As we celebrate at this Table, we must always remember whose meal it is. We did not establish this Supper, but rather, the Lord Jesus did. He self-consciously sat down at the Passover meal with His disciples, which He said He had been longing to do, and in the midst of these old covenant symbols, He intruded a radical new meaning for the cup and the bread.
This new meaning was not at odds with the old meanings, any more than cooking is at odds with eating, or pregnancy at odds with giving birth, or prophecy at odds with fulfillment. He was contradicting nothing, but He most certainly was changing everything.
We are gathered at this Table because Jesus established this Table as a means for us to commune with Him. Raw faith doesn’t do it, because God did not command faith to operate without sacraments. For faith to try to “go it alone” is actually unbelief, because biblical faith can only respond to what God has actually said He will do. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. Faith has no powers of invention.
At the same time, the same thing is true about bread and wine, considered only in themselves. They by themselves do not constitute a sacrament either. We must come in true, sincere, lively evangelical faith. As the great Puritan Thomas Watson put it, speaking of this meal, those who come with only the skin of duty will have only the shell of comfort.
When God told Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, it would not have been sufficient for Abraham to stay at home and say, “The essence of this command is that I give my ‘all’ to God, which I am happy to do.” Faith obeys.
Some object to the idea of an obedient faith, suspecting that some Pharisee is trying to smuggle works-righteousness in, but the only alternative to obedient faith is disobedient faith, which is, of course, no faith at all.
So then, faith chews and swallows. But that is not all it does.