To the perishing, eating, drinking, and making merry is all they have to look forward to. This is all there is, you only live once, so seize the day and live for right now, live in the moment, travel the world, try everything once...because you’re going to die and that’ll be the end.
Understandably, Christians have resisted this sort of over-indulgence! Along with this mindset comes all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice, envy, strife, deceit, maliciousness, sensuality, and impurity. [Rom 1:29; Eph 4:19; 5:3] We are called to resist and flee from all of these things, and so we rightly resist and flee from the sorts of eating, drinking, and partying which defines the world!
But that doesn’t mean we’re boring! It doesn’t mean we are suspicious of joy! Of celebration! Of enjoyment of this life! Christians actually have better parties, because we have been given real riches!
The world says, “This is all there is, so let us eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.”
But because of the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ, and His incorporation of us into Himself by baptism and the Holy Spirit, you know what the Church should be saying every single week?
Christ’s body given for you; Christ’s blood of the new covenant shed for you.
Because of the bounty of God’s grace, let us eat, drink, and be merry, FOR TODAY WE LIVE! And tomorrow we live! And we will live even though we die!
This is the richest meal you can imagine. This is rest, this is forgiveness, this is peace with God, and perhaps most of all, it’s a meal you don’t eat by yourself! We eat one bread and drink one cup in unity and committing to self-sacrifice for one another.
So come...and show the world how to really party!