For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death till He comes. –
1 Corinthians 11:26 NKJV
This morning we look at Question 161 of the Larger Catechism, which asks, “How do the
sacraments become effectual means of salvation?” It gives the answer, “The sacraments become
effectual means of salvation, not by any power in themselves, or any virtue derived from the piety
or intention of him by whom they are administered, but only by the working of the Holy Ghost,
and the blessing of Christ, by whom they are instituted.” Today’s question hearkens back to
Question 154, which identified the Word, the sacraments, and prayer as “means” by which God
“especially” communicates to the elect the benefits of Christ’s mediation. After spending six
questions on the Word, the Catechism now begins a seventeen question section on how the
sacraments are used by God for the salvation of His people.
Following Calvin, the great majority of Reformed churches, including the city of Geneva, the
Dutch Reformed Church, the Church of England, and the Puritans of both Scotland and England
all identified the two Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper as real means of salvation to
the Christian. What does this mean? Because the elect begin life as totally depraved sinners,
God’s grace must sovereignly bring to them the salvation purchased by Christ. But as we have
previously seen with respect to preaching, God rarely brings His grace directly or arbitrarily to the
Christian, His usual way is to work through means He has appointed to that end. The
Westminster Standards uniformly insist that these means are not supernatural and miraculous,
but “outward and ordinary,” and in fact they include “all His ordinances,” but “especially the Word,
sacraments, and prayer” (Q 154). In other words, God uses all of the things Jesus told His Church
to do as means through which He brings the grace of salvation to His elect. Here we should
understand salvation to include the lifelong process of sanctification whereby, with the help of
the Holy Spirit, Christians continue to grow in grace, working out their salvation until they die.
Thus, when our Question calls the sacraments “effectual means of salvation,” we should
understand that the Westminster Divines identified the sacraments as a primary way for
Christians to grow in the grace of sanctification.
So how do Christians grow in grace through their use of the sacraments? First, not by any power
in the sacraments themselves. Here the Divines are denying the sacramentalism of the Medieval
Church, which taught that the sacraments actually effect the grace that they set forth. So that
while Rome and Westminster both affirm that the sacrament of baptism signifies the washing
away of sin and the renewal of regeneration, at the Council of Trent (1545-1563), Rome defined the
sacraments with the phrase ex opere operato, which means “by the working of the works.” Here
the sacraments themselves (when rightly administered and rightly received) actually bring about
the grace they picture; so that the water of baptism really does wash away original sin, and really
does bring about the new birth. Conversely, Protestants do not believe that there is any power in
the baptism itself to bring about these things. The baptism is a sign and a seal of these graces,
but it is not the cause of them. Christ alone does these things, and He works in the sacraments
even as He works in His Word and in prayer: freely, according to His good pleasure, not inevitably,
according to our always less than good performance.
Second, the sacraments do not become effectual means of salvation because of “any virtue
derived from the piety and intention” of the minister. During the Donatist controversy of the
fourth century, it was believed by some that if a minister of the gospel ever denied Christ in a
time of persecution, all of the ministrations he had previously discharged were null and void.
That meant that many lifelong Christians could find themselves suddenly “unbaptized,” or never
having taken the Lord’s Supper, been catechized, or even unmarried! Thankfully, the church
followed Augustine’s Biblically correct view that the virtue of a sacrament does not flow from a
minister, but from Christ. And therefore, even if a minister later fell away, if he was a minister in
good standing when you received the sacrament from his hand, then you could be certain that
you received it not from man but from Christ Himself; even as people healed by Judas were really
healed by the power of God, notwithstanding that Judas was “a devil” from the beginning (Joh.
6:70). So also the Divines affirmed that the true efficacy of a sacrament is only as the Holy Spirit,
in accordance with the sovereign blessing of Christ, works to make the sign of the sacrament a
real means of grace to the believer, so that his faith in Christ is strengthened, whereby he grows
in the grace of sanctification, which is godliness. Pray for Christ to bless the sacrament to you
today as we celebrate the Lord’s Supper.
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