The Wisdom of Christ in the Appointment of the Lord’s Supper.

Tuesdays with Edwards!

Sometime between August 1728 and February 1729 Edwards preached The Spiritual Blessings of the Gospel Represented by a Feast based on Luke 14:16 Then said he unto him, A certain man made a great supper and bade many. My Tuesdays with Edwards posts have been looking at the ways which show “how gospel provision is well represented by a feast.”

Edwards showed how he saw this:

in the expensiveness of gospel blessings,

in the free offer of it,

as it nourishes the soul as food does the body,

because of the excellency of it,

by the abundance and variety of it,

by the friendship of those that feast together,

by the communion of the saints,

and by how it represents the joy of Christianity.

Today’s post looks at the first of several applications of this.

You can read this sermon in its entirety at www.edwards.yale.edu. This selection is from Sermons and Discourses, 1723-1729, ed. Kenneth P. Minkema, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 14 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997) Pages 288-289.

***

I. Hence we learn the wisdom of Christ in the appointment [of] the Lord’s Supper. The Lord’s Supper is a representation of this spiritual gospel feast. It is very suitable to the gospel state of the church, the state wherein God’s grace in providing for souls is so abundantly manifested, and this spiritual provision so plentifully bestowed, that there should be a feast appointed and observed in the church, showing forth that spiritual feast which God has provided in Jesus Christ for our souls with such great expense, and to signify and seal the covenant with agreement and friendship between God and his people. In this ordinance is represented the great cost which God has been at to provide this feast for us, in the representation of the breaking of the body and shedding of the blood of Jesus Christ, in order [that] we have all spiritual blessings by the body and blood of Christ; and Christ did as it were submit himself to death, that he might give his body and blood to be our meat and drink, that we might have such food as would nourish and satisfy our souls. In this sacrament we have this represented to us.

How well is that great love there is between Christ and his disciples signified, and the covenant between God and them, when Abimelech and Isaac made a feast to seal it (Genesis 26:30). We have been at enmity with God; we have been God’s enemy, and we have made God our enemy; we are naturally the objects of his wrath: but in Christ he is reconciling sinners to himself, and in him God loves us with an exceeding love; and to manifest and confirm this amity and love, God has appointed this feast, wherein God doth as it were invite [us] to his own table and sits down with us. He receives [us] into his house and family and feasts us at his own table.

How well is the communion between Christ and believers signified by this ordinance: for, as has been said, Christ was not only with his disciples at the first sacrament, but he sits with his people in every sacrament. Here is a signification how we partake of the same spiritual dainties which satisfy and delight the soul of our Savior.

And by this sacrament is well signified the union, love and communion of saints. They feast together, friends and brethren, members of the same Lord, and those that drink of the same Spirit. They are of the same family and eat of the same spiritual meat and drink.

God’s wisdom is to be seen in the choice of the elements: the bread, which is the staff of life, which best signifies that spiritual life and nourishment which we have in Christ, and which best signifies the body of Christ, that bread which came down from heaven; and the wine, which best signifies the spiritual joy and delight which the church hath in Jesus Christ. These are the same elements that were the meat offering and the drink offering under the law, and the same that Melchizedeck, that great type of Christ, gave to Abraham, which signified the same spiritual blessings which bread and wine doth in the sacrament (Genesis 14:18).