The Lord’s Supper as Fatherly Love – Calvin and the Lord’s Supper (Part 1)

“The knowledge of this high mystery is very necessary, and in view of its very greatness it demands a careful explanation.”

So John Calvin writes of the Lord’s Supper. And then he continues for page after page after page to unpack this “high mystery,” explaining its significance, defending it against its corrupters, all the while trying to open the eyes of Christians to this God-ordained means of grace and what it can be for hearts of faith. The energy and bite of his writing sounds foreign to our modern ears where this Supper can so easily be “one of those things we do” that we never quite understand–though we know it’s important. We will take a handful of entries to walk through Calvin’s writing on the subject, found in Book IV, chapter 17, of his Institutes. He isn’t the final word on the subject–that belongs to God alone in his word–yet, Calvin’s writing is rich and inspiring.

As he proceeds in the first section (“Sign and Thing”) he uses two terms that help us start to unpack the Lord’s Supper. Firstly, it is “nourishment.”  This “nourishment” is the loving response of our heavenly Father who has adopted us as children: ”God has received us, once for all, into his family, to hold us not only as servants but as sons.”  God our heavenly Father has brought us from death to life (Jn 1:12-13; Eph 2:1-5). But then, having brought us to life, he now “nourishes us throughout the course of our life.” And so, “just as bread and wine sustain physical life, so are souls fed by Christ.” In the Lord’s Supper our souls find the nourishment they need to continue encouraged in our walk of faith, that we “may repeatedly gather strength until we shall have reached heavenly immortality.”

Secondly, he calls the Supper a “pledge,” or “guarantee and token,” or later, “confirmation.” It is a “pledge, to assure us of this continuing liberality.” In other words, the Lord’s Supper isn’t a new work that we do, or even that God does, but a “pledge” to remind our hearts of what has already taken place. It is like when we make a major purchase, and pay it completely, and the seller takes a big red stamp that says, “paid,” and puts it across the bill. The Lord’s Supper does that for us, announcing to our souls and the world, that our debts are “paid,” that our sins are “punished,” that we now belong to God.

Several times in this opening section the phrase “once for all” is used to describe “the fact that the Lord’s body was once for all so sacrificed for us that we may now feed upon it,” or, “that his blood was once for all so shed for us in order to be our perpetual drink,” or, the fact that he, “once for all ratified with his blood” the new covenant. The Lord’s Supper is a “confirmation” of this fact, not a re-enactment or re-sacrificing of this fact. The only new sacrifice in this Supper is the “sacrifice of praise” (eucharist) that we offer as in all acts of obedience and worship. Our lives are filled with struggles and temptations and failures. Surely Calvin is right that we need “nourishment” in this walk of faith.

The Lord’s Supper meets us in our hunger and directs us toward true food, toward Jesus Christ himself. But, our challenges are more than simply weaknesses, they are also sins, intentional acts of rebellion against our Creator. Here the Lord’s Supper meets us again, reminding us of that blessed “once for all” sacrifice of Jesus the Lamb of God being crucified for just those very sins. We are reminded of the complete salvation we have been given, and then we can again lift our heads toward our heavenly Father in glad worship.

May the Lord’s Supper be just this to us-—nourishment for hungry souls, and comfort for wandering hearts.

DJB