“As we’ve just gone through Holy Week, we know that tension that exists between Good Friday and Easter. We understand that the wages of our sin is death and so Christ needed to die. He is our only and complete substitute for God’s wrath. He rose and with that promises us new life now and for eternity. His work to win us salvation is finished. So, yes, it is appropriate to enjoy the redemption that has been offered for us. Yes, the weight of our sin is heavy. Yes, we should have godly sorrow for our sin. But we live and celebrate the sacrament in gratitude for what he has done. That gratitude ought to be fostered in our local churches.” —Dan De Graff
Manuscript of This Episode
What are you doing? I don’t ask that question about what you are doing here in this room right now. I don’t ask it the way I ask it to my children when they’ve done something ridiculous. But in worship services, if you are the pastor—what are you doing? If you are someone who is regularly in the congregation worshiping, what do you see yourself doing? Again, pastors, what do you think the congregation thinks you’re doing? When in worship, but especially when you have opportunity to share the ministry of the Word and the sacraments, is what you are doing an inspirational or motivational talk? Are you a Bible teacher? Are these rituals that there may or may not be something the Holy Spirit is putting a special touch on in your words because of your ordination or your clothes or your touch?
Bavinck starts this series of chapters—Volume 4 Chapters 8 through 11—140 pages long—by addressing that while Christians recognize God’s grace comes to us through Christ, traditions and individuals have different understanding about the means used to communicate that grace. As you see on point one on the handout, he talks about mysticism, referring to those who would say there are no means to receive grace but the Spirit in you. In contemporary terms, it’s not exactly “I feel like God is doing or telling me something,” but God is giving you grace or not. On the other end is the Catholic Church’s understanding—that grace is absolutely bound to means. He categorizes for them, the Church is the perfect means of grace, Scripture rises from the Church and needs the Church, going so far as to say the Church views itself as not needing Scripture.
As is often the case, the Reformed tradition can be described as taking a middle way. “…The church [is] on the foundation of Scripture and elevated Scripture high above the church…Scripture, the Word of God, became the means of grace par excellence” (444). We are bound to the Word. As we’ve heard from Jason, the Word is where power is found. Even the sacraments are subordinate to the Word because it teaches them to us, and Christ’s grace originates in what is revealed there.
Bavinck labels what the church does with the ordinary means of grace as administration. “The church and its offices…do not impart grace; this only occurs through the Word and the sacraments.” He gives us a definition for means of grace, this is, “…External, humanly perceptible actions and signs that Christ has given his church and with which he has linked the communication of his grace. Still they may not even for a second be detached from the person and work of Christ, nor from the church as organism and as institution” (448).
This focus on Christ and his work was captivating for me. I don’t think there’s disagreement from anyone in this room that we want preaching to direct people to Jesus, to show his salvation and its benefits. We want all we do in worship to glorify him, to promoote his majesty and give him praise. But Bavinck’s understanding of Christ’s leading and the Spirit’s presence and work in and through what we do in worship services was a bit of a wake-up call when leading worship can feel routine, when it feels like some people are there to check it off the list of things to do or to get the message that they want.
What strikes me about Bavinck’s treatment of proclamation is that he writes not just about what the minister is doing when it comes time to read the Bible and preach the sermon. But there’s really an understanding of the power of God at work in the church. God is changing people in the reading and hearing of the word—that’s not just sermons but already in his day, he recognized people encounter the word in family, in school, in speeches, in reading. He also offers this distinction, “…We must definitely distinguish between the word of God and Scripture…The word in most cases does not come to us at all as Scripture, that is, in the form of Scripture. In fact, it comes in such a way that, having been absorbed from Scripture into the consciousness of the church, it proceeds from there to the most diverse people in the form of admonition and speech, nurture and education, books, magazines, tracts, and speeches [dare I add podcasts] and exerts its effect. And always it is God who stands behind that word. It is he who causes that word to go forth to people in all those diverse forms and thereby calls them to repentance and life…The expression ‘Word of God’ in Scripture has a variety of meanings and can refer to the power of God by which he creates and upholds the world, or his revelation to the prophets, or the content of revelation, or the gospel that was preached by the apostles. Yet it is always a word of God, that is, never just a sound but a power, not mere information but an accomplishment of his will” (449).
I think it’s possible we hear that and potentially see him playing fast and loose with Scripture or its importance. But he later points out, “…The Reformers jointly maintained that the Word alone is insufficient to bring people to faith and repentance, that the Holy Spirit can but usually does not work without the Word, and that Word and Spirit, therefore, work in conjunction to apply the salvation of Christ to human beings” (457). Scripture is authoritative, it is infallible, it is inspired by God, God-breathed. But what he’s referring to is not just words from a page. Rather, God uses Scripture and proclamation in and through the church—both assembled and sent out to spread his grace and bring his purposes to effect. That is why he goes on to say, “…The word of God that is freely proclaimed by ministers or conveyed to people…is indeed taken from Scripture but not identical with Scripture, it is still a word from God, a word that comes to human beings but is originally from God, is spoken in the power of the Holy Spirit and therefore always effective. The word of God is never separate from God, from Christ, from the Holy Spirit; it has not permanence or existence in itself…It is always efficacious; it is never powerless. If it does not raise people up, it strikes them down” (459). True and faithful proclamation is not merely our words; it is God’s with his power. Making that clear to our congregations, nurturing that in their minds, is beneficial.
Moving onto the sacraments, he unsurprisingly holds onto Calvin’s language of signs and seals. That language for some in the Reformed tradition can easily slide into seeing, especially the Lord’s Supper, as just symbols. So being reminded of the depth of what we’re to consider and cling to—some of these ideas are certainly contained in the formularies that we find in the Psalter Hymnal—he writes, “The invisible element, the matter and substance of the sacrament, accordingly, is the word, the promise, the covenant of grace, the person of Christ along with all his benefits. But the visible element does not keep these spiritual goods enclosed within itself, nor does it bestow them to us by some ‘intrinsic power of its own.’ God does not relinquish his work to the signs in the sacrament. He and he alone is the possessor and also remains the distributor of grace. The signs fulfill only an instrumental or ministerial function: God employs them to impart his grace….only to those who believe, and then he strengthens and nourishes their faith. Unbelievers only receive the sign, not the thing signified” (470).
Along with that, what is meant by grace? “Grace…is not a material something, but the favor and fellowship of God…It is Christ himself who baptizes and celebrates the Lord’s Supper in his church…He…employs humans as his instruments” (474). Essentially we’re talking about the benefits of salvation. The reason why he counts the Word as primary and the sacraments as subordinate is, “The Word contains all the promises of God and faith appropriates them all…All the benefits of salvation can be obtained from the Word and by faith alone, while there is not a single benefit that could be obtained without the Word and without faith from the sacrament alone” (479). If you like imagery, “The sacraments do not work faith but reinforce it, as a wedding ring reinforces love” (489). When you think about conversations around the frequency of the sacraments, what drives those conversations? If we tend to be in favor of weekly communion, are we seeing it as offering or accomplishing something the Word falls short in? If we lean towards less frequent, worried it may become less special or just routine if celebrated too often, is there something to learn from that idea of reinforcing faith? In your small groups consider discussing how emphasizing Christ’s work as primary affects your practice.
I want to offer a brief word on baptism. It isn’t so much about the form of what we say, but how we understand what we find in Scripture and utilize in our administration. “Christian baptism is and must be an incorporation into the fellowship with the God who has revealed himself as Father, Son, and Spirit…[What is said] indicates that the person being baptized is placed in relationship and fellowship with the God who has revealed himself as Father, Son, and Spirit, and is now obligated on that basis to confess and glorify that name” (504). Also, “A person is entitled to baptism not by faith and repentance but only because of the covenant…” (511). Those are rich reminders of the Reformed emphasis on the primary work of God in election, for faith, rather than simply our confession or response to him.
On the Lord’s Supper, I appreciated the heightened focus on the connection of the Lord’s Supper to the Passover that I believe is lacking in our confessions. He writes: “…The rite of Passover first served as an offering of atonement and was then used as a sacrificial meal to signify God’s communion with his people. All this Christ transfers to himself. He is the true Passover lamb, who by his death, by the breaking of his body and the shedding of his blood, effects atonement with God and lays the foundation for a new covenant…Jesus proceeds here from the Passover meal and the Old Testament sacrifices, adopts the action and terminology customary in that connection, and applies to his death” (546-47).
He goes on, “…Bread and wine do not relate to the person of Christ in general but specifically to Christ as crucified. In it he depicts his sacrifice before our eyes but also has us enjoy it. And that enjoyment is definitely what the Lord’s Supper is about. Jesus gave us the signs of bread and wine. He did not keep them in his hands but distributed them and told his disciples to take and eat them,..” (549).
As we’ve just gone through Holy Week, we know that tension that exists between Good Friday and Easter. We understand that the wages of our sin is death and so Christ needed to die. He is our only and complete substitute for God’s wrath. He rose and with that promises us new life now and for eternity. His work to win us salvation is finished. So, yes, it is appropriate to enjoy the redemption that has been offered for us. Yes, the weight of our sin is heavy. Yes, we should have godly sorrow for our sin. But we live and celebrate the sacrament in gratitude for what he has done. That gratitude ought to be fostered in our local churches.
Again, 140 pages long—there is plenty more that could be talked about, but I want to highlight the fifth point under small group discussion on your worksheet—contemporary application. Especially in the recent state of the CRC, participation in the sacraments is one of those areas that has been raised—as I said yesterday, even with an overture this year. There is a fine line that is walked between relying on the work of God and him knowing the heart of each participant, and our administering when it comes to fencing the table to any degree as well as who would be allowed to be baptized. Yet again, this is where it’s not a contradiction to point out the sacraments are visible signs and seals of God’s grace, but they are not to conflict with the Word. We are to be gracious and inviting, but there is certainly an understanding that we aren’t just promoting something good happens or is offered if you get water on you or eat a piece of bread or drink a cup of juice or wine. We’re proclaiming the grace of Jesus Christ which is for those who repent and believe.
I want to highlight situations like that and invite you to discuss how we can strengthen not just the churches we serve, but how can we better help one another throughout the CRC and across congregations? Especially when more and more of our churches have people joining from other Christian traditions, other church backgrounds—there can be assumptions that are not fully thought through, differences that might not even be recognized that people hold onto. How can we equip people to grasp what it is we believe God’s Word teaches and that we believe the sacraments are about?
I started out by asking what are you doing? What are you doing at your church? What do you understand is going on at your church? What do you think others think? At the heart of all the answers to these questions is a need to lift up God’s Word. We need to point people back to that. We need to share it with them. We need to draw the connections or show how the Confessions do that to large degree. Are there things going on in our church cultures, though, that just are assumed to be acceptable and good? Are there ways that we have adapted the expectations or standards of understanding so that people who are unchurched or unfamiliar with Reformed theology can better acclimate and be discipled, but have we forgotten to raise the bar back up and disciple each other further? How can you as pastor, as elder, as member, as friend, as Bible study participant point people to the source of grace and encourage them to be content and satisfied with these things?