“When we eat and drink at His table, with a servant’s heart, we are not attending a gloomy memorial, sitting in the dark, feeding on a dry cracker. We are engaged, by the mercy and grace of God, in the extension of Christ’s kingdom. We are conquering the world through sitting down in the peace …
Self-Suspension from the Supper
“If a man is coming to the Table with a bad attitude, then he should not hold back from partaking. Rather, he should come confessing the attitude. But what if he remembers his brother has something against him (Matt. 5:23)? The passage is talking about presenting a gift, and not about receiving this gift from …
The Cup is the Covenant
“A lot of ink has been used in the discussion of Christ’s statement that the bread was His body. Comparatively little has been said about His statement that the cup was the new covenant. Thus we will not have a full understanding of the Supper until we recover an ability to think in covenantal categories” …
Partaking
“This sort of covenantal participation is not limited to the godly. Something similar happened to the idolaters of Corinth. They were partakers at a demonic table, but no sacerdotal miracle was occuring there either. But by eating at an idolatrous feast, those worshippers were covenantally identified with the demons behind their idols” (Mother Kirk, p. …
Not Water Through a Hose
“There is true blessing here, and it is the result of covenantal identification. This is a blessing that is poured out on the believer by a sovereign God in a providential response to the believer’s obedience. The blessing does not come through the elements, like water through a garden hose. But it does come on …
No Covenantal Island
“This shows us that the sacrament is not a covenantal island in the middle of a noncovenantal world. Rather, everything around us must be seen in covenantal categories — unbelief included — with the Table of the Lord at the center of believing covenantal living” (Mother Kirk, p. 100).
Two Kinds of Real Christian
“Suppose a man marries and he knows that he is going to be unfaithful to his wife — in fact, he already has adulterous plans. But for various reasons, he thinks it expedient to be married, so he does to the church and makes the vows. Now, is he married? Of course he is — …
And You Have to Sign the Card With a Little Stubby Pencil Too
“We do not like the idea of requiring a man to be baptized down in front of the church before we call him a professing Christian — although Jesus commanded such baptism. In lieu of this, we offer a substitute of our devising. Instead of being baptized in front of the church, we say he …
Teeming With Metaphor
“There are only two established sacraments in the Christian Church, which are baptism and the Lord’s Supper. But the whole world is sacramental, teeming with metaphor. To come to a fuller understanding of this, we should seek to grow in our knowledge of the two formal sacraments that have been placed within the Church. Baptism …
Maybe They Can’t See for the Same Reasons We Couldn’t
“The temptation associated with this is forgetting what it was like not to be able to see. Everything is now so clear to us that anyone who does not immediately assent to what we see in the Word seems either theologically perverse or a chucklehead . . . (2 Tim. 2:24-25). . . [But] to …