Johann Gerhard on the Mystery of the Blessed Sacrament
From Gerhard’s “Sacred Meditations"
Johann Gerhard (1582-1637) is among the most important Lutheran theologians, both in his time and still today. A Lutheran Scholastic theologian during the time of Lutheran Orthodoxy, Gerhard was one of the most prominent Lutheran Church leaders in his day. His writings have preserved the Lutheran Confession of faith for centuries.
One of his best-known works, Sacred Meditations, is a devotional text for Christian edification. The work is divided into 51 devotions on various topics in theology and Christian life. Quoted below is an excerpt from the nineteenth and twentieth chapters, both on the Lord’s Supper.
Gerhard not only demonstrates a profound understanding of the Sacrament of the Altar, but encourages the proper response to it: awe and reverence. Truly it is such a marvelous and mysterious blessing that our heavenly Lord should come down and feed us with the gift of His Body and Blood.
Gerhard also emphasizes the need for proper preparation for the Sacrament. While the Lord’s Supper is given as a means to receive life, forgiveness, and salvation, Gerhard warns that improper preparation and unworthy reception may lead one to find death and judgement. “Certainly then a worthy preparation is needful,” that we may find the gifts Jesus promises to give us in this holy meal.
In the Holy Supper of our Lord we have a mystery placed before us that should cause the deepest awe and excite our profoundest adoration. There is the treasury and storehouse of God's grace. We know (Gen. 2:9) that the tree of life was planted by God in Paradise, that its fruit might preserve our first parents and their posterity in the blessedness of an immortality which He had bestowed upon them at their creation. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was also placed in Paradise; but that which God gave them for their salvation and eternal life, and to serve as a test of their obedience, became the occasion of their death and eternal condemnation, when they miserably yielded to Satan's enticements and followed their own sinful desires.
So in this Holy Supper we have the true tree of life again set before us, that sweet tree (Ez. 47:12), whose leaves are for medicine and whose fruit is for salvation; aye, its sweetness is such as to destroy the bitternes of all afictions, and even of death itself. The Israelites were fed with manna in the wilderness as with bread from heaven (Ex. 16: 15); in this Holy Supper we have the true manna which came down from heaven to give life unto the world […]
Nor does Christ simply speak the word of comfort to our souls, He also takes up His abode in us; He feeds our souls not with heavenly manna, but, what is far better, with His own blessed self. Here is the true gate of heaven to our souls, and the ladder reaching from earth to heaven on which the angels of God ascend and descend (Gen. 28:12); for is not He who is in heaven greater than the heavens? Can heaven be as close to God as the flesh and the human nature which He assumed in the incarnation? Heaven is indeed the dwelling-place of God (Is. 66:1), and yet the Holy Spirit rests upon the human nature assumed by Christ (Is. 11:2). God is in heaven, and yet in Christ dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily (Col. 2:9).
Truly this is a great and infallible pledge of our salvation; He could not possibly have given us a greater, for what is greater than Himself? What can be more intimately united to the Lord than His own human nature, which He hath taken, in His incarnation, into fellowship with the adorable Trinity, and thus made the treasury of all the blessings that heaven has to bestow? What is so intimately joined to Him as His own body and blood? With this truly heavenly food He refreshes our souls, who are as miserable worms of the dust before Him, and makes us partakers of His own nature; why then shall we not enjoy His gracious favor?
[…]
This Holy Supper is no common meal, nor is it the banquet of an earthly king; but here we have placed before us the holy mystery of the body and blood of Christ, in which we are to participate. Certainly then a worthy preparation is needful, that we may not, unworthily eating of it, find death instead of life, and receive judgment instead of mercy.
Sacred Mediations, Johann Gerhard, chapters 19 and 20, pgs. 77-81.
Are not all unworthy to receive this heavenly food? Certainly! By ourselves we are unworthy and unable to receive God’s precious gifts. Nevertheless, God lovingly invites all who know the gifts He brings in this blessed meal and have faith in its power to restore life to us and bring to us salvation.
Those who do not accept the gifts given by Christ in the Holy Eucharist or do not have faith in that which our Lord declares is truly present in this sacred meal, however, have effectively dispensed the invitation. Disbelief in God’s power to do what He says He will do in His Word bars them from a proper reception of the Supper.
Nevertheless, our Lord gladly invites us to His table and we partake of this holy food. Each time we kneel to faithfully receive this blessed Sacrament, each time we ponder the mystery of Christ coming down into the flesh to bear our sin on the cross and rise again, each time we feel burdened by sin and riddled with guilt: let us come gladly to the Supper! Let us consider our unworthiness—and still let us hear God’s call.
Excellent!! Hopefully this will be widely read and believed. May it also inspire those who read this to search out Gerhard’s full Sacred Meditations and other writings either in print or online. Thank you!