Sacri-what? Intro

The first thing that we’ll want to talk about with respect to the church’s sacraments, or alternatively, ordinances is the definition of these words.

What do we mean by a sacrament?

A sacrament is a means of grace which belongs to the church.

By contrast, an ordinance is not a means of grace.

Rather:

An ordinance is a sign or evidence of grace.

A sacrament would be an actual channel by which grace is imparted to the believer.

So the question is:

When we participate in baptism, the Lord’s Supper, or perhaps certain other activities, are these means of grace which the church administers or are these merely signs of things that the church carries out?

The answer to that question will largely depend upon your view of what you think the church itself is.

Is the church the means of salvation that God has given to mankind?

Is the church itself a sort of primary sacrament?

Is the church the means of grace that God has given to mankind through which we receive salvation?

Or, is the church simply the fellowship of those who, through faith in Christ, are united together?

In that case it is not a special channel of God’s grace that he has instituted, but rather it is the fellowship of those who have come to know him through faith in Christ.

I hope you can see the difference between a sacrament and an ordinance.

Although many times certain Protestants will speak loosely of sacraments, they usually don't actually believe that baptism or the Lord’s Supper, for example, are sacraments.

They usually think that they are ordinances rather than means of grace.

So what constitutes an ordinance or a sacrament?

It will typically be the Word of God conjoined with some sort of visible element.

For example, water in baptism or bread and wine in the Lord’s supper is the visible element that is conjoined with the Word of God that is proclaimed.

We now want to ask how are these sacraments or ordinances to be understood in terms of their efficacy?

What do they actually do?

What actually happens as a result of participating in a sacrament or ordinance?

Here, as you might expect, Christians have a diversity of views.

On the Catholic view, the sacraments are a means of infusing grace into a person.

You’ll remember when we talked about justification, we saw that on a Catholic view justification involves the actual infusion of God’s grace into an individual person.

This happens through the sacraments.

By being baptized, going to Mass and taking the Lord’s Supper, and participating in certain other sacraments, God’s grace is infused into the believer through these sacraments.

The Lutheran view is slightly weaker.

On the Lutheran view, the sacraments are a means of grace by virtue of the Word of God which is bound up with the sacrament.

Remember we saw that a sacrament is constituted by the conjunction of the Word of God with some visible element.

For the Lutheran, these sacraments are means of grace, but it is in virtue of the Word of God that they impart grace to those who partake in them.

The Reformed view is still weaker.

It holds that the sacraments are a confirmation of God’s grace by means of a visible sign.

So when you participate in a sacrament, what you see is a visible sign confirming the grace which God has imparted to you.

Finally, on the Baptist view, which is the weakest of all, the act is simply a confessional act on the part of the believer.

In baptism, you give a public confession of your allegiance to Christ and to your conversion to the Christian faith.

Or in the Lord’s Supper, you confess your faith in him until he comes again and confess your sins.

It is simply a confessional act; it is not a means of grace.

What about the number of the sacraments?

Again, Protestants and Catholics differ on this question.

On the Catholic view, the Council of Florence (which dates from 1439) ratified seven sacraments which are recognized by the Roman Catholic Church.

These are:

baptism,

confirmation (where an individual, typically a youngster, will confirm the decision that was made in baptism),

the Eucharist (or the Lord’s Supper),

penance (which will involve confession of sin and performing some act of contrition),

marriage (interestingly enough),

ordination (such as when a priest is ordained to the ministry),

and finally extreme unction, which you take before you die as the Last Rites are administered to you by the Church to ensure that you die in a state of grace and are therefore ready to meet God.

By contrast, Protestants tend to recognize basically two sacraments or ordinances.

Those would be baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

Next time we’ll look more closely at the rite of baptism.

What does baptism accomplish and to whom should it be administered?

Those are the questions that I am looking forward to discussing with you the next time we meet.