What are sacraments? August 15, 2007
Posted by Anya in : I won't keep things purposely vague , 2comments… that was my question in Omnibus today… here’s the lovely, lengthy *cough* answer…
While some see the sacraments as mere rituals, and other see them as the means of salvation, they are wrong. The sacraments have true meaning, if they are used rightly, and are a means of grace to true Christians.
There are only two sacraments: baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Baptism involves the pouring of water onto the person being baptized [1] and is to be administered to those professing faith in Christ and to the infants of a Christian. However, it should not be applied to a person twice, once as a baby and once as an adult! Baptism serves several purposes to believers; it is a sign and a seal.
First of all, baptism is an outward symbol to the entire world that this person is a part of the church. It binds the church to nurture and disciple this person in the faith. Pastor Woody Lauer pointed out that while we take baptism for granted in the
U.S., it is a huge struggle for Japanese Christians to be baptized, because it is dangerous! It shows that you are not part of the world, but of the
church of
Christ. However, to claim that you are a Christian and to refuse to be baptized is to be living in sin, since Jesus commanded baptism when He commanded His disciples to “make disciples of all nations and baptize them”[2]. In this sense, baptism is a sign to the world, very much as circumcision was a sign to world under the old covenant.
Baptism is also called a seal. This means that it is a confirmation of God’s grace to the one being baptized. It does not make one saved, rather, it functions much as the seal of a king. A king’s seal could be stolen and stamped onto documents which he has not written, and this would not mean that they are from him. In the same way, a person could claimed to be saved and be baptized. However, anyone who was caught forging the king’s authority in this way would be surely punished, and likewise, anyone who experiences the grace of God and spurns it will be severely punished. But, when used properly, baptism signifies that this person is one of God’s chosen people and seals the outpouring of His grace upon them. To baptize an infant means that they will be brought up in the church, among the people of God, as a child of God.
Apart from all these things, baptism also signifies the washing away of our sins through the death of Christ, and that we have been made clean and righteous before God.
The Lord’s Supper is the second sacrament. Jesus gave it to His followers the night before He was crucified, to be a remembrance of Him. It was not the sort of memorial as we commonly use the term, gloomily croaking, “Nevermore!” but it was a remembrance which pointed forward as He spoke of the next time He would drink of the fruit of the vine – in the kingdom of God with His apostles.
It is extremely important to understand that Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper to be this sort of foreshadowing memorial. He did not make it a perpetual offering up of Himself. If this were the case, it would have made no sense for Him to say on the cross, “It is finished!” This was the reason for the deaths of many martyrs in the Middle Ages; they refused to reverence the mass as the body and blood of Jesus, correctly preferring to reverence the One Who was remembered in the sacrament.
The Lord’s Supper, in reminding us of Christ’s death, reminds us of the privileges which His death conferred on us and what we owe to Him because of this grace, which is, in fact, our very lives.[3] Also, it serves as a mark to the world of the communion which we have with the risen Christ and with other believers who also partake of the Lord’s Supper. It is not called communion for no reason – in it, we commune both with God and with our fellow Christians.
The Holy Spirit works through the Lord’s Supper to cause us to grow in faith and in our relationship with God. It is one of the means which God has appointed for our growth, and for us to refuse from partaking in it is a decision to live in sin.
Obviously, these benefits are not conveyed to those who are not truly repentant of their sins when they take the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. On the contrary, it works to their damnation, because they are making light of the death of Christ. Therefore, it is the responsibility of pastors to solemnly warn people before they eat the Lord’s Supper, so that they can be sure that they are doing so rightly. People who are “ignorant and ungodly” should not be permitted to take and defile the Lord’s Supper, bringing condemnation upon themselves.
The sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper have been ordained by God as a means of grace to believers when they are used rightly.
Anya
August 15, 2007
[1]G.I. Williamson explains in detail why the Greek word absolutely does not always mean “immersion”, even in the New Testament on page 210 of his book The Westminster Confession of Faith: For Study Classes, published 1980.
[2] Matthew 28:30
[3] Romans 12:1-2
