THE BELGIC CONFESSION OF FAITH
– A Commentary – By Dr. Chuck Baynard
The Belgic Confession of Faith,
Article XXXV
The Holy Supper of Our Lord
Jesus Christ
We believe and confess that our Savior Jesus Christ did ordain and
institute the sacrament of the holy supper to nourish and support those whom He
has already regenerated and incorporated into His family, which is His Church.
There is real communion (communication) with Christ in the Lord’s
Supper and this can only be true for the believer. Those who are not of the
family will bring condemnation upon themselves and not blessing. That is they
will not receive of grace but condemnation in improperly coming to the table.
(See the parable of the wedding feast)
Now those who are regenerated have in them a twofold life, the one
corporal and temporal, which they have from the first birth and is common to all
men; the other, spiritual and heavenly, which is given them in their second
birth, which is effected by the Word of the gospel, in the communion of the body
of Christ; and this life is not common, but is peculiar to God's elect. In like
manner God has given us, for the support of the bodily and earthly life, earthly
and common bread, which is subservient thereto and is common to all men, even as
life itself. But for the support of the spiritual and heavenly life which
believers have He has sent a living bread, which descended from heaven, namely,
Jesus Christ, who nourishes and strengthens the spiritual life of believers when
they eat Him, that is to say, when they appropriate and receive Him by faith in
the spirit.
Thus the sacraments are also called means of grace in that there is a
real partaking of Christ in the supper. Not the actual feeding upon Christ as if
meat, but feeding of the spirit born of Christ.
In order that He might represent unto us this spiritual and heavenly
bread, Christ has instituted an earthly and visible bread as a sacrament of His
body, and wine as a sacrament of His blood, to testify by them unto us that, as
certainly as we receive and hold this sacrament in our hands and eat and drink
the same with our mouths, by which our life is afterwards nourished, we also do
as certainly receive by faith (which is the hand and mouth of our soul) the true
body and blood of Christ our only Savior in our souls, for the support of our
spiritual life.
In contrast to those who see the bread and wine transformed into the
actual flesh and blood of Christ, the reformed have always maintained the
reality of the table without the monstrous thought believers are cannibals
eating the flesh of Christ. The argument for actual change of substance and the
spiritual understanding of the table is much older than the reformation. There
were great debates in the ninth century concerning this very thing. The
reformers here as in many places choose the biblical doctrine that has been in
the church from her founding in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost. The
reformation was not all new doctrine but the discernment of biblical doctrine
that had been buried beneath Roman Catholic tradition and dogma to the detriment
of the body of Christ and harm of god’s people in withholding the means of
grace from the people.
Now, as it is certain and beyond all doubt that Jesus Christ has not
enjoined to us the use of His sacraments in vain, so He works in us all that He
represents to us by these holy signs, though the manner surpasses our
understanding and cannot be comprehended by us, as the operations of the Holy
Spirit are hidden and incomprehensible. In the meantime we err not when we say
that what is eaten and drunk by us is the proper and natural body and the proper
blood of Christ. But the manner of our partaking of the same is not by the
mouth, but by the spirit through faith. Thus, then, though Christ always sits at
the right hand of His Father in the heavens, yet does He not therefore cease to
make us partakers of Himself by faith. This feast is a spiritual table, at which
Christ communicates Himself with all His benefits to us, and gives us there to
enjoy both Himself and the merits of His sufferings and death: nourishing,
strengthening, and comforting our poor comfortless souls by the eating of His
flesh, quickening and refreshing them by the drinking of His blood.
Since the doctrine of the Roman Church from which the reformed churches
were born has been in deep heresy for several centuries we find the need of
clarity and redundancy in dealing with this issue. It is in reality the body and
blood of Christ, but not physically but spiritually discerned.
Further, though the sacraments are connected with the thing
signified nevertheless both are not received by all men. The ungodly indeed
receives the sacrament to his condemnation, but he does not receive the truth of
the sacrament, even as Judas and Simon the sorcerer both indeed received the
sacrament but not Christ who was signified by it, of whom believers only are
made partakers.
Christ is in the sacrament, the sacrament is real, but not so joined that
physical partaking of the sacrament is the spiritual receipt of the sacrament or
the thing signified, union with Christ. Christ, the word of God cannot thus be
separated from the sacrament, but neither may the unbeliever in the sacrament
wrongly receive him.
Lastly,
we receive this holy sacrament in the assembly of the people of God, with
humility and reverence, keeping up among us a holy remembrance of the death of
Christ our Savior, with thanksgiving, making there confession of our faith and
of the Christian religion. Therefore no one ought to come to this table without
having previously rightly examined himself, lest by eating of this bread and
drinking of this cup he eat and drink judgment to himself. In a word, we are
moved by the use of this holy sacrament to a fervent love towards God and our
neighbor.
The table in that it is the body and blood of Christ and is real
communion with Christ is holy and to approach this table without confession and
prayer in self-examination is failure to discern the body and blood of Christ.
While it is true this is the place for those troubled and in doubt that they
might make use of this means of grace, it is to be approached most seriously and
reverently. For this reason among others, the sacrament then is only rightly
presented in connection with the Word in the sacred assembly of the church.
Therefore we reject all mixtures and damnable inventions which men have
added unto and blended with the sacraments, as profanations of them; and affirm
that we ought to rest satisfied with the ordinance which Christ and His apostles
have taught us, and that we must speak of them in the same manner as they have
spoken.
Being part of
the Word, the sacrament is to be handled the same way, with reverence and
prayer. Like the Scriptures it is not to be diminished nor added to in any way
whatsoever. Connected, as it is to the worship of God’s people of Him alone,
it is rightly also within the veil of the regulated Principle of Worship.
