We’ve talked about how the bread and the wine are necessary. They each play a role in helping us to see in a visible way the death of Jesus Christ and through that sign to more deeply be encouraged in the gift. One by a faith revealed, and the other by a faith disclosed. The spiritual is where in some sense the action happens in Communion. It is by the union we have through the Holy Spirit where the connections take place through faith and the spiritual nourishment is applied when we rightly and properly partake of the outward elements.

Words like mystical, supernatural, enchanted, etc… sound like they belong more at home in a fantasy novel than they do being associated with a Presbyterian church. However, we would do well to remember that we should be comfortable with such terms, especially when our minds turn towards the sacraments of the Church. We confess our thoroughgoing skepticism no more than when we get uncomfortable with the stuff that happens outside our brain. Yet, our fathers in the faith in Scotland and elsewhere worried not about such modern hang-ups. It would be quite beneficial to us to re-embrace the weird in the Christian faith.
What does all that then have to do with the Lord’s Supper? In no other place in our religious life do we need to think outside the confines of what we can perceive with our senses than when it comes to what happens when we partake of the bread and the cup at Christ’s table. For our Q/A today we will read more on what the Westminster Divines understood about these truths.
Here are the two for today:
Q. 170. How do they that worthily communicate in the Lord’s supper feed upon the body and blood of Christ therein?
A. As the body and blood of Christ are not corporally or carnally present in, with, or under the bread and wine in the Lord’s supper, and yet are spiritually present to the faith of the receiver, no less truly and really than the elements themselves are to their outward senses; so they that worthily communicate in the sacrament of the Lord’s supper do therein feed upon the body and blood of Christ, not after a corporal and carnal, but in a spiritual manner; yet truly and really, while by faith they receive and apply unto themselves Christ crucified, and all the benefits of his death.
Q. 171. How are they that receive the sacrament of the Lord’s supper to prepare themselves before they come unto it?
A. They that receive the sacrament of the Lord’s supper are, before they come, to prepare themselves thereunto, by examining themselves of their being in Christ, of their sins and wants; of the truth and measure of their knowledge, faith, repentance; love of God and the brethren, charity to all men, forgiving those that have done them wrong; of their desires after Christ, and of their new obedience; and by renewing the exercise of these graces, by serious meditation, and fervent prayer.
In God’s way of doing things the body and the soul are meant to work together for the betterment of the individual believer. We confess that the human being is both physical and spiritual. How that works exactly is above our paygrade. What we do comprehend is that both are creations of the Lord and they both inhabit our identity. They are not to be understood as either fighting against one another (like a cartoon where each have a different voice) or that one is more important to God than the other. They are equal in power and glory.
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Individuals, corporations, and governments all condense their positions into slogans, preferably the socially acceptable ones. Therefore, the narrative around the facts is formed of the puzzle-like pre-made constructs, further limited by the constant virtue signalling. And if the narrative does not offer enough flexibility, our perception of reality is forced to compensate. In the end, it appears that the facts actually do care about your feelings, or at least about the feelings of the crowd.

Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.
So wrote George Orwell, describing the dystopian system in which there is only one correct opinion, and if reality disagrees with it, then reality is wrong. Fortunately, we do not live in such a world, but the alarming trend is that our agreement over the facts are becoming less and less stable. Every side has its own truth. It may initially seem that this situation is the opposite of Orwell’s, but the current situation is, in fact, nothing but the result of one of the contestants’ victory. The principle is the same: each fact has its certain meaning, and each action speaks of a certain character feature. Everyone should support the current thing, else they are deemed bigots, racists, sexists, and oppressors. Alternatively, they may be named traitors. And should the current thing change, everyone must update their opinions accordingly.
The problem is that the leading narrative can no longer be questioned. There can only be one interpretation of events and only one judgement. Once it is established that a particular event has taken place, the case is all but closed; if a man has killed, he must be a murderer, and nuances do not matter. At the same time, the smallest of details is enough to condemn, regardless of its relevance or importance. This is a simplistic approach of a town square mob conquering governments and courts. Moral outrage replaces debates, and facts are sacrificed to avoid it.
This becomes evident in the controversies such as the teaching of critical race theory or propagation of queerness at schools. While the conservative camp insists that such topics are, at the very least, inappropriate for children, the progressive one often claims no such things take place at all, accusing its opponents of spreading conspiracy theories but somehow being extremely upset when CRT and LGBT propaganda gets banned from the state education.
This is evident in the British Labour Party’s inability to define a woman and their treatment of John Cleese, who dared to utter a great heresy of calling London with its 43.4% of native white British population “not really an English city any more.”
This is evident in the infamous CNN coverage of the Kenosha, Wisconsin riots in 2020 when the correspondent was filmed in front of the burning vehicles, while the banner on the bottom read “fiery but mostly peaceful protests.”
Finally, this progressive hegemony  is evident in COVID-19 information policies: whatever the doctors employed by the government said was automatically true, even if their opinions have changed back and forth during the two years of lockdowns.
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Written by Guy M. Richard |
Saturday, April 20, 2024
Instead of looking for perfection, we should be looking for any desire to pray, any desire to meditate, and any desire to obey—however small. We should look for conviction when we fall short too. Is there any remorse in regard to your prayerlessness or lack of attention to Scripture or to obedience? If so, be encouraged. These kinds of things are impossible without the Spirit of Christ, because apart from Christ no one will ever want anything to do with God in any way (see Rom. 3:10ff).

I want you to picture the scene: a pastor is meeting with a member of his congregation who has come to him seeking his counsel. The member has been struggling with assurance of salvation and is asking the pastor for help. The question uppermost in this member’s mind is, “How can I know for sure that God is for me and not against me?”
The scene is not unusual. Pastors get asked these kinds of questions all the time. The struggle for assurance is undoubtedly one of the most persistent struggles that many Christians will face in their lifetimes. But what would you say if I told you that the pastor in this scenario responded by saying, “The key to knowing whether or not God is for you is to feel Christ inside of you”? How would you respond if you were the one sitting in the pastor’s office, and this is the counsel you received? Many people that I know would be tempted to get up and walk out. Feelings are fallible. They can easily mislead us, and, oftentimes, they do. So, why would any faithful pastor direct his church members to feel anything within themselves?
Surprising as it may be, however, this is precisely the counsel that John Calvin—of all people—gives in his commentary on Ephesians 5. After devoting significant time and energy to unpacking the doctrine of union with Christ, Calvin quite unexpectedly says: “Let us therefore labour more to feel Christ living in us, than to discover the nature of [our union with Him].” It’s a statement that comes out of left field, as least it does for me. I cannot recall another place, off the top of my head, where Calvin speaks of feeling anything much less of feeling Christ within us. Quite simply, Calvin is not known for his “touchy-feely” demeanor, convictions, or counsel. This statement sounds more like what we would hear from a pastor or ministry leader in the 21st century than in the 16th century. What is Calvin trying to say here? And what does it mean to “labour…to feel Christ living in us”?
What is Calvin saying?
The first thing that Calvin has in mind here is the mysterious nature of our union with Christ. It is “mysterious” not because we don’t know anything at all about it but because, as AA Hodge once said, “it so far transcends all the analogies of earthly relationships, in the intimacy of its connection, in the transforming power of its influence, and in the excellence of its consequences.” Rather than seeking to understand how Christ is “in us” or what it really means, we should instead, according to Calvin, focus upon other things that are less mysterious. And Calvin believes that feeling Christ within us is at least one of things that qualifies.
The second idea that Calvin has in mind in encouraging us to feel Christ within us is the fruitfulness of our union with Him. When the apostle Paul says that “Christ in [us]” is “the hope of glory” (Col. 1:27), he is highlighting the transformation that union with Christ produces within every believer. To have Jesus within us is to have something that we didn’t have before: namely, hope. That hope represents an experiential change within the believer; it is something that we can see and feel, generally speaking. Every Christian may well undergo seasons in which that hope is veiled, but that should be the exception rather than the rule. Being a Christian means having Christ within us, and having Christ within us means that we have hope.
Paul speaks more explicitly about the transformation we experience in Romans 8:9-11, which says:
You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.
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