Should Communion Have One Big Cup or Lots of Little Cups?

Gary: Contending for the Faith. Here’s this week’s question: “Dear Dave and Tom, how big an issue should we make over the details over the ordinances of baptism and communion? For example, my church recently switched from passing one cup for all to partake to many tiny plastic cups. Some in my church are objecting because the Scriptures speak of one cup. Is that a legitimate concern?”

Tom:  Dave, let me quote Mark:14:23And he took the cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them: and they all drank of it.
See All..., just to give some background as to this person’s concern, or the people of the congregation. Mark:14:23And he took the cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them: and they all drank of it.
See All...: “And He took the cup, and when He had given thanks, He gave it to them, and they all drank of it.” So it was one cup.

Dave: I’m not certain that we could prove there was just one cup from that. I grew up in a fellowship—well, we had one cup, and then when it gets a little larger, you had two, maybe you had three or four. If you…just the logistics, say if you’ve got 500 people in a congregation, it’s going to take you forever for everybody to take from one cup. So, I think from a practical standpoint, that opens the possibility for more.

It’s poured out of the same place… but look—it’s not the cup; it’s not where the wine or the grape juice came from, whether it all came out of one container, if you had a large enough group, it couldn’t even come out of one container.

This is not a physical thing. That’s one of the problems with sacramentalism. The sacrament itself begins to have power. It has some power.

We are remembering Christ in His death, and the cup is a remembrance of His blood poured out upon the cross for our sins. Now, if I have a little individual plastic cup, because you’ve got to pass it around to a lot of people, and just for the sake of time—I’m not going to complain about that, because the point is not the cup that I’m taking this from; but the point is that Christ’s blood was shed upon the cross for my sins! And that is what I am remembering.

Now, we made too much of the cup, and in many instances, it’s just a mechanical operation. Maybe they do it once a month, maybe they do it once a year. Some people might do it every week, and you go through the motions as though there is some virtue—some efficacy in the fact that you are drinking something out of a cup. No, no! It is a remembrance of Christ and His death upon the cross.

So, I wouldn’t begin to split hairs over the cup itself.

Tom: See, Dave, this is an interesting issue because these are ordinances. They have nothing to do with salvation, as you know.

Dave: Right.

Tom: But they were something that Jesus commanded us to do—if we love Him, “keep my commandments,” not for salvation but to please Him. There were a lot of things that we do, that we recognize from the scripture that we want to do to honor Christ and to please Him.

Dave: So Paul says it this way: “As often as you eat this bread and drink this cup…” Oh, well wait a minute! I’ve got to go back to find the cup that Paul drank out of? This was the Holy Grail….

Tom: Right. That’d make a good movie, Dave.

Dave: Yeah, I’ve got to fine that cup. There’s some power in that cup. When He says “this” cup, He means—it’s not the tea that you drink at home, it’s not the grape juice, or the Coca-Cola, or whatever, but it is this cup that you take in remembrance of Christ. That’s what He’s talking about. This cup. So, He took the cup, He passed it, and so forth. I think this is what He’s talking about.

Tom: Yeah, I want to step it up just a little bit, because there are some things that we do consider. You make a great point that these ordinances are not efficacious in themselves, because once you start believing that, then we begin to mystify this. Then we start to bring in things—the presence of Christ, and the elements become His actual body and His actual blood, His soul and divinity, and so on. That’s not what the scriptures teach.

But my concern here is, going back to baptism—for example, someone says, “Well, I’m just going to be sprinkled. Yes, I believe in believer’s baptism.” Now, we could take issue with that, couldn’t we? Because, the symbology, the representation is dying with Christ.

Dave: It’s pretty clear—and, again, we’re not going to quarrel. I have friends who sprinkled—they believe in that and so forth. So, I’m not going to quarrel with them, but if I want to go by the Bible, when, for example, Philip baptized the Ethiopian it says, “They went down both of them together into the water.” When Jesus’s disciples baptized, when John baptized—Jesus went into the water. When He came up out of the water it says in John 3 that “His disciples were baptizing in Enum, near Salem, because there was much water there. You don’t have to have much water if all you have to do is put a damp hand on someone or sprinkle a little water over them.

So, it’s very clear, and, as you said, “It’s a symbol, it’s a reminder, that we have been crucified with Christ; we have been buried. You don’t sprinkle some dirt on a dead man, you bury them. So that is very clear from the scriptures.

Now, somebody wants to quarrel with that and they say, “Well, it’s okay,” and so forth, I’m not going to argue with them or break fellowship with them over that.

Tom: It has nothing to do with salvation.

Dave: No. Right. I think they’re not following the scriptures. But, as you said, we’ve got to be very careful that the power of God, spiritual power, is not ministered through a sacrament. Where is the power? The power is in the blood of Christ that was shed upon the cross. The power is in His death as He paid the penalty for our sins. I want to remember Him. Now, let me remember Him in the best way that I can. Now, the power is in the fact that I’ve been crucified with Christ. I’ve died with Him! Been buried, and risen again, with Christ!

Well, then, I think that going into the “waters of death,” where I would be dead if I stayed there, and coming out, that symbolizes it better, but I’m not going to quarrel with someone. On the other hand, I will point out that infant baptism is not going to do it, because it’s very clear in the scriptures—believers’ baptism…the Ethiopian asked Philip, “What doth hinder me to be baptized?” He said, “If you believe, with all your heart, you may be.”

So, salvation is not in baptism, but it’s in our faith in Christ, and these other things are symbolic of what Christ did for us on the Cross.