This meal is the Wisdom of God. But you do not come here to do things with that Wisdom, but rather so that God’s infinite Wisdom will do things to you. The Wisdom of God is infinite and personal. Only the Spirit of God can plumb the depths of that infinite Wisdom, and that is …
Empowered, Enlightened, Enlivened
This meal is not a propitiatory sacrifice. We are not offering Christ to God—rather, God is offering Christ to us. He is able to do this because Christ’s blood was spilled in the crucifixion, and applied to the heavenly altar in the Ascension. The offering of Christ to God was a singular event, and in …
More Than a Warp Spasm of Devotion
The Bible contains different kinds of literature, which means that it also contains different approaches to theology. Because these theologies are ultimately harmonious, it is obviously our task to be students of them all. But part of this task means mastering them on their own terms before the harmonization is attempted. For example, the psalms …
Eat Your Wisdom
This meal consists of an edible word, a drinkable word. That word is, of course, the Lord Jesus, who is the eternal Word of the eternal Father. This is His body, and this is His blood. We do not just treat the bread and wine as a visible word and as visible drink, but as …
The Central Point
This meal is a sacrament. But what is a sacrament? Where does this use come from? The answer to that question—given the nature of what we are doing here—cannot be confined to one simple answer, but it does have an answer. The use of the Latin word sacramentum was introduced by the early father Tertullian, …
Present and Absent Both
This Supper of the Lord is not limited in its signification to just one or two things. It is richly laden with meaning on multiple levels. But two of them might appear to be in tension. The Lord’s Supper is a memorial of what Christ has done for us, and the Lord’s Supper is a …
Wine in a Cup, and Blood Spilled
There is a striking similarity between the bread we see here and the body of Jesus Christ. There is also a striking similarity between the wine in the cup and the blood of Jesus. If there were no similarity it could not work as a sacrament—it could not even work as a metaphor. But there …
The Household of Faith, Hope, and Love
One of the ways we diminish our understanding of the Lord’s Supper is through saying that it is just a metaphor. In the first place, the world is more mysterious than that and there is no such thing as “just” a metaphor. God created the cosmos by speaking, and words are not impotent little labels. …
Where the Transformation Occurs
As you know, you are worshiping God in a Protestant church. This means, of course, that we do deny certain things, and this lines up with the common modern understanding of the word. The word Protestant is thought of as a variant of protestor. But in the Reformation the term was originally more of an …
To Live and Die as Christians
We gather at this Table weekly. As we do, we should remember that there are three elements to what we do. The first is invocation. We acknowledge God’s presence here with us, and indeed, we invite it. We call upon Him. Second, we rejoice before Him with thanksgiving. This is a Table of thanksgiving and …