Saint Augustine famously wrote that the sacraments are visible signs of invisible graces. a This definition helps us understand the two sacraments of the Protestant church, surely, but with a little bit of imagination, one can read through the whole of the Scriptures and see sacraments, or at least sacramental imagery, on every page.
For example, in Genesis 1, God set the sun to govern the day and the moon to govern the night. Every day when the sun rises, men rise with it and when the sun sets, men sleep. Throughout Scripture, sleep is representative of death ( Job 14:10-12, Ps. 13:3, Mark 5:39, etc.), so it seems that the cycle of night and day which governs our lives points to the greater reality of death and resurrection. When we go to sleep, we die. When the sun rises, we are born again. In this way, when Christ rose, He signified the rising of a new creation as Colossians 1:15 teaches us, “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.” As the rising sun governs our day, the risen Son governs all of our lives.
Genesis 2 tell the creation story of what I believe to be perhaps the most meaningful, though that’s not to say the most important, sacramental image of all: mankind. Like water, bread, and wine, the elements that make up Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, Adam was created out of a basic element. Dust. God did not choose the most radiant of his newly formed creation, the sun, to be His image bearer on earth. Nor did He choose animals that will later be used to symbolically describe the Lord, such as the lion or lamb. Instead, God chose to transform the most basic element of His creation into His own representative, fashioning the dust into a being made in His own likeness. It was into the dust of the ground that God breathed His Spirit into. God presented man as His visible representative on earth, just as later Christ presented bread and wine as representations of His body and blood.
It should go without saying that I don’t mean that man is a “sacrament” in the ecclesiastical sense, as Baptism and the Supper are, but humanity is a sacramental image of God in that we are visible representations of the invisible Godhead. We are God’s agents on earth, meant to carry out His work, modeling attributes like love, wisdom, knowledge, power, and the list goes on. And not only does man sacramentally reveal God to the world and even each other in our human relationships, but we commune with God through sacramental things. Just as God created the universe to be packed full of sacramental imagery, He created man to see such revelations. “It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out” (Prov. 25:2).
The Old Testament is especially full of vivid images that point to spiritual truth. John Calvin calls the Tree of Life, a sign of immortality, and the rainbow, a seal that God would not judge the earth again by a flood, sacraments of a “first kind”. b The ark which carried Noah and his offspring safely through the flood is another “first kind” of sacrament, a proto-baptism, if you will. Another baptism took place at the Red Sea as Israel was delivered from slavery in Egypt, which also serves as a symbolic image of sin and death. In the wilderness God gave His people manna and quail, water from the rock, healing from the bronze serpent. The sacrificial system served as another visible way that God revealed Himself to His people, pointing to the great sacrifice to come, Christ Jesus, and by physical means communed with His people. These were visible, tangible, eatable, smellable signs of God’s mercy and grace, without which, God’s people could not have a right relationship with Yahweh.
This quick overview of Scripture is by no means thorough enough to do the subject justice, but I hope it is enough to demonstrate that the sacramental nature of the world goes deeper and wider than we often think. There is no such thing as bare “material” reality. The sacramental nature of the universe reveals to us that we serve a God who loves to be with us, to commune with us, and to show Himself to us in the ordinary things of the world. Dust, water, wine, trees, rainbows, men and women, all show forth the glory of God and reveal His grace to the world and the goodness of His works. Reading through Psalm 19, you’ll find several verses that echo this idea, God reveals Himself in the Heavens and gives knowledge in the night:
The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours out speech,
and night to night reveals knowledge. (Psalm 19:1-2)
The rules of the Lord are true,
and righteous altogether.
More to be desired are they than gold,
even much fine gold;
sweeter also than honey
and drippings of the honeycomb. (Psalm 19:9-10)
Ultimately, however, the sacramental nature of the world is pointing to something, someone, greater. The signs are not in fact the spiritual truths they represent, though they are “enjoined upon men to render them more certain and confident of the truth of his [God’s] promises” (Institutes IV, xiv, 18). The sacraments are gifts to men that aid our faith, giving us reminders of God’s promises that we can touch, taste, and handle. Alasdair Heron makes this point in his book, Table and Tradition:
“What then is all too easily lost to sight is the fact that the bond between visible and invisible on which everything turns in Christian theology is not that supplied by a ‘sacramental universe,’ but is rather Jesus Christ himself. There is the link between God and man, heaven and earth, the divine and the creaturely, and, we must add, the spiritual and the material.” c
Jesus Christ is the great Sacrament, the ultimate visible sign of God’s invisible grace. As I quoted above, the Apostle Paul expounds on this in Colossians 1:15 explaining that Jesus is the “image of the invisible God.” This is but an echo of Christ’s own words from the Gospel of John, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). The Incarnation of Christ is the greatest sacramental event in history; his conception as a human being was the supreme joining of heaven and earth, divine and human, spiritual and material. It is only through Christ’s mediation that any man can have true communion with God, He is “the link between God and man,” the fulfillment of every other sign and seal and every sacramental image that came before. It was in the first Advent that the Word became flesh, that God’s promises were enjoined to a man, Jesus Christ, and the invisible, divine God became visible, once and for all.
And yet the fulfilment of these signs and seals by Christ does not mean they are done away with completely. We were made to commune with God through creation and the two ordinances of the New Testament church demonstrate our continual need for signs and seals. Though Jesus’ death and resurrection are the substance of all Christian baptism points to, He still commands His disciples to baptize in the Triune name. Though his body and blood broken and shed for us are the true bread and wine, He still serves us at His table each week.
The sacramental universe is not gone with Christ, it is made complete. We serve a sacramental God, the Creator who imbues seed and stream and star with meaning, the Divine Being who transcends His creation yet stoops down to mingle with it and who sent a Messiah to rescue His people by becoming one of them. The Lord of the Scriptures did not create a world in which the spiritual and material are separated by a gap that cannot be bridged, instead he designed our universe to be one where the spiritual and material are joined.
And as we do the work of kings, searching out the glory of God concealed in His works, we live out our sacramental nature, visibly testifying to the wonders of our God and Great King.
- Augustine, On The Catechising of the Uninstructed, 26.50. (back)
- Calvin, Institutes, IV.xiv.18. (back)
- Alasdair Heron, Table and Tradition, 73. (back)
