Our God is a Savior, and because our need of salvation is something that is expressed in history, our God is the God of saving acts. God establishes the story, the end from the beginning, but God has also written in the story in such a way that requires Him to intervene in it.
When God told Noah to build an ark, and told him to retreat with his family into it, that was a saving act. When God intervened with Abraham, and pointed him to the ram in the thicket, that was a saving act. When God rained down destruction upon Egypt, and then led Israel through the cloud and the sea, that was a saving act. When God took Israel into Babylon for their sins, and brought them back to the land again, that was a saving act.
All these were precursors and types of the ultimate saving act, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is that saving act that we are memorializing here as we eat the bread and drink the wine. As we do so, we are partaking of God’s great saving act through Jesus, and if we do so in genuine and sincere faith, we are partaking of that saving act.
Now it is not possible to partake of that saving act—really, genuinely—without being saved. If you are in the ark, you are not drowning. If you are on the far side of the Red Sea, then you are not under the Red Sea.
Our intent here is not to partake of a little ceremony. Our intent is to gather, as a people overflowing with faith, in order to partake in the salvation of the world. When you chew and swallow the bread, that is what the salvation of the world tastes like. When you take a drink of the wine, what you are tasting is God’s kindness to sinners.
So we do not call God our Savior because that is a Bible word. We call Him Savior because He saves. We call Him that because we have gathered here to the salvation of mankind.
So come, and welcome, to Jesus Christ.
Great sentiment, but not biblical. The Lord’s table is about priestly submission to death with a focus not on salvation but on resurrection. It is a meal only for the twice-born. It is the table of the martyroi, which is why Jesus said He would not drink wine with them until after His death and resurrection. The New Covenant sacraments are not about salvation — that’s what the Gospel is for — which is why I maintain that sacramentalism is a rival Gospel, another Gospel much like the one Paul railed against in Galatians. We partake of the bread and… Read more »