If you knew of a father who refused to feed his children, you might be inclined to consider him a delinquent father. Perhaps you’d confront him, rebuking him for not caring for his children. Then imagine he replied, “I express my love for my children every day, I tell them I’m proud of them, and I assure them that I always will.” He tells you that he’s certain his feelings of love are sufficient for the nourishment, and growth of his children.
Once you picked your jaw up off the floor, you’d be right to intervene for the sake of his children. God, of course, isn’t such a father. God feeds His children. He knows the feebleness of our faith, and so He nourishes it with the visible signs of baptism & the Supper. As one Scottish preacher (R.M. M’Cheyne) once said, “Your faith is like a bruised reed. He will strengthen you with might, so that you shall hold Christ, and not let Him go.”
Though the Bible declares God’s great love for us, for His beloved children, He also gives us a meal to nourish our faith; instead of leaving you to somehow strengthen & grow your faith apart from Him. God doesn’t merely tell us of His love for us, or of the forgiveness we have in Him. God shows us. He feeds us, with incarnate Love.
Our comfort in life and death is that God sent His Son to be our Savior. The child of God is built up in his faith by feeding upon Christ, laying hold on Christ, being shown Christ. This Supper, which we partake of “until he comes”, was instituted to ensure that through each age the saints might hold, and see, and taste the bread of heaven, the wine of relief; the nourishing Love of God in bread & wine.
So come in faith and welcome to Jesus Christ…
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