The Augsburg Confession affirms the ancient and medieval consensus of the Catholic Church that Christ’s flesh and blood are substantially present in the Eucharist: “Of the Supper of the Lord they teach that the Body and Blood of Christ are truly present, and are distributed to those who eat the Supper of the Lord; and they reject those that teach otherwise.” This affirmation of the substantial presence of Christ’s flesh and blood in the Lord’s Supper was integral to the Lutheran Reformation from the beginning.
In On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, Luther is critical of the practice of communion in one kind (i.e., the pre-Vatican II practice of withholding the cup from the laity), transubstantiation, and the the Mass as a sacrifice for the living and the dead. Nevertheless, unlike most of the other reformers, Luther is quite clear that there is a Real Presence based on his canonical, catholic, and evangelical principle. This real substantial presence was the overwhelming catholic consensus of the ancient Church from its inception….
Indeed, there is no scriptural evidence whatsoever for the rejection of the substantial presence of Christ in the Lord’ Supper. Not a syllable of the Bible ever states that the words of institution are metaphorical. The New Testament authors (notably St. Paul), and Jesus in the Johannine Bread of Life discourse, never indicate that the Eucharist is symbolic or merely spiritual. On the contrary, they consistently affirm a real and substantial presence that can be profaned and ingested….
The Embodied Gospel
The reception of Christ’s true Body and Blood in the sacrament of the altar is the most clearly embodied expression of the gospel. Indeed, it is the very substance of the gospel itself. As Lutheran theologian Hermann Sasse writes: “It is really true that the sacrament is the Gospel, and the Gospel is the Sacrament.”1 Isaiah tells us that Jesus, who is the Servant of YHWH, will be given as a covenant to the nations (Isa. 49:8). It is Christ’s Body and Blood that bring about the forgiveness of sins and form the content of the new covenant (Jer. 31:34). Therefore, in dying Jesus donates Himself in His testament to sinners….
The self-donation of God in Christ is itself the reality of the new covenant to the nation as Isaiah says: “I will give you as a covenant for the people” (Isa. 42:6). Therefore, the presence of Christ in the sacrament constitutes the literal giving of the testament/covenant of the forgiveness of sins. Christians receive this testament 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!”2….
Christ’s Priestly Office and the Lord’s Supper
Because believers passively receive the testament of the forgiveness of sins in the Lord’s Supper, it is a not sacrifice in itself. However, this does not mean that it has no connection with the sacrificial work of Christ. The words of institution themselves “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) show that the sacrament is inexorably tied to Jesus’s sacrificial work. Jesus presents his flesh and blood as having been separated from one another (“this is my body. . . this is my blood”). In the Bible, atoning blood sacrifice is an act of the separation of body and blood (Lev. 17:11).
Since there is no moment of separation of the body and blood in the sacrament, the Body and Blood must have been offered from a sacrifice that had already taken place. As is clear from the New Testament, this sacrifice took place on the cross. Therefore, the purpose of the sacrament is not a re-presentation of the sacrifice of the cross. Rather, Christ gives believers a share in the fruits of His sacrifice through the gift of the new covenant/testament.
As 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.3
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 holds up His previously sacrificed Body. This eternal priestly act places the forgiveness of sins won on the cross before the Father. God then delivers this forgiveness through the testament of the Lord’s Supper to believers.
Here, Christ is the active agent of the Lord’s Supper, rather than the priest acting in persona Christi. Moreover, the communicants passively receive the promise of the Lord’s Supper, rather than being drawn into Christ’s self-offering to the Father. The Lord’s Supper is a visible word of promise received passively by faith and not a grace enabled work.
Communion is for all who recognize their sin and the substantial presence of Christ’s Body and Blood because: “The Lord’s Supper is a visible word of promise received passively by faith and not a grace enabled work.”
- 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. ↩︎
- Cynthia Seel, Ritual Performance in the Fiction of Flannery O’Connor (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2001), 202. ↩︎
- Charles Porterfield Krauth, The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2007), 591. ↩︎
From the draft manuscript for Lutheran Dogmatics: The Evangelical-Catholic Faith for an Age of Contested Truth (Lexham Press).
Cover photograph by Erik M. Lunsford, Copyright: © 2023 The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, in Sarah Reinsel, “Nourished by His Word: First Lutheran Church of Boston,” Lutheran Witness, February 1, 2024, accessed December, 18, 2024, https://witness.lcms.org/2024/nourished-by-his-word-first-lutheran-church-of-boston/.