From The Archives - “Discerning The Lord’s Body” by Ed Dufresne
(I Cor. 11:23, 28, 29)For I have received of the Lord that which also I deliver unto you, that the Lord Jesus Christ the night in which He was betrayed took bread and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, “Take, eat, this is my body which is broken for you. This do in remembrance of me . . . But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup. For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body.”
First of all, don’t let the word “unworthy” confuse you. If you are a born-again Christian, you are worthy to take communion. He’s saying you’re unworthy if you do not discern the Lord’s body. (v. 29)“For he that drinketh unworthily eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body.” You do it unworthily when you are not discerning what happened at Calvary.
Now a lot of us take the bread and chuck it into our mouths and flip the blood in there and we don’t even know what we’re doing. It’s just religious and everybody else is doing it. We do it because everybody else does it, and it reminds us of our sins. But His blood has washed away our sins!
A few years back, when I was a deacon in a church and serving communion, one Sunday morning, I asked the Lord for a vision of what happened at Calvary. It seemed like the roof came off the building, as if it moved and I actually saw as God showed me what happened and what He means by “to do this (take communion) in remembrance of Him,” of the substitutionary work that happened at Calvary. As God showed me, I saw my Savior on the Cross; it didn’t look like any of the pictures I’d seen. I saw Jesus on Calvary and I watched as every demonical disease and infirmity hit my Jesus.
(v. 30)For this cause many are weak and sickly among you and many die. For this cause many are weak. Why? Because many do not discern (or understand) what happened at Calvary; that Jesus bore all our sicknesses and diseases; that by His stripes we were healed. I asked God for more scriptures on this. He told me to read Isaiah 53 out of the amplified Bible. In Isaiah 53:1 Isaiah was prophesying what he was seeing, Jesus hanging on the Cross. That’s why he said, “Who could believe what I’m seeing? Who’s going to believe if I tell them what’s happening?” He saw the Son of God being crucified through revelation knowledge. In Isaiah52:14 he talks about Jesus being marred beyond recognition of a man. This is what God talks about when He says to discern the Lord’s body. Every sickness and every disease, besides all the sins of the whole world, were on my Savior.
(Isaiah 53:2) Isaiah is talking about Jesus having no beauty. He didn’t even look like a man hanging on that Cross because every sickness and disease was laid on Him; cancer, leprosy, everything the devil had. No wonder He said, “My God, My God! Why hast thou forsaken me?” No wonder He was under so much pressure that He sweat drops of blood. But He did it so that you and I could take communion and remind ourselves and God of the covenant that God cut with Jesus at Calvary; Jesus busted out of the grave and went up to Heaven to take the blood up there to cut the covenant with God. This is why when He was on His way up and saw Mary, He told her not to touch Him because He hadn’t entered in. Remember, the priests in the temple were holy and weren’t allowed to touch anybody. Jesus was on His way to the Holy of Holies, to cut the covenant with the Father, ratified with the blood.
Jesus was tempted and tested just like you, and He knows what it’s like to carry pain, because pain was laid on Him. (Isaiah 53:3-4). The pain of chastisement, of punishment, was laid on Jesus. The curse of the law in Deuteronomy 28 was laid on Him. Galatians 3:13 says that He was made a curse for us. In Isaiah 53 it says, “Surely he has borne our griefs, sicknesses, weaknesses, and distresses and carried our sorrows and pain of punishment, yet we ignorantly considered him stricken, smitten and afflicted by God.” Notice He said ignorantly. The people of that day thought God did it to Him; they thought God was punishing Him. They weren’t discerning the Lord’s body.
The Body of Christ ought to be the strongest bunch of people in the world, but many are sickly and dying because they’re not discerning the Lord’s body.
In Isaiah 53:5 & 6 it goes on to say that we are healed and made whole; that He was oppressed so that we wouldn’t have to be. Have you oppression? That was laid on Jesus. I’ve found out that oppression is caused by fear. The Bible says that perfect love (and God is love) casts out fear. (I John 4:18)
Isaiah 53:7-10 shows us that it pleased God to bruise Him. That’s hard for me to take sometimes, that it pleased God to bruise His own Son, but I asked God for revelation and He said, “I love you so much it pleased me to get Him bruised just to get you into Heaven.” Praise God! How many of you would hang your own son up there? God had to turn away; He couldn’t look at His Son, full of sin, infested with demons. Can you see what happened? Are you discerning the Lord’s body? When you see this, it will change your life; you’ll be free of doubt and unbelief. He was made sick so you wouldn’t have to be sick. He was made poor so you wouldn’t have to be poor. He went to hell so you wouldn’t have to go to hell. He took the keys of this earth from Satan and He’s given them to us!
One last thing: the blood covenant is still the most powerful agreement in the world today. One blood brother owns all that the other owns and vice-versa. God cut a covenant with Abraham that made him rich, and Jesus is the surety of a better covenant; we remind Him and ourselves of that better covenant each time we partake of the Lord’s Supper and rightly discern the Lord’s body and all it means.