When God feeds His people He uses means. These means are called means of grace. They do not bring grace to you the way a bucket carries water, but they are means of grace. So what does this mean?
The biblical formula is that God saves and sanctifies us by grace through faith. Different wings of the church have tried to separate these two, as though that were possible. But sola fide and sola gratia make no biblical sense apart from each other.
One error is to focus on the means of grace themselves, considered in themselves—the forms of prayer, or the reading of Scripture, or the partaking of the sacraments, or attendance at church.
Others see how foolish and superstitious this is, and they overreact in the opposite direction. True, evangelical faith is necessary in all these operations, they say, which is quite true, but then they go on to say, wrongly, that true evangelical faith does not need these appointed means. And so the person goes out into the field and “believes” God, without using the appointed means of grace.
But we believe that God meets us in the Scripture, and that He does not do so in the same way in other, uninspired books. We have to read in faith, but reading the newspaper in faith will not get the same results. God promises to meet us in that unique way in His Word, and not somewhere else.
It is the same with the Lord’s Supper. The Lord has promised to meet with His people here in a unique way. Not somewhere else, but here. Does this make evangelical faith superfluous? Of course not. But if we have evangelical faith, does that make the meal superfluous? Can you exercise that faith, walk away from this meal, and receive the same spiritual blessings outside? The answer is, again, of course not.
God meets us where He has promised to meet us.