This article develops my previous discussion on the Lord’s Supper. In the first article we examined why many believers have come to view communion as a means of receiving physical healing or divine power for long life, particularly tied to ‘discerning the body’. By studying both the text and context of 1 Corinthians 11, I argued that this isn’t what Paul meant. In this article we’re going to turn our attention to another prevalent misunderstanding of communion: treating it as a kind of spiritual charm or superstition.
Communion has been turned into a means of protection from evil and accidents.
Similarly to the erroneous and unbiblical idea that discerning the body brings healing, in many circles communion has been turned into a means of protection from evil and accidents. Communion has also been bound up with the notion of “breakthrough,” explaining why communion is so often a part of “crossover nights.” We’re even starting to see individuals ‘taking communion’ alone, before a job interview, exam, or some other important event. They do this convinced that communion guarantees success.
How Superstition Mishandles Communion
Such a superstitious approach to communion echoes patterns we know well in our African traditions. In many of our traditions, people have long relied on rituals, incantations, objects, or substances to secure protection from harm or to attract blessings. It’s easy, then, for communion to be pulled into that same mindset of superstition. Without realising it, the bread and cup are made to serve as a Christianised version of old practices, where God’s will is treated as something we can manipulate through a ritual.
African people have long relied on rituals or objects to secure protection from harm and attract blessings.
The real danger is that something Jesus gave us as a beautiful gift—a meal to honour his sacrificial love and the covenant he secured for us with his blood—gets reduced to a formula. Instead of drawing our hearts to Christ in worship, it becomes a tool we use to try to get something we want. And when the hoped-for healing, protection, or breakthrough doesn’t come, the result is often confusion and disappointment. Some begin to wonder if their faith is weak, if they didn’t partake the “right way,” or even if God has failed them.
But that’s not what the Lord’s Supper was ever meant to do.
The True Meaning of Communion
The Bible isn’t silent about healing. God encourages his people to pray for the sick (James 5:14-15). He invites us to bring our needs before him, trusting him as our healer. And indeed, sometimes God graciously grants us physical healing in response to prayer.
Rejoice in the salvation he has secured for us.
However, by far the greatest healing scripture promises us isn’t freedom from disease or aging, but the forgiveness of sin and the gift of eternal life through Jesus Christ. By his wounds, we are healed from our deepest, most deadly sickness—the sin that separates us from God (Isaiah 53:5). This is why Jesus gave us the Lord’s Supper—not as a ritual to guarantee health, protection, or prosperity, but as a sacred table where we remember his sacrifice and rejoice in the salvation he has secured for us.
Here we reflect deeply on his broken body and the blood shed for us—the new covenant he secured through his death. Here we proclaim his death until he comes again. We look around at the body of Christ, the Church, with whom we share this covenant meal. And we look forward to the day when we will eat and drink with him in the kingdom of God, a day when sickness, suffering, and death will be no more.
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