Devotional 158: The Worthy Reception: Self-Examination Before Partaking

The Confession Read

The outward elements in this sacrament, duly set apart to the uses ordained by Christ, have such relation to him crucified, as that, truly, yet sacramentally only, they are sometimes called by the name of the things they represent, to wit, the body and blood of Christ; albeit, in substance and nature, they still remain truly and only bread and wine, as they were before.

— Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 29, Section 5

Introduction

Listen to the strangest sentence a Christian ever speaks, the sentence we utter at this table more often than any other: "This is my body." A minister stands before a gathered church, a piece of bread in his hand, and says that it is not bread but the body of his Lord. He takes a cup and says that it is not wine but the blood of the new covenant. And yet the bread is bread, and the wine is wine. Whatever those words accomplish, they do not make the loaf a limb or the cup a wound. The bread does not cease to be bread the moment it is called a body, any more than a map ceases to be paper the moment a man, tracing a winding line with his finger, says, "This is the way home." That last image is worth holding on to, because it names the very thing this section of the Confession is about. A traveller unfolds a map and points to a thin line and calls it the road; and no one accuses him of lying, because the map truly corresponds to the road, bears its name, and guides the feet along it. Yet the map is paper and ink, and everyone knows it. The man has spoken truly, and at the same time he has spoken only "map-wise," if we may coin a word; and the truth of the one statement does not threaten the truth of the other. The map is not the road, and yet it is a true map, really corresponding to the country it pictures, really able to lead a weary man to the spring of water it shows him. Both things are true at once, and neither may be surrendered without losing the other. This is the balance the Westminster Divines are trying to hold in the section before us. They are answering a single, quiet question that has divided Christendom for five hundred years: what actually happens to the bread and the wine? Three answers had been put forward in their day, and two of them were, in the end, the same mistake in opposite directions. Rome said the bread stops being bread and becomes the substance of Christ's body. The more radical spirits, recoiling from that, said nothing happens at all: the bread is bread, and the words are a mere figure, a kind of word-picture with nothing behind it. The Divines refused both. They said that the bread, set apart to the use Christ ordained, enters into such a relation to Christ crucified that it may be truly, yet sacramentally only, called the body and blood of Christ; while in substance and nature it remains, truly and only, bread and wine. Everything in this sentence turns on those two little words, "truly" and "sacramentally only," and it is those two words we must learn to hold together if we are ever to come to this table without either idolatry or coldness.

Scripture Foundation

Before we ask what the Divines meant by the sacramental relation, we must watch how Scripture itself speaks, for the whole doctrine is nothing but an account of the Bible's own manner of naming things. The simplest place to begin is with a fact that startles people when they first notice it: the word "is," in the mouth of God, often means "signifies" or "represents," and to hear it any other way is to miss what God is saying. Consider the dreams of Pharaoh, and the young Hebrew prisoner who interpreted them. Pharaoh had dreamed of seven fat cattle swallowed by seven thin ones, and of seven full ears of corn devoured by seven blasted ears. Joseph did not hesitate to tell him what the dream meant. "The seven good kine are seven years," he said, "and the seven good ears are seven years: the dream is one. And the seven thin and ill favoured kine that came up after them are seven years; and the seven empty ears blasted with the east wind shall be seven years of famine." Here the word "are" cannot mean identity, for no one imagined that cattle were literally years, or that ears of corn were a calendar. The cows were not the years; they stood for the years. The verb "to be" carried the sense "to signify," and Pharaoh understood it perfectly, because every man on earth speaks this way when he speaks of signs and pictures. It is the ordinary grammar of the whole world, and Scripture uses it without apology. Now turn to the Lord himself, and watch how he interprets his own parables. When the disciples asked the meaning of the parable of the wheat and the tares, Jesus gave them a running commentary in which the word "is" means "represents" again and again. "He that soweth the good seed is the Son of man," he said. "The field is the world; the good seed are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the wicked one; the enemy that sowed them is the devil." The Son of man is not literally a sower scattering seed in a field; the world is not literally a ploughed acre; the children of the kingdom are not literally stalks of wheat. And yet the Lord says "is," and no one misunderstands him, because the relation between a thing and what it pictures is a real relation, strong enough to bear the weight of the little word "is." If our Lord himself teaches by means of this very figure, then we are on solid ground when we read the words of the Supper with the same ears. Nor is this confined to parables and dreams. The last book of the Bible is full of it, and the risen Christ himself gives us the key. John, in his vision on Patmos, saw seven golden candlesticks, and standing among them one like the Son of man holding seven stars in his right hand. The Lord then explained what John had seen: "The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches: and the seven candlesticks which thou sawest are the seven churches." The stars are not angels in the sense that a lamp is a lamp; the candlesticks are not churches in the sense that a building is a building. The stars and the candlesticks are signs, and yet Christ says they "are" the things they signify, because in the world of vision and sacrament a sign may take the name of the thing it sets before the mind, and take it truly. One further example completes the pattern, and it matters because here the figure is worn by Christ himself. "I am the true vine," he says, "and my Father is the husbandman. I am the vine, ye are the branches." The Son of God is not a plant rooted in the soil of Galilee, and his disciples are not twigs. Yet he does not say "I am like a vine," but "I am the vine," because the vine is not a random comparison but a chosen image in which a real, organic, life-giving union is exhibited. The branch truly lives by the vine; the believer truly lives by Christ. The "is" is figurative in form and utterly real in what it conveys. Here, in the mouth of the same Lord who said "This is my body," we learn how to hear both sentences. The relation between the sign and the thing signified is real enough to bear the name, and that is precisely what the Confession calls a sacramental relation. What, then, shall we say of the bread? The answer follows directly from the principle we have just watched at work. If, in the mouth of God, the little word "is" so often means "signifies," then the thing that is said to be another thing does not therefore cease to be what it is. When Joseph said that the seven kine are seven years, the kine remained kine; when Jesus said that the field is the world, the field remained a field. And when the same Lord took bread on the night in which he was betrayed and said, "This is my body," the bread remained bread, even while it came to bear, truly and by divine appointment, the name of his body. To insist that the bread must vanish into Christ's flesh the moment it is called his body is to abandon the very grammar that Joseph and our Lord himself employed, and to hear literally a sentence that Scripture everywhere speaks sacramentally. The sign remains a sign, the bread remains bread, and yet the two are joined in so close an appointed relation that the name of the one may be given to the other without deceit. That is the grammar of the sacrament, and it is the Bible's own grammar from Genesis to Revelation. A thing may be called by the name of what it represents, truly and without guile, while remaining in substance what it was before. This is not a trick of rhetoric; it is the way God has chosen to speak to his people.

What the Divines Meant

The Westminster Divines wrote Section 5 to settle a question that had burned through Europe for more than a century, and they wrote it with the precision of men who knew that a single misplaced word could tip a soul into idolatry or starve it into unbelief. The question was this: when the minister sets the bread and wine apart by prayer and the word of institution, what has changed? The first thing to notice is where the Confession locates the change, and it is not in the substance of the elements. "The outward elements in this sacrament, duly set apart to the uses ordained by Christ, have such relation to him crucified..." The change is a change of relation, not of substance. The bread was common bread; now it is set apart to a holy use, and in being set apart it acquires a new standing, a new relation to Christ crucified that it did not have before. The Divines are careful to pick up the language of Section 3, where they described the minister as blessing the elements "and thereby to set them apart from a common to an holy use." Consecration, they insist, is a setting apart, a dedicating to a purpose; it is not a transformation of one thing into another. What is new is not the nature of the bread but the office the bread now bears. It is the same loaf, but it is no longer a loaf like every other loaf; it is a loaf that now points to, exhibits, and seals the body of Christ crucified. This brings us to the heart of the section: "truly, yet sacramentally only." Each half of that phrase is a weapon aimed at a different enemy, and the Divines meant both halves to be heard together, for each guards against the corruption of the other. "Truly" is aimed at the man who reduces the Supper to a bare reminder, an object lesson, a picture with nothing behind it. There were such men in the Divines' day, the heirs of those who, in their zeal against Rome, had so emptied the sacrament of Christ that the bread became a mere token and the words a mere figure of speech. Against them the Confession says: the relation is real. The bread is not merely like the body of Christ; it is so joined to him in the purpose of God that it may be called by his name, and called truly. The believer who receives the bread does not receive a hollow emblem but is truly brought into communion with the thing the bread sets before him. The "truly" is the Confession's insistence that grace really reaches the soul at this table, that Christ is really present to faith, that the meal is not a charade but a real means of real communion. To lose the "truly" is to lose the Supper altogether and to be left with nothing but a mournful memorial. "Sacramentally only" is aimed at the opposite error, and it is the word that protects the "truly" from running wild. The relation is real, but it is a sacramental relation, the relation of a sign to the thing signified, and not a relation of identity or of bodily presence. The bread is not changed into Christ's body; the body is not locally enclosed within the bread; the bread is not the body in any carnal sense. The Latin tradition behind the phrase speaks of sacramentaliter, "sacramentally," and the word's whole force is to say: the bread is called the body of Christ after the manner of a sacrament, not after the manner of a change of substance. The name is given because of a relation that God has appointed, a relation that is spiritual and sacramental, and it must never be pressed into a physical identity. The "sacramentally only" is the Confession's wall against transubstantiation and against every form of carnal presence, and it stands exactly where the "truly" stands, guarding the same truth from the other side. Then comes the clause that gives the reason for it all: "they are sometimes called by the name of the things they represent." This is the doctrine of sacramental speech, and it has a technical name in the schools: metonymia, a word taken from the Greek for "a change of name." Metonymy is the figure by which a thing is called by the name of another thing to which it is closely related; we do it daily when we say "the crown" for the king, or "the kettle" for what is in the kettle. Scripture does it in the dreams of Pharaoh, in the parables of the Lord, and in the visions of Patmos, wherever a sign is made to bear the name of the thing it signifies. In every case a sign is called by the name of the thing it sets before the mind, not because the two have become one substance but because they are joined in so close and appointed a relation that the one may bear the other's name. This is what happens at the table. The bread bears the name "body of Christ," and the cup bears the name "blood of the new testament," because God has joined them to what they represent; and the joining is real enough to make the name true, and sacramental enough that the bread remains bread. Finally, the Confession closes the door against every shadow of the Roman doctrine with a sentence that could not be plainer: "albeit, in substance and nature, they still remain truly and only bread and wine, as they were before." The bread does not cease to be bread. The wine does not cease to be wine. What they were before consecration, they remain after it, in substance and in nature. The Divines are not being cold or negative here; they are protecting the very heart of the gospel. For if the bread became the body of Christ, then Christ would be offered again, and the finished work of the cross would be unfinished after all, and the sacrament would become a sacrifice, and the church would bow before a piece of bread. To say that the bread remains bread is to say that Christ's sacrifice was once for all, that his body is in heaven at the right hand of the Father, and that the Supper is a feast and not a shrine. The whole section, held together, is a single sentence of praise to the wisdom of God, who stoops to give us, under the sign of common bread and wine, the body and blood of his Son, truly present to faith, and truly received.

Theological Depth

The doctrine of Section 5 did not fall from the sky; it was hammered out in one of the fiercest controversies of the Reformation, and the voices that shaped it speak with a care born of that long struggle. At the Marburg Colloquy of 1529, Luther and Zwingli sat across a table and argued over four words of Scripture, "This is my body," and neither could persuade the other, and the Reformation was divided at the Lord's table as a result. The confession our churches hold is the matured fruit of that argument, and it is worth hearing how the great Reformed theologians set the balance. Turretin is the right place to begin, because he asked the precise question this section answers and answered it with the tools of the schools. When he took up the words of institution, he insisted that the sentence "This is my body" is figurative, and that "this" refers to the bread, and that "is" here means "signifies." But he was careful to add that the signification is not an empty one. It is a sacramental signification, a signifying that also seals and exhibits and conveys, so that the believer receives in the sign a real communication of the thing signified. Turretin distinguished between the literal and the figurative sense of Scripture, and he refused to let either the Romanist or the Socinian have his way: the one would make the figure into a physical fact, the other would make it into a hollow word. The truth, he argued, is a metonymia that carries a real relation within it, and it is precisely that relation the Confession names. For Turretin the sacraments are not mere signs, as the Socinians held, nor are they the things themselves, as Rome held; they are signs that, by divine appointment, truly exhibit and seal the grace they signify. Calvin's treatment runs along the same ridge but climbs it from the side of the believer's experience. Throughout his discussion of the Supper he held two things at once with unbroken firmness: that the body of Christ is locally in heaven, and that the believer truly feeds upon it by the Spirit. The bread, he said, is called the body of Christ because of a real communion; the soul is lifted by the Holy Spirit to the true body and blood of the Lord, and there is fed with a heavenly and spiritual nourishment, even while the bread on the table remains bread. Calvin could call the bread "a badge" and in the next breath call it "the body of Christ," and he saw no contradiction, because for him the sacramental union was not a figure of speech but a work of the Spirit joining the sign to the thing signified in the act of believing reception. The "truly" of the Confession is Calvin's insistence that the feeding is real; the "sacramentally only" is his insistence that it is not carnal. He would not surrender either half, and he taught the church to hold them as one truth. Shaw, expounding the Confession itself, walks through the section clause by clause and lays bare its grammar. The elements, he observes, remain bread and wine in substance and nature, but they are not common bread and wine; being set apart, they have a sacramental relation to Christ crucified, and because of that relation they are sometimes called by his name. Shaw is careful to say that the name is given "truly, yet sacramentally only," and he explains that the truth of the naming lies in the real relation, while the "sacramentally only" denies every change of substance and every carnal presence. His exposition is a model of the discipline this section demands: he refuses to let the warmth of "truly" carry him into Rome's error, and he refuses to let the caution of "sacramentally only" carry him into the Socinian's coldness. The two halves must breathe together, and Shaw lets them. A. A. Hodge, in his commentary, adds the sharp observation that the whole force of the section lies in the nature of a sign. A sign, he says, is a thing that points beyond itself, and the moment you change its substance you have destroyed its character as a sign; a bread that is no longer bread can no longer signify anything, because it has ceased to be what it was appointed to be. The bread must remain bread precisely so that it may point, and the name "body of Christ" must be a name given and not a substance substituted, precisely so that faith may have something to lay hold of. Hodge's point is the theological depth of the section in a single insight: the sacrament works because the sign stays a sign. Turn the sign into the thing, and you lose both the sign and the thing, for faith has nothing to receive and the senses have nothing to taste. One further word completes the picture, and it belongs to Warfield. Writing on the sacraments, Warfield insisted that the Reformed doctrine holds together two affirmations that every other position tears apart: that the sacrament is a real means of grace, and that the elements remain what they are. The Romanist holds the first and denies the second; the rationalist holds the second and denies the first. The Reformed faith holds both, and holds them for the same reason: because the efficacy of the sacrament lies not in the element but in the Spirit of God, who works by his Word and through the sign in the hearts of believers. The bread remains bread, and yet grace truly flows; and it is God, not the bread, who makes it flow. All of these men, from Turretin to Warfield, are saying the same thing with one voice: the Supper is a feast of real communion at which the bread is truly bread and Christ is truly given, and neither truth may be let go.

Puritan Application

The doctrine of Section 5 may seem at first to be a matter for the schools, a fine point about signs and substances. But it is intensely practical, for it governs the whole posture of the soul at the Lord's table. Let us search our own hearts by it. First, hold both halves of the sentence, and refuse to let go of either. There is a temperament that loves the "truly" so much that it begins to seek Christ in the bread itself, and a temperament that loves the "sacramentally only" so much that it reduces the Supper to a mere object lesson, a stirring reminder with no Christ in it at all. Both are spiritual dangers, and both are in us. When you come to the table, come with the Confession's balance: expect Christ truly, and seek him spiritually, not carnally. Do not bow to the bread, and do not despise it as common bread either. It is a sign, but a sign that God has joined to the thing it signifies, and a sign through which he truly works. Guard the "truly" with the "sacramentally only," and the "sacramentally only" with the "truly," and you will walk the narrow way between idolatry and unbelief. Second, learn the humility of sacramental speech, and let it teach you how to speak of holy things. The bread bears the name "body of Christ" because God has appointed it to do so, and that appointment should make us reverent and not presumptuous. We may call the bread the body of Christ, because God calls it so; and we must not call it the body of Christ in any carnal sense, because God forbids it. The same principle governs all our speech about sacred things. Speak as Scripture speaks, no more and no less. Where God has joined a name to a sign, do not separate them; and where God has kept them distinct, do not confound them. The tongue that learns this grammar at the table will speak rightly of every other holy thing, giving to each its proper place and refusing to say more than God has said. Third, seek the reality and not merely the sign, and let the bread drive you past itself to Christ. The bread remains bread, and that is the whole point: it is a means, not an end, a sign that points, not a thing to rest in. If you stop at the bread, you have missed the Supper, even if you have eaten it a thousand times. Press through the sign to the thing signified; feed by faith on Christ crucified, whose body and blood the bread and cup set before you. The believer who comes to the table and finds only bread and wine has come in unbelief; the believer who comes and, by the Spirit, lays hold of Christ through the sign has come worthily. Let every reception be a stretching of the soul toward the Lord, a real feeding on him who is really present to faith, and do not be content with the outward morsel when the inward feast is set before you. Fourth, adore Christ alone, and let the bread remain a creature. Because the bread remains truly and only bread, it is not to be worshipped, and the whole weight of the first commandment falls upon any heart that bows before it. The temptation to worship the sign returns in every age in new dress, and we are not exempt from it: a cherished manner of worship, a beloved minister, a treasured tradition, a style of music, even a particular building or a particular table, can all be invested with the honour that belongs to God alone. The test is the one this section teaches: does this outward thing carry my soul to Christ, or does it stop my soul at itself? The bread that remains bread is honoured best when it is received in faith and left behind as the soul presses on to the Lord it signifies. Let all your adoration gather itself upon Christ, and let every creature, the bread of the Supper included, stand back in its proper place as a servant of your joy, never its master. Fifth, take comfort in the "truly," for it is a word for the weak and the weary. There are hours when faith burns low, when the soul can hardly believe that Christ is near, when the remembrance of his death seems a story told of someone else. It is for such hours that the Confession says the relation is real, and the receiving is true. You do not come to this table to act a part or to stir a memory; you come to receive, and the Lord who appointed the sign stands behind it and gives himself through it. The bread is bread, and Christ is in heaven, and yet by his Spirit he meets you at the table and feeds your soul as truly as your hand takes the bread. Lay hold of this with both hands, you who feel your own unworthiness and wonder whether grace is for you. It is for you. The sign is true, the promise is true, the Lord is true, and he who said "This is my body" said it that you might come, receive, and live.

Prayer

O Lord Jesus Christ, thou who didst take bread in thy hands on the night in which thou wast betrayed and say, This is my body: we adore thee, and we confess that our tongues can never speak of these holy things except as thou hast taught us. Grant that we may hold together what thou hast joined: that the bread is truly bread, and that thou art truly given; that the sign is not thyself, and yet that we do truly feed on thee by the Spirit. Save us from the idolatry that would bow before a creature, and from the unbelief that would empty thy table of thy presence. Teach our hearts the grammar of thy grace, that we may neither say more nor less than thou hast said. O Holy Spirit, thou who dost lift the soul to the true body and blood of Christ, make the relation between the sign and the thing signified a living reality within us. When our faith burns low, and the bread seems only bread, and the cup only wine, do thou quicken us to lay hold of the Lord who stands behind them. Do not suffer us to rest in the outward morsel when the inward feast is spread before us; nor suffer us to despise the outward sign which thou thyself hast joined to thy promise. Feed us with Christ crucified, that we may grow in grace, and that our hearts may be kept in the narrow way between presumption and despair. O our God, we thank thee for the wisdom that gave us common bread and wine to be signs of so great a salvation. As thou didst teach Pharaoh by dreams that the seven kine are seven years, and as thou didst teach thy disciples by the vine that we are branches abiding in the true Vine, so teach us at this table to read the sign aright, and to pass through it to the substance. May we come to thy Supper with reverent and believing hearts, truly receiving, and truly fed, until the day when faith gives way to sight, and the sign gives way to the substance, and we sit down with thee at the marriage supper of the Lamb. Abide in us, and let us abide in thee, for without thee we can do nothing. Amen.