The Sacrament is in the Participle

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One of the great theological problems that has afflicted the church down through the ages is the tendency to think of the Lord’s Supper in terms of a snapshot, and not in terms of the video.

There is no sacrament here on the table. We have bread, and we have wine, but we have no sacrament. Nothing happens on this table that would justify us calling this table an altar. But many Protestants, having been reassured that nothing happens to the bread and wine on the table, walk away reassured in the false notion that nothing happens at all.

But this is false. Something does happen to the bread—it is eaten by the people of God in faith. Something does happen to the wine—we drink it while believing God. The sacrament is the action of the body of Christ, and you are that body. The bread is transformed, but you are that bread. The wine is changed, but you are that cup, the cup of the new covenant. You are transformed; you are changed.

As we gather and do what God tells us to do, and we do it in faith, God uses this series of actions to knit us closer together with His Son and our Lord, the Lord Jesus. But the central thing in this is faith and unbelief. Those who go through this assigned ritual with evangelical faith in God are built up into Jesus Christ. Those who go through it in faithless unbelief are eating and drinking that unbelief, which is why they are eating and drinking damnation. Our salvation is graciously given through the instrument of faith.

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