I. The Lord’s Supper is a proof of the fact that Christ died. Any commemoration of an historical fact, when such commemoration dates back to the time immediately subsequent to the event, involves of necessity the truth of the fact. As this commemoration has been uninterrupted and universal, it is the testimony of each succeeding generation to the great fact in question. We should so regard it. It is one important end to be accomplished by the ordinance, and it is a great honor to be of the number of those appointed to keep alive the knowledge of the fact.
II. It is a continued proof that the death of Christ was the culminating point of his work. Had it been simply designed to keep Christ in mind, it might have been his birth, or his life, or his history that it commemorated. So it has been with other great benefactors of our race. But the fact that his death was selected by Christ himself to be perpetually celebrated, shows that his death was his great work. He came into the world to die. All else was subordinate to this. He wee to be remembered not as teacher or healer, but as dying.
III. The Lord’s Supper commemorates the manner and nature of Christ’s death. It was not an ordinary death, brought about by sickness or decay; but it was a death in which his body was broken and his blood shed. Neither was it a death by lawless violence, only a casualty, but a death judicially indicted. He was condemned to die, by the man who had the power of life and death in his hands. But this mere human judgment was only the form and instrumentality under and by which a divine judgment was pronounced. It was by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God that he was crucified and slain. This is true not only in the sense in which all things come to pass according to the counsel of the divine will, but also in the sense that God delivered him up. He laid on him the iniquity of us all. Christ regarded his sufferings and death as imposed by the hand of God. It was to him that he looked. We are to regard the death of Christ as the offering up of his Son by the Father for the sins of the world.
IV. It sets Christ’s death forth as voluntary. He was led, but he was led unresistingly. He laid down his life of himself. He had power to lay it down and power to take it again. Thus he is, exhibited in the prophets and thus also in the evangelists.
V. It sets forth his death in the twofold light of a sin offering and a federal offering. The latter is the former, but the former is not always the latter.
1. As the victim bore the sins of the offerer, so Christ bore our sins.
2. As the death of the victim took the place of that of the offerer, so Christ’s death was vicarious.
3. As the effect of a sacrifice was expiation and propitiation, so was Christ’s death. It removed our guilt; it renders God propitious.
4. As the offerer was certainly pardoned and restored, so is the death of Christ certainly efficacious. It not merely renders salvation possible, but certain.
As a federal offering,
1. It ratifies the covenant. It is the pledge on the part of God that he will fulfill his promise.
2. Therefore it secures for the believer all the benefits of the covenant of grace.
VI. As it sets forth Christ’s death under these two aspects, or as Christ’s death was in fact both a sin offering and a federal offering, so the Lord’s Supper is a commemoration of his death as a sin offering and as a federal offering. It is so to the Church, to the spectators, and to the world. It is a continued testimony to all men that Christ died for the sins of the world, the just for the unjust; that his blood is sacrificial and cleanses from all sin.
VII. But to the believing communicant it is more than this. It is the actual reception of the body and blood of Christ, i.e., of their sacrificial benefits. He then and there, as he receives the bread and wine, receives Christ and all his benefits for his spiritual nourishment and growth in grace. This act of appropriation is not an emotional act; It does not imply any special elevation of devout feeling, however desirable that may be; it is not an act of the understanding merely; but it is an act of faith i.e., believing,
1. That Christ died.
2. That he died.
3. That he died judicially.
4. That he died by the appointment of God.
5. That he died for the sins of men, as a sacrifice, and has been accepted as such.
6. That we are partakers of the benefits of his death. We receive them as freely offered.
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