The Eucharist as Embodied Gospel

No passage of Scripture ever describes the Lord’s Supper itself as a sacrifice. Neither does the New Testament speak of ministers as priests re-presenting Christ’s work… Moreover, from an evangelical perspective, a sacrificial concept of the Mass problematically makes it into a work, albeit one enabled by grace….

The Lord’s Supper as Sacrifice

Although the Lord’s Supper is not a sacrifice in itself, this does not mean it has no connection with the sacrificial work of Christ. As American Lutheran theologian Charles Porterfield Krauth notes:

The idea of sacrifice under the Old Dispensation sheds light upon the nature of the Lord’s Supper. . . Sacrifice through the portion burnt, is received of God by the element of fire; the portion reserved is partaken of by men, is communicated to them, and received by them. The eating of the portion of the sacrifice, by the offerer, is as real apart of the whole sacred act as the burning of the other part is. Man offers to God; this is sacrifice. God gives back to man; this is sacrament. The oblation, or the thing offered, supplies both sacrifice and sacrament, but with the difference, that under the Old Dispensation God received part and man received part; but under the New, God receives all and gives back all: Jesus Christ, in His own divine person, makes that complete which was narrowed under the Old Covenant by the necessary limitations of mere matter.¹

David Scaer adds that the Lord’s Supper is a sacrifice from God’s perspective, but a sacrament and testament from the perspective of believers. In other words, in the Lord’s Supper, Christ, as part of his priestly ministry, holds up his previously sacrificed Body and Blood to the Father. This intercessory act reminds the Father of the forgiveness of sins won on the cross. God then delivers forgiveness through the testament of the Lord’s Supper to believers. 

However, there remain substantial differences between Roman Catholic teaching regarding the sacrifice of the mass and Lutheran doctrine. A key difference is that for Lutherans Christ himself is the active agent of the Lord’s Supper, rather than a priest acting in persona Christi. Moreover, according to Lutheran teaching, communicants passively receive the promise in the Lord’s Supper. Reception directly into the mouth clearly confesses this belief. In post-Vatican II Roman Catholicism, however, communicants actively enter into and participate in Christ’s self-offering to the Father. Instead, Lutherans, with Scripture, affirm the Lord’s Supper as a visible word of promise received by passive faith and not a grace-enabled work.  

The words of institution themselves reveal the Sacrament’s inexorable connection to Jesus’s sacrificial work: “this is my body. . . for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matt. 26:28). Jesus presents his Flesh and Blood as separate from one another (“this is my body. . . this is my blood”), which indicates that they must have been separated at some time in the past. In the Bible, the act of separating a victim’s body and blood (Lev. 17:11) functions as an atoning blood sacrifice.

Since the priest or minister never ritually separates Christ’s Body and Blood in the sacrament, the already-separated Body and Blood must originate in a sacrifice that has already taken place. As is clear from the New Testament, this atoning sacrifice took place on the cross. Therefore, the purpose of the sacrament is not a re-presentation of the sacrifice of the cross. Rather, the Lord’s Supper gives believers a share in the sacrificial fruits of the atonement through the gift of the new covenant/testament.     

The Lord’s Supper as Testament

Hence, in his writings subsequent to On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, Luther uses the idea of the sacrament as a “testament” (diatheke) to interpret the Lord’s Supper.² Luther notes that Jesus says nothing in the words of institution about the sacrament being a sacrifice. Instead, he speaks of it as a “new testament [diatheke] in my blood” (1 Cor. 11:25).³ 

Many modern English translations render the Greek word diatheke as “covenant.” This is because the LXX translated the Hebrew word berith (chain, ring, or covenant) into Greek as diatheke.⁴ Nevertheless, as Luther correctly notes, the literal meaning of the term diatheke is a “last will and testament.” The New Testament authors exploit the testamental meaning of diatheke by connecting the nature of the gospel promise to the structure of a will (Gal. 3:15, Heb. 9:16).⁵ 

For example, in Revelation, St. John describes the Lamb’s book (which symbolizes the gospel) as a scroll with the seven seals (Rev. 5:1-8). Modern scholarship shows that in the first century last wills and testaments were bound with seven seals.⁶ The conception of the gospel as a testament also exists outside the New Testament in other early Christian literature. In the late and apocryphal Gospel of Peter, Jesus’s tomb is sealed with seven seals (Gos. Pet. 8:33). This suggests that the gospel, whose basis is Jesus’s death and resurrection, is a kind of will of inheritance.⁷  

The Lord’s Supper as Sacrament

The sacrament of the altar is the most clearly embodied expression of the nature of the gospel. Indeed, it is the very substance of the gospel itself. As Hermann Sasse writes: “It is really true that the sacrament is the Gospel, and the Gospel is the Sacrament.”⁸ Isaiah tells us that Jesus, the Servant of YHWH, will be given as a covenant to the nations (Isa. 49:8). Christ’s sacrificed Body and Blood win forgiveness of sins and form the content of the new covenant (Jer. 31:34). Thus, the dying Jesus donates himself to sinners in his last testament. 

Unfortunately, not all Christians today take Jesus at his word when he offers his Body and Blood as a New Testament for the forgiveness of sins. In this vein, Reformed-Baptist theologian Wayne Grudem offers several arguments in favor of a symbolic reading of the words of institution. Perhaps the worst is that Christ’s words simply cannot be understood as literally true.⁹ 

On the contrary, God’s self-donation in Christ is itself the reality of the new covenant to the nations. As Isaiah says: “I will give you as a covenant for the people” (Isa. 42:6). Therefore, the gift of Christ’s presence in the sacrament constitutes the literal gift of the testament/covenant of the forgiveness of sins to those who receive it by faith. A mere symbol could never give assurance because it would not give Jesus himself. As Flannery O’Connor famously opined: “Well, if it’s [the Eucharist] a symbol to hell with it!”¹⁰

Christ’s self-donation embodies the very nature of a unilateral promise.  To promise unilaterally, one must give one’s very self to the other. Not surprisingly, the Bible uses the image of marriage for the relationship between YHWH and Israel and then for the relationship between Christ and the Church. Marriages are always sealed by literal physical self-giving. Husband and wife “know” (yada) each other through deep participatory knowledge in the sex-act. Likewise, God in Christ commends his grace and forgiveness through the gift of his very being to his people. 

The promise of the Lord’s Supper is not merely the forgiveness of sins, but also the promise of eternal life: “Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever” (Jn. 6:58). Indeed, Christ’s Body and Blood are the true medicine of immortality. His self-gift in the sacrament is a foretaste of the final eschatological wedding feast. At the eschaton, Christ and his bride, the Church, will forever sit at the banqueting table under his banner of love: “Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb” (Rev. 19:9).   

The Lord’s Supper as Fellowship

Finally, returning to a point that we only partially addressed in an earlier chapter, the reception of the Lord’s Supper is an act of fellowship among Christians: “Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread” (1 Cor. 10:17). Union with Christ received in the Lord’s Supper binds individual communicants together with all who share this unity in the mystical Body of Christ. 

For this reason, the Lutheran Church has historically affirmed the need for Christians to agree on the primary and secondary fundamental articles of the faith to commune at the same altar. As Werner Elert demonstrated in Eucharist and Church Fellowship in the First Four Centuries, the ancient Church shared this understanding.¹¹ Paul clearly states that receiving Lord’s Supper manifests the unity of faith created by the Holy Spirit: “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Cor. 11:26).  

The practice of indiscriminate communion reveals a profoundly different understanding of the Lord’s Supper than that of Scripture and the early Church. In practice, Mainline Protestants and many liberal Catholics essentially see the Eucharist as a ceremony of community acceptance rather than a sacrament received for the forgiveness of sins. In light of this understanding, excluding those not in fellowship with one’s Church because of doctrinal disagreements appears cruel and un-affirming. Liberal Lutherans often argue that that excluding anyone from communion makes the sacrament a reward for moral purity or affirmation of approved doctrines. In reality, a conception of grace identical with what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace” (i.e., grace without death to sin), lies behind loose table discipline that allows the unrepentant and those knowingly affirming serious doctrinal error to commune. 

Of course, this absolutely does not make the Lord’s Supper a reward for good behavior or right belief. Beyond the already discussed need to exclude the unrepentant from the Lord’s Supper, excluding those who disagree in the fundamental dogmas of the faith has a twofold purpose. First of all, among Protestants who reject the substantial presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper, exclusion from the Eucharist prevents them from eating and drinking judgment upon themselves (1 Cor. 11:29). Persons who reject the promise of Christ’s Flesh and Blood, and therefore the gospel itself, spiritually poison themselves. Preventing individuals from unknowingly harming themselves is an act of love.

Protestants and others who deny the Real Presence eat and drink judgement on themselves when receiving Christ’s Body and Blood in churches that affirm the substantial presence. Blessedly, this does not occur in their own churches. Protestants who reject the substantial presence do not use the words of institution according to their proper meaning. As a result, their Eucharists lack validity and efficacy. Because of this, they are not in any danger of spiritually poisoning their communicants. In support of this interpretation, Paul states that it is possible to abuse the Lord’s Supper to the point that it ceases to function as a sacrament: “when you come together, it is not the Lord’s Supper you eat” (1 Cor. 11:20).    

The exclusion of the unrepentant and those not in doctrinal agreement from the Eucharist serves a second purpose. The Lord’s Supper manifests the unity of the faithful. Therefore, communing with those who do not genuinely share unity in the primary and secondary fundamental articles of the faith effectively enacts a public lie. It gives an illusion of unity when no unity actually exists. 

This being said, such stipulations about communion fellowship should not be based on a legalistic or mechanical conception of Church unity. The bond of the Word and the Spirit, not human beings, creates Church unity. Membership in a denomination at odds with confessional Lutheran teaching is not necessarily grounds for a pastor to deny communion to an individual who nevertheless genuinely believes in the same fundamental articles of the faith. Pastors must examine communicants on a person-to-person basis. Moreover, they should not use the accident of denominational membership to deny the sacrament to those who possess real spiritual unity with the Church through true faith.  

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1. Charles Porterfield Krauth, The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2007), 591. ↩︎
2.  On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1520); LW 36:37-8; and Croken, Luther’s First Front, 73-86. ↩︎
3. On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1520); LW 36:37. ↩︎
4. J. Benton White and Walter Wilson, From Adam to Armageddon: A Survey of the Bible (Belmont, CA: Thomason Watson, 2012), 1. ↩︎
5. Hans Betz, Galatians: A Commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Churches in Galatia (Hermeneia; Fortress, 1979), 155; Scott Murray “The Concept of diathēkē in the Letter to the Hebrews,” Concordia Theological Quarterly 66 (2002): 59; Frank Thielman, Theology of the New Testament: A Canonical and Synthetic Approach (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011), 600. ↩︎
6. Louis Brighton, Revelation (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1999), 107. ↩︎
7. R. Joseph Hoffmann, Jesus Outside the Gospels (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1987), 101. ↩︎
8. Hermann Sasse, This is My Body: Luther’s Contention for the Real Presence in the Sacrament of the Altar (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2001), 406. ↩︎
9. Grudem, Systematic Theology 2^nd edition, 1226. ↩︎
10. Cynthia Seel, Ritual Performance in the Fiction of Flannery O’Connor (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2001), 202. ↩︎
11. See the aforementioned: Elert, Eucharist and Church Fellowship in the First Four Centuries. ↩︎

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From the draft manuscript for Lutheran Dogmatics: The Evangelical-Catholic Faith for an Age of Contested Truth (Lexham Press).

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Cover image: Our Savior Lutheran Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan; other images from Philip Kosloski, “Prayer of adoration of Jesus’ Heart in the Eucharist,” Aleteia, June 19, 2022, accessed July 6, 2024, https://aleteia.org/2022/06/19/prayer-of-adoration-of-jesus-heart-in-the-eucharist; 7th Century Mosaic, Church of Sts. Cosmas and Damian in Rome at Agioi_Anargyroi, “‘As a yearling lamb, for us a crown of goodness, the Blessed One…,’” Full of Grace and Truth, May 14, 2019, accessed July 6, 2024, http://full-of-grace-and-truth.blogspot.com/2019/05/as-yearling-lamb-for-us-crown-of.html; Hermann Sasse quotation meme by Dennis E. McFadden at Facebook.com; detail of John Hrehov, Heaven on Earth, 2012; and quotation meme from Johann Gerhard from St. John Lutheran Church, Wheaton, Illinois, https://www.facebook.com/stjohnwheaton,