9. The Lord’s Supper as a Means of Grace: Part 1

WSC 96. What is the Lord’s Supper? A. The Lord’s Supper is a sacrament, wherein, by giving and receiving bread and wine, according to Christ’s appointment, his death is showed forth; and the worthy receivers are, not after a corporal and carnal manner, but by faith, made partakers of his body and blood, with all his benefits, to their spiritual nourishment, and growth in grace.

The Lord’s supper is a New Testament sacrament given to the visible church (Lk. 22:20).¹ It is constituted by the giving and receiving of bread and wine according to Christ’s appointment (Mt. 26:26-28; 1 Cor. 11:23-26).² When used correctly, it confirms a believer’s union and communion with Christ (1 Cor. 10:16). In contrast to baptism, which is for covenant initiation, the Lord’s supper is for the renewal of our covenant vows, whereby we pledge our obedience to God (1 Cor. 10:14-16, 21) and our love for other believers (1 Cor. 10:17).³

The Lord’s supper is for the spiritual edification of believers. When it is rightly administered and received, the Lord’s supper will strengthen and build up God’s people in faith. (We will elaborate more on how the Lord’s supper is rightly received in the next class). Briefly, it is for people who are confirmed as Christians; renewed and strengthened in their resolve to live a life of thankfulness and obedience to God; and testify of their love for fellow believers. The right use of the Lord’s supper encourages Christians with respect to their position with Christ, and strengthens their relationship to His spiritual body, the church.⁴

Roman Catholics, Lutherans, and the Reformed all affirm that believers receive and feed upon Christ in the Lord’s supper in some sense, but they differ (greatly) in their doctrine about the mode of Christ’s presence. Accordingly, today’s class will largely focus on explaining what is meant by the presence of Christ in the Lord’s supper and to clarify the Reformed position.

Roman Catholic Position

The Roman Catholic church teaches that when a priest pronounces the words of institution, the bread and wine are miraculously transformed into the physical body and blood of Christ. This is called transubstantiation.⁵ According to them, the elements only appear to be bread and wine outwardly, but the actual substance is changed to Christ’s body and blood in reality.⁶ Furthermore, the Lord’s supper (or “Mass”) is a repeated sacrifice that is identicalto what Christ offered on the cross.⁷ For this reason, the “altar” is the focus of Roman Catholic worship and the elements are venerated. As such, the Mass occupies a central position in the Roman Catholic Church. To them, it is necessary for salvation.⁸

Transubstantiation conflates the sign with the thing signified. The Roman Catholic view is universally rejected by all Protestants on the basis of the eternal character of Christ’s priesthood (Heb. 5:6; 7:17, 21-25) and the perfection of His sacrifice on the cross (Heb. 7:27; 9:12, 28; 10:10, 12, 14). Therefore, repeated sacrifices are not only unnecessary, but also blasphemous. Christ’s sacrifice on the cross has secured all the benefits of salvation and His accomplished work cannot be augmented (Heb. 9:26-28).⁹

Lutheran Position

While Roman Catholics materialize grace, Lutherans localize it.¹⁰ Roman Catholics believe that the bread and wine are the body and blood of Christ. In contrast, Lutherans believe that Christ is physically bound to the elements in space—meaning that Christ is “in, with, and under” the elements of the Lord’s supper, while remaining materially distinct.¹¹ Some people call this consubstantiation (though Lutherans do not like this term). Correspondingly, Luther’s Small Catechism teaches that “the Sacrament of the Altar” is “the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ under the bread and wine, for us Christians to eat and to drink, instituted by Christ Himself.” Underlying this teaching is the Lutheran doctrine of the ubiquity of the glorified body of Christ, such that His real body can be locally present in the sacrament.¹²

The Position of Carlstadt (or the “Zwinglian” View)

Most modern evangelicals reject the physical and spiritual presence of Christ in the Lord’s supper.¹³ Accordingly, the Lord’s supper is a commemoration of Christ’s death, and nothing more. According to this view, Christ is not present in the supper at all. The problem with this position is that it reduces the Lord’s supper to a mere memorial, and therefore no longer an objective means of grace.¹⁴

Reformed Position

In response, the Reformed teach that the Lord’s supper is both an ordinary natural meal and an extraordinary spiritual meal.¹⁵ In contrast to the Roman Catholic or Lutheran views, the Reformed deny that Christ is physically or locally present in the bread and wine. As expressed by the catechism, Christ’s presence is not “corporal” or “carnal”:¹⁶

There is no biblical precedent to indicate that believers who received the Lord’s supper physical consumed Christ’s body and blood. When the Lord’s supper was first instituted by Christ, He was not distributing His physical body and blood.¹⁷
A physical or local presence undermines the humanity of Christ. For, how is it possible for a true human body to be present everywhere? The testimony of Scripture is that Christ’s human body is wholly present in heaven and therefore cannot be present at many different places on earth at the same time. Human nature cannot be omnipresent.¹⁸ While Jesus Christ’s human nature was glorified at the resurrection, this does not mean that His human nature ceased to have the same essential attribute of human finiteness.¹⁹
The purpose of the sacrament is to nourish our souls. Physical food and drink do not serve this end.²⁰ There is no advantage to physically consuming Christ.
Transubstantiation is contradicted by the testimony of our senses. The elements of the Lord’s supper look, feel, smell, and taste identical to bread and wine.²¹ There is no evidence that their substances are transformed into the divine.²²

Moreover, in contrast to the “Zwinglian” view, the Reformed also deny that the Lord’s supper to be a one-sided act of confession or a mere memorial. Rather, Christ is truly and essentially present in the Lord’s supper.²³ Believers experience Christ’s presence not from His physical descent from heaven, but because their hearts are lifted heavenward and united to Christ by the Holy Spirit.²⁴ In this way, Christ is communicated to believers in the sacrament.²⁵ Here are main affirmations of the Reformed position:²⁶

“Grace” is not a material substance, but God’s unmerited favor by which He saves fallen humanity.²⁷ Grace is not a thing, but a Person, namely Jesus Christ.²⁸ Accordingly, God unites believers to Jesus Christ using His appointed means of grace. This union is not accomplished physically, but spiritually.²⁹
The Lord’s supper communicates the same grace as the Word of God and in the same way—by faith according to the power of the Holy Spirit.³⁰ Accordingly, faith, is an indispensable requisite for properly receiving the Lord’s supper.³¹
The Lord’s supper communicates the saving benefits of Christ to His people, such that they are more drawn more intimately to Him. For this reason, the Lord’s supper is commonly called “communion.” In it, we have communion with Christ. Through the sacrament, Jesus Christ gives Himself to His people and in turn they receive Him by faith. Therefore, believers can enjoy true fellowship with Christ through the covenant meal. By faith, believers who partake of the Lord’s supper are strengthened because they are forgiven their sins and receive hope of eternal life bestowed to them by Christ.³²
Finally, the Lord’s Supper is also a memorial celebration and the proclamation of Christ’s death. It serves as a confession of our faith before the world and strengthens our communion with other believers.³³

To summarize, our eating and drinking of Christ’s body and blood is not with our physical mouths, but by faith which is “declared to be the hand and mouth of the soul.” The sacrament is made effectual by the power of the Holy Spirit who communicates the benefits of Christ to us spiritually. The grace bestowed by the Lord’s supper is not limited to the sacrament itself, but is the same grace given by the Word of God whenever faith in Christ is present.³⁴

Footnotes

1
WLC Q168: What is the Lord’s supper? A: The Lord’s supper is a sacrament of the New Testament, wherein, by giving and receiving bread and wine according to the appointment of Jesus Christ, his death is showed forth; and they that worthily communicate feed upon his body and blood, to their spiritual nourishment and growth in grace; have their union and communion with him confirmed; testify and renew their thankfulness, and engagement to God, and their mutual love and fellowship each with other, as members of the same mystical body.
2
The essential elements of Christ’s appointment of the Lord’s supper cannot be changed or omitted. These include the elements of bread and wine, along with the sacramental actions (e.g., taking the bread and cup, giving thanks, breaking the bread, giving the bread and the cup to the communicants, receiving the bread and the cup, and eating the bread and drinking the wine). Details are provided in Westminster Larger Catechism 169.
3
Vos, Johannes Geerhardus. The Westminster Larger Catechism: A Commentary. P&R Publishing, 2002, p. 482.
4
Ibid, p. 484.
5
The concept of transubstantiation appeared in the 11^th century, but the word itself was first introduced in the 12^th century. It was officially adopted by the Fourth Lateran Council in A.D. 1215 and authoritatively defined by the Council of Trent in A.D. 1545-1563 (where it is also stated that if anyone denies the doctrine of transubstantiation, “let him be anathema”). Bavinck, Herman. Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. 4: Holy Spirit, Church, and New Creation. Baker Academic, 2008, p. 554; and Vos, Johannes Geerhardus. The Westminster Larger Catechism: A Commentary. P&R Publishing, 2002, p. 489.
6
“The accidents of bread and wine, that is, the form, taste, smell, color, and even the nutritive power, while they remain after the consecration, no longer inhere in a subject. The substance of which they are the properties has been removed and replaced by a totally different substance of which they are not the properties, but which they only conceal from the eye by their appearance. Now, since Christ’s body and blood cannot be separated from his human nature and his human nature cannot be separated from his deity, the whole Christ is fully present in each element and in every part of both elements.” Bavinck, Herman. Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. 4: Holy Spirit, Church, and New Creation. Baker Academic, 2008, p. 555.
7
“The sacrifice that the priest effects in the Mass is the same as that accomplished on the cross. It is not just an image, symbol, or reminder of it; it is completely identical with it. It is entirely the same sacrifice, the only difference being that the one on the cross was a bloody sacrifice, and the one that occurs in the Mass is unbloody… for it is Christ himself who, through the priest, offers himself up to God… The sacrifice of the Mass therefore is not only an offering of praise and thanksgiving, but also a sacrifice of atonement.” Ibid, p. 555.
8
“Mass has… become the central focus of Roman Catholic worship… In the Mass, Christ continually and ever anew repeats his sacrifice on the cross. In it he essentially and truly continues to offer himself up—be it in an unbloody manner… This is so whether they are on earth or inpurgatory… for the forgiveness of sins and the prevention or staving off of illness and accidents, drought and flooding, war and cattle plague, and so forth. That is what Rome has made of the Supper of our Lord Jesus Christ!” Ibid, p. 573.
9
Ibid, p. 574.
10
Vos, Geerhardus. Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. 5: Ecclesiology, The Means of Grace, Eschatology. Lexham Press, 2016, p. 97.
11
“Luther initially taught that bread and wine are signs and pledges of the forgiveness of sins secured by Christ’s death and received by faith. But he soon reversed himself and maintained—especially from 1524 onward against Carlstadt and Zwingli—that the body of Christ… is realistically and substantially present in, with, and under the [elements of the] Lord’s Supper. He saw this as being analogous to the presence of Christ’s divine nature in his human nature and as heat is or can be present in iron… This doctrine passed into the Lutheran confessions.” Bavinck, Herman. Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. 4: Holy Spirit, Church, and New Creation. Baker Academic, 2008, pp. 556-557.
12
In Lutheranism, there is a commingling of the human and divine natures. There is a communication of properties (communicatio idiomatum) between the two natures (cf. Acts 20:28; 1 John 1:7).
13
This position has been erroneously attributed to Zwingli. Oftentimes, people ascribe to him as believing that the Lord’s supper is a mere memorial, but this is probably not the case. “Zwingli definitely rejected the physical presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper, but in so doing he by no means denied that Christ is spiritually present in it to believers. On the contrary, Christ is very definitely received in the Lord’s Supper, as John 6 clearly teaches, but Christ is present in the Supper and is received there in no other way than he is present in the Word and by faith, that is, spiritually. This reception of Christ consists in nothing other than in trusting in his death… In the Lord’s Supper, accordingly, we confess our faith and express what Christ continually means to us by faith and what we enjoy of him. And we do this in remembrance of Christ, to proclaim and give thanks for his benefits.” Ibid, p. 557.
14
“Of primary importance in the Lord’s Supper is what God does, not what we do… If the Lord’s Supper were only a memorial meal and an act of confession, it would cease to be a sacrament in the true sense… [Jesus] in granting the signs of bread and wine, offers his own body and blood as nourishment and refreshment for [our] souls. That is a communion that far surpasses the communion inherent in a memorial meal and an act of confession. It is not merely a reminiscence of or a reflection on Christ’s benefits but a most intimate bonding with Christ himself, just as food and drink are united with our body.” Ibid, p. 567.
15
Ibid, p. 575.
16
Summarized from Bavinck, Herman. Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. 4: Holy Spirit, Church, and New Creation. Baker Academic, 2008, pp. 569-572.
17
“If no trans- or consubstantiation and no literal eating with the mouth (manducatio oralis) took place at the first Supper, then neither may it be accepted at the Supper that the Christian church celebrates after Jesus’s death at his command and according to his institution.” Ibid, p. 569.
18
For the Roman Catholics and Lutherans, “this presence of Christ in the Supper is deemed to be such that Christ is totally present—not only according to his divine but also according to his human nature—in every Supper, wherever and whenever it is celebrated; that he is present with his entire divine and human nature in every sign of the Supper, indeed in every particle of the bread and in every drop of the wine.” Ibid, p. 570.
19
“Jesus instituted the Supper in remembrance of himself precisely because he is departing and soon will no longer be physically presentwith his disciples, as he expressly states elsewhere (Matt. 26:11). And at his ascension he departed and was taken up (Acts 1:9–11) into heaven, which is a place (John 14:2, 4; 17:24; Acts 7:56; Eph. 4:10; Col. 3:1; Heb. 7:26), to remain there until his parousia [i.e., the second coming] (Acts 1:11; Phil. 3:20; 1 Thess. 1:10; 4:16).” Ibid, p. 570.
20
After all, “even if Christ were physically and locally present in the Supper, one cannot see to what end this is necessary and useful… Suppose that with our physical mouth we literally ate Jesus’s own body; how would that profit us? Is not the point of the Supper that our soul, that is, our spiritual life, be nurtured and strengthened? And this, in the nature of the case, cannot happen by our eating Christ’s body with our physical mouth, for the things we eat with it in part become constituents of our body, and in part are expelled from the body… [Clearly] Jesus had in mind only a spiritual eating, an eating by faith, and does not so much as say a word about a physical eating.” Ibid, pp. 570-571.
21
Of note, the Roman Catholic Mass omits the distribution of wine. “Transubstantiation makes a second sign in the Lord’s Supper completely superfluous. All of grace is already contained in the bread alone.” What need is there for an additional element of wine? “Since the twelfth century… the custom arose of withholding the cup from the laity… [Later] the Council of Trent also gave its approval to the practice of withholding the cup… Consequently the church of Rome comes into conflict with a direct command of Christ (Matt. 26:27, ‘Drink of it, all of you’).” Ibid, pp. 571-572.
22
“Rome has come upon the idea that, while the substance changes [i.e., the bread and wine change into the physical body and blood of Christ], the accidents remain the same [i.e., the bread and wine retain their colour, smell, taste, texture, etc]. The question of how this must be conceived remains unanswered. At Cana the water changed into wine but in such a way that both the substance and the accidents changed. Accidents, furthermore, cannot be separated from their substance and deemed to be self-sustaining, for then they cease to be accidents and themselves become substances.” Ibid, p. 571.
23
Ibid, pp. 557-559.
24
Ibid, pp. 558, 576.
25
Believers partake of Christ spiritually by faith, not physically or locally with our mouths. “Do not prepare your jaws but your heart: for this Supper is commended. Behold, we believe in Christ when we receive him in faith; in receiving him we know what we think. We receive a little and are nourished in heart. It is not what is seen, then, but what is believed that feeds.” Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion, 4.17.34.
26
“Calvin’s main idea—that in the Lord’s Supper, by the Holy Spirit, believers experience spiritual fellowship with the person of Christ and hence also with the body and blood of Christ and are thereby nourished and refreshed unto eternal life—has been taken over in the various Reformed confessions.” Ibid, p. 559. Refer to the Belgic Confession, article 35; the Heidelberg Catechism 75-80; and the Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 29.
27
Fesko, J.V. Word, Water, and Spirit: A Reformed Perspective on Baptism. Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage, 2010, pp. 272-273.
28
Ibid, p. 274.
29
“For whereas, in the mind of Roman Catholics and Lutherans, grace is something material and passive that is received physically even by an unbeliever, so to the Reformed it is the personal living Christ himself who imparts himself in the Supper as spiritual food to those who believe in him… for he is not physically and locally present in the signs but spiritually.” Bavinck, Herman. Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. 4: Holy Spirit, Church, and New Creation. Baker Academic, 2008, pp. 577-578.
30
“The communion with Christ, which is strengthened in the Supper, is nothing other than that which is brought about by the Word as a means of grace. The sacrament does not add any grace to that which is offered in the Word. It only strengthens and confirms that which has been received by faith from the Word… In exactly the same manner in which a person is incorporated by faith into Christ, so that person is also strengthened and confirmed in that communion by the Lord’s Supper… The sacrament does not supply any other grace.” Ibid, p. 577.
31
“For just as in the case of the Word, so in the case of the Supper, God has obligated himself truly to bestow Christ and all his benefits on everyone who believes. But the unbeliever, in the nature of the case, receives only the sign, just as in the case of the Word that one hears only the sound and does not receive the thing denoted by the Word. Needed… therefore, is a working of the Holy Spirit in the heart of a person.” Ibid, p. 578.
32
Ibid, pp. 579-580.
33
Ibid, p. 580.
34
Vos, Johannes Geerhardus. The Westminster Larger Catechism: A Commentary. P&R Publishing, 2002, p. 491; citing A.A. Hodge’s Outline of Theology.

Footnotes

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