Thoughts On The Lord’s Supper 5

Applying lotion to my hands recently, and tried to go to the garage…
I couldn’t open the door.
It wasn’t locked, mind you…but it might as well have been—
I couldn’t twist the door knob because of my lotioned hands.

It wasn’t an issue of strength, but of grip…
Here I was, an adult male, helpless to open a normal door by myself.
I had to call on one of my children to open the door for me…

My dear friends, oh how this applies to us spiritually
as we humble ourselves to reflect and celebrate the Lord’s Supper, communion…

We cannot open the door to heaven on our own,
with our supposed “good deeds”
or any other “admirable” characteristic within ourselves.

Our good deeds—
our thinking of ourselves as basically a good person with a few flaws—
are mere lotion on the sinful hands we all have.

We think our strength—our niceness, the fact that we aren’t as bad as “them”—
can open the door to heaven, but it can’t.

Nothing in us can do that,
nothing in us deserves forgiveness & reconciliation with God the Father.

But everything in Christ can deserve those things for us.

We must call on the God-Man Carpenter,
Jesus of Nazareth, the Lord Jesus of heaven,
we must call on His nail-scarred, calloused hands alone
to grip the doorknob of heaven & open it for us…

• Oh may local churches stop passing out different types of lotion
  with more pleasing scents,
  .
• may local churches stop trying to teach people techniques
  with which to try to open the door on their own!
  .
• May local churches teach the only Gospel that saves…

That is what we admit & celebrate at the Lord’s Supper:
we have utterly sinful/stained hands
that we’ve lotioned up with good deeds…
and we are helpless to get through the door.

On our own, we would be stuck forever on the front porch of heaven–
outside with wailing & gnashing of teeth!

But there is a perfect Savior with nail-scarred hands
Who alone can open the door & carry us through
because of His good deeds leading up to & through the cross…
cry out to Him in repentance and faith, loved ones, cry out to King Jesus…