Daily Life Under Christ’s Sacraments

The human body is a marvel of God’s creative wisdom and power. The body has such strength and resiliency. Yet, without the Lord’s preservation and provision, the fragile body would not last much past 40 days without food, 8 days without water, or 4 minutes without oxygen. Our bodies are in need, and our God supplies!
The human soul, in comparison, has none of the qualities of the body, no resiliencies, defenses, strengths. Of itself, the human soul is dead, lifeless, helpless in transgressions and sins. The soul is powerless to breathe in the breath of eternal life, and even if it could, it has no power to swat away the lord of the flies (Beelzebub) who wants to take eternal life away.
God does for our souls what our souls can’t do for themselves. He gives life to the lifeless and breath to the breathless. He breathes into our feeble souls the holy wind, or breath, of the Gospel of the Christ. To souls spiritually dead, He brings spiritual new birth and life. To souls rotting in sinfulness, He brings the fresh air of God’s forgiveness. To souls headed for certain doom, He brings sure salvation. Made alive by the Spirit’s application of the Gospel of Jesus, our souls, which have no cardiac muscles nor an actual pulse, now beat with a spiritual heart of flesh, no longer spiritually inanimate like stones. And our souls’ measurable spiritual pulse is connected to the lifeblood of the Lamb!
Bodies wear out. Physical hearts stop. The soul, however, by the Spirit, goes on and on, from strength to strength, from life to LIFE. But while we are on this side of heaven, the heartbeat of faith will weaken, arrest, and surely die if not in a continued connection with Jesus through the Gospel. So Jesus gave us and souls the gifts of the Font and the Table, the Sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion, for our daily use.
Daily the soul makes use of the sacred waters of Jesus’ gift of Baptism through an exercise that our catechism days taught us, that, “[the sinner] in us should by daily contrition and repentance, be drowned and die with all sins and evils lusts; and that… [the saint in us] daily come[s] forth and arise[s], who shall live before God in righteousness and purity forever” (paraphrase, Small Catechism, “The Meaning of Baptism”). Those drowning and rising spiritual activities are what Paul taught in Romans 6:4. Because, as Luther observed, “We find out that that original sinner can swim,” daily we go back to the Font, daily the sinner is drowned, daily the saint rises with Christ.
And with the Lord’s Table, Luther taught: “There are so many hindrances and temptations of the devil and the world that we often become weary and faint, and sometimes also stumble [Heb 12:3]. Therefore, the Sacrament [of the Altar] is given as a daily pasture and sustenance, that faith may refresh and sustenance, that faith may refresh and strengthen itself [Ps 23:1–3] so that it will not fall back in such a battle, but become ever stronger and stronger” (Large Catechism, V, 23–24).
So, daily as we read our Bibles, God speaks to us. Daily His Law shows us our sin and condemns each of us as sinners. Daily we drown those sins in repentance. Daily His Gospel shows us our Savior and that His blood and righteousness are our beauty and our glorious dress, are our sure source of forgiveness, comfort, and certainty. Daily we arise with Christ Jesus, alive, as did He on Easter morn. Daily the Law empties us of any self-righteousness and drives to be satiated in our hunger for what the Table offers: the very body and blood of the Perfect Sacrifice, for us (“For you!” the Savior said), given and poured out, in, with, and under the bread and wine. Daily Jesus’ words, “In remembrance of me” remind us that He did not die for a faceless humanity, but for each individual, for me. What personalized grace and assurance! Daily that hunger mounts as we look forward to partaking “often.” In the Large Catechism, Luther advises communing no fewer than four times a year. Because of such a blessed, driving hunger in the soul for the Table that advice is never a maximum but rather a minimum!
A Christian soul cannot go 4 minutes, let alone 8 or 40 days without the power of God unto salvation, the Gospel, found in the Sacraments. Spirit-given faith is never static. It either decreases or it increases. A daily connection to the Sacraments prevents the former and produces the latter, with effectiveness to live in righteousness and purity today and in the endless day!
David Russow is pastor of Redeeming Grace Lutheran Church in Rogers, Minnesota.