Nourishment and Life

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The third blessing that proceeds from the Lord’s Supper, according to the Westminster Confession, is our “spiritual nourishment and growth in Him.”

Now nourishment and growth are meaningless concepts to a dead person. If someone has died, it is no part of wisdom to run down to the kitchen to fix them a meal. Food does nothing to death. Food presupposes a principle of life, something which can take that food and adapt it to the tasks at hand.

Now the reason this food can be offered to us here is that we have been quickened. We used to be dead in our trespasses and sins, as Paul describes it in Ephesians, but now we have been made alive. Because we have been made alive by the Spirit, food is useful to us. It nourishes us and enables us to grow.

Growth means changes, transformation. Growth is not a sensation or feeling. Growth means that things do not remain the same. When a two-year-old grows into a sixteen-year-old, no one can mistake the changes that are occurring. In the same way, worshippers of Christ are in the process of growing up. We are maturing, we are being made different. We are being grown up into resurrection life. That process is occurring now, and is all part of the preparation for the great and final transformation. But the life that works with the means of grace offered by God is life that is present now.

We are not waiting to be born again; we have been born again. Because we have been born again, we may sincerely desire the pure milk of the Word, like new born babies. No one has to teach babies to be hungry.

And further, no one has to teach babies how to use the nourishment that is resident in the food. All the baby has to do is eat and drink. And, as we come to this Table, that is all we have to do as well.

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