'Our Lord left nothing more beneficial to the Church than this holy sacrament'. So wrote John Calvin. But what is the 'benefit' that the Lord's Supper brings to the Church? What is its impact on the lives of Christians?

Throughout history considerable attention has been devoted to the words 'This is my body' in discussing the nature or content of the sacrament and regular controversy has been aroused by them. In the Scottish tradition it has been the qualifications for coming to the Lord's Table which have almost monopolized sacramental theology. But in this article we are not primarily concerned with the question, 'Who should come?' but with the question, 'How they should leave'; not with 'how they receive' but with 'what they take away'. Indeed, it is very likely that our preoccupation with qualifications and 'mechanics' has some­times obscured the true purpose of the Lord's Supper.

We shall consider firstly that The Lord's Supper gives us Grace and secondly The Grace which the Lord's Supper gives.

1. The Lord’s Supper Gives Us Grace⤒🔗

This is only another way of saying that the Supper is a means of grace. That has been the consistent teaching of the Reformed Church. For example we have the testimony of James Walker:

The Scotch theolo­gians, at that time (i.e. 1560-1750), urgently asserted that the sacraments were not mere signs. There was always efficacious grace connected with the true receiving of them. Rutherford says: We say that increase of grace is given by the reception of the sacrament.

John Craig, colleague of Knox and author of a once-famous cate­chism, states that 'Sacraments are added as effectual instruments of the Spirit'.¹That word 'effectual' recurs frequently in discussions of the Supper, which was clearly seen as something having 'efficacy'.

To put it simply, in the Lord's Supper the believer receives. Herein lies the total contrast with the Roman Mass, which is essentially about giving to God, not receiving from him.

This Reformed view, that the Supper is a means of grace, is undoubt­edly Scriptural, for several reasons.

1. The Supper is an ordinance of the covenant of grace — a covenant founded on and steeped in God's giving love. It is a covenant ordinance for at least two clear reasons: First of all, it is intimately related to the Passover (Luke 22:15, 1 Corinthians 5:7). It was, as Jeremias has shown, a Passover meal. Secondly, it is specifically related to 'the new covenant in my blood' (Luke 22:20). Now all the ordinances of the Covenant are intended actively to advance our covenant living. They are not mere reminders, but like the Covenant itself are active and dynamic.
    
2. More precisely, the Supper is a means of grace because it is a sacrificial meal. 'The Lord's Supper is really the Passover feast given a new form by which it has been adapted to the new conditions of the universal covenant. It bears the same essential significance which is found in the Passover feast — i.e. it is not a sacrifice but a sacrificial feast' (B. B. Warfield). Now a sacrificial feast is a participation in the results or benefits of a sacrifice (1 Corinthians 10:16). When an animal was offered as a sacrifice it became immediately the property of God. If a part of it was feasted on by those who had offered it, they were not eating 'their own' but were being 'entertained by God', being fed as his guests. In the Lord's Supper, then, we are not giving a new or renewed sacrifice to God (as in Romanism) nor are we merely recollecting that a sacrifice was once offered to God for us (the so-called Zwinglian teaching), but we are being feasted by God on what has been already sacrificed. In other words, the Lord's Supper gives us grace.

2. The Grace which the Lord’s Supper Gives←⤒🔗

In the Lord's Supper the believer receives. Now we pass to the question, What does the believer receive?

Attention must be focussed on the truly remarkable aspect of that Passover meal which Jesus celebrated on the night in which he was betrayed. In passing the bread and the cup to the disciples he said, 'This is my body ... This cup is the new covenant in my blood...' Jesus Christ himself is the Passover Lamb (1 Corinthians 5:7). He himself is the sacrifice on which we are feasted at the Supper. That is, Jesus is himself the food that is given spiritually in the Lord's Supper. We receive the benefits of his expiatory sacrifice from his own hand. He has risen and ascended, he now reigns for the benefit of his people, bestowing grace and glory by the Holy Spirit. He gives righteousness, sanctification, wisdom and redemption — he gives us himself.

1. The Lord's Supper Gives Us Christ←↰⤒🔗

It must be stressed that believers are sustained (or, fed) not by gifts from Christ but by Christ himself. In the covenant of grace we are given grace, not as some separate, holy 'substance', but as the living com­munion with Jesus himself. It must also be stressed, against the 'incarnational' theology so popular today, that the heart of the covenant of grace lies not at the incarnation but at the immolation of Jesus. We are fed by Jesus who sits in heaven, 'a Lamb as it had been slain'.

By faith, then, the believer receives in the Lord's Supper nothing less than Jesus himself, in all his saving fulness. To put it another way, The Lord's Supper intensifies our union with Christ. No one has expressed this more eloquently than Robert Bruce:

By the sacrament my faith is nourished ... and so, when I had but a little grip of Christ before, as it were betwixt my finger and thumb, now I get him in my whole hand: for the more my faith grows, the better grip I get on Christ Jesus.

The Lord's Supper gives a stronger faith. Zwingli, so often maligned by an incomplete portrayal of his sacramental theology, stresses this aspect: 'Satan', he says, 'sets up the scaling-ladders of passion against our senses ... (but) in the sacraments the senses are not only turned aside from the enticements of the devil, but they are pledged to faith ... Hence they support and strengthen faith'. (Mentioning hearing, sight, touch, taste and smell, he goes on) 'just as these senses take pleasure in food and are stimulated by it, so the soul exults and rejoices when it tastes the sweet savour of heavenly hope'.²

Herein lies the answer to the question, raised in his Catechism by John Craig, Does not the Word give us all this anyway? Craig answers: 'Yes, no doubt, but it (the Word) works more plenteously with them (the Sacraments)'. Q. 'What is the reason for that?' A. 'Because our senses are moved to the comfort of faith'. ³

In other words, the Lord's Supper clarifies the Word, vividly certifies it and makes it easier for our imperfect faith to grasp Christ. So 'Christ dwells in us and we in Him: our union with Christ is more evident and manifest' (Craig). ⁴

But we must not leave it at this level. It is the Scriptural pattern to 'break grace up small' into detailed application. For example, in Colos­sians 3 Paul lays down the great theological principle of Christian living: 'You died and your life is hid with Christ in God. Set your affections on things above'. But he does not leave it there. Rather he goes on to spell it out in both negative and positive detail: 'Put to death sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, greed ... clothe yourselves with compas­sion, kindness, humility, etc.'. Similarly, when we consider the Supper we must not leave its benefit in our 'general' experience of Christ but must go on to show the detailed impact of Christ on our lives. The means of grace are not intended to produce mere ideas or mystic emotions but to change our lives. Profound 'experience' may be in­volved, but experiences alone are never the 'end' but rather a subordi­nate 'means' to producing a better Christian life in true holiness.

Of course, all parts of Christian living depend on our union with Christ, and the Supper should affect them all, but the Bible traces some particular connections where the sacrament has a special role to play. We can gather them under three headings: Hope; Zeal; and Unity. In considering these things the underlying argument is not that the com­municant ought to go away and increase in hope, zeal and unity but that it is the direct role of the sacrament to send us away increased in hope, zeal and unity.

2. The Lord's Supper Gives Us Hope, Zeal and Unity←↰⤒🔗

HOPE: It is both important and obvious that the institution of the Lord's Supper is set firmly in an eschatological context (see Luke 22:16, 18; 1 Corinthians 11:26; John 6:27). In this context two elements can be distinguished:

The Supper is an anticipation of the coming kingdom — where there will be a reunion of feasting at the marriage supper of the Lamb (Matthew 26:29).

The Lord's Supper is provisional: it has a role to play 'till he comes' and is a standing reminder of the transitoriness of this life. In 1 Corinthians 10:4 the Supper is set, by implication, in a 'wilderness' motif. It is a pilgrimage ordinance.

The Supper, then, arouses hope by giving a foretaste of what is to come. It also warns against a 'hopeless' satisfaction with this present world. It warns us against being rooted in this age by whetting our appetite for the heavenly kingdom. 'We are too apt to take our rest here and we need something to make us hunger and thirst after that perfect righteousness' (Matthew Henry, in The Communicant's Companion).

As the Jews commonly concluded the Passover meal with the cry 'Next year in Jerusalem', the true communicant will find his eyes lifted up, 'looking for and hastening unto' the day of Jesus' return. He has, after all, fed by faith on 'Christ ... the hope of glory'.

In the New Testament, this hope is a prominent factor in the daily life of the believer. In particular, it relates to the whole matter of assur­ance. When the Christian rightly partakes of the Supper he is reassured of two things.

1. Eternal redemption: that a perfect, full and final atonement has been made, not merely for past sins but also for future sins. The sacrifice is finished, the feast is spread. By faith the believer already stands justified in the Day of Judgment.
    
2. Personal possession: the personal conviction that Christ is mine is vividly reinforced by the actual reception of the sacrament.

Sometimes our thinking about assurance does not give sufficient weight to the direction of assurance, which is essentially forward-looking and Christ-centred. Scripture teaching, however, carries the believer forward to the eternal inheritance, not back to some point in his own experience (Romans 8:16ff). Likewise 2 Timothy 1:12 focuses on 'that day' which is to come, not on the day when I believed. Such assurance is strengthened by the Lord's Supper as it grants a foretaste of heaven.

The relation of assurance to the Lord's Supper is not that of qualifica­tion and reward. Rather it is that of the end to the means. God has given the sacrament to the Church precisely because our faith and assurance are weak and in order to be a 'prop' to help us. (Interestingly, this is a major element in Calvin's teaching. While he taught that assurance is of the essence of faith, he also taught that such faith and assurance are far from unclouded. He did not teach that every believer enjoys uninter­rupted, vivid certainty). It is a false theology which makes assurance (in the sense of a full confidence) a qualification for the Lord's Table.

One aspect of assurance sometimes stressed by the Reformers in relation to the Lord's Supper, of which we tend to lose sight, was that of the resurrection of the body. The sacrament assures us that Christ's body is glorified in heaven, living and nourishing his own. In taking into our bodies the signs and seals of his glorified life we have the guarantee that one day our dying bodies will live in glory with him.

ZEAL: In the Supper we are to 'remember' the Lord. This word 'remember' has strong covenant connotations. (cf Deuteronomy 8:18). It is the mainspring of all the activity of the redeemed, just as 'forgetting' denotes not mere lapse of memory but the first step of active rebellion. To remember God's covenant acts is to be moved to more diligent obedi­ence and service, to be strengthened in zeal. (Revelation 2:5, 'Remem­ber ... and repent').

The sacrament is a sign of God's mighty works and a seal of his continuing faithfulness which calls for and awakens within us a response of intensified activity: 'We should come from this ordinance much quickened to every good work' (M. Henry). We should be more obedient Christians, more moral, because we have enjoyed intensified fellowship with Jesus at the Table. Is not this the whole argument against fornication, 1 Corinthians 5:8 and 6:16? Likewise in 1 Corin­thians chapter 10, Paul appeals to their observance of the sacrament as an argument against involvement in pagan and immoral feasts. The com­munion of Christ should arouse our zeal for good works and against sin. It may be that communicating leads to an overwhelming conviction of sin and that 'remembering' will lead to very specific repentance. Certainly it should affect the whole tone of our lives.

Zeal is displayed in joyful consecration on the lines of Romans 12:1, the mercies of God in Christ prompting the giving of a living sacrifice. Consider some words of John Willison in his Sacramental Directory:

Christ holds communion with his people in this ordinance, by strengthening them for duty and making them delight in his service and count it their meat and drink to do his will, and reckon one day in his courts better than a thousand elsewhere.

Or John Calvin:

We cannot conceive having a spur to prick us more sharply into life than when he makes us, so to say, see with the eye and touch with the hand and manifestly feel a blessing so inestimable, that we feed on his substance.

This consecration may even take the form of a vow, binding us anew to the Lord's service. Such was the case in what is sometimes known as the Revival of 1596, when John Davidson and others spurred the General Assembly to a full confession of the sins of the whole nation, beginning with the sins of the ministers. A great gathering in St. Giles' was moved to tears and from there a stimulus went far and wide throughout the land. In one congregation at least — that of James Melville in Fife — the days of humiliation and confession led up to the renewing of a covenant of dedicated service to God in family and church life, a covenant that was publicly ratified at a Communion service.

Such an event is obviously exceptional but there is a place in every Communion service for the emphasis so excellently expressed in Cranmer's Communion service, in the prayers which follow the actual communicating: 'And here we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy and lively sacrifice unto thee; humbly beseeching thee that all we who are par­takers of this holy Communion may be fulfilled with thy grace and heavenly benediction'. In this sense there is indeed a sacrifice in the Lord's Supper — the eucharistic sacrifice in which the priesthood of all believers is exercised.

It follows that our thanksgiving should have a definite content. It is the giving of joyful obedience all our days. Zeal is thanksgiving in action.

In this way, the Lord's Supper helps to make Christian obedience Christ-centred rather than legalistic. The difference can be put simply like this: the legalist is holy because he wants to reach an absent Christ; the true believer is holy because he is with Christ. It is only a lively awareness of Christ-with-us that produces evangelical holiness. The Lord's Supper is a great stimulus to that awareness of faith.

This raises the important question of whether we give enough stress to Christ-likeness, to an evangelical Imitatio Christi in our Christian living.

2 Corinthians 3:18 teaches that we are transformed into the likeness of the One upon whom we gaze. Does not the Supper cause us to gaze intimately upon him? The sacrament should put the beauty of the Lord Jesus upon the daily life and the daily works of the believer.

UNITY: By the very nature of the body of Christ, intensified union with Jesus must lead to intensified union with all other believers. The Supper is a fellowship meal. At the Lord's Table we are in fellowship with one another, not like the customers of a Wimpey bar who are eating 'privately', unknowing and uncaring about their fellow custom­ers. The Supper is a corporate, uniting ordinance, we become 'one loaf' (1 Corinthians 10:17, 18). Indeed, it was the precise evil at Corinth, which called forth Paul's treatment of the Lord's Supper in chapter 11, that they had forgotten this and regarded it as an occasion for individual satisfaction (1 Corinthians 11:18).

The sacrament, then, is intended for the good of the church as a whole, not just the individual believer. It may strengthen, revitalise, rebuke a whole congregation. It is surely no accident that the Lord's Supper has been so prominent in the revivals of Scotland — and of Ulster — at Kirk O'Shotts, Cambuslang and Ferintosh, at Ettrick and on the Covenanting Hills. In our preparation and celebration we should consider corporate needs. Also, the Supper reminds us that true piety is not isolationist. It is in the fellowship of the Church, influenced and helped by the piety of others, that the Christian grows to maturity (Ephesians 4:16). We are too prone to devalue such corporate believing by making an unbiblical dichotomy with personal faith. It is no coincidence if many Christians have their deepest experiences in the acts of public worship. At the Lord's Table we are not merely reminded that this is so, but are drawn together into the fellowship of the Father, the Son and the Spirit.

Again, the sacrament promotes the true unity of believers by its gift of the Lord Jesus. His love to us arouses our love to him, and we cannot love him without loving those whom he has begotten. A firm trust in his forgiveness cannot but prompt us to forgive our brethren. Here, once more Calvin and Matthew Henry catch the mood of biblical teaching:

We shall benefit very much from the Sacrament if this thought is impressed and engraved on our minds, that none of the brethren can be injured, despised, abused, or in any way offended by us, without at the same time injuring, despising and abusing Christ; that we cannot love Christ without loving him in the brethren...

We must come from this ordinance with a disposition to forgive those that have been provoking and injurious to us. Our approach to the sacrament made it necessary for us to forgive; but our attendance on it should make it even natural to us to forgive; and our experience there of God's mercy and grace to us should conquer all the difficulty and reluctance which we are conscious of in ourselves, and make it as easy to forgive our enemies as it is to forgive ourselves.

What use is all our 'experience' at the table if it does not purify our relationships with the church? Is not the problem of relationships between Christians one of the most prominent areas of New Testament moral instruction? The Lord's Supper is a medicine fitted to deal with this prevalent and deadly disease of bitterness and division within the church. The Lord's Supper is a sacrament of unity. It is an ordinance of living union between Christ and all his people.

We have seen that the Lord's Supper gives us grace, and that Christ himself is the grace given there to us. In giving us Christ the Supper strengthens our hope, zeal and unity. We conclude with three senten­ces:

1. Though the sacrament in no sense adds to the Word (indeed it is inseparable from the Word) yet it does have a definite and important role in vividly pressing home what the Word proclaims, as the Holy Spirit uses it for our good.
    
2. Those who are preaching towards, and administering, the Lord's Supper should give clear instruction and direction, so that the communicants are looking for a specific growth in grace in these areas.
    
3. If the Lord's Supper makes an impact on our Christian lives in these ways, it is a benefit that we cannot have too often.