Waters, Guy Prentiss. The Lord’s Supper as the Sign and Meal of the New Covenant. Short Studies in Biblical Theology 8. Wheaton: Crossway, 2019. 117pp excluding end matter.
Summary and Critique
In The Lord’s Supper, Waters rightly connects the Lord’s Supper to the New Covenant that Jesus ratified with this death on the cross. Waters also shows how the Lord’s Supper follows God’s pattern throughout salvation history (what Waters calls “redemptive history”) of providing signs for all his covenants with mankind and frequently providing covenant meals.
As a sign, the Lord’s Supper points to the cross of Christ, Jesus’ redemptive and sacrificial death for sinners. As a meal, the Lord’s Supper “is the occasion for the covenant member’s communion with the covenant Head, Jesus Christ,” by the Holy Spirit and through faith (107).
My biggest negative critique of The Lord’s Supper is that Waters does not treat the Lord’s Supper with enough breadth or depth. Of the 117 pages (the third shortest book in the series), Waters only spends 23 pages (20% of the book) on texts that explicitly mention the Lord’s Supper. Within these 23 pages, he spends an extraordinarily small amount of space on key texts, such as 1 Corinthians 11:17–34, which receives a total of three pages dedicated to it. Waters left many stones unturned that would have complemented his study and given the reader a greater understanding of the Lord’s Supper. Although The Lord’s Supper is supposed to be a short study, I find this book too short, especially in light of other books in the series that used up to 200 pages, excluding end matter.
Summary of Each Chapter
Chapter 1: Covenant Basics
The most important covenants in the Bible are the covenants that God made with human beings (20).
The following three observations about covenants yield a working definition of the covenants that God made with human beings:
- “Covenant” assumes an existing, elective relationship between two parties and serves as the solemn ratification of that relationship (21).
- A covenant involves life-and-death issues (22).
- A covenant is a sovereign administration of promises with corresponding obligations (23).
Waters summarizes a covenant between God and man as follows (31):
“God’s covenants with people formalize an existing, elective relationship and in this way bring life-and-death issues to the fore. In these covenants, God sovereignly administers promises with corresponding obligations”
What ties all the covenants together is Jesus: “The New Testament understands all of God’s several covenants with sinners in the Old Testament to point toward and find their intended consummation in the person and work of Jesus Chris” (35).
Chapter 2: Covenant Signs
The nature of covenant signs: “The covenant signs were physical and tangible objects susceptible to the five senses . . . . Each sign was given to the covenant community as a visible and perpetual reminder of God’s goodness in and through that particular covenant” (45).
Waters briefly summarizes the covenants between God and people along with their corresponding sign:
- The Covenant of Works (Adamic Covenant): the Tree of Life (55–58)
- The Noahic Covenant: the rainbow (46–47)
- The Abrahamic Covenant: circumcision (47–49)
- The Mosaic Covenant: the Passover (circumcision carried over into the Mosaic Covenant) (50–53)
- The Davidic Covenant: “Instead of presenting a brand new covenant sign, the Davidic covenant invested the existing covenant sign of circumcision with enriched meaning. We have, then, not a new sign instituted but an old sign reinvigorated” (55).
- The New Covenant: Baptism and Lord’s Supper (50–53)
Chapter 3: Covenant Meals
This chapter looks at the succession of meals within salvation history by focusing on the meals in the Pentateuch, Prophets, and New Testament. “We will see themes and trends that will help us better appreciate the Lord’s Supper when we look at it in the next chapter” (60).
The Pentateuch
The goal of Israel’s feasts that cycle throughout the year “was to reinforce central lessons about who God was and what he had done for Israel. These feasts afforded God’s delivered people the opportunity to respond to him appropriately” (60). The feasts in the Pentateuch are (60–64):
- The Feast of Passover. “Passover commemorates the Lord’s deliverance of Israel from bondage in Egypt” (60).
- The Feast of Unleavened Bread.
- The Feast of Firstfruits.
- The Feast of Weeks.
- The Feast of Trumpets.
- The Day of Atonement.
- The Feast of Booths.
God was teaching Israel several lessons through the annual cycle of feasts:
- God “was providing his people with ongoing reminders of his covenantal mercies and faithfulness to them” (64).
- “God was calling his people to draw near into his presence on regular occasions” (64).
- The feasts were corporate (64).
- The feasts “called forth a range of affections appropriate for life in covenant with God,” such as mourning for sin and being joyful for God’s goodness (65).
- The feasts all centred on food (65).
The Prophets
“God frequently appealed to feasts, meals, and food in speaking to his people through the Prophets,” such as expressing displeasure due to sin and covenant breaking (67), expressing and conveying covenant curses (69), and bringing covenant restoration (69–70).
The New Testament
In John’s Gospel, it is shown how the covenant system of worship “purposefully foreshadows the work that Jesus has come to do as Messiah and Redeemer” (76). In the Synoptic Gospels, “Jesus situates the kingdom [of God] in the context of the unfolding covenants and covenant meals of redemptive history” (76).
Chapter 4: The Lord’s Supper
Waters investigates the Gospels, Acts, and Paul to determine what the New Testament says about the Lord’s Supper.
The Gospels
There are three interwoven dimensions of the Lord’s Supper presented in the Gospels:
- The Lord’s Supper “is a covenant meal in which individual believers, by faith, commune with Christ to their spiritual nourishment” (96).
- The Lord’s Supper “is a family meal in which the covenant family of God gathers together under the oversight of God in Christ” (96).
- The Lord’s Supper “serves to distinguish the church as a society that God has set apart from the world around them” (96).
Acts
- The Lord’s Supper was a communal observance (98).
- The Lord’s Supper was an act of worship (98).
- The Lord’s Supper accompanied the preaching of the Word (98).
Paul’s Letters
There are two passages where Paul treats the Lord’s Supper in detail:
- 1 Corinthians 10:14–22 (102–04). The Lord’s Supper is an ordinance of communion between the believer and Christ (102).
- 1 Corinthians 11:17–34 (104–07). The Lord’s Supper is an ordinance of remembrance, commemorating the death of Christ for sinners and “his self-giving in blessing to his people” (102).
Waters summarizes Paul’s view of the Lord’s Supper as follows:
- The Lord’s Supper “is the occasion for the covenant member’s communion with the covenant Head, Jesus Christ. In the Lord’s Supper, Christ is present to his people by the Holy Spirit and through faith (1 Cor. 10:16)” (107).
- The Lord’s Supper is a demonstration of the unity of the church” (107).
- The Lord’s Supper “draws a clear line between the church and the world” (108).
Chapter 5: Conclusions for the Church
After summarizing the biblical teaching on the Lord’s Supper (109–12), Waters answers three common questions about the Lord’s Supper.
- Q1: How is Christ present in the Supper? Christ is present to his people “by the ministry of the Holy Spirit working by and with the Word of God, to the faith of the believer. We may affirm, then, that the bread and the wine are the body and blood of Christ not physically or superstitiously but spiritually for God’s people, as we approach the Table and feed upon Christ by faith” (113).
- Q2: Who may come to the Supper? “[T]he Supper is available to those believers who have demonstrated the capacity to examine themselves and to discern the body and blood of Christ” (114). Elders are permitted to bar professing Christians from the Lord’s Supper who “is known for a lifestyle of sin” (114).
- Q3: How is the Lord’s Supper like and unlike baptism?
- They have different old covenant analogs. The Lord’s Supper analog is the Passover and Baptism’s analog is circumcision (116).
- Baptism points to union with Christ; Lord’s Supper points to the cross of Christ, the redemptive and sacrificial death of Christ for sinners (116).
- Baptism is the covenant sign of initiation; Lord’s Supper is the covenant sign of nourishment (116–17).