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Pastors, Do You Encourage Your Congregation with the Sacraments?
Baptismal Vision
A poem once adorned the walls of the fourth-century baptistery constructed at the Basilica of Sant’Ambrogio in Milan, Italy. Its author was undoubtedly the bishop of Milan—Ambrose. This poem captured Ambrose’s baptismal vision and was visible to all who entered the waters. It reads,
This eight-niched temple has risen to a holy purpose,
And eight sides of the font perform their task.
That number befits a chamber for baptizing,
It towers so that people may be saved. In the splendor of Christ’s rising, to break the bars
Of death and bring life out of tombs.
Freeing from sin’s stain repenting men,
Cleansed in the font’s pure-running stream.
Here those shedding vile crimes of their past
May wash their hearts and take away pure breasts.
Here let them swiftly come. Here anyone who dares,
However darkened, will go off whiter than snow.
Let saints run here, since no one can be saintly
Without these waters, by God’s reign and plan.
Here flares the right.
What can be more God’s work
Than removing sin in an eyeblink?1
Ancient Wisdom for the Care of Souls
Coleman M. Ford, Shawn J. Wilhite
Professors Coleman M. Ford and Shawn J. Wilhite help pastors to embrace a classic, patristic vision of ministry through a study of pastoral virtues and early church figures.
As Ambrose prepared men and women for baptism, he told them they would be immersed in the water and thus clothed with Christ. The baptistery at Milan was constructed so as to feed water from four sides, signifying the four rivers of Eden described in Genesis 2:11–14, and to provide running water in the pool through one drain, symbolizing the “living water” of eternal life that Jesus spoke of in John 4:14.2 Ambrose wanted every detail of his basilica to convey the rich spiritual symbolism of the Christian life, a symbolism that arose out of a close reading of Scripture and a focus on the otherworldly nature of the Christian faith. Thus, Ambrose is a prime example of what we’d like to call a sacramental pastor—he understood the rich spiritual realities present in the church, the preaching of Scripture, and the practices of worship. He understood the power of God conveyed through the word of God. Whether in baptism or in singing hymns, Ambrose knew God was at work through the ordinary things of the Christian faith. Before learning from his ministry, let’s define what these sacraments are and show how they can affect our experience in the church.
Baptism and the Supper
In the corporate acts of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, we celebrate the power of the Spirit working in the body of Christ. The Spirit is at work in all aspects of worship and ministry, but the two sacraments (or ordinances) provide special physical pictures of his powerful work of spiritual transformation. Further, the sacraments are derived from God himself and undergirded by his word. As with all the means of grace, the word and Spirit are what make the sacraments effective for spiritual growth.
In short, baptism shows the reality that saints are reborn by faith in Christ; they shed their old self and put on the new self, which is Christ. This happens as the Spirit changes their heart to love Christ, and thus baptism also shows us who is in communion and who is not. The Lord’s Supper, a covenantal symbol, brings the church together to proclaim the gospel and continually grow in the Spirit as they worship him together. They are saints because they now dwell by faith in the body of Christ and will one day dwell with him for eternity (Rev. 21:3).
In the corporate acts of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, we celebrate the power of the Spirit working in the body of Christ.
In the church I (Coleman) grew up in, we took baptism and the Lord’s Supper seriously. The Supper was a weekly celebration, and baptism was considered a requirement for salvation. This church was part of a tradition that eventually took shape following the early nineteenth-century Cane Ridge revivals in Cane Ridge, Kentucky, what has come to be known as the Stone-Campbell (or Restoration) Movement. This movement saw the New Testament as the authority for church practice and jettisoned (or at least neglected) the historic creeds and confessions in favor of a plain and simple reading of the Bible. The spirit of the movement—reform and biblical simplicity—were worthy goals. What developed, however, was an ultra-literalistic interpretation of many New Testament passages on worship and practice. This group lacked both a broad, biblical theology of worship as well a charitable view of church history. As far as I could tell, the church of my youth did not deny core doctrines of the faith, but they certainly left them murky and unexplained. And the strict New Testament–only interpretation of the Christian life eventually led to beliefs that, in my experience, promoted a condescending perspective of other church traditions and even a pugnacious attitude toward other professing Christians. While this church also shaped me in healthy ways, I recognize that part of what was missing in my experience was a healthy view of the sacraments.
The idea of sacrament, understood in a biblically faithful and theologically correct manner, leads to more faithful Christian discipleship and more serious pastoral practice. The notion of sacrament is not foreign to Protestant worship, even Baptist worship, and has been used comfortably by past believers to highlight the biblical means of grace within the life of the church.3 Further a sacramental understanding of our life in the church reminds us of our eschatological destiny. We are a company of saints, aided by and growing in the Spirit, on a journey toward heaven. Simon Chan explains,
We cannot conceive of the church as a sacramental community without at the same time conceiving of it as an eschatological community. . . . Thus the signs of a sacramental community are also the signs of an eschatological community: a community on the move, whose life and mission are always directed toward the future, the visio Dei. This gives an eschatological seriousness to everything the church does.4
The notion of sacrament communicates that something otherworldly and future-bound is taking place when the saints gather for worship. It’s not magic, and it’s not secretive—rather, it’s spiritual and transformative.
Let’s look at the Supper as an example. Paul communicates something of this when he talks about participation in the body and blood of Christ. “The cup of blessing that we bless,” says Paul, “is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?” (1 Cor. 10:16). Stephen Um comments,
The objective reality of Christ’s work is subjectively appropriated by the work of the Spirit. Christ is really spiritually (but not physically) present—but not in a mechanistic sense. The Christian’s subjective experience is important—but not in an instrumental sense. In the Lord’s Supper, Christians commune with God in Christ through the Holy Spirit.5
In other words, the meal of the Lord connects us with the body of the Lord. This is not a re-sacrifice or a transmutation of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. It is a recognition of the amazing mystery that the church is bound up in the life of God in Christ. Um observes,
The breaking of his literal body binds Christians together in his mystical body. Communion together is based on his relentless grace. . . . The Lord’s supper reveals the vertical aspects of what it means to be in union with God through the Lord Jesus Christ, but there are also horizontal and social implications for what it means to put others’ needs first.6
The Supper reminds us of the spiritual connection Christians have with the Lord and with one another. It is anything but casual as it signifies a covenantal bond (Luke 22:20; 1 Cor. 11:25). Yet, the Supper is not a conditional or contractual act; it is an act of love and gratitude for the Savior who took on flesh for our salvation. It is a gift, not a burden, to God’s people. We recommit ourselves to God and one another with each sip of the cup and every bite of the bread. The Supper is a salve for the soul. Without regular participation in the Lord’s Supper, a Christian will not appreciate the richness of God’s grace given in the person and work of Christ. The sacraments also connect believers to the universal church, reminding them that every person in the body of Christ—both past and present—has participated in the living acts of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. After being welcomed into the body of Christ through the baptismal waters, Christians are sustained and nourished by the life of Christ through the Supper of Christ.
Overall, ministers of the gospel handle deep and spiritual things week in and week out. Empowered by the word of God, pastors encourage the saints not with worldly things but with the mysteries and power of God. These are clearly expounded in the ministry of Ambrose, who challenges us to consider the otherworldly nature of what pastors lead the church into on a weekly basis. He not only preached on the sacraments but also encouraged other ministers to cultivate spiritual habits and led laypeople to sing songs confessing the deep mystery of God in Christ. The man behind the words of sacramental beauty carved on the walls of Milan’s basilica was actually a reluctant candidate for leading the church, yet he soon became a respected (perhaps even feared) pastor and theologian. He would come to champion the sacraments of the church, and his pastoral sense led him to creatively address one of the greatest theological crises of his day.
Notes:
- Garry Wills, Font of Life: Ambrose, Augustine, and the Mystery of Baptism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 11.
- For a more detailed description of Ambrose’s baptistry, including the poem inscribed on the walls, see Wills, Font of Life, 2–13.
- Michael Haykin has demonstrated how English Baptists inherited their understanding of the sacraments from earlier Puritan theology, which comfortably situated the sacraments of the Lord’s Supper and baptism within a proper biblical framework apart from Roman Catholic sacramentalism. See Michael A. G. Haykin, Amidst Our Beloved Saints: Recovering Sacrament in the Baptist Tradition (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2022). For Baptist perspectives on the nature of the church and sacraments see Anthony R. Cross and Philip E. Thompson, eds. Baptist Sacramentalism: Studies in Baptist History and Thought (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2007).
- Simon Chan, Spiritual Theology: A Systematic Study of the Christian Life (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 1998), 112.
- Stephen T. Um, 1 Corinthians: The Word of the Cross, Preaching the Word (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2015), 205.
- Um, 1 Corinthians, 208–9.
This article is adapted from Ancient Wisdom for the Care of Souls: Learning the Art of Pastoral Ministry from the Church Fathers by Coleman M. Ford and Shawn J. Wilhite.
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