We live in a day when we can get almost anything we want or need quickly and precisely the way we want it. When I want to talk to a friend, I can fire off a text in just a few seconds. If I’m feeling hungry, I can have a delivery person drive to my home and drop off snacks on my doorstep with barely a lift of my finger. A few months ago, I needed a new pair of shoes. Within 30 minutes I found a pair I liked on an online store, within two hours I received confirmation that they were shipped, and within two days they had arrived on my doorstep. But for everything that the little 3 by 6-inch screen in my pocket can do, it can’t meet a single one of my spiritual needs.
We are spiritual beings who are designed to have our spiritual needs met by another. Only God can provide what we most need. Guilt, shame, reconciliation, the power to fight sin, the ability to love the Lord and others as we ought: these things can only come from God in Jesus. So, how does God provide what we most need? Or, to put it another way, how do we get Jesus?
4 Means of God’s Grace
We don’t get Jesus on our own terms (John 3:13). Instead, God provides us with four ways of getting Jesus. These ways, or “means,” are by his word, through prayer, and in the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. This is why Christians have historically referred to these things as “means of grace.” Now, grace isn’t a substance. It’s not as though the Christian has a “grace meter” that needs to be filled and re-filled week by week. Instead, it’s most helpful to think of grace as the person of Jesus: the incarnate grace-gift from God. So what we receive in these means isn’t a kind of inertia or power boost, but we receive Jesus and all of his goodness given to us through faith.
If we have believed in Christ, we have been united to him. Our lives have been eternally knit to his in such a way that everything that is true of Jesus can be said of the Christian (Eph. 1:3, 2:6; 2 Cor. 5:17). This is why the most popular designation for the Christian in the New Testament is “in Christ” (e.g. Rom. 8:1). Every single thing that is true of Jesus according to his human nature is true of the believer. We don’t just receive forgiveness of sins when we believe, but we get a new life— we receive Christ’s own life as our own. If you were to plot out your life on a piece of paper, it’s as though there would be an arrow stretching from that moment of regeneration infinitely forward labeled “Christ’s.” This is why the apostle Paul is able to say, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20).
Becoming As We Are
If we’re honest, we may be tempted to be disappointed by the sacraments we’re given. Perhaps these things appear too mundane to be helpful. In one sense they are incredibly ordinary: human speech, bread, wine, water. These are in abundant supply in the world around us. Yet, it’s good to remember that the Lord uses common things to communicate uncommon glory. In prayer, the Holy Spirit takes us by the hand, as it were, to a heavenly Father who always has time to hear his beloved children. When we hear the preached word, we hear the voice whose very utterance causes a hundred billion stars to appear and sing of his glory. And this same voice goes forth when the word is preached, inevitably accomplishing each and every one of his purposes in our lives (Isa. 55:11). In baptism we see and experience a sensory depiction of the washing of sin and the gift of new life in Christ. In the Lord’s Supper, we are taught that in the same way that bread gives us energy to do our work and wine “makes our hearts glad” (Ps. 104:15), so also Jesus gives himself to us for our daily strength and happiness.
Or, perhaps, we’re prone to be wary of these things because sacraments are so often treated as if they’re beneficial in and of themselves. But these sacraments are means which the Lord uses. They are signs. And when we look to the one whom they signify with the eyes, ears, and mouth of faith, we really do get Christ’s own life as our strength, encouragement, and holiness.
The entirety of the Christian life can be summed up in the idea that we are becoming as we are in Christ—finally, fully, inexorably, in every way truly as we are. It’s through the ordinary stuff of human speech, water, bread, and wine that God enters into a real relationship with us. These ordinary means of hearing God’s word, prayer, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper are used by God to make us everlastingly happy in Jesus.
