Waters / Ortlund The Lord's Supper as the Sign and Meal of the New Covenant

1. Auflage 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4335-5840-5
Verlag: Crossway
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 128 Seiten

Reihe: Short Studies in Biblical Theology

'When he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, 'This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.'' -1 Corinthians 11:24 The Lord's Supper is more than a church tradition or a complex doctrinal controversy-it has practical importance to our daily lives. When Jesus instituted the Supper, it was meant to strengthen the faith of his followers by reminding them of his promises. God has always made promises to his people through covenants, and along with them given signs and meals to point to and confirm his blessings. Looking at the unity of the covenants throughout the Bible, this book will help Christians recover the practical importance of the Lord's Supper as both a sign and a meal of the new covenant blessings God has bestowed on believers in Christ.

Guy Prentiss Waters (PhD, Duke University) is James M. Baird Jr. Professor of New Testament and academic dean at Reformed Theological Seminary, Jackson. He is the author or editor of fifteen books and numerous chapters, articles, and reviews. He is a teaching elder in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA).

Autoren/Hrsg.

Waters, Guy Prentiss

Ortlund, Dane

Leseproben

Introduction

It is fair to say that many believers think of the Lord’s Supper as a matter of long-standing controversy in the Christian church. What exactly happens at the Lord’s Supper? What is the relationship between the body and blood of Jesus Christ and the bread and wine? How often should we observe the Lord’s Supper? May we observe the Supper outside of the local church? What qualifies a person to come to the Lord’s Table?

These questions touch on differences that have emerged within the Christian church concerning the doctrine and practice of the Lord’s Supper. They are legitimate questions in themselves. To mention them as I have is not to say that they have no biblical answers. They do have answers. It is, rather, to observe that such questions may well tempt believers to retreat from the Lord’s Supper. Christians might conclude that the Supper is a complex matter best taken up by seasoned theologians, that it is a matter of doctrinal controversy but of little practical importance. For all intents and purposes, they could reason, the Lord’s Supper is best left to others; it has no meaningful significance to the Christian life.

It would be sad were Christians to come to such a conclusion. That would upend the whole purpose of God in giving the Lord’s Supper to his people. That purpose is to support and strengthen the faith of believers. To deprive ourselves of the Supper is to deprive ourselves of the strength and assurance that God gives to our faith through it. One reason I have written this book is to help Christians recover the importance of the Lord’s Supper in the Christian life through a renewed appreciation of the Supper as both a sign and the meal of the new covenant. Our aim is to see better how the Lord’s Supper points to and confirms the blessings and benefits that God has poured out upon his people in Jesus Christ.

God’s provision of the Supper is part of a long-standing pattern of his gracious dealings with his people throughout history. Just as God has always made covenants with his people, so also God has always given covenant signs and covenant meals to his people. In all of God’s covenants, he has given his people tangible signs or tokens tied to the promises that he has made with them. God has also appointed meals for his covenant people to help them appreciate his goodness and abundance in the gospel. God appeals to us through our five senses—sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell—to encourage us to believe the good news that he offers us in the promises of the gospel.

God has never chosen at random the physical elements that have made up the signs he appointed for his covenants, and it is no accident that he has appointed meals throughout redemptive history for his people. These signs and meals always have had some meaningful connection to the promises to which they correspond. There is a reason that in the Lord’s Supper we partake of bread and wine at a Table that Christ has spread for us and to which he invites us.

If there is meaning and purpose to the signs and meals that God has appointed within his covenants, there is equally meaning and purpose to the covenants themselves. In other words, the covenants that God made with his people were not sporadic or disassociated events in the history of God’s dealings with humanity. On the contrary, there is a glorious unity to the covenants of the Bible. When we grasp that unity, we will better appreciate the meaning of the signs and meals that God has given, along with the covenants he has made with his people. A full appreciation of the importance of the Lord’s Supper in the Christian life requires us to look first to the progression of God’s covenants in human history and then to the signs and meals that God appoints within those covenants.

The project we are undertaking goes by the name biblical theology. What is biblical theology? It is not simply theology that is true to the Bible. Biblical theology is that, but that definition covers many other things as well. A clear understanding of biblical theology will guide our reflections on the Lord’s Supper.

Biblical theology must begin, as does any legitimate approach to the Bible, with the conviction that the Bible is the Word of God. The Bible is, in other words, the verbal revelation of God to humanity. For all the diversity represented in the Bible—different types of literature, different human authors, different primary audiences—the Bible has a single, divine author. That author has spoken, and his speech is the words and propositions that make up the books of the Old and New Testaments.

The chief concern of the Bible and, therefore, of the Bible’s divine author, is salvation. The Bible assumes that all human beings (except one man, Jesus Christ) are sinners in need of salvation. God created man upright, but we, in Adam and by reason of our own sins, have gone astray. The Bible tells us what God has done so that sinners may be saved.

God’s saving words and deeds did not transpire all at once. God gradually and progressively revealed his purpose to save human beings in and by his Son. This saving revelation began soon after the fall, in the garden of Eden (Gen. 3:15), and this saving revelation came to its culmination and climax in the Lord Jesus Christ (Heb. 1:1–4), who is the incarnate Word of God (John 1:1), and in whom all God’s promises find their yes and amen (2 Cor. 1:20). Christ, by his death and resurrection, has saved a multitude from among every tribe, tongue, people, and nation. Jesus has not only saved people who lived after his death and resurrection. He has also saved people who lived prior to his death and resurrection. For the most part, those who were saved prior to the life and ministry of Christ were among the old covenant people of God, Israel. Even then, Israelites were saved in the same way that people today are saved—through faith in Christ. This is how Abraham (Romans 4; Galatians 3), Moses (Heb. 11:26), David (Romans 4), and Isaiah (John 12), to name just a few, were saved.

What, then, is biblical theology? Biblical theology explores the unfolding of God’s self-revelation in the Bible. Biblical theology gives due weight to the central concern of biblical revelation—the glory of God in saving sinners through the work of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. It notes both the progressive and organic character of biblical revelation. Biblical revelation is progressive in that it moves toward a divinely predetermined goal, namely, the person and work of Jesus Christ. Biblical revelation is organic in that this movement resembles the growth of an organism. As a tree grows from a seed to a sapling to a mature plant, or a human being grows from a fetus to a toddler to a mature person, so also biblical revelation witnesses the maturation of God’s saving promises from their shadowy beginnings to their mature completion in the Lord Jesus Christ (see Col. 2:16–17).

One of the most important ways in which God revealed his plan to redeem sinners through Christ was in making covenants with human beings. Through these covenants, God gradually revealed more and more of his one purpose and plan to save sinners in every age through Jesus Christ. In so revealing Christ to his people, God was summoning them to trust in his Son for their salvation. Covenants (and, we will see, their signs and meals) find their meaning and integration in the person and work of Christ.

Chapter 1 will offer a brief definition of covenant. We will then reflect on the major covenants of the Bible. Which are they? What is their relationship with each other? How does each point to the saving work of Jesus Christ?

In chapter 2, we will look at covenant signs. We will see that such signs are a staple of God’s covenants with human beings. They are an important way that God condescends to us in order to reinforce his covenant promises to us. Covenant signs reach out to senses beyond the ear. We see them, feel them, smell them, and taste them. These signs help us to see how committed God is to our growth in faith.

Chapter 3 will look at covenant meals. Throughout history, God has appointed special meals for his people to enjoy. Like signs, these meals are designed to point beyond themselves. They point to the rich and abundant spiritual provision that God has stored up for us in Christ.

Chapter 4 will focus on the Lord’s Supper. We will look at what the New Testament tells us about the Supper, from Jesus’s institution of this meal, to the early church’s faithful observance of it, to a young church’s confusion and misuse of it. We will see how the apostle Paul sternly but patiently addressed the church’s misapprehensions by setting the church on a sound doctrinal and practical foundation. In the Lord’s Supper, we commune with the Lord Jesus Christ. Even so, Paul insists, the Supper is not a private experience. It is a family meal. We must not come to this meal and be indifferent toward our brothers and sisters in Christ. Neither is the Supper a mechanical experience. We...