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Episode 211: Westminster Chapter 29

Release date: 3/5/2025

Chapter 29: The Lord’s Supper

  1. A
    1. A couple of things to highlight:
      1. The church is to continue the sacrament of communion until Jesus returns. It’s an act of remembering.
        1. Sproul 613-14
      2. Communion is spiritual nourishment for the Christian.
      3. It’s a sign of our being part of Christ’s body.
    2. Sproul 614 (don’t be surprised if we start or have started doing this)
  1. Jesus isn’t sacrificed again and again — every time the Lord’s Supper takes place. His sacrifice was “once for all.” 
  1. This is the part that happens before we take communion. Usually verses from 1st Corinthians 11 are read.
    1. Elder discussion: comfortable changing “wine” to “juice”
    2. Elder discussion: there is room in our church constitution to take communion to shut in and homebound folks. 
  1. This is a statement against some of the ways that communion was being abused when the confession was being written. 
  1. Read paragraphs 5 and 6 together
    1. This is getting into the theology of the Lord’s Supper. Jesus said, “This is my body. This is my blood.”
      1. Roman Catholic view – transubstantiation (bread and wine become the literal/physical body and blood of Christ)
      2. Lutheran view – consubstantiation (bread and wine have the physical body of Christ “in, with, and under” them)
      3. Zwingli – memorialist (nothing happens to the bread and wine; communion is merely a remembrance of Christ’s sacrifice)
      4. Calvin Reformed view (the bread and wine do not change physically, but spiritually are the body and blood of Christ)
    2. The differences arise because of a misunderstanding of the nature of Christ.
      1. Jesus was both fully God and fully man.
      2. Sproul 624
        1. For the bread and cup to physically be the body and blood of Christ is to give Jesus’ humanity the divine characteristic of omnipresence (being everywhere at the same time). Humanly speaking, Jesus is one place right now — at the right hand of God.
        2. Yet, memorialists make the opposite mistake. They take Jesus’ deity and confine it to his human location (meaning it’s as if Jesus is not omnipresent in his divinity). Thus communion is only about remembering.
        3. The Reformed view keeps Jesus’ humanity human and his divinity divine. Thus the bread and wine do not become the physical body and blood of Jesus (for he’s only in one place, humanly speaking), yet see Christ — in his divinity — being spiritual present in the bread and wine (thus it is his body and blood).
    3. Elder discussion: Someone may want to soften the language, but must agree that the Roman Catholic view is incorrect.
  1. Said everything I need to say above.
  1. There is and will be judgment on those who take communion not in faith.
    1. Sproul 629