What good are baptism and the Lord’s Supper to the lifetime of the Christian? How can sprinkling, and even immersion in, some water or consuming a morsel of bread and consuming a sip of wine carry us nearer to God?
The up to date American church generally overlooks or downplays the sacraments, focusing extra on individualized and expressive spirituality than the normal piety of the church. Whereas evangelicals usually embrace the present of the Bible because the Phrase of God to information us, they’ll neglect the opposite technique of God’s grace, particularly the sacraments.
Nonetheless, to ignore the sacraments is to fail to obtain all of the blessings that God has given us. The “Westminster Confession of Religion” offers us with a extra expansive imaginative and prescient for the sacraments. “Sacraments are holy indicators and seals of the covenant of grace” (WCF 27.1). By the sacraments, God the Father in Jesus Christ by way of the Spirit blesses us with presents and provision to dwell out our pilgrim life collectively.
Many individuals miss out on the connection between the Lord’s Supper and Baptism within the gospel itself. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are providing us the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ for our sins, however another way, by way of indicators and seals, because the Heidelberg Catechism teaches in query 67:
Q. Are each the phrase and the sacraments then supposed to focus our religion on the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross as the one floor of our salvation?
A. Sure! Within the gospel, the Holy Spirit teaches us and by the holy sacraments confirms that our whole salvation rests on Christ’s one sacrifice for us on the cross.
The right place of the sacraments in Reformed spirituality begins with understanding how they verify the gospel of Christ by the Spirit to us. No competitors exists between religion in Christ and reflections and meditation on the sacraments as a result of Christ is the substance of the sacraments made current by the Holy Spirit. To be baptized in religion is the signal and seal of our union with Christ, and to feast on the bread and wine is to expertise in religion the Bread of Life and the Fount of Residing Water.
The sacraments are divine presents to speak the gospel of Jesus and its advantages. The Triune God, because the Creator, can and does work by way of bodily realities to convey religious blessings. We should reconceive and educate in regards to the sacraments not merely as factors of ecclesiological distinction or theological nicety, however as relational realities sanctioned and utilized by the Triune God to bless his covenant individuals.
Pastors may also help their individuals perceive these realities by thoughtfully weaving the blessing of the sacraments into their preaching and discipleship. As a result of baptism and the Lord’s Supper are relational realities, they’ve an goal basis and demand subjective participation. The target ingredient is grounded on the guarantees of God that in these tangible symbols God will meet his individuals.
For the reason that sacraments are goal presents within the type of communication and technique of communion, they require private reception and reflection.
There’s nothing magical or mechanical about them. The right participant should obtain the blessing supplied therein by religion. Because the “Westminster Shorter Catechism” reminds us, “The sacraments grow to be effectual technique of salvation, not from any advantage in them, or in him that doth administer them; however solely by the blessing of Christ, and the working of his Spirit in them that by religion obtain them” (WSC 91).
It isn’t the ability within the components or water, however it’s the Triune God who ordained them for our good. The religion that receives the covenant promise in baptism and presence on the Lord’s Supper is that very same belief that takes maintain of Christ himself by the ability of the Holy Spirit. The thing of our religion, God in Christ by the Spirit, is identical one we encounter by way of the sacraments.
Baptism is the continuous marking out of the Christian by the covenant signal and identify of God. Every day we dwell out our baptism – setting apart the previous life with its sin and demise and residing the brand new life in Jesus Christ by the Spirit – as these to whom the gospel is given. Baptism binds us to Christ and summons us day after day to dwell in him and along with his physique, the church.
The Westminster divines name us to dwell into our baptism “by drawing energy from the demise and resurrection of Christ, into whom we’re baptized, for the mortifying of sin, and quickening of grace” (WLC 167). Likewise, Communion is just not solely a name to recollect the gospel, however is the brand new covenant in Christ’s blood (Luke 22:20), which establishes the gospel, and the participation in Christ’s blood (1 Corinthians 10:16), which seals the gospel to us. Via his promise and presence, Christ by way of his Spirit is with us on the desk nourishing our religion and empowering the individuals which might be his physique.
Baptism and the Lord’s Supper usually are not add-ons to the gospel however are the gospel enacted. If we’re to counteract American spirituality’s tendency to neglect the sacraments, we should deliberately and actively reintegrate the sacraments in Reformed piety and the educating of the Church. They’re presents ordained by God for the blessing of his individuals till he returns. They’re indicators and seals of the gospel of grace that bless the Church till religion turns to sight.
The brand new life symbolized in baptism is fulfilled in resurrected glory, and bread and wine grow to be the wedding feast of the Lamb.
Okay.J. Drake serves as tutorial dean and professor of historic theology at Indianapolis Theological Seminary.
