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2. THE THINGS SEALED IN THE LORD’S SUPPER.
The Lord’s Supper is not only a sign but also a
seal. This is lost sight of by a good many in our day, who have a very superficial view of this
sacrament, and regard it merely as a memorial of Christ and as a badge of Christian profession.
These two aspects of the sacrament, namely, as a sign and as a seal, are not independent of
each other. The sacrament as a sign, or — to put it differently — the sacrament with all that it
signifies, constitutes a seal. The seal is attached to the things signified, and is a pledge of the
covenanted grace of God revealed in the sacrament. The Heidelberg Catechism says that Christ
intends “by these visible signs and pledges to assure us that we are as really partakers of His
true body and blood, through the working of the Holy Spirit, as we receive by the mouth of the
body these holy tokens in remembrance of Him; and that all His sufferings and obedience are as
certainly ours as if we ourselves had in our own persons suffered and made satisfaction to God
for our sins.”[Lord’s Day XXIX, Q. 79.] The following points come into consideration here:
a. It seals to the participant the great love of Christ, revealed in the fact that He surrendered
Himself to a shameful and bitter death for them. This does not merely mean that it testifies to
the reality of that sacrificial self-surrender, but that it assures the believing participant of the
Lord’s Supper that he personally was the object of that incomparable love.
b. Moreover, it pledges the believing partaker of the sacrament, not only the love and grace of
Christ in now offering Himself to them as their Redeemer in all the fulness of His redemptive
work; but gives him the personal assurance that all the promises of the covenant and all the
riches of the gospel offer are his by a divine donation, so that he has a personal claim on them.
c. Again, it not only ratifies to the believing participant the rich promises of the gospel, but it
assures him that the blessings of salvation are his in actual possession. As surely as the body is
nourished and refreshed by bread and wine, so surely is the soul that receives Christ’s body and
blood through faith even now in possession of eternal life, and so surely will he receive it ever
more abundantly.
d. Finally, the Lord’s Supper is a reciprocal seal. It is a badge of profession on the part of those
who partake of the sacrament. Whenever they eat the bread and drink the wine, they profess
their faith in Christ as their Saviour and their allegiance to Him as their King, and they solemnly
pledge a life of obedience to His divine commandments.
F. THE SACRAMENTAL UNION OR THE QUESTION OF
THE REAL PRESENCE OF CHRIST IN THE LORD’S SUPPER.
With this question we are entering upon what has long been, and still is, the occasion for
considerable difference of opinion in the Church of Jesus Christ. There is by no means a