Nothing I’m about to write is either very original or very profound.

I am simply setting down a reminder to myself, and whoever decides to read this.

God has attached His Gospel promises to physical sign-acts. Historically, these have been called sacraments, which just means “holy things,” more or less.

These are baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

These sacraments are means of grace. In other words, God has promised to actually do things to us and for us and in us, through them, as we receive them in faith.

In baptism, we are brought into the Gospel, joined to Christ in His death and resurrection, washed clean by the water with the Word. We are clothed in the seamless garment of Christ’s righteousness, and the Holy Spirit comes to dwell in us.

In the Lord’s Supper, the Gospel is brought into us. Christ prepares a table for us in the presence of our enemies—Satan, our sinful flesh, and an unbelieving, hostile world. There, by the bread and the wine, we feed on His flesh and blood, given for us and for our sins. We commune with our Lord, and He abides in us, and we in Him.

These are gifts that are not only received in faith—they also nurture faith, and nourish faith. Because we learn by them that God’s promises in Christ are as true and tangible as the water in which we are baptized, the bread we eat, and the wine we drink.

Forgiveness. Adoption. Union with Christ. Righteousness. Wisdom. Holiness. Eternal life. These are all the grace of God, and that grace is as substantial as the water, the bread, and the wine. And this grace is given to us by God in the water, the bread, and the wine.

God has not given us promises of air, or a ghostly grace. Rather, God-is-with-us in Jesus, our Immanuel; who was born, lived, suffered, died, and rose again for us with a physical body. We are received by the Triune God in the physical water of baptism. And we receive Christ in the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper.

This also reminds us of the Incarnation of Christ, and the goodness of the material world. Grace upon grace has been poured out on us in Christ, who is the Word of God become flesh, in whom the fullness of God dwells bodily. We are physical, and not only spiritual, creatures; so God imparts spiritual blessings to us through physical means.