The Importance Of Teaching On The Sacraments

When I hear people talk about the sacraments of the church. I often hear them talk about what they are not. Very rarely do I hear someone explaining what is happening in the sacraments. We want to keep things as simply a memorial tribute to something that Jesus said to do. I believe this is why people are often confused or do not have a very high view of the sacraments. We emphasize that they are very important but never tell them why. We simply leave it at Jesus said to do it and therefore it is important. While I do not disagree with that statement I think there is more happening that we never talk about for fear of being to spiritual and not completely capable of explaining the spiritual dimension of grace being imparted through the sacraments. What I mean by sacraments specifically here is baptism and the Lord’s Supper, but my attention will be on the Lord’s Supper.

The Bible calls Christians ambassadors for Christ (II Cor. 5:20). An ambassador is someone who stands in place of the authority figure who cannot be physically present but is treated as if he is the ruler because he comes as a representative of ruler. If you disobey or disrespect the ambassador it is as if you have disobeyed the ruler himself. When we apply this to the Lord’s Supper we understand that the person leading the Church in the Lord’s Supper is representing Jesus Christ. This does not elevate the person to a special status; it just simply means that this person is standing in the place of Christ because He is not able to be present physically. He is Christ’s representative. His role is to facilitate revealing Christ as a reminder of Christ’s continuous saving grace which is being celebrated.

The one who is leading the Lord’s Supper stands before the body as a representative of the body’s faith and therefore, he represents the head of the Church which is Christ It is the binding nature of the Spirit that makes this possible. It is the Spirit that acts not as separator of the priesthood of Jesus from the priesthood of believers, but as the mediation that binds the two. In this capacity it is the representative that shows eyes of faith, the work of the Spirit that brings about the work of Christ. The facilitator is reminding the Church of the redemptive power of the Spirit which is the work of Jesus. Therefore, in remembrance of Christ’s death and continuous saving grace, it is the role of the representative to distribute the bread and wine and repeat the words of Christ. He is acting as Christ did in the upper room when He gathered the disciples and invited them to participate in the Lord’s Supper.

I believe this is how the disciples viewed the Lord’s Supper when they practiced it after Christ’s death. This was very close to home for them and they would not have simply viewed this as just a remembrance of Christ’s death. When the bread was broken, they would have had a visual stamp in their mind of when Christ had done this. As they took the bread they would not have viewed it as coming from Peter, or Paul, or whoever else might have distributed it. They would have seen it as coming from Christ through this person.

So what makes this so significant? It is because Christ is spiritually present and we fellowship with Him. John 11:56 says, “They kept looking for Jesus in the temple area and asked one another ‘What do you think? Isn’t He coming to the feast at all?” While Jesus was alive there were festivals and celebrations that He did not attend because His time had not yet come. Well friends, His time has come and He wouldn’t miss out on attending His feast for anything. While He cannot be here physically, He is here spiritually and we can be confident that He is there because the feast is His. If Christ were to be absent then the partaking of the Lord’s Supper is done in vain. Christ also promised in Matthew 18:20 that “For where two or three come together in my name, there I am with them.” If it were possible for us to see beyond the temporal I believe that we would see Jesus Christ standing next to His representative responding like the master did to the servant in the parable of the talents in Matthew 25:18, when the master says “Well done my good and faithful servant.”

The Spirit also plays a key role in the Lord’s Supper. Since Christ’s death on the cross, the Spirit’s role has been modified. It is the Spirit that draws us into the sacrificial attitude of Christ. It is the Spirit of Jesus that marked His life and it is that same Spirit that marks our lives within His story. Our faith is shown by our participation in His faith which was a sacrificial faith that was characterized by His human acts of love towards God and His neighbors. As we observe the Lord’s Supper we are being molded and transformed into the likeness of Christ. This is not so much a spiritual thing as it is a free-will choice. As you grow in your relationship with God you have a choice to draw close to Him or draw away from him. Part of the sacrificial attitude that the Spirit places in us is that of self sacrifice. Just as Christ was willing to sacrifice everything for the will of God, so also we need to sacrifice our own desires to those of the Father’s. If that is not grace then I have no idea what is.

And all this is just the tip of the iceberg. All that the Lord’s Supper means cannot be conveyed in a blog post so I will leave it at this… We need to do a much better job communicating to our churches the significance of what is happening in the sacraments and quit talking about what they are not and start telling people what they mean.