22. IN MEMORIAM; OR, FOURTH LESSON ON THE DOCTRINE OF THE CROSS
Matt. 26:26-29; Mark 14:22-25; Luke 22:17-20; (I Cor. 11:23-26).
The Lord's Supper is a monument sacred to the
memory of Jesus Christ. "This do in remembrance of me." In Bethany Jesus had
spoken as if He desired that Mary should be kept in remembrance in the
preaching of His Gospel; in the supper chamber He expressed His desire to be
remembered Himself. He would have Mary's deed of love commemorated by the
rehearsal of her story; He would have His own deed of love commemorated by a
symbolic action, to be often repeated throughout the ages to the end of the
world.
The rite of the Supper, besides commemorating, is
likewise of use to interpret the Lord's death. It throws important light on the
meaning of that solemn event. The institution of this symbolic feast was in
fact the most important contribution made by Jesus during His personal ministry
to the doctrine of atonement through the sacrifice of Himself. Therefrom more
clearly than from any other act or word performed or spoken by Him, the twelve
might learn to conceive of their Master's death as possessing a redemptive
character. Thereby Jesus, as it were, said to His disciples: My approaching
passion is not to be regarded as a mere calamity, or dark disaster, falling out
contrary to the divine purpose or my expectation; not as a fatal blow inflicted
by ungodly men on me and you, and the cause which is dear to us all; not even
as an evil which may be overruled for good; but as an event fulfilling, not
frustrating, the purpose of my mission, and fruitful of blessing to the world.
What men mean for evil, God means for good, to bring to pass to save much
people alive. The shedding of my blood, in one aspect the crime of wicked Jews,
is in another aspect my own voluntary act. I pour forth my blood for a gracious
end, even for the remission of sins. My death will initiate a new dispensation,
and seal a new testament; it will fulfil the purpose, and therefore take the
place, of the manifold sacrifices of the Mosaic ritual, and in particular of
the Paschal lamb, which is even now being eaten. I shall be the Paschal Lamb of
the Israel of God henceforth; at once protecting them from death, and feeding
their souls with my crucified humanity, as the bread of eternal life.
These truths are very familiar to us, however
new and strange they may have been to the disciples; and we are more accustomed
to explain the Supper by the death, than the death by the Supper. It may be
useful, however, here to reverse the process, and, imagining ourselves in the
position of the twelve, as witnesses to the institution of a new religious
symbol, to endeavor to rediscover therefrom the meaning of the event with which
it is associated, and whose significance it is intended to shadow forth. Let
us, then, take our stand beside this ancient monument, and try to read the
Runic inscription on its weather-worn surface.
1. First, then, we perceive at once that it is to
the death of Jesus this monument refers. It is not merely erected to His memory
in general, but it is erected specially in memory of His decease. All things
point forward to what was about to take place on Calvary. The sacramental acts
of breaking the bread and pouring out the wine manifestly look that way. The
words also spoken by Jesus in instituting the Supper all involve allusions to
His death. Both the fact and the manner of His death are hinted at, by the
distinction He makes between His body and His blood: "This is my body," "This
is my blood." Body and blood are one in life, and become separate things only
by death; and not by every kind of death, but by one whose manner involves
blood-shedding, as in the case of sacrificial victims. The epithets applied to
the body and the blood point at death still more clearly. Jesus speaks of His
body as "given"--as if to be slain or "broken"[22.1] in sacrifice, and of His
blood as "shed." Then, finally, by describing the blood about to be shed as the
blood of a new testament, the Saviour put it beyond all doubt what He was
alluding to. Where a testament is, there must also be the death of the
testator. And though an ordinary testator may die an ordinary death, the
Testator of the new testament must die a sacrificial death; for the epithet new
implies a reference to the old Jewish covenant, which was ratified by the
sacrifice of burnt-offerings and peace-offerings of oxen, whose blood was
sprinkled on the altar and on the people, and called by Moses "the blood of the
covenant."
2. The mere fact that the Lord's Supper
commemorates specially the Lord's death, implies that that death must have been
an event of a very important character. By instituting a symbolic rite for such
a purpose, Jesus, as it were, said to His disciples and to us: "Fix your eyes
on Calvary, and watch what happens there. That is the great event in my earthly
history. Other men have monuments erected to them because they have lived lives
deemed memorable. I wish you to erect a monument to me because I have died: not
forgetful of my life indeed, yet specially mindful of my death; commemorating
it for its own sake, not merely for the sake of the life whereof it is the
termination. The memory of other men is cherished by the celebration of their
birthday anniversaries; but in my case, better is the day of my death than the
day of my birth for the purpose of a commemorative celebration. My birth into
this world was marvelous and momentous; but still more marvelous and momentous
is my exit out of it by crucifixion. Of my birth no festive commemoration is
needed; but of my death keep alive the memory by the Holy Supper till I come
again. remembering it well, you remember all my earthly history; for of all it
is the secret, the consummation, and the crown."
But why, in a history throughout so remarkable,
should the death be thus singled out for commemoration? Was it its tragic
character that won for it this distinction? Did the Crucified One mean the
Supper which goes by His Name to be a mere dramatic representation of His
passion, for the purpose of exciting our feelings, and eliciting a sympathetic
tear, by renewing the memory of His dying sorrows? So to think of the matter
were to degrade our Christian feast to the level of the pagan festival of
Adonis,
"Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured
The Syrian damsels to lament his fate
In amorous ditties all a summer's day."
Or was it the foul wrong and shameful indignity
done to the Son of God by the wicked men who crucified Him that Jesus wished to
have kept in perpetual remembrance? Was the Holy Supper instituted for the
purpose of branding with eternal infamy a world that knew no better use to make
of the Holy One than to nail Him to a tree, and felt more kindness even for a
robber than for Him? Certainly the world well deserved to be thus held up to
reprobation; but the Son of man came not to condemn sinners, but to save them;
and it was not in His loving nature to erect an enduring monument to His own
resentment or to the dishonor of His murderers. The blood of Jesus speaketh
better things than that of Abel.
Or was it because His death on the cross, in
spite of its indignity and shame, was glorious, as a testimony to His
invincible fidelity to the cause of truth and righteousness, that Jesus
instructed His followers to keep it ever in mind, by the celebration of the new
symbolic rite? Is the festival of the Supper to be regarded as a solemnity of
the same kind as those by which the early church commemorated the death of the
martyrs? Is the CoeníDomini simply the natalitia of the great
Protomartyr? So Socinians would have us believe. To the question why the Lord
wished the memory of His crucifixion to be specially celebrated in His church
the Racovian Catechism replies: "Because of all Christ's actions, it (the
voluntary enduring of death) was the greatest and most proper to Him. For
although the resurrection and exaltation of Christ were far greater, these were
acts of God the Father rather than of Christ."[22.2] In other words, the death
above all things deserves to be remembered, because it was the most signal and
sublime act of witness-bearing on Christ's part to the truth, the glorious
copestone of a noble life of self-sacrificing devotion to the high and perilous
vocation of a prophet.
That Christ's death was all this is of course
true, and that it is worthy of remembrance as an act of martyrdom is equally
true; but whether Jesus instituted the Holy Supper for the purpose of
commemorating His death exclusively, principally, or at all as a martyrdom, is
a different question. On this point we must learn the truth from Christ's own
lips. Let us return, then, to the history of the institution, to learn His mind
about the matter.
3. Happily the Lord Jesus explained with
particular clearness in what aspect He wished His death to be the subject of
commemorative celebration. In distributing to His disciples the sacramental
bread, He said, "This is my body, given, or broken, for you;"[22.3] thereby
intimating that His death was to be commemorated because of a benefit it
procured for the communicant. In handing to the disciples the sacramental cup,
He said, "Drink ye all of it; for this is my blood of the new testament, shed
(for you[22.4] and) for many for the remission of sins;"[22.5] thereby
indicating the nature of the benefit procured by His death, on account of which
it was worthy to be remembered.
In this creative word of the new dispensation
Jesus represents His death as a sin-offering, atoning for guilt, and purchasing
forgiveness of moral debt. His blood was to be shed for the remission of sins.
In view of this function the blood is called the blood of the new testament, in
apparent allusion to the prophecy of Jeremiah, which contains a promise of a
new covenant to be made by God with the house of Israel,--a covenant whose
leading blessing should be the forgiveness of iniquity, and called new,
because, unlike the old, it would be a covenant of pure grace, of promises
unclogged with legal stipulations.[22.6] By mentioning His blood and the new
covenant together, Jesus teaches that, while annulling, He would at the same
time fulfil the old, in introducing the new. The new covenant would be ratified
by sacrifice, even as was the old one at Sinai, and remission of sin would be
granted after blood-shedding. But in bidding His disciples drink the cup, the
Lord intimates that after His death there will be no more need of sacrifices.
The sin-offering of blood will be converted into a thank-offering of wine, a
cup of salvation, to be drunk with grateful, joyful hearts by all who through
faith in His sacrifice have received the pardon of their sins. Finally, Jesus
intimates that the new covenant concerns the many, not the few--not Israel
alone, but all nations: it is a gospel which He bequeaths to sinners of
mankind.
Well may we drink of this cup with thankfulness
and joy; for the "new covenant" (new, yet far older than the old), of which it
is the seal, is in all respects well ordered and sure. Well ordered; for surely
it is altogether a good and God-worthy constitution of things which connects
the blessing of pardon with the sacrificial death of Him through whom it comes
to us. It is good in the interests of righteousness: for it provides that sin
shall not be pardoned till it has been adequately atoned for by the sacrifice
of the sinner's Friend; and it is just and right that without the shedding of
the Righteous One's blood there should be no remission for the unrighteous.
Then this economy serves well the interest of divine love, as it gives that
love a worthy career, and free scope to display its magnanimous nature, in
bearing the burden of the sinful and the miserable. And yet once more, the
constitution of the new covenant is admirably adapted to the great practical
end aimed at by the scheme of redemption, viz. the elevation of a fallen,
degraded race out of a state of corruption into a state of holiness. The gospel
of forgiveness through Christ's death is the moral power of God to raise such
as believe it out of the world's selfishness, and enmities, and baseness, into
a celestial life of devotion, self-sacrifice, patience, and humility. If by
faith in Christ be understood merely belief in the opus operatum of a vicarious
death, the power of such a faith to elevate is more than questionable. But when
faith is taken in its true scriptural sense, as implying not only belief in a
certain transaction, the endurance of death by one for others, but also, and
more especially, hearty appreciation of the spirit of the deed and the Doer,
then its purifying and ennobling power is beyond all question. "The love of
Christ constraineth me;" and "I am crucified with Christ," as the result of
such faith.
How poor is the Socinian scheme of salvation in
comparison with this of the new covenant! In that scheme pardon has no real
dependence on the blood of Jesus: He died as a martyr for righteousness, not as
a Redeemer for the unrighteous. We are forgiven on repenting by a simple word
of God. Forgiveness cost the Forgiver no trouble or sacrifice; only a word, or
stroke of the pen signing a document, "Thus saith the Lord." What a frigid
transaction! What cold relations it implies between the Deity and His
creatures! How vastly preferable a forgiveness which means a giving for,[22.7]
and costs the Forgiver sorrow, sweat, pain, blood, wounds, death--a forgiveness
coming from a God who says in effect: "I will not, to save sinners, repeal the
law which connects sin with death as its penalty; but I am willing for that end
to become myself the law's victim." Such a forgiveness is at once an act of
righteousness and an act of marvelous love; whereas forgiveness without
satisfaction, though at first sight it may appear both rational and generous,
manifests neither God's righteousness nor His love. A Socinian God, who pardons
without atonement, is destitute alike of a passionate abhorrence of sin and of
a passionate love to sinners.
Jesus once said, "He loveth much who hath much
forgiven him." It is a deep truth, but there is another not less deep to be put
alongside of it: we must feel that our forgiveness has cost the Forgiver much
in order to love Him much. It is because they feel this that true professors of
the catholic faith exhibit that passionate devotion to Christ which forms such
a contrast to the cold intellectual homage paid by the Deist to his God. When
the catholic Christian thinks of the tears, agonies, bloody sweat, shame, and
pain endured by the Redeemer, of His marred vision, broken heart, pierced side,
lacerated hands and feet, his bosom burns with devoted love. The story of the
passion opens all the fountains of feeling; and by no other way than the via
dolorosa could Jesus have ascended the throne of His people's hearts.
The new covenant inaugurated by Christ's death is
sure as well as orderly. It is reliably sealed by the blood of the Testator.
For, first, what better guarantee can we have of the good-will of God? "Greater
love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."
"Hereby perceive we the love of God, because He laid down His life for us."
Looking at the matter in the light of justice, again, this covenant is equally
sure. God is not unrighteous, to forget His Son's labor of love. As He is true,
Christ shall see of the travail of His soul. It cannot be otherwise under the
moral administration of Jehovah. Can the God of truth break His word? Can the
Judge of all the earth permit one, and especially His own Son, to give Himself
up, out of purest love, to sorrow, and pain, and shame, for His brethren,
without receiving the hire which He desires, and which was promised Him--many
souls, many lives, many sinners saved? Think of it: holiness suffering for
righteousness' sake, and yet not having the consolation of doing something in
the way of destroying unrighteousness, and turning the disobedient to the
obedience of the just; love, by the impulse of its nature, and by covenant
obligations, laid under a necessity of laboring for the lost, and yet doomed by
the untowardness, or apathy, or faithlessness of the Governor of the universe
to go unrewarded;--love's labor lost, nobody the better for it, things
remaining as before: no sinner pardoned, delivered from the pit and restored to
holiness; no chosen people brought out of darkness into marvelous light! Such a
state of things cannot be in God's dominions. The government of God is carried
on in the interest of Holy Love. It gives love free scope to bear others'
burdens: it arranges that if she will do so, she shall feel the full weight of
the burden she takes upon her; but it also arranges, by an eternal covenant of
truth and equity, that when the burden has been borne, the Burden-bearer shall
receive His reward in the form He likes best--in souls washed, pardoned,
sanctified, and led to everlasting glory by Himself as His ransomed brethren or
children.
The principle of vicarious merit involved in the
doctrine that we are pardoned simply because Christ died for our sins, when
looked at with unprejudiced eyes, commends itself to reason as well as to the
heart. It means practically a premium held out to foster righteousness and
love. This offered premium carried Jesus through His heavy task. It was
because, relying on His Father's promise, He saw the certain joy of saving many
before Him, that He endured the cross. It is the same principle, in a
restricted application of it, which stimulates Christians to fill up that which
is behind of the sufferings of their Lord. They know that, if they be faithful,
they shall not live unto themselves, but shall benefit Christ's mystic body the
church, and also the world at large. If the fact were otherwise, there would be
very little either of moral fidelity or of love in the world. If the moral
government of the universe made it impossible for one being to benefit another
by prayer or loving pains, impossible for ten good men to be a shield to Sodom,
for the elect to be a salt to the earth, men would give up trying to do it;
generous concern about public wellbeing would cease, and universal selfishness
become the order of the day. Or if this state of things should not ensue, we
should only have darkness in a worse form: the inscrutable enigma of
Righteousness crucified without benefit to any living creature,--a scandal and
a reproach to the government and character of God. If, therefore, we are to
hold fast our faith in the divine holiness, justice, goodness, and truth, we
must believe that the blood of Jesus doth most certainly procure for us the
remission of sins; and likewise, that the blood of His saints, though neither
available nor necessary to obtain for sinners the blessing of pardon before the
divine tribunal--Christ's blood alone being capable of rendering us that
service, and having rendered it effectually and once for all--is nevertheless
precious in God's sight, and makes the people precious among whom it is shed,
and is by God's appointment, in manifold ways, a source of blessing unto a
world unworthy to number among its inhabitants men whom it knows not how to use
otherwise than as lambs for the slaughter.
4] The sacrament of the Supper exhibits Christ
not merely as a Lamb to be slain for a sin-offering, but as a Paschal Lamb to
be eaten for spiritual nourishment. "Take, eat, this is my body." By this
injunction Jesus taught the twelve, and through them all Christians, to regard
His crucified humanity as the bread of God for the life of their souls. We must
eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of man spiritually by faith, as we
eat the bread and drink the wine literally with the mouth.
In regarding Christ as the Bread of Life, we are
not to restrict ourselves to the one benefit mentioned by Him in instituting
the feast, the remission of sins, but to have in view all His benefits tending
to our spiritual nourishment and growth in grace. Christ is the Bread of Life
in all His offices. As a Prophet, He supplies the bread of divine truth to feed
our minds; as a Priest, He furnishes the bread of righteousness to satisfy our
troubled consciences; as a King, He presents Himself to us as an object of
devotion, that shall fill our hearts, and whom we may worship without fear of
idolatry.
As often as the Lord's Supper is celebrated we
are invited to contemplate Christ as the food of our souls in this
comprehensive sense. As often as we eat the bread and drink the cup we declare
that Christ has been, and is now, our soul's food in all these ways. And as
often as we use this Supper with sincerity we are helped to appropriate Christ
as our spiritual food more and more abundantly. Even as a symbol or
picture--mysticism and magic apart--the Holy Supper aids our faith. Through the
eye it affects the heart, as do poetry and music through the ear. The very
mysticism and superstition that have grown around the sacraments in the course
of ages are a witness to their powerful influence over the imagination. Men's
thoughts and feelings were so deeply stirred they could not believe such power
lay in mere symbols; and by a confusion of ideas natural to an excited
imagination they imputed to the sign all the virtues of the things signified.
By this means faith was transferred from Christ the Redeemer, and the Spirit
the Sanctifier, to the rite of baptism and the service of the mass. This result
shows the need of knowledge and spiritual discernment to keep the imagination
in check, and prevent the eyes of the understanding from being put out by the
dazzling glare of fancy. Some, considering how thoroughly the eyes of the
understanding have been put out by theories of sacramental grace, have been
tempted to deny that sacraments are even means of grace, and to think that
institutions which have been so fearfully abused ought to be allowed to fall
into desuetude. This is a natural re-action, but it is an extreme opinion. The
sober, true view of the matter is, that sacraments are means of grace, not from
any magic virtue in them or in the priest administering them, but as helping
faith by sense, and still more by the blessing of Christ and the working of His
Spirit, as the reward of an intelligent, sincere, believing use of them.
This, then, is what we have learned from the
monumental stone. The Lord's Supper commemorates the Lord's death; points out
that death as an event of transcendent importance; sets it forth, indeed, as
the ground of our hope for the pardon of sin; and finally exhibits Christ the
Lord, who died on the Cross, as all to us which our spirits need for health and
salvation--our mystic bread and wine. This rite, instituted by Jesus on the
night on which He was betrayed, He meant to be repeated not merely by the
apostles, but by His believing people in all ages till He came again. So we
learn from Paul; so we might have inferred, apart from any express information.
An act so original, so impressive, so pregnant with meaning, so helpful to
faith, once performed, was virtually an enactment. In performing it, Jesus said
in effect: "Let this become a great institution, a standing observance in the
community to be called by my Name."
The meaning of the ordinance determines the
Spirit in which it should be observed. Christians should sit down at the table
in a spirit of humility, thankfulness, and brotherly love; confessing sin,
devoutly thanking God for His covenant of grace, and His mercy to them in
Christ, loving Him who loved them, and washed them from their sins in His own
blood, and who daily feedeth their souls with heavenly food, and giving Him all
glory and dominion; and loving one another--loving all redeemed men and
believers in Jesus as brethren, and taking the Supper together as a family
meal; withal praying that an ever-increasing number may experience the saving
efficacy of Christ's death. After this fashion did the apostles and the
apostolic church celebrate the Supper at Pentecost, after Jesus had ascended to
glory. Continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from
house to house, they did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart.
Would that we now could keep the feast as they kept it then! But how much must
be done ere that be possible! The moss of Time must be cleared away from the
monumental stone, that its inscription may become once more distinctly legible;
the accumulated d>>bris of a millennium and a half of theological
controversies about sacraments must be carted out of sight and mind;[22.8] the
truth as it is in Jesus must be separated from the alloy of human error; the
homely rite of the Supper must be divested of the state robes of elaborate
ceremonial by which it has been all but stifled, and allowed to return to
congenial primitive simplicity. These things, so devoutly to be wished, will
come at last,--if not on earth, in that day when the Lord Jesus will drink new
wine with His people in the kingdom of His Father.[22.9]
This document (last modifiedSeptember 17, 1997) from Believerscafe.com
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