The Lord's Supper in the Theology of Martin Chemnitz Bjarne - Logia

The Consecration |
thing in the Gospel or the sacrament, but the Words of Institution,
which are spoken through men, are words of power because Christ
himself speaks through His servants, “Ministers act in Christ’s stead
and do not represent their own persons according to the word (Luke
10:16) ‘He who hears you hears me’” (Ap. VII, 47; see also Ap. VII, 28;
XII, 40; XXVIII, 18).
204 The only ground on which we can know that we are receiving the
gift of Christ’s body and blood given and shed for us for the forgiveness
of sins is the consecration done only with the words of the Lord.
That is the epistemological basis for the certainty that we have the
same Supper the Lord instituted in the Upper Room. This sacrament
stands or falls with the consecration. Chemnitz spells this out so
clearly that his meaning cannot be misunderstood:
Therefore the words of institution are spoken in our Lord’s Supper,
not merely for the sake of history but to show to the church that Christ
himself, through His Word, according to His command and promise, is
present in the action of the Supper and by the power of this word offers
His body and blood to those who eat, For it is He who distributes,
though it be through the minister; it is He who says: “This is my body,”
It is He who is efficacious through His Word, so that the bread is His
body and the wine His blood, In this way, and because of this, we are
sure and believe that in the Lord’s Supper we eat, not ordinary bread
and wine, but the body and blood of Christ. (Ex, 2, 229).
205 The principle that ministers act in Christ’s stead as His ambassadors
here enunciated is so fundamental to the theology of the Lutheran
Confessions that Chemnitz in his dialogue with the Papists
on Penance wants to make it clear that his theology in no way holds
to a conditional absolution so that nothing is offered and imparted in
absolution but only calls attention to something they already had. He
disavows such a viewpoint:
For among the Sacramentarians some contend that sins are not
remitted through absolution, since men are not able to remit sins — a
thing which belongs only to God, Therefore they contend that believers
receive nothing in absolution, but that it is only an outward declaration
of something they already had before, However, God, who alone remits
sins, does not do this without means but through the ministry of the
Word and sacraments. Now private absolution proclaims the message
of the Gospel through which God is without doubt efficacious and
remits sins to those who by faith lay hold of the message of the Gospel
in absolution. Therefore in absolution God himself remits sins through