What are the Sacraments?
Series: Recommended Resources
Stanley was brought up in the Methodist Church, and his experience there is similar to that of most American Christians: “At Pleasant Mound [Methodist Church] baptisms and confirmations were done and the Lord’s Supper (infrequently) celebrated, but according to Stanley everyone knew that these had nothing to do with being a Christian. The real deal was getting saved on Sunday nights. The congregation would gather, sing hymns for hours, and wait to wear down the Spirit’s patience.”[1] We’re all looking for experiences of the Holy Spirit’s power in our lives. We want to know God, and we want to grow in our Christian life. This is good. The New Testament is replete with exhortations to seek after the Spirit and his gifts. But the odd thing is that in our pursuit of the Spirit’s work in our lives, we almost always ignore two tools that he has promised to use to promote our spiritual growth: the sacraments.
Jesus has given the church two sacraments, which we observe regularly in faithfulness to his command and in faith-full awareness of his promises. The sacraments are meant to be visible-sensory-bodily signs of the invisible truths of what Jesus has done for us by dying and rising in our place. And Jesus specifically ties our growth in him (discipleship) to them (see Matthew 28.19). The two sacraments are baptism and communion.[2] “Together with the preaching of God’s Word, these are means by which God mysteriously, yet surely meets with, pledges himself to, and sustains the faith of his people (Romans 4.11; 3.28; 10.8, 17).”[3]
The Belgic Confession describes well the importance and role of the sacraments when it says:
We believe that our good God, mindful of our crudeness and weakness, has ordained sacraments for us to seal his promises in us, to pledge his good will and grace toward us, and also to nourish and sustain our faith. He has added these to the Word of the gospel to represent better to our external senses both what he enables us to understand by his Word and what he does inwardly in our hearts, confirming in us the salvation he imparts to us. For they are visible signs and seals of something internal and invisible, by means of which God works in us through the power of the Holy Spirit. So they are not empty and hollow signs to fool and deceive us, for their truth is Jesus Christ, without whom they would be nothing.
In other words, God has achieved our salvation through Jesus life, death, and resurrection for us. And in the gospel: the good news of what Jesus has done, he promises us the salvation Jesus has procured. The sacraments are another means of delivering his gospel promises to us, which take into account the fact that we are embodied, sense-oriented creatures. The sacraments are not “empty and hollow signs,” with no tangible benefit to them. Instead they bring us Jesus Christ and his benefits.[4]
The sacraments do this in two ways, as signs and as seals. As signs, they depict a reality to us; something about the gospel. Baptism shows us that Jesus cleanses us from our sin as well as our union with him in his death and resurrection (Romans 6.3-5). Communion shows us that Jesus’ body and blood were broken and shed for us, and that we are, together, part of his body the church (1 Corinthians 10.16-17). They remind us of these realities, and provide a visual image to strengthen our perception of them.[5] That is how they function as signs. As seals, the sacraments serve to confirm the promises they signify. Just like a seal on a letter guarantees its authenticity, through the sacraments, God pledges himself to fulfill his promises for all who are united to Jesus by faith.
The sacraments are not magical. They do not save anyone. But they are also not empty, or meaningless, or trivial, or really even optional.[6] Through them God offers us genuine spiritual benefits, that we should not ignore. The Bible never explicitly addresses how this happens, but throughout the assumption is that, in a very real sense, that through the sacraments God does what he promises (e.g., Romans 6.4-5; 1 Corinthians 10.16-17; Galatians 3.27; Colossians 2.11-13). A helpful analogy for understanding how this works comes from the world of theatre. In most plays, we have props. These props help us to better enter into and grasp the world of the play. Strictly speaking, we can have a play without the props, but we generally prefer them to be there. In the same way, our faith still “works” without props. But they sure do help.
And at the end of the day, we need all the help we can get. We’re often looking for new and exciting ways to experience God and grow in him.[7] And while there are many ways that can indeed be very helpful to us, let’s not neglect the means by which he has promised and guarantees to help us as we seek to follow him. Through the sacraments we are further tied to the church,[8] and grow up into the people that God is calling us to be.
[1] William Cavanaugh, “Stan the man: A Thoroughly Biased Account of a Completely Unobjective Person” in The Hauerwas Reader ed. John Berkman and Michael Cartwright (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), 19.
[2] For more information about these sacraments specifically, see our papers “What is Baptism?” and “What is Communion?.”
[3] 1.21 Church Doctrine Statement. In order to understand a Reformed view of the sacraments, it is helpful to understand the Reformed view of preaching. We believe that the Bible is God’s Word, objectively. Even if it’s just lying on your table, it’s the Word of God. And when we read it, we get infallible truth from God. But preaching adds another layer to the mix, as the Westminster Larger Catechism notes, “The Spirit of God makes the reading, but especially the preaching of the Word, an effectual means of enlightening, convincing, and humbling sinners; of driving them out of themselves, and drawing them unto Christ; of conforming them to his image, and subduing them to his will; of strengthening them against temptations and corruptions; of building them up in grace, and establishing their hearts in holiness and comfort through faith unto salvation” (Question 155). Hence, through preaching, the Holy Spirit is active, creating faith in the hearts of God’s people. There is a very real sense in which we can say that when we listen to preaching, we hear God speak to us. Even through human words, God is at work, speaking to us, bringing us to himself, and creating faith in us. If we can understand and accept this, then it is much easier for us to understand the sacraments, which operate similarly.
[4] For many this seems like a very strong statement, and can cause worry that we are teaching that the sacraments save us or our necessary for our salvation. But this is not the case. Instead, we recognize that the sacraments hold out for us the same basic content as the Bible, and the preaching of the gospel: Jesus Christ in his person and work. The same Holy Spirit works through them, and they are received in the same way, by faith. As the Confession says, apart from Jesus, they would be nothing.
[5] Actually, the sacraments are far more multi-sensory than that. We see the bread and wine, or the water. But we also feel them, smell them, hear them, and taste them. Nowadays people are very excited about embodiment and sensory experiences. Yet churches are busily trying to invent new experiences, while all along Jesus has given us the sacraments.
[6] If we are Christians by depending upon Jesus and his work for our salvation (and we are), then surely it is inconsistent for us to neglect the sacraments where he promises to help us. A disregard for the sacraments could be indicative of a deeper spiritual problem.
[7] Michael Horton lists several potential “aids to spiritual growth” such as Bible study, prayer, witnessing, fasting, quiet times, etc. and asks, “But how many of us would put the sacraments at the top? Would they even make the list? One wonders” (Putting Amazing Back into Grace 2d ed. [Grand Rapids: Baker, 2002], 179). Please note, though, that I think all of these things are good, and I encourage you to do them (my guess is that he would too). But I do share Horton’s concern that Christians tend to devalue the sacraments Christ has given us. I suspect that this is because of “a mentality that reduces sacred signs to mere reminders, communion with Christ to beliefs about Christ, and the living body of the church to an association of likeminded individuals” (B.A. Gerrish, Grace and Gratitude: The Eucharistic Theology of John Calvin [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993], 190).
[8] It is important to note that the sacraments have been given to the church, and that only the church is authorized to administer them. This is the assumption of 1 Corinthians 11.17-34; and 12.12-13. In various ways, the sacraments depict our solidarity with the people of God, the church. Therefore, to abstract them from the church is to rob them of their meaning.