Thursday, January 12, 2006

Clowney on the Church

This is the last paragraph in Edmund Clowney's book The Church; his chapter is on the sacraments, but it is a fitting conclusion to the book overall:

The seal of Christ's New Covenant could not be more concrete and specific. he gives himself to us as our Surety and our Life. No less does his sacrament bind us to each other. We participate, Paul says, in the blood of Christ and in the body of Christ. Because we are united to Christ, we cannot be joined to idols. But because we are united to Christ, we must be joined to one another: 'Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf' (1 Cor. 10:17). Baptized into the name of Christ, partaking of the body of Christ, the church is the Lord's. The doctrine of the church is the teaching of the Lord himself, who loved the church and gave himself for it. The unchanging Christ still gives the bread and the cup, sealing his presence until the day when the mission fo the church is finished, and with that host from every family and nation we will see him whom we love, and he will eat with us again in resurrection glory.

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