Last Sunday, our teaching pastor, John Piper, gave a message on the importance of the Lord’s Supper. We then partook of the supper together after his message. It was a very moving service and a great message; I encourage you to read or listen to it.
That sermon prompted me to post on at least two aspects concerning the Lord’s Supper. What follows will be part 1, with part 2 following later this week.
Spiritual Participation in Christ’s Death
What do we mean by spiritual participation? If any Baptists are reading this (as most surely there are), giant, bright, red-colored flags are popping up. “Remembrance“”we only remember Christ in the Lord’s Supper.” “Oh, he’s speaking of a mystical presence of Christ to be gained or sought in this act! Ugh!” It is a fact that transubstantiation, consubstantiation or even the view that communion is a “means of grace” are scorned in Baptist circles.
I can appreciate the reasons why Baptists so resolutely give a knee-jerk reaction to such talk. Clearly there are many errors surrounding communion, and many traditions make it into a supernatural religious ceremony with powers all its own. Yet the Baptist reaction to such errors is perhaps also a serious error in itself. Many Baptists approach the Lord’s table with no expectation of any spiritual participation.
Pastor Piper in his message last week pointed out that our church elder affirmation of faith states:
Those who eat and drink in a worthy manner partake of Christ’s body and blood, not physically, but spiritually, in that, by faith, they are nourished with the benefits He obtained through His death, and thus grow in grace.
“Where does the idea of ‘spiritually’ partaking of Christ’s body and blood ‘by faith’ come from?” you may ask. You could go read Piper’s sermon because he explains why. But I will be glad to tell you. It comes from this passage of Scripture:
1 Cor. 10:16-21 “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. Consider the people of Israel: are not those who eat the sacrifices participants in the altar? What do I imply then? That food offered to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be participants with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons.”
Piper explains what “participation” (koinonia) means with the help of v. 18. Those who ate the sacrifices were participants in what happened on the altar. Let me quote Piper at this point, as he says this better than I could:
What does sharer/participant/partner in the altar mean? It means that they are sharing in or benefiting from what happened on the altar. They are enjoying, for example, forgiveness and restored fellowship with God.
So I take verse 16 and 17 to mean that when believers eat the bread and drink the cup physically we do another kind of eating and drinking spiritually. We eat and drink””that is, we take into our lives””what happened on the cross. By faith””by trusting in all that God is for us in Jesus””we nourish ourselves with the benefits that Jesus obtained for us when he bled and died on the cross.
Just as believing Israelites would joyfully bask in their restored fellowship with God on the basis of the shedding of blood, just as they would joyfully eat and rejoice in their hearts partaking spiritually in what was happening physically on the altar, we can joyfully participate in and experience spiritually all the benefits of Christ’s death on our behalf. His sacrifice is once for all, so our joy and fellowship is greater and fuller and more complete.
Wayne Grudem discusses this very thing in a helpful way as follows:
…Jesus promised to be present whenever believers worship: “where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Matt.18:20). And if he is especially present when Christians gather to worship, then we would expect that he will be present in a special way in the Lord’s Supper: We meet him at his table, to which he comes to give himself to us. As we receive the elements of bread and wine in the presence of Christ, so we partake of him and his benefits. We “feed upon him in our hearts” with thanksgiving….Yet we must not say that Christ is present apart from our personal faith, but only meets and blesses us there in accordance with our faith in him….Certainly there is a symbolic presence of Christ, but it is also a genuine spiritual presence and there is a genuine spiritual blessing in this ceremony. [Systematic Theology, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000), pg. 995-996]
In his footnotes he addresses the view which denies such a spiritual presence with an insightful quote from Millard Erickson:
“Out of a zeal to avoid the conception that Jesus is present in some sort of magical way, certain Baptists among others have sometimes gone to such extremes as to give the impression that the one place where Jesus most assuredly is not to be found is the Lord’s supper. This is what one Baptist leader termed ‘the doctrine of the real absence’ of Jesus Christ” (Christian Theology, p. 1123). [Ibid, pg. 995]
One last angle on this aspect of the Lord’s Supper concerns the idea of fellowship with God around a meal. Wayne Grudem offers Ex. 24:9-11 and Deut. 14:23-26 as examples of a special fellowship with God surrounding a meal. This he describes is a restoration of the fellowship man had with God in Eden before the Fall. Yet he stresses:
The Old Testament sacrificial meals continually pointed to the fact that sins were not yet paid for, because the sacrifices in them were repeated year after year, and because they looked forward to the Messiah who was to come and take away sin (see Heb. 10:1-4). The Lord’s Supper, however, reminds us that Jesus’ payment for our sins has already been accomplished, so we now eat in the Lord’s presence with great rejoicing….Yet even the Lord’s Supper looks forward to a more wonderful fellowship meal in God’s presence in the future, when the fellowship of Eden will be restored and there will be even greater joy…. [Ibid, pg. 989]
It is a participation… Wow- Piper sounds like a good ole’ Presbyterian…(;. I love Piper and his teaching on the Supper reminded me of something Luther once did in a debate. (Now I don’t subscribe to his (con-sub)position, but I think his actions in the debate over the Supper make sense. He once took a knife during the debate and carved into some wood, I forget, but I think a desk. He carved, “This is my body.” He then said the gospel writers had a perfectly fine greek word for the term “represents”. Great post.
Gage
Experimental Calvinism
Bob,
Great post! In your study of wine, do you believe that wine should be used in the Lord’s Supper? It is an interesting study.
Ripclaw,
More, Please!
I think it probably should be. Yet, as Pastor Piper expressed in his sermon, there is some freedom in that the NT does not go out of its way to absolutely command that alcoholic wine be used.
I think it was used by the early church (the Corinthian’s used alcoholic wine as some had gotten drunk–and Paul never condemns them for using fermented wine, while he does chide them for other abuses). In our current culture and its views of wine, I think different positions are permissible.
For a good defense of the use of alcoholic wine in communion see this post from Captain Headknowledge. It is an excerpt from Keith Mathison’s book: Given for You: Reclaiming Calvin’s Doctrine of the Lord’s Supper. I linked to it in one of my recent posts on the subject.
Thanks for stopping by.
I recently read the 1687 Second London Baptist Confession of Faith and noticed that it is a condensed version of the Presbyterian Westminster Confession on the topic of the Lord’s Supper. In addition to the RC “transubstantiation,” and Luther’s “consubstantiation,” Mathison in Given For You recommended the term, “suprasubstantiation,” in reference to the Reformed doctrine of the real presence of Christ in the elements of the Lord’s Supper, which is shared by Reformed Baptist and Presbyterian alike, at least if they follow their confessions.