius Bonar (1808-1889) helps us to appreciate the our Lord’s incarnational suffering:

“In person and in work, in life and in death, Jesus Christ is the sinner’s Substitute.  His vicariousness is co-extensive with the sins and wants of those whom he represents, and covers all the different periods as well as the varied circumstances of their lives.

Jesus entered our world as the Substitute.  ‘There was no room for [him] in the inn’ (Luke 2:7)—the inn of Bethlehem, the city of David, his own city.  ‘Though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor,’ Paul wrote of him (2 Cor. 8:9).

Jesus began his life in poverty and in banishment.  He was not allowed to be born or to die as anything but an outcast man.  ‘Outside the city’ (Heb. 13:12) was his position as he entered and as he left our earth.  Man would not give a roof to shelter or a cradle to receive the helpless babe.  It was as the Substitute that he was the outcast from the first moment of his birth.  His vicarious life began in the manger.  For what can this poverty mean, this rejection by man, this outcast condition, but that his sin-bearing had begun?”

Consider Jesus and all His suffering for your sake.