THE LORD'S SUPPER NO. 3

THE LORD’S SUPPER NO. 3

... As to remembering the atoning as well as the separating side of His death, His death terminates His connection with man as He was here; He is dead as to man here; we announce His death until He come. There is no change from His death here until He come; His death gives the true character to everything here: that He died here, entails on the heart true to Him, to be identified with His death; communion with His blood and with His body — that is His death. But besides that He died here, it greatly intensifies His death that it was for us. I have tried to explain it by saying, that the place where my father died would recall his death to me, but that if he died there for me it would make his death very affecting to me. Still, it is about my father I am thinking and not the effect on me of his death. Hence I regard “for you” as rendering His death unspeakably affecting to us, and I think this will supply the lack which you have rightly felt there ^[p. 31] would be in remembering His death without including that He died “for you”. I have pressed His death for you as rendering His death more affecting to us, though generally it is used to renew to oneself the assurance of the benefit derived from it. In Christendom they recall the fact of His death in the same way that a pious Israelite would view the paschal lamb, as shelter from judgment.

The effect, blessed be God! of His death and resurrection, is our reconciliation. God has effected the reconciliation, but it is the One who has effected it that we remember.