Zeal For Truth

Usually the first objection that is brought up when a person who holds to a memorialist position learns that I hold to the view that some kind of sanctifying grace is imparted to a participant in the Lord’s Supper is that I’m believing in magical elements. To quote a commentator on a previous thread, where I introduced this idea:

The Bible does NOT teach that magic rituals obtain grace, but rather that faith is rewarded with grace.

I believe there are two reasons that this, and similar responses I’ve heard from many people, occur. The first, and one I will only touch on here, is that it comes from a lingering rejection of the Roman Catholic Church. Having “grown up” in Baptist churches, where the memorialist position was the norm, all other positions were pretty much lumped together as being the Roman Catholic view, or at least on the way to it. I don’t believe this was done intentionally, by most, but was done simply for lack of knowledge on other traditions in general and lack of thought on the Lord’s Supper particularly.

As an example to this, I was talking with a friends dad the other day who use to be a pastor in The Christian And Missionary Alliance (Not to put either the dad [who I enjoy talking with] or the CMA [which I am attending a church of and enjoying it very much at the moment] down but only to illustrate the issue) and the fact that I think grace is imparted in the supper came up. His first reaction was to call it a Catholic view and begin to discuss what is wrong transubstantiation. The fact that I didn’t mention the topic of Christ’s presence, but only wished to talk about what happens in the Lord’s Supper didn’t seem to matter. It was a deviation from the memorialist position and therefore must be Catholic and include the whole of the Catholic teaching. This is of course absurd, but it happens often. The only way to combat this is education on the fact that protestants have historically had varying views on the Lord’s Supper and not everything different is Catholic. Of course a better understanding of what the Roman Catholic Church actually teaches and why would also help.

The second reason that any grace position is rejected as magic, and I think the more pervasive one, is that the vast majority of people today have in their minds a radical separation between the spiritual and physical world. We can chalk this dichotomy up to gnosticism or enlightenment philosophers, but the fact is that it’s there and it’s undeniable. The idea that God would use an object to give grace, seems so very strange to many because of this.

Today’s average Protestant Christian has simply accepted the doctrine of justification by faith alone, and never actually looked to see what it means. It has therefore morphed into something much closer to a doctrine that says “justification by faith in faith alone” eliminating any physical connection and bringing in the nebulous idea that it is faith the saves a person and not something or someone. When pressed on it, every protestant worth their salt will respond that it is Christ that saves, but in the abstract, the fact that He was a physical person whose action we put faith in to accomplish what scripture promises putting faith in Him will, is not considered. The physical actions of Christ are often overlooked on account of faith. We are not saved by faith, but saved by a person who in faith we trust in to do what He promised.

To bring this a bit away from the abstract, we could ask the question: If Christ did not go to the cross, commit a physical action, would salvation still be open to people even if they had faith? The answer I think is no, Christ needed to go to the cross, and He needed to be raised again or else our faith would be in nothing.

This is all well and good you say, but that was Christ committing a physical action, your speaking of us performing a physical action of receive grace. Isn’t that works salvation?

Works is the funny thing in Protestant theology. I was once asked long, long ago, how I could say I didn’t believe works saved and then say that faith was needed to be saved. Wasn’t faith a work? The question perplexed me for a while, I was a very new believer, but the answer is quite simple; faith may be a work, but it is one that is done not by our own power but by God’s (Ephesians 2:8).

The Protestant argument against works is, or at least should be, that the person is trying to save themselves. They are doing works of their own power to get a spiritual result. They think that by doing something they are storing up merit that counts towards them in heaven. These are not views I want to put forward as what happens in the Lord’s Supper at all.

When I say sanctifying grace is given in the Lord’s Supper I mean that God uses the elements of it to give us grace. It’s the avenue which He sends His grace to us through. There is no inherent quality in the bread and wine that gives grace to any eater of it, but God sends His grace through it to those who take it in faith. As we saw earlier God uses the physical Christ to bring saving grace to us, and we see other examples in scripture of Him using physical objects to bring grace to people.

Consider Numbers 21:9:

So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live.

There are several questions to ask with a passage like this. Was it a work for the people to look at the snake? Did they heal themselves? Was it the snake that healed, or was it God? Of course we will say it was not a work, that God healed them and it wasn’t the snake that did but God working through the physical object. The same questions should be asked with Mark 8:23-25 where Christ used physical objects to heal a man of his blindness.

None of this is proof, or even an argument, that sanctifying grace is given in the Lord’s supper, thats not the point here. The point is to give the person pause who rejects that view out of hand because it comes across as magic. God can, and does, use physical means to distribute His grace. He did it with Christ, with the serpents on the pole, and with mud and spit. The absolute dichotomy between physical and spiritual is not one found in scripture. Our God works in mysterious ways, and through mysterious objects, and we should embrace that!