The Sin Of Indifference

How much severer punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled under foot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified?

–Hebrews 10:29

What does it mean to take the Lord’s Supper in an unworthy manner? In 1 Corinthians 11, Paul said we do so through unacceptable behavior and unfocused ritualism. Third, we partake in an unworthy manner through unconfessed sin. Before you eat the bread or drink the cup, you need to confess any blatant acts of rebellion in your life. Look at verses 29-30: “He who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself if he does not judge the body rightly. For this reason many among you are weak and sick, and a number sleep.” Because the Corinthians were partaking of the Lord’s Supper without any desire to repent and live in a way that is pleasing to God, many of them were physically ill, and some had even died. The Lord’s Supper is serious business to God. To enter into it with a heart of rebellion toward God and to leave the table with the resolve to continue disobeying God is to invite God’s severe judgment on your life.

Fourth, we observe the Lord’s Supper in an unworthy manner through unnecessary absence. Some Christians say, “I do not want to risk God’s judgment in my life, so I will not partake of the Lord’s Supper.” Or they say, “The Lord’s Supper is just a boring ritual. It is okay if I skip it.”

That is perhaps the greatest sin of all: the sin of indifference. In Hebrews 10:29, the writer said, “How much severer punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled under foot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified?” To trample under foot the Son of God is to treat as worthless what Christ did on the cross. And to regard as unclean the blood of the covenant is to say the blood of Jesus has no more worth than that of a mongrel dog. Whenever you skip the Lord’s Supper because you do not care about it or because you do not want to repent of your sins, what you are really saying is “The death of Christ is not that big of a deal. I do not really care about the new life He offers me.” And that is to invite God’s severest judgment on your life.

When Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper, He said, “Do this in remembrance of Me” (Luke 22:19). In our study of Ecclesiastes, we saw that to remember God means to make Him central in our lives. Jesus was saying that observing the Lord’s Supper has a way of recentering our lives spiritually. When we partake of the Lord’s Supper, we are reminded of the great price He paid for us on the cross. We are reminded that God’s plan for the future is to redeem us and take us to be with Him forever. And we are reminded that we have an obligation to our Savior, because we have been bought with the ultimate price.

Today’s devotion is excerpted from “The Sacred Supper” by Dr. Robert Jeffress, 2011.

Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.lockman.org.