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ISN'T ONE DRINK ENOUGH?

There's a kind of letter that comes very predictably to us here at the Voice of Prophecy. Actually for decades now, even going back to when my dad led out in our work. Usually the return envelope would just have a name, and sometimes the address would simply be a very long box number with five or six digits. And our people at the Bible School would instinctively know that this was coming in from an inmate, a man or woman in prison.

And so many times, the message is a simple one: "I was raised as a good Christian, baptized, faithfully walking with Jesus. But slowly things got out of hand; the relationship I had with the Lord didn't continue . . . and now here I am." And sometimes the "here I am" has to do with things like murder, even multiple murder.

And ironic as it may seem, it's often within the gray walls of that institution, with guards everywhere and barbed wire strung along the tops of all the walls, that this person finds freedom! They come back to the Lord! They renew their relationship with Jesus and once again begin to enjoy the liberty of being a saved, born-again Christian.

Now there are those who decide that because the spiritual detour was so severe, the journey to a faraway country such a bitter and debasing memory, they want to be rebaptized. And certainly many, many Christians through the centuries have done exactly that. I know a prison chaplain is thrilled to participate in something like that.

On the other hand, though, it's a common and biblical belief in the Christian faith that just one baptism is enough — even for the mass murderer. A person baptized in their youth, maybe, can come back to Jesus Christ, repent, and once again enjoy the confidence of salvation . . . and it's not a Christian requirement that you be baptized again.

However, as we continue looking at this wonderful moment in the Christian life — this moment of bread and wine — we find that here is a repeated thing. Unlike baptism, which happens once, this one may happen many times in a believer's life. In fact, when Paul writes to the Christians in Corinth, teaching them to observe the Lord's Supper, he quotes Jesus as saying this to His disciples:

"This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of Me." In the King James Version, you probably remember it this way: "This do ye, as oft as ye drink it."

Clearly this sacred moment, ordained by Jesus Himself, was meant to be an ongoing reminder to each of us. We talked about that great Memorial Day cry going out from the widows and the fatherless: "Don't forget!" Friend, there's a reason why we celebrate Memorial Day every year. Maybe we need it more often than that. And we need the reminder of the cup and the cracker on a regular basis in our own lives.

In the New International Version's text notes for the Bible passages dealing with the Lord's Supper, the scholars write this:

"What the Passover was to the exodus, as an annual festival celebrating God's salvation, the Lord's Supper is to the atoning death of Christ, enabling us to call it regularly to mind and to feast on its great benefits. It is thus, through word and sacrament, that the past becomes present again."

Isn't that absolutely the truth in our experience? Yes, the baptism into God's family, once, can count forever. But friend, the gift of Calvary, happening as it did in the past, 2000 years ago now, needs to become present again. Not just once, but often.

You know, you and I weren't there at Calvary. Oh, true, we were there in spirit among the rebels, the soldiers, the betrayers, the disciples who fled, the mob who cheered every dull thud as the nails went in. But our eyes and minds weren't there to take in the scenes in full Technicolor, to really grasp with our senses what was happening. However, Communion makes the past the present. When I sit there in church next to Jackie and I have that piece of bread in my hand, that cup of dark liquid — yes, I can think of the blood better that way. It's more real. And when I take those emblems into myself, I'm taking Jesus and His sacrifice for me . . . into me! I'm accepting it again — and again — and again.

Augustine once wrote that this sacrament, the Lord's Supper, is "the visible form of invisible grace." Isn't that a wonderful way of putting it? I'm grateful for the visibility of these tokens of God's love.

Having said that, let me take a few moments here to broach an aspect of Christianity that we've debated and discussed for about 20 centuries now. Is this a religion — Christianity, that is — where you can sign on, accept Christ, be baptized once, and then that's it? This thing called the Sacrament of Communion seems to imply an ongoing kind of involvement with Calvary, rather than just a one-time signing on the dotted line of the church. But what about it?

Many of us have witnessed something like a beach baptism. Back in the 70s, when the "(quote) Jesus movement" was going on, once in a while an itinerant sand-covered preacher would just wade out into the Pacific Ocean waves and begin baptizing anyone who could stand the cold water. In two minutes it was over, and the new convert might go off to a new life, or might not go off to a new life. Sometimes they'd just catch the next wave and keep right on like before. Was that true Christianity?

Well, friend, speaking of ocean water, I don't want to give a shallow answer to a deep question. But sometimes even the most devout among us are bothered by a verse written by Paul, Philippians chapter 2. Here it is:

"Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling."

And we're stunned by that. "Work out your salvation"? "Fear"? "Trembling"? Didn't Jesus pay it all? Isn't one baptism enough? What kind of ongoing, continuing work is required? And if we read this verse in the King James, the vise tightens up even a bit more. Notice the added word:

"Work out your OWN salvation with fear and trembling."

And we start to understand, maybe, why there are those who get into a pattern of going to a church or cathedral every single day to light a candle or partake of some sacrament. Sometimes it even is the bread and the wine. In light of a verse like this, we might hope there's credit to be gotten from every cup and every cracker.

But you know, I think we miss the point if we take that view. Friend, Jesus did indeed pay it all. Every bit of your debt was paid on a Friday afternoon at Calvary; all the bread in the world here in 1997 couldn't add one iota to Jesus' completed accomplishment. And yes, one baptism, whenever that happened for you . . . is also enough. It suffices.

And yet, the being reminded of Calvary, the remembering, the thinking, the reflecting . . . friend, we're fools if we think that's a once-only event. The Christian who wants to grow in maturity, who wants to follow Jesus more fully, fall in love more deeply — that man or woman wants to be reminded of the gift on Golgotha just as often as possible. Not to earn but to learn. Not to gain merits, but to thank God for the merits of Jesus.

I'm comforted that this tough verse by Paul, "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling," comes in the very same book of the Bible, Philippians, as another verse which sets our hearts right again. Just back a few verses, chapter one, verse 6:

"Being confident of this, that HE who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus."

Who does the work in us, friend? Jesus does. God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit work in the life of the maturing Christian, bringing us to completion. The only "(quote) working out of our own salvation" we can do is to keep letting them in. Which, of course, involves reminding ourselves over and over and over again about Calvary and how much Jesus did for us as He hung on that cross.

David and I want to tip our hats today to those scholars who helped put together this New International Bible. Here's another wonderful insight:

"‘Work it out to the finish'?" Commenting, obviously, on that troublesome phrase. "Not a reference to the attempt to earn one's salvation by works, but the expression of one's salvation in spiritual growth and development. Salvation is not merely a gift received once for all; it expresses itself in an ongoing process in which the believer is strenuously involved."

So yes, friend, God works out salvation in our lives on an ongoing, daily, hourly basis . . . and what a blessing the cup and cracker can be in keeping the right images before us. And really, maybe we can even find truth in that Bible phrase: "with fear and trembling." "Working out salvation with fear and trembling." If the bread and the wine take us to Calvary and we see in our imagination our Savior Jesus hanging there, won't there maybe be fear and trembling?

We can't help but have that old song go through our minds: "Were you there when they crucified my Lord?" The Communion elements would indeed take us there — where the chorus immediately confesses: "Oh, it causes me to tremble. Were you there when they crucified my Lord?"