2. The relationship of the Lord's Supper to the other means of grace.
What the Lord's Supper has in common with the word of the gospel and with baptism is that it is a medium of justification (medium iustificationis sive remissionis peccatorum). The Lord's Supper, too, is nothing more and nothing less than a means ordered by Christ, by which Christ offers and appropriates to the participants in this meal the forgiveness of sins that he has purchased. In other words, the Lord's Supper does not belong to the law, but is pure gospel, that is, it is not a work that we do to Christ, but a work that Christ does to us. It is a work of Christ whereby he assures us that we have a gracious God through his atoning death. This is clearly expressed by the words Christ uses in instituting the Lord's Supper. For when Christ says, "Take, eat; this is my body which is given for you," and, "This is my blood which is poured out for you," these words can have no other meaning than that we ourselves no longer have to pay our sins to God, but that our sins have already been paid for by Christ's body given for us and by Christ's blood poured out for us. Thus Luther is right when he inculcates, "The Mass [of the Lord's Supper] is not a work or sacrifice, but a word and sign of divine grace, which God uses to establish and strengthen our faith in Him [namely, that He is gracious to us]." 1166) The Apology states:1167) "The sacrament is
1164) Cf. Luther against Carlstadt, XX, 174 ff.: "Carlstadt scolds us for the sake of the name that we call the sacrament a mass, and takes it upon us that we are Christ's executioners, murderers, and of the atrocious words more, and even worse than the Papists, because mass is called a sacrifice in Hebrew, and shall not help us that we argue and have argued with such seriousness and driving that the mass is not a sacrifice. Now it is also a shameful, childish, womanish [AE 40, 119: “effeminate”] thing before the world, if one is otherwise one in the matter and yet quarrels over words; which Paul reproves and calls them λoγoμάχονς, word warriors and quarrelsome."
1165) Holtzmann, Neut. Theol. II, 200; Nösgen, Neut. Offenb. I. 545.
1166) St. L. XIX, 346.<w:t>1167) M. 259, 49. [Trigl. 401, XXIV, 49 🔗]
344 > The Lord's Supper. [English ed. ~ 293-294]
instituted for this purpose, that it may be a seal and sure sign of the forgiveness of sins, by which the hearts may be reminded and the faith strengthened, that they may assuredly believe that their sins are forgiven." Thus the Smalcald Articles rightly include "the holy sacrament of the altar" among the "gospel" and call it, along with the oral word of the gospel and baptism, "counsel and help against sin."1168) Furthermore, the Lord's Supper has in common with private absolution and baptism that it includes in itself an individual promise of the forgiveness of sins made to the individual person. Nevertheless, the differentia specifica, or that which is peculiar to the Lord's Supper, is very clearly marked in Scripture. In the Lord's Supper, individual absolution from the guilt of sin, made out to the individual person, is confirmed or sealed by the presentation of the body of Christ, given for us, and by the presentation of the blood of Christ, shed for us. This is what distinguishes the Lord's Supper from the other means of grace.
But it is precisely with this wonderful means of grace that Christ has had little luck in the midst of Christendom. Rome bisects the Lord's Supper by the withdrawing of the chalice, and the body of Christ which it wants to leave is, in the exact understanding of the Roman doctrine, not the body which is given for us, but a body which is supposed to have come into being by the transformation of the bread into the body of Christ.1169) To this is added on the part of Rome the abomination of the Sacrifice of the Mass, according to which the Body of Christ is not presented and received for the assurance of the forgiveness of sins, but is made an "unbloody" sacrifice offered by the priest for the living and the dead, to the dishonor of Christ's one and perfect atoning sacrifice and to the suppression of faith in the forgiveness of sins available through Christ's sacrifice. Reformed church fellowships remove the body and blood of Christ from the Lord's Supper altogether and make the Lord's Supper a celebration in which they distribute bread and wine as images of the absent body and blood of Christ. They not only declare the reception of the body and blood of Christ in the Lord's Supper to be absolutely impossible, but in some of their most noble doctrines they go so far as to declare — according to the procedure of the heathen — Christ's Supper, in which Christ's body given for us and Christ's body given for us,
1168) M. 319. [Trigl. 491, Part III, Art. IV 🔗]<w:t xml:space="preserve">1169) Luther, St. L. XIX, 1303.
345 > The Lord's Supper. [ed. ~ 294-295]
is cannibalism, a cyclops meal, a Thyestic meal and a fabrication of the devil.1170) Newer Lutheran theologians are not satisfied that Christ's body and blood are received for the forgiveness of sins, but they think they should enrich the old Lutheran doctrine of the Lord's Supper by ascribing to themselves also a physical effect ("natural effect"). The multiform error requires a detailed exposition of the Scriptural doctrine of the Lord's Supper.