Bottom Line, Up Front (BLUF): Simple & Simultaneously Profound

Slice of Life: In our Christian discipleship and fellowship class at church, my wife and I are blessed to be part of a group of people who turn out week after week, month after month, year after year, to love the saints, to read the Scriptures, to submit ourselves to the authority of the Bible, and to herald it to all who will hear. We are blessed to practice the biblical paradigm: “And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (Acts 2:42). Why do I share this? To sound holier-than-thou? To appear super-spiritual? To shame others who are likewise fellow believers but who practice biblical faith differently? No, to all three. Trust me: I am quite aware of my sin, and God is supremely aware of it, too. I share it because of its simplicity. God’s means of grace are simple and simultaneously profound. 

We read the Scriptures together because where Scripture speaks, God has spoken, and God’s people need to hear. We aim to submit to the authority of the Scriptures because they are the means by which the saints learn the revealed will of God. We herald the Scriptures because “faith comes through hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17). We break bread together over the table, over the campfire, next to one another, beside one another, etc. because there is something about sharing meals together that is of course physiological, biological, chemical, and visceral, but it is also spiritual. This is why the Lord’s Supper is crucial as a means of grace in the Christian worldview. We are feeding upon the bread of life who came down from heaven, God the Son, the Word made flesh. Looking to him, feeding upon him. As one of Christianity’s great confessions phrases it, we “do then also, inwardly by faith, really and indeed, yet not carnally and corporally, but spiritually, receive, and feed upon, Christ crucified, and all benefits of his death: the body and blood of Christ being then, not corporally or carnally, in, with, or under the bread and wine; yet, as really, but spiritually, present to the faith of believers in that ordinance, as the elements themselves are to their outward senses.” 

This morning as the Table was before us in the congregation, I could not go forward. I held my head in my hands and wept. A woman seated behind me tapped me on the shoulder. “It’s time to go forward for the elements,” she intimated. But I sat still, head in hands, sobbing. I did not look up. But there was no use in pretending. A child on the row in front of me could tell I was crying, and she looked at me. I know she was watching me because I could feel it. I raised my blurry eyes to see her, a precious little blond girl in a yellow dress and white sandals, her hair in pigtails. I’m sure I appeared a sad weepy old man, a strange and ostensibly scary sight to a young girl in pigtails and who is still learning the English alphabet. But I was broken. I understood once again that Christ came into his world to save sinners, and I am chief among them.

I grew up in the Baptist tradition and we don’t (this is just my opinion) teach upon the crucial nature of the Lord’s Supper as I think Scripture commends, but I don’t wish to start theological skirmishes with brothers and sisters who are genuine believers. I could be wrong, but I think it’s quite important. And so the natural question might be, “Then why did you not partake?” Short answer: Because I examined myself in light of God’s holiness and I was ashamed. 

Very often when I read through Scripture, what I see over and over again is that God crushes those he uses. That is, he brings them low so that they might love him rather than themselves, that we sinners might learn to put others before ourselves, that we might endure sufferings in order to get a taste of what the Son endured as he despised the shame and became sin for us. And it brings me to my spiritual knees because I know that God is perfectly just to damn me, a sinner in word and deed. Perfectly just. 

 I listened to the song’s lyrics being played and labored to dry my tears without attracting attention:

Were creation suddenly articulate
With a thousand tongues to lift one cry
Then from north to south and east to west
We’d hear Christ be magnified

Were the whole earth echoing His eminence
His name would burst from sea and sky
From rivers to the mountain tops
We’d hear Christ be magnified

O! Christ be magnified
Let His praise arise
Christ be magnified in me
O! Christ be magnified
From the altar of my life
Christ be magnified in me

When every creature finds its inmost melody/And every human heart its native cry/Oh then in one enraptured hymn of praise/We’ll sing Christ be magnified

O! Christ be magnified
Let His praise arise
Christ be magnified in me
O! Christ be magnified
From the altar of my life
Christ be magnified in me

I won’t bow to idols
I’ll stand strong and worship You
If it puts me in the fire
I’ll rejoice ’cause You’re there too

I won’t be formed by feelings
I’ll hold fast to what is true
If the Cross brings transformation
Then I’ll be crucified with You

‘Cause death is just the doorway
Into resurrection life
And If I join You in Your suffering
Then I’ll join You when You rise

And when You return in glory
With all the angels and the saints
My heart will still be singing
My song will be the same

I won’t bow to idols
I’ll stand strong and worship You
If it puts me in the fire
I’ll rejoice ’cause You’re there too

I won’t be formed by feelings
I’ll hold fast to what is true
If the Cross brings transformation
Then I’ll be crucified with You

‘Cause death is just the doorway
Into resurrection life
And If I join You in Your suffering
Then I’ll join You when You rise

And when You return in glory
With all the angels and the saints
My heart will still be singing
My song will be the same

O! Christ be magnified
Let His praise arise
Christ be magnified in me
O! Christ be magnified
From the altar of my life
Christ be magnified in me
O! Christ be magnified
Let His praise arise
Christ be magnified in me
O! Christ be magnified
From the altar of my life
Christ be magnified in me

But with each thunder of the chords on the piano, with each cymbalic resonance through the sanctuary, there I was–reduced to tears and in awe of the God who came to save sinners.

This may come across as a preachy missive, or as an anecdote of a self-obsessed navel-gazing pietist. But it is not. I assure you that is not my intention. My intention is simple–to teach myself (before anyone else) that God’s means of grace are both simple and profound: prayer, fellowship, Scripture, the Lord’s Supper (breaking of bread), and teaching of the Scriptures. These ostensibly simple means are more than sufficient to grip sinners’ souls, call them to the One who loved them with the everlasting love, and present them faultless before the throne.