This article is the thirty-sixth installment in our series "Christian, What Do You Believe: The Belgic Confession of Faith." Find the whole series here.
On the night Jesus died, he shared a meal with his disciples. They ate because they were hungry. The food and drink nourished their bodies. But this was no ordinary meal. It commemorated the Lord’s provision of a lamb whose blood protected believing families from tragedy. At the dinner, Jesus “took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, ‘Take, eat; this is my body.’ And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, ‘Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins’” (Matt. 26:26–28). By these words and his imminent death on the cross, Christ fulfilled the Passover and transformed it into the Lord’s Supper.
By use of this meal, Christ’s body and blood can “preserve your body and soul unto everlasting life.” But only if you use it properly. To do so requires understanding, discernment, right judgment, self-examination, and faith (see 1 Cor. 11:27–29).
The Analogy of the Sacrament
Believers live a two-fold life. Part of who we are is physical. God both feeds us and blesses the food for our good. But life is more than what we eat or drink (Matt. 6:25; Rom. 14:17). When God’s children are born again through “the Word of the gospel in the communion of the body of Christ” they receive also a “spiritual and heavenly life” (BC 35; cf. John 3:3). For this life God has sent from heaven the living bread Jesus Christ (John 6:51).
The Lord’s Supper brings together the physical and the spiritual. Bread and wine are beautiful symbols of our dependence on God and on his promise to feed our bodies and souls. As the Lord provided manna to the fathers who were required to gather it daily (John 6:31–33; Exod. 16:4–5), so believers must feed on Christ and will live because of him (John 6:57). “To represent to us this spiritual and heavenly bread, Christ has instituted an earthly and visible bread as the sacrament of his body, and wine as the sacrament of his blood.” This meal testifies to us that “just as truly as we take and hold the sacraments in our hands and eat and drink it in our mouths … we receive into our souls, for the spiritual life, the true body and true blood of Christ our only Savior.”
Like baptism, the Lord’s Supper is a visible presentation of the gospel. God promises to delight believers with the rich food of Jesus (Is. 55:2). We should respond with a spiritual appetite that says, “We taste thee, O thou living bread, and long to feast upon thee still; we drink of thee, the fountainhead, and thirst our souls from thee to fill.”
Christ’s Action in the Sacrament
When I was young, every Memorial Day, our family would visit the grave of my grandfather, a Korean War veteran. We didn’t receive power from that visit; it simply reminded us of our loved one. But Scripture teaches that the Lord’s Supper is more than a memorial; in it Christ acts in power.
As sobering proof of Christ’s action in the sacrament, God threatens punishment for improperly communing. The things signified by the sacrament, Christ and his saving benefits, are not received by all people. Unbelievers take bread and wine but do not trust in the Savior whom the elements signify. Whoever eats the meal without treasuring Christ’s body and blood “eats and drinks judgment on himself” (1 Cor. 11:29).
But in the Supper, Christ truly gives himself to his own. “What is eaten” by believers “is Christ’s own natural body and what is drunk is his own blood” (see John 6:53–58). We do not bring Christ down from heaven (Mark 16:19; Rom. 10:6); the bread and wine do not become his body and blood. Rather, “with prayer, thanksgiving, and reading of the institution of the Lord’s Supper, the [elements are] sanctified, set apart from all other [food and] drink and given a holy purpose,” to help us commune with Jesus. In the Supper, the Holy Spirit seats believers at “a spiritual table at which Christ communicates himself to us with all his benefits” and “makes us enjoy himself as much as the merits of his suffering and death, and he nourishes, strengthens, and comforts our poor, desolate souls.”
The celebration of the sacrament is a powerful act, affecting both believer and unbeliever. For this reason we must be thoughtful about how we receive it.
The Application of the Sacrament
Scripture teaches several things we must do to receive this meal to our comfort.
Examine Yourself
Before coming to the Supper you should ask important questions (1 Cor. 11:28). Do you know that because of your sin you should be condemned by God (Rom. 7:24)? Do you believe that Christ has redeemed you by becoming accursed by God on the cross (Gal. 3:13)? In light of God’s mercy, do you love Christ’s body and determine to show thankfulness through joyful obedience? Such questions are not meant to produce fear. But they must be answered (2 Cor. 13:5).
Receive the Supper with Humble Reverence
The Lord’s Supper is a sobering exercise. We do not deserve Christ’s kindness any more than Peter deserved to have Jesus wash his feet. But by faith we accept God’s good gift, given “because of our weakness and because of our failures, in order to increase our faith.” For this reason, even those just beginning to seriously follow Jesus should profess their faith and humbly come to the Lord’s Supper.
Remember Christ’s Death with Thanksgiving
When Jesus inaugurated the Lord’s Supper, he told the disciples to eat the bread and drink the cup, “In remembrance of me” (1 Cor. 11:24–25). When we recall all of Christ’s benefits we should “lift up the cup of salvation” and offer to God “the sacrifice of thanksgiving” (Ps. 116:12–13, 17).
“Confess [your] faith and Christian religion”
The Lord’s Supper is a repudiation of self-sufficiency. It reminds us that the Father created us to worship him, the Son redeemed us to make us God’s children, and the Spirit renews us, restoring in us the image of God. In confessing the Christian religion, we affirm Christ’s death and resurrection as the centerpiece of God’s redemptive work and place our hope in his certain return.
As we receive Christ in the Lord’s Supper, he stokes in us a “fervent love of God and our neighbors.” Holy Communion proclaims and confirms that God “loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” By that act of love God makes us able and willing to love like him (1 John 4:10–11). The Supper doesn’t magically or mechanically dispense grace. But it is a means by which we can both receive and reflect God’s love.
Footnotes
https://formsandprayers.com/liturgical-form/#12
“O Jesus, Joy of Loving Hearts,” Trinity Psalter Hymnal, 494.
Staten Vertaling, note on 1 Cor. 10:16.
https://formsandprayers.com/liturgical-form/#11
See John Calvin’s preferred method of confirmation, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 4.19.13.
