The Presence of God and the Means of Grace

I THINK THAT THIS POST HAS MOVED FROM ITS ORIGINAL POSITION IN THE BLOG DUE TO BLOG ISSUES WHILE I'M HANDLING THE POSTS.  IF THE ORIGINAL POSITION OF THIS POST IS EVER FOUND, REPOST IT WITH THAT DATE AND TIME.

THIS MAY BE CONNECTED WITH THE POST ON JUNE 3, 2011.

I'm referring to the angle of concurrence between the actions of corporate worship in Word and Sacrament and the actual, effectual and sovereign working of the Holy Spirit upon the souls of the believers.

When the degree of concurrence between the sovereign, invisible action of the Spirit and the visible activity in Word and Sacrament is small, then the two classes of action, visible and invisible, do not necessarily interact at all.  They are independent.  The Spirit performs his actions sovereignly and probably most often unconsciously in the hearts of the elect, and probably most often independently of the immediate exposure to the visible actions of Word and Sacrament.  The ministry of Word and Sacrament finds the elect where they have been put by the invisible work of the Spirit, and when the two classes of action happen to intersect, then there is a conversion to Christ, or a step upward in spirituality and growth in grace.  There is no necessary connection between the two classes of action, visible and invisible, but each has its own place in the scheme of things.  In the extreme, Word and Sacrament are seen not as channels of real grace, but as teachers of ideas, and reminders of God's grace, and mainly as actions that we take to testify to our faith.  The downside of this view, taken to an extreme, is that there is no certainty at any point in time that the visible actions of Word and Sacrament are having any effect in the church.

On the other hand, when the degree of concurrence between the invisible action of the Spirit and the visible activity in Word and Sacrament is very high, that is, when Word and Sacrament are actual instruments or vehicles of the Spirit, then we expect to find spiritual life and progress exclusively through exposure to Word and Sacrament.  The downside of this approach is that grace can be bound to the Word and Sacrament in such a way as to discount the working of the Spirit in the elect under general circumstances, and we also now have a more difficult time explaining those circumstances when Word and Sacrament seem to "fail" in certain persons, even though they have been applied to them.

Between these two extremes there must be a nuanced medium.  We want to know what the Scripturally normative degree of concurrence should be between the activity of the invisible Spirit and the visible Word and Sacrament.

The special presence of God in the worshiping assembly would tend to put much emphasis on Word and Sacrament as instruments in the hands of the Spirit.

John 15:7   7 "If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you.

John 17:8   8 "For I have given to them the words which You have given Me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came forth from You; and they have believed that You sent Me.

Acts 5:20   20 "Go, stand in the temple and speak to the people all the words of this life."

Acts 11:14   14 'who will tell you words by which you and all your household will be saved.'

Romans 9:6   6 ¶ But it is not that the word of God has taken no effect. For they are not all Israel who are of Israel,

Romans 10:8   8 But what does it say? "The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart" (that is, the word of faith which we preach):

Romans 10:17   17 So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

1 Corinthians 15:2   2 by which also you are saved, if you hold fast that word which I preached to you -- unless you believed in vain.