Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity – Sunday

Encyclopædia Britannica (8th) edition

This is My body…This is My blood. – Matthew 26:26, 28.

God in His Word has revealed to us the things that are necessary for our salvation. If we do not rest upon this Word alone and completely, but permit our reason to interfere, then we shall surely err and do all manner of foolish things.

Thus it came about that the Reformed Church, with all its various and variously named branches, says that in the Lord’s Supper we do not receive the body and blood of Christ, but only bread and wine, and that bread and wine simply “represent” the body and blood of Christ, and are mere “figures,” or “images,” of Christ’s body and blood.

Why twist the words of Christ, and tamper with their plain meaning? Christ’s words are plain, very plain, and every child can understand them: “This is My body”; “this is My blood.” And Christ says that He gives us that body which was given for us into death, and that blood which was shed for our redemption. And the Apostle says by inspiration of the Holy Ghost: “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?” (I Corinthians 10:16). And he also says: “Whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord” (I Corinthians 10:27).

Indeed, in the Lord’s Supper Christ gives us His body with the bread and His blood with the wine. In place of the Sacrament of the Passover in the Old Covenant He has in the New Testament instituted the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, where instead of the flesh and blood of the paschal lamb, which was but a type and figure of the coming Christ, He now, under the bread and wine, gives us the true, actual flesh and blood of the one whom the Passover Lamb foreshadowed, namely, Himself. This is what His words clearly say. And who, merely to satisfy his reason, dares to undermine the words of the divine institution of a Sacrament and the words of the Savior’s own divine testament?

PRAYER – Dear Lord, Thou True, Almighty, and All-wise God, help me to accept and believe all Thy words just as they plainly read, including those concerning Thy Holy Supper. Guard me against any objections from my depraved reason, lest my faith be weakened or destroyed! Amen.

We eat this bread and drink this cup,

Thy precious Word believing;

that Thy true body and Thy blood,

our lips are here receiving.

This word remains forever true,

and there is naught Thou canst not do;

for Thou, Lord, art almighty.

(Hymn 306, st. 4; TLH)