26 August 2012
On Means of Grace
On Means of Grace
Church embraces also the Sacraments. To avoid that ambiguous and so often misused word of ecclesiastical Latin, we should say that Church embraces also Baptism, absolution, and the Lord’s Supper. However, one wants to name these things, whether one speaks of sacraments with the Latin Church or of mysteries with the Eastern Church, or whether one includes them with the Word in the collective term “means of grace,” one thing they all have in common : they have eschatological importance. The coming world is anticipated in them. They do not merely describe a divine, heavenly reality; they bestow right now a share in it. The forgiveness of sins, which we receive in Baptism and the absolution, is the anticipation of the acquittal in the Last Judgment. Our death and our resurrection to eternal life have begun already in our baptism (Roman 6:3-11). In the holy Supper Christ comes to us now and gives us a share in the “messianic” heavenly feast.
HERMAN SASSE, THIS IS MY BODY, P.358
