An Effectual Meal

This is a meal. A supper. A feast. As with any meal, it does something to us. Of course, bread is nourishing and wine is refreshing but that is not the full extent of what this meal does to us. A common meal could do that. But this is no common meal. 

This is the Lord’s Supper. For the grammar nerds who like to diagram sentences, the Lord is in the possessive. This is His table, and His feast. By this meal He effects something in us. Now, like you’d want your surgeon to have steady hands, it is important to be very steady theologically precision here.

Rome teaches that by priest’s words, these common elements are transformed, and by them we partake of the physical body and blood of Christ. The priest is the one acting. He does something to the elements by his words. If he gets it wrong in some way nothing happens to us. But Scripture teaches us that these common elements are made sacred because they are a consecrated word to us from Christ. It is by His Word & Spirit that these elements speak to us an efficacious word.

Christ our Lord presides at this feast, not a priest. It is Christ’s work that is potent here, not the proper Latin phrases. Because Christ, the everlasting Word, is spiritually present in this visible word, He is able to make effectual what this meal signifies.

And what this meal signifies is the depth and width of the everlasting love of God. It signifies three principle things. First, Christ’s death and all its benefits to those who believe. Second, the renewing of covenant promises to us, namely His vow to spiritually nourish & enliven us. Lastly, the uniting of each believer not only to the Triune God, but also to each other in the sweetness of Christian fellowship.

So, come in faith and welcome to Jesus Christ…