The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology - Saint Mary ...

the weight which is attached to the death of Christ both by the words of the
institution and the apostle's doctrine of the Supper. In all the passages
which we have just been considering, the language has reference, not to
the glorified, but to the broken, or given body, that is, the sacrificed body.
Even if the Supper was not instituted in connection with the feast of the
Passover, yet Paul, in the words (1 Cor. v. 6, 7), 'Christ our passover is
sacrificed for us,' and John (John xix. 36), by applying to the unbroken
body of our Lord the Old Testament command that the Paschal Lamb
must not be broken (Exod. xii. 46; Ps. xxxiv. 20), represent the death of
Christ as a paschal sacrifice. We have seen (Dogm. I. 262 seq.) that in the
Passover lay the germ of the later worship. It was a propitiatory sacrifice,
and, at the same time, a sacrificial meal. The fulfilling has separated into
two elements the two parts of the Paschal Feast, the offering and the eating.
Christ, the Paschal Lamb, was sacrificed on Golgotha, at the time when the
paschal lamb was offered in the temple. This sacrifice, which Christ
offered in His own body to God, is the fulfilling of all sacrifices, and,
consequently, the last sacrifice, and has an objective atoning efficacy for all
men, and forever more. After this sacrifice has been made, the
appropriation of it remains, until Christ's second coming, the essence of the
Supper, the transfigured paschal festival. In the bread broken and the cup
blessed, God imparts, through Jesus Christ, in whose name it is dispensed,
not merely a sign, but a visible word, which, to the believing recipient, is a
medium of communion, a word concerning the sacrificial death of Jesus
Christ. He who, in faith, partakes of the bread and wine as the Sacrament
of the body and blood of Christ, receives the fruit of the death of Christ, to
wit, the forgiveness of sins.
"But even with this the significance of the Supper is not exhausted.
To this the Passover, the type of the Supper, already points. The paschal
supper was not a mere appropriation of the propitiatory virtue of the
paschal sacrifice. It was the supper of the living fellowship of the people, of
a unity of families, with God (Dogm. I. 262 seq). The Lord's Supper is,
consequently, also, no bare appropriation of the propitiatory