Whosoever will

“As it is the Lord’s Supper, Jesus Christ is the host who presides and invites participants to the table…. Insofar as it is Christ’s table, the church is invited, and therefore the church and its officers are not the presiding hosts. The church people who do preside at the table are only the servants who have themselves been invited…. [T]he table is a place of welcoming by God to sinners. When we get too strict about the right intentions, we might tend to lose sight of the fact that we are sinners welcomed to a table we do not deserve and over which we do not preside.”

—Joe R. Jones, A Grammar of Christian Faith (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), 2:673-75.