Reconciliation and the Table of Communion | Romans 5 Sermon

What is the true purpose of communion, and how does Christ’s sacrifice shift our focus from religious performance to authentic relationship?

In this communion sermon on Romans 5:6–11, Lead Pastor Neil McClendon explores what it means to be reconciled to God. Pastor Neil highlights how the Bible honestly describes humanity—as weak, ungodly, and sinful—not to condemn us, but to invite us into a deeper realization of grace. Discover how Jesus’ death does far more than offer forgiveness; it restores a lasting relationship with a loving Father, freeing believers from mere behavior modification so they can truly enjoy walking with God.

In this episode, we cover:

• The Heart of Communion: Why coming to the Lord's table is an act of rejoicing in what Christ has accomplished rather than an empty ritual.
• Embracing Our Need: Understanding how acknowledging our natural weakness makes God's grace and reconciliation far more meaningful.
• Reconciliation vs. Forgiveness: Discovering how Christ brings us into a secure, permanent relationship with God.
• Relationship Over Performance: How prioritizing and enjoying your relationship with God naturally diminishes the appeal of sin.

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Transcript

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This podcast is brought to you by Grand Parkway Baptist Church, helping people to know, enjoy, and glorify God. For more information about Grand Parkway, visit Grandparkway.org.

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Lord, it's only right and fitting that we all praise belongs to you. And so we've come to give you what is rightfully yours. Our worship, our adoration, our praise, different words the Bible uses to say you are pre-eminent and pre-existent. You're first and foremost in our attention and in our affection. And we've gathered today to remember you, just like you instructed us to. And so, Holy Spirit, brood over and be over this time as we prepare our head and our heart to come to the table of remembrance. We offer this prayer in Christ's name, and everyone said, Amen. Amen. You can have a seat. If you're our guest, let me explain to you what you see set up around the room. Today's communion Sunday here at Grand Park Way. And for us, communion uh is not just something that we do at the very end or it's the entire service. So here's what's gonna happen. I'm gonna have a brief homily. Homily is a very religious word for a short sermon. And everyone said, I hate all of you. Anyway, uh no, it's it's short for a sermon, and then basically after the homily, we'll give you some instruction. And so what we do is we receive communion as families or group of friends. And so I'll read a little passage of scripture and say, hey, let this shape our time, and then we'll just take a moment or two to kind of examine ourselves. Like the Bible says, hey, you should examine yourselves so that you don't receive the elements in an unworthy manner. In other words, it's just some empty ritual. Let's get this over with so we can beat the Methodists to lunch. No, it's so much more than that, okay? And so we got to be careful that we don't just kind of go through the motions. We want to be awakened and aware of what we're doing and why we're doing it. And so uh we practice what's called open communion here at Grand Park Way, which means you don't have to be a member of our church to receive communion today. Uh if you're a Christian, if you identify as a Christ follower, we invite you to come and receive and celebrate communion. So, what we'll do is uh uh when I'm done and when there's a time of reflection, people will go to their stations and prepare to serve you. And when you're ready, you just get up. You don't have to get right up what everybody else does. You can just keep worshiping, okay? Keep worshiping, keep singing, prepare in your head and your heart. And when you're ready, there's stations here across the front and all across the back. There's nine stations total. You'll just go to one of those stations and they'll serve you the elements. And now, listen carefully. If you say, hey, I'd like to be prayed for, I got a lot going on. Then when you're there, just tell them, hey, could you pray for me? Uh we got this going on. This is a safe place, okay? Uh let me say this: if you're not a believer, you abstain. This is not for you. Or if you're a Christian and you're like, I'm living in willful sin, I need to abstain, but let don't stay in your chair. Come and just say, hey, I need to not receive the elements because I got some stuff going on. And then tell them how you can pray for you. I remember a guy came to my station one time and he just said, he just shook his head and said, can't. And I said, okay, talk to me. And he said, just not, yeah. And I say, I respect that. How can I pray for you? It was a great conversation. You will not be ashamed, you will not be made to feel guilty, okay? Uh, and so I appreciate you taking communion with a sense of sobriety. I want to focus our thoughts here uh as we prepare to come to the table with this reading from Romans chapter 5, starting in verse 6. He says, While we were still weak at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die. But God chose his love for us in that, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since therefore we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his son, much more now that we are reconciled shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we now have received reconciliation. A couple things I want to point to in here. First of all, look, he says, For while we were still weak, Christ died for the ungodly. And then he goes on and says, someone will scarcely die for a good person, but uh, but God shows his love for us in that while we're still sinners. And so here's the way the Bible describes us weak, ungodly sinners. Now, none of you is gonna put that on your Tinder profile, amen. No one on your online profile is gonna say, or you apply for a job. Tell me some things about you. I'm weak, I'm ungodly, and I'm a sinner. Who wants to get with this? And yet the Bible, listen to me, not out of condemnation, but out of invitation. Because unless you embrace it by nature, let me just go first. By nature, that's who I am. I am a weak person. I cannot live out what the gospel commands of me. Okay? I am by nature ungodly, and I am by nature a sinner. Why is that such a big deal? Because when I embrace that, then the death of Jesus on the cross becomes more significant and more substantial in my life. He goes on and says, While we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by his death, by the death of his son. Much more now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life? More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ. That's communion. He said, look, that's the essence of communion. More than that, more than that, see, the Bible doesn't rub your face, rub your nose in your failures and say you're just a bad person, try to do better. No, no, no. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ. This is the essence of communion. It is rejoicing in God because of what Jesus Christ has done. Okay? And so when the Bible starts off and says we're weak, by nature, weak, ungodly, and sinful people, don't let that offend you. Let that remind you. Because you've not just been forgiven, you've been reconciled, which means you've been brought into a relationship, okay? And the more you learn to enjoy the relationship, the less sin appeals to you. Does that make sense? Say amen. It's not about performance. He's not looking down and kind of going, hey, I saw you at the rodeo. What was up with that? No, it's about a relationship. And the more you learn to enjoy the relationship, the less sin appeals to you. I used to travel a lot on airplanes, and my buddies would say, Hey, look around the airport. You'll see some really crazy behavior. So I'd be in the airport probably about 190 days out of the year. I would be in the airport somewhere. My favorite was at Atlanta, Hartsville Airport. They used to have what was called the smoking lounge. There was no door on it, it was just an opening with a bunch of chairs in there, and women would park their strollers for their kids right outside the door and go in there and just burn a heater. There'd be so much smoke in there, you couldn't see the people. It would just be this blue fog. And I would walk by, and these kids right here inhaling secondhand smoke, kind of going, hey, whose kid is this? Every time I went to Atlanta Hartsfield Airport, I would see that. Or I would see the guy who would take his shoes off in the airport and put them up on the chair in front of him. I'm like, dude, I didn't come this morning to see that, okay? Get your crusty feet off the furniture. But my perhaps one of my favorites was when my buddy said, He said, I was in DFW Airport, and this is they just clamped down on security. And so people get in the security line, and he said, I saw a lady behind me. She had on these uh pointy-toed cowboy boots with metal caps on them. She had a big old belt buckle on, and she had her hair all done up. And he said, I got it, and a bunch of jewelry. He said, I got out of line because I just thought I want to see how this goes. And the lady got there, put her little carry-on on there, and thought she was just gonna march through. And they said, Excuse me, ma'am, you need to take your boots off. And she said, I barely got them on. I mean, come on. She said, ma'am, you gotta take your boots off. She takes her boots off, puts them in a little train, walks through, meet, meet, meet, goes off. They said, Do you have a belt on? She pulls it up. He said, Dude, it looked like a hubcat. The hugest belt buckle. I was just like, What? And so she's like, I gotta take my belt off. My pants are kind of big. And I said, ma'am, we gotta take your belt off. Takes her belt off, puts it in there, walks through with her pants in her hand. Ma'am, do you have any metal anywhere in your body? She goes, Well, I got a lot of hair. I got my hair done. I got a lot of pins in my hair, and man, you gotta take them out. Oh, yeah. We're getting down to the get down. And she's like, What? She goes, I'm meeting people and we're going out for a night on the town. Ma'am, you've got to take. And so they walk over to the side. The lady holds a bowl, the TSA holds a plastic bowl, and she begins to unpin her hair. And my friend said to me, he said, it was it beginning to just fall down. And see, it took her at least five minutes to pull all the pins and stuff out of there. And she got her hair in one hand and her pants in the other, and she finally walks through the metal detector like this. And he said, I went from laughing to being so sad. Because the woman and she just took the Bobby pins and put them in her pocket and just got her boots under her arm and just limped down to the plane. Now, why do I tell you that? By nature, that's you and I coming before a holy God, weak, ungodly, with our hair in one hand and our pants in the other, like, okay, I thought I was looking good, but not so much. But you are the people who have been reconciled to God by God. Reconciliation is more than forgiveness, it's a relationship. And the more you and I learn to enjoy the relationship, the less things that don't belong to the relationship appeal to you anymore. If you're married, say amen. If you've been with your wife or you've been with your husband any length of time, you may not language it like this, but your task is to learn to prioritize that relationship such that anything that contaminates or affects your enjoyment of that relationship cannot be a part of your life. It just can't. This is the essence of Christianity. It's not behavior modification, it is the enjoyment of a relationship. This is why God not only forgives you, but he reconciles you. Yes, amen. He reconciles you. What does that mean? That means that you're brought into a relationship with a God who's never going to break up with you. That's what it means. And so I'd like us to spend a little bit of time thinking about what we just heard as we prepare to come to the table and remember the body and the blood of Jesus that makes all this relationship possible. Let me voice a prayer. God, thanks for the reality of the cross that Jesus offered himself up in our place and for our sins. And we don't want to walk away from that and just think about our sins, about sinning versus not sinning. We want to wake walk away from that and be reminded that we were reconciled. And so we can rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus, through whom we now have received reconciliation. And reconciliation is the restoration of the relationship we were created for. Not religion, relationship. Not rules, relationship. We live like we do because we don't want anything to taint our enjoyment of the relationship. So Holy Spirit, brood over us now for just a moment as we prepare to come to the table and to remember and celebrate. Stay standing for just a moment. Take a moment. Ask yourself what you walk away from today with. If you're here and you've yet to begin a relationship with Christ, you should ask yourself, why would you not want to know a God like this? The God that looks at people like me that by nature are weak, ungodly sinners. And he says, I don't want to just forgive you, I want to reconcile you into a relationship that's never going to go away. It is about learning to enjoy the relationship, it's not about modifying your behavior and increasing your performance. It's about so enjoying the relationship with God that anything that threatens that cannot be allowed to be a part of your life. Anyone that threatens that cannot be a part of your life. This is the essence of Christianity. So the Ten Commandments, you shall know the gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a graven image. Because the relationship is about prominence and priority. And God derives a measure of enjoyment from his relationship with his people. The task for you and I is to reciprocate that enjoyment that he finds by finding our highest enjoyment in the relationship as well. You're not just bad people that he tolerates, you're sons and daughters that he enjoys. Hold your hands out. We'd like to conclude our service with a spoken blessing. So if you're comfortable, and even if you're not, hold your hands out. There's nothing about you that surprises God. He sees you, he knows you, even the parts you don't want anybody to know. He knows that part of you as well. And he offered up his son on the cross as a payment. So you wouldn't have to be afraid anymore or wonder. You could know because you've been reconciled. Depart now and live as the reconciled, accepted, beloved, paid for people of God. In the name of the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit. Amen. Bless you.