ORDER
(7th in a series)
Primitive Baptists practice close communion. (“Close” is the proper term, instead of “closed.”) This means that we commune only with those who have been scripturally baptized and who are walking in gospel order. The basis for close communion lies in the identity of the church, and in church discipline.
The identity of the church is bound up in the ordinances. As we have previously stated, where the ordinances are found, there the church is found; where the church is found, there the ordinances will be found. They always go together. If one ceases to be in a local situation, then so does the other. Likewise, the ordinances go together. Baptism is the door to communion. No instance is found in Scripture where an unbaptized person engaged in the Lord’s Supper. In Acts Chapter Two, those who received Peter’s words were baptized and added to the church, and then “they continued stedfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread.” The breaking of bread followed baptism. Those who were added to the church were the ones that communed.
Baptism and communion are the borders of the church. Where the ordinances end, the church ends; where the church ends, so do the ordinances. The church is the pillar and ground of the truth; one of the great works of the church is to defend the truth and maintain the purity of the doctrine. Without control over her own borders, it would be impossible for her to do this. How could the church have any control over what was preached within her borders if she could not put outside her borders those who preached error? The right of the church to forbid communion is thus linked directly to the purity of her doctrine. If the identity of the church is not carefully regarded, neither will be her purity. If the Lord has commanded her to be holy as He is holy, how is she to do that if she cannot “keep house” through discipline? How else is she to keep house if not through excommunication?
The Primitive Baptists’ close attention through the generations to the identity of the church is entirely proper. If just anyone is the church, and if the church is the pillar and ground of the truth, then it follows that “just anything” is the truth. Since just anything is not the truth, but since truth is carefully distinguished from error in the Scriptures, and since we are not to bid “God-speed” to those who are in gross error, then it plainly follows that everyone claiming to be the church cannot be right. Someone must be wrong. Someone must not be the church. If all are not the church, then all do not have the ordinances nor the right to them. Thus, we must practice close communion if we are to show proper regard for truth.
The harshest discipline the church can administer is to deny someone the communion table. “But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an one no not to eat” (1 Cor. 5.11). How can we “not eat” with someone if we cannot forbid him the communion supper? It obviously would not be possible. It plainly follows, then, that if there is to be any church discipline, there must be close communion.
I highly recommend that our people read Elder Lemuel Potter’s “Four Lectures on Communion,” delivered in 1886. We certainly need to be informed on this important subject.