Thursday, August 13, 2020

Greg Lanier on the Veneration of Jesus in the Ordinances of Baptism and the Eucharist

 

 

Venerating Christ in Ordinances

 

Every religious movement of the ancient world had ceremonies or ordinances done in honor of or to appease their deities. And the Israelites were no different, in that their entire sacrificial and ceremonial system was oriented around God. Of course, with the coming of Christ, these shadows faded as the reality appeared. And thus, the system of sacrifices was replaced by spiritual worship in the New Testament era. Yet ordinances did not go away altogether in early Christianity. Two were mandated by Christ himself. What is fascinating is that the New Testament regularly speaks of both as being done “unto” or “in” the Lord Jesus.

 

Consider baptism as the initiating ordinance. Three times in Acts, the early Christians declare that one is baptized “in the name of” Jesus (Acts 2:38; 10:48; 19:5). This use of “name” is important, because to a Jewish-background Christian of this period, the “name” of God represents God himself (see especially Ex. 23:21; Num. 6:27; 1 Kings 8:29; 2 Chron. 7:16). Hence, being baptized “in” or “into” the name of Jesus expresses how such a washing is an actual act of worshiping him. Similarly, Paul writes of how we are “baptized into Christ Jesus” (Rom. 6:3-4). By leaving out the “name of” (found in Acts), he makes even clearer that the physical act of baptism somehow binds the confessing believer spiritually to Christ. What exactly the New Testament authors mean is hard to grasp; we will save the mystery of the sacrament for another day. But consider this thought experiment. What if someone said, “Be baptized in the name of Caesar” or “in the name of Napoleon” or “into the queen”? Regardless of one’s religious perspective or high opinion of such individuals, such phrasing would either be incredibly off or downright scandalous. Yet that is precisely what the early Christians said about Jesus Christ—early and often, and long before sacramental theology had fully developed. The inescapable conclusion is that early Christians could use such language only if they considered Jesus worthy of such exalted veneration.

 

The same is true of the sustaining ordinance of the Eucharist (or Holy Communion). Observe that the actual name given to it in the New Testament is the “Lord’s Supper” (Gk. Kyriakon deipnon, 1 Cor. 11:20). Jesus presides over it. It is his meal. It is a means of fellowshipping with him, fulfilling both the Passover meal and the postsacrifice priestly meals of communion with God (e.g., Lev. 7:11-32). Paul further describes the Supper as “participation in the blood of Christ” and “participation in the body of Christ” (1 Cor. 10:16). What exactly he means continues to be debated, but it is clear that the ordinance somehow brings the worshiper into a kind of fellowship with the Lord Jesus in a way that is unparalleled by any other human meal (see John 6:53). But to stress how this sacrament is truly an act of worship of Christ, Paul goes on to compare it with Roman-era cultic meals that were a participation in the “cup of demons” and the “table of demons” (1 Cor. 10:21). What pagans do to worship false deities shares a similar pattern with the Lord’s Supper, which is why the latter had to be handled so carefully at Corinth. It is not a mere meal but an act of worshiping Christ.

 

In addition to these primary ordinances, two other passages further display how early Christians saw Jesus as an appropriate recipient of acts of veneration. (1) Paul describes how Christians have liberty to choose to “observe” Jewish feat days or foods—provided they conduct such act of worship “in honor of the Lord” (Rom. 14:6). Here “Lord” refers to Jesus, as Romans 14:8-9 makes clear. (2) Throughout the Old Testament, the “firstfruits” of any crop or livestock are offered to God and God only. In a subtle comment in Romans 16:5, Paul uses “firstfruits” (Gk. AparchÄ“) as a metaphor for new believers and declares them “firstfruits to Christ” (my trans.). Thus, he subtly signals Christ to be a rightful recipient of the firstfruits, just as God in the Old Testament era. (Greg Lanier, Is Jesus Truly God? How the Bible Teaches the Divinity of Christ [Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 2020], 82-84)