When it comes to the sacraments there are a few things necessary, including faith, to bring the full measure to bear on your soul. First of all you need to have a lawfully called minister of the gospel applying the visible signs of God’s covenant blessings. This year at Synod the ARP Church made it clear in a change made to our Directory of Public Worship that you can’t do Zoom/online communion. The same could be said for worship itself. It’s not something you can do by yourself no matter how many people are online with you.

As has been the case from when we was back in the single digits of the catechism our Westminster Divines have taken one part of the previous question and have begun to expand on it as we get into the next-to-last section which will cover the sacraments of the Church. Thankfully we don’t have to worry about defining “sacrament” since Q. 92 below does it for us. The key thing to take at this point is that there are ways that God has made to help us grow in grace and we need to be careful not to be wiser than the Lord. As is noted there are only two. Not seven as Rome might think, and not thousands like evangelicalism would conjure up in their never-ending desire to find something new.
In the catechism lesson today we are going to talk about what makes a sacrament a sacrament and why this matters. Here are the Q/A’s for this week:
Q. 91. How do the sacraments become effectual means of salvation?
A. The sacraments become effectual means of salva­tion, not from any virtue in them, or in him that doth ad­minister them; but only by the blessing of Christ, and the working of his Spirit in them that by faith receive them.
 Q. 92. What is a sacrament?
 A. A sacrament is an holy ordinance instituted by Christ; where­in, by sensible signs, Christ, and the bene­fits of the new covenant, are represented, sealed, and ap­plied to believers.
Q. 93. Which are the sacraments of the New Testa­ment?
A. The sacraments of the New Testament are: Baptism and the Lord’s Supper.
The first thing that we read above is that as with all things what really matters is Jesus. It’s not the water, the cup, or the bread or even the minister (though all are necessary in their own way). If Christ is not in it then it’s worth about as much as a freezer in the Arctic. However, if the Church takes from that idea that it doesn’t really matter how we go about accomplishing the sacrament as long as we ask the Lord to be a part of it then we’ve lost the plot at some point in time.
Isaiah the prophet speaks at length about the reasons why God has refused to accept the sacrifices of Israel. He makes it clear that it stinketh the nostrils of Jehovah because they are neither offered in faith nor in the manner described in the law. If Israel wants Him to take notice and give the promise contained therein then they best get to:
…[seeking] Me daily, and delight to know My ways, as a nation that did righteousness, and did not forsake the ordinance of their God. They ask of Me the ordinances of justice; they take delight in approaching God.”
Remember last week when we talked about our need to be diligent with the means of grace found in the Scriptures?
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God never intended to save all of ethnic Israel. He always intended that the children of promise or elect Israel were to be the heirs of the promises. That has not changed. Gentiles are included as children of the promises made to Abraham. That has not changed either. It is about mercy, not law-righteousness. All who receive this mercy come to Christ by faith. God’s intention is that both Jews and Gentiles, though all shut up in disobedience, are given mercy. The writing of this amazing truth causes Paul, the Jewish-born apostle to the Gentiles, to erupt in a doxology to God for His unfathomable mercy.

Dear CCW Family,
Israel has been on the minds of most of us these days. It seems appropriate to revisit an article I wrote 10 years ago addressing the phrase, “And so, all Israel will be saved” (Rom 11:26). Here is the way I see this:
How and When Will All Israel Be Saved?
This phrase has often stymied students of the New Testament, and has been a verse with many interpretations. I offer mine. To adamantly conclude that I have the right one, or even one that has not been proposed by others is presumptuous. What I’m offering is merely from my Bible reading and not from diligently studying other authors on the subject, so I could likely be repeating what another has said. I also realize that a lot rests on the interpretation of this phrase, so one has to very careful to know the context.
Who is “all Israel”?
In my opinion, though Israel is discussed in various ways in Romans 9-11, “all Israel” in this verse (11:26) is “all elect Israel.” I believe Paul is saying, “and so, all [chosen] Israel will be saved.” This comports with 9:6-13 below. Please read it carefully:
But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For they are not all Israel who are descended from Israel; nor are they all children because they are Abraham’s descendants, but: “Through Isaac Your descendants will be named.” That is, it is not the children of the flesh who are children of God, but the children of the promise are regarded as descendants. For this is the word of promise: “At this time I will come, and Sarah shall have a son.” And not only this, there was Rebekah also, when she had conceived twins by one man, our father Isaac; for though the twins were not yet born and had not done anything good or bad, so that God’s purpose according to His choice would stand, not because of works but because of Him who calls, it was said to her, “The older will serve the younger.” Just as it is written, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”
In the entire section of chapters 9-11, Paul is making the point that the children of promise are those God chooses and calls (9:23-24). These are the elect such as Isaac and Jacob (9:8-13). Some are Jews and some Gentiles, for God says in Hosea, “I will call those who were not my people, ‘My people’” (9:25). Israel as an ethnic entity has rejected God’s offer of Christ, and “it is the remnant that will be saved” (9:27). Whatever one says about the sentence, “and so all Israel will be saved,” we must remember that it will only be the remnant that will actually be saved among Israel and that remnant is the true Israel about whom the promises were made.
Who Responds by Faith?
In chapter 10 of Romans, we see that ethnic Israel as a whole has not responded by faith in Christ, even though they have had a zeal for God. They bypassed God’s way of righteousness through Christ, and continued in law works. The possibility of belief was close to them, but it was the Gentiles who responded much better. Officially, Israel, as the perverse generation, rejected Christ. God “stretched out His hand” and “hardened” the hearts of Israelites because of this—except for the elect remnant.
Are The Promises Made to Israel Abrogated?
Chapter 11 is where our often misinterpreted phrase is found: “and so all Israel will be saved.” How does Paul develop his thoughts?
First of all, Paul asks the question that provides the theme of the chapter: “I say then, God has not rejected His people, has He? May it never be.” Paul introduces his argument in this chapter by using two illustrations—himself and the Elijah story. Israel is not rejected by God because, Paul says, “I too am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin.” In other words, he is saying, “I am a case in point that Israel is not rejected and that the promises made concerning them are being fulfilled, because I have believed in Christ as an Israelite.”
And, secondly, Paul reminds them of Elijah. What did God tell Elijah when he thought there were none like him who would follow God?
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The most pressing civic duty for Christians is to insist upon the lordship of Christ. We must witness against the idols of this world. As was the case in the early years of the Church, when the cult of the emperor demanded loyalty, so today our most powerful witness will be the act of ­refusal. Christians are called to obey the magistrate. But we must first honor God, never bending the knee to civil authorities, institutions, and movements.

Leaders of the Civil Rights Movement urged resistance to laws that enforced racial discrimination. They appealed to natural law and God’s law, with the aim of reforming our civic order in accordance with transcendent standards. In our time, the rule of law denies nature and usurps the authority of God, making the powers of this world into the supreme lawgivers. In 2015, the Supreme Court of the United States took political possession of the institution of marriage, redefining it so that men may marry men and women may marry women. The same has been done in other jurisdictions in the West. More recently, the Court adopted the view that men who wish to be regarded as women, and women who want to be seen as men, must be accorded protection against ­discrimination.
This refusal to acknowledge nature and recognize divine authority puts Christians, and all citizens, in a perilous position. For when transcendent truth is denied, whether natural or revealed, the once fitting and proper instruments of civil authority become absolute. They are deified as all-powerful idols.
Secularism encourages political absolutism. It removes religious authority from public life. In ­doing so, it claims to secure neutrality in civic affairs. We are told that this ostensible neutrality brings religious freedom and allows for a social contract based on needs and interests shared by everyone, without regard to theological convictions. Yet secularism’s promise has shown itself to be hollow. It is a metaphysical project with political consequences, engaging in soulcraft by another name.
A society that makes no reference to God implicitly claims that all the goods worth pursuing can be found in this life. Consequently, it sponsors a regime that privileges—and at times imposes—its purely immanent and this-worldly projects and ambitions. On the one hand, therapeutic ideals of self-invention insist that individually determined projects and modes of self-expression have final authority. Our social policies must pay homage to the sovereign self, even if it means violating the sanctity of life and denying the moral truth inscribed upon our bodies as male and female. On the other hand, the regime accords our bodies a defining role. Powerful i­­deologies concerning race, intelligence, and sexual desire insist that we are defined by our biology.
This seems a contradiction: A self-chosen identity that denies the authority of the body is privileged alongside an identity politics that accords the body supreme significance. But these two understandings of identity have in common a repudiation of transcendent authority. The expressive self rejects the demands that moral truths place on our freedom; God’s creation must not hinder self-­creation. Identity politics rejects God’s transcendent call and bids us accept our place in the prisons of race, gender, and sexual orientation.
In Genesis we read: “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him” (1:27). We are not simply bodies; the human person is stamped by the image of God. But neither are we purely spiritual beings who transcend our physical condition. Our souls animate our bodies, which are formed in accord with the divinely ordained difference between men and women. We are at once capable of transcendence and firmly rooted in God’s creation.
When political authority no longer serves something deeper—the moral order—or something higher—the promise of transcendence—it becomes sheer power. Liberty becomes grandiose self-invention, an ideal that masks our captivity to anxiety and our vulnerability to social control. In a world unable to acknowledge the laws of nature and nature’s God, traditional limits on state power fall away—and without moral authority or divine authority to anchor human affairs, we turn to the state as our only hope, inviting it to become all-powerful in order to hold everything together.
As Evangelicals and Catholics, we regard our political inheritance as noble. The best of our constitutional and civic traditions draw upon Christian sources. But secularism has spent down the Christian inheritance of the West. It is urgent, therefore, that we recover a biblical understanding of government and of our duties as citizens. The Christian tradition affirms two sources for the right ordering of human affairs: Temporal authority ensures peace and tranquility in the civic realm, and spiritual authority guides and governs souls toward the end of their salvation in Christ. The two authorities—“two swords,” as the Christian tradition sometimes puts it—are distinct. But both are required. A political community that does not accord proper scope to political judgments about our temporal well-being becomes a theocratic parody. A society that refuses to acknowledge God’s call for us to cleave to him in faith cannot sustain the authority of men, and will devolve into anomie and ceaseless struggles for power.
The Church is a community in exile. ­Justin Martyr observes: “Christians dwell in the world, but do not belong to the world.” We journey as pilgrims toward the final consummation of the created order, when Jesus, whom the Father has raised from the dead and seated at his right hand, will return in glory, with all things under his dominion (Acts 2:22–36; see, also, Ps. 110). As Christians, therefore, we recognize no worldly authority as ultimate. The words of St. Peter before the priestly council in Jerusalem must serve as the foundation of any Christian understanding of citizenship: “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).
Our constitutions, governments, civic traditions, and institutions do not operate independent of God’s authority. Even now Jesus is Lord. Human affairs are ordered in God’s providence toward their final end in Christ, to whom all things have been made subject. Christians cannot accept the secular conceit that the legitimacy of government stems solely from a social contract or the consent of the governed, however useful such concepts may be as part of a fully developed political theology. St. Paul is unequivocal: “There is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God” (Rom. 13:1).
The particular purposes for which God has instituted temporal authority are not transparent to our understanding. We are not privy to God’s designs. As believers, we must resist shallow judgments that too quickly baptize (or demonize) political movements and public personalities: “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?” (Rom. 11:34; Isa. 40:13). Moreover, the Church has functioned in a remarkable variety of regimes. There is no Christian system of government. Nevertheless, Scripture and the Christian tradition offer a general account of the legitimate purposes of civil authority.
After insisting that every person is rightly subject to governing authorities, St. Paul explains that governmental authority is ordained by God for the sake of restraining sin. Civil authorities exist to promote good conduct and punish bad conduct. They bear the sword of coercion as agents of God’s judgment against the actions of wrongdoers, chastising the wicked. This is an important office. A society that fails to deter murder, theft, and other crimes does not deserve our loyalty. This does not mean that a regime must be perfect. Insofar as wrongdoing is prohibited and grave transgressions of the moral law are not ­overlooked, we must provide our support, according the respect and honor due to civil authority (Rom. 13:1, 4–7).
The First Letter of Peter makes a similar argument: “Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to praise those who do right” (2:13–15). God has given the power of the temporal sword to those who rule so that wrongdoing is met with firm rebuke and the wicked do not lead others astray. History has seen governments that rage against God’s law. If the rule of law perversely turns against morality and justice, civil ­disobedience may be required, and even rebellion may be justified. But if temporal power is used properly, Christians are called to be the most loyal of citizens. Christians need not be blind to the ­injustices that characterize all regimes in our fallen world. We may be active in efforts of reform. Yet when the temporal sword seeks to honor God’s intentions, however imperfectly, we must not foster rebellion or simmering dissent.
Restraint of sin allows civil authority to secure the good of peace. As Augustine makes clear, the peace of the earthly city does not rest in the harmony of wills that comes about when we honor and worship God in one accord. This peace is found only in the City of God, when love of God has conquered love of self. In our pilgrimage toward that end, we can experience a foretaste of this peace, most often in the life of the Church, but also in civil affairs, when we join together to achieve common ends. But Christians recognize the limits of political ambition. We accept that we must function in political, economic, and social structures that presume a preponderance of self-love. Often, the only realistic alternative is to moderate the destructive effects of self-love “by a kind of compromise between human wills” (City of God, XIX.17).The well-regulated marketplace can control greed. The rule of law can constrain the powerful. The pain of want, if allowed in proper circumstances, can motivate the indolent. As St. Paul reminds the Thessalonians, “For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: If anyone will not work, let him not eat” (2 Thess. 3:10).
Too often, modern Christians chafe against the limits of earthly peace. We undervalue its relative good, disparaging it in comparison to the ideal of true harmony and integral solidarity that characterizes the City of God. Some fall into a theologized activism, urging the inauguration of the New Jerusalem here and now. But the Church is the sole custodian of God’s heavenly peace that passes all understanding—not governments, constitutions, civic institutions, or legal traditions. A failure to recognize the limits of earthly peace can lead to the exasperated refusal to countenance God’s delay of the final consummation. The result is a social Pelagianism, a political works righteousness that seeks to confect heavenly peace out of human movements, ideologies, and efforts. Some of the greatest crimes of the modern era have been committed by those who imagined themselves capable of transcending, through social engineering and revolution, the mediocrity of the earthly city, which is always hobbled by self-love.
The Pelagian rebellion against the limits of earthly peace is mirrored by a social Donatism, a perfectionism that will not be sullied by worldly loyalties. We wash our hands of the sin-infected institutions that govern society, insisting that our civic covenants make no legitimate claims upon our soul. Like the zealous social activist, the Christian purist often makes correct judgments about the inadequacy of even the best governments. ­Augustine observes that as the peace of the earthly city rests in the absence of violence, it is not a true peace. But we must not scoff at the negative peace of the earthly city. Rather, as Augustine teaches, we are called to make good use of the relative tranquility of a well-ordered society, neither disturbing it with utopian dreams nor spurning our duty to honor and protect its limited but genuine goods.
Our different traditions have different views of the degree to which faithful Christians can exercise the office of the magistrate. Some of us believe that a life of discipleship forbids the use of lethal force, which backstops civil authority. But we agree that civil authority is ordained by God. And we agree that our commitment to the triumph of Christ’s peace need not contradict our loyalty to the civic order, however imperfect that order may be.
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