Sin-Stained Hands
Eucharistic Meditation
One of the great missionaries in the Reformed tradition was the Scottish Presbyterian, John G. Paton. In the mid-1800s, he labored to bring the gospel to cannibals on two different islands in the South Pacific. His time on the first island was marked by great affliction as he suffered the deaths of both his wife and newborn son and was persecuted. But on the second he found great success, with the entire island of about 250 people coming to the Lord.
Following the first baptisms, the new Christians were invited to celebrate the Lord’s Supper for the first time. And this is what Paton wrote of that experience, “At the moment when I put the bread and wine into those dark hands, once stained with the blood of cannibalism, but now stretched out to receive and partake the emblems and seals of the Redeemer’s love, I had a foretaste of the joy of glory that well nigh broke my heart to pieces. I shall never taste a deeper bliss, till I gaze on the glorified face of Jesus himself.”
That really must have been a marvelous and unique experience. But in one sense, it is one that we also experience each Lord’s Day. As far as I know, no one in this congregation has been guilty of the sin of cannibalism. But you have grieved the Lord with other sins. Your hands have been stained with the guilt of many transgressions, some of them especially wicked, and all of them worthy of damnation.
And yet as the Apostle Paul wrote, “And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of God.” The same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead and converted cannibals has also quickened your heart, uniting you forever to God. Therefore, with clean hands and pure hearts—Come, and welcome, to Jesus Christ.
This communion meditation was given on January 11, AD 2026 at King’s Cross Church in Moscow, Idaho.