This coming Lord’s Day morning we will be celebrating the Lord’s Supper. Your mind has likely already started thinking about the birth of our Savior, and I would encourage you to consider that every time we sit down at our Lord’s table, we are celebrating His incarnation. “This is my body…this is my blood…” (Matthew 26:28). Our Savior had (and continues to have!) a true body with real blood, as well as a rational soul able to develop and express the direct comparison of bread and wine to his body and blood. Over two thousand years ago the Son of God took to Himself a human nature - and He did it in order to live a sinless life for those whom the Father had given Him before the foundation of the world, and then to die a violent death for His people to deliver them from their sins by bearing in His body on the cross the full wrath of God against them. God can’t die - therefore God the Son became a man without ceasing to be God in order to die in our place and free us from the curse of the Law, slavery to sin and Satan, and the fear of death.
The physicality of the incarnation is matched by the physicality of the sacraments. There is an earthiness to the gospel that is repulsive to some, and yet it is our salvation. God has stooped low to inhabit the dust of the earth. And He has also stooped low to give us finite, tangible, concrete, edible signs of His covenant lovingkindness and faithfulness. He knows our frame, that we are weak and frail creatures. He loves us enough to speak to us in visible ways because He knows that our faith falters and wavers. We need to see, to touch, to taste, to smell, and to feel the gospel, as well as to hear it.
So as you come to the table this Sunday with the saints, come with a heart lost in wonder, love, and praise. Celebrate the incarnation of our Savior, and the incarnational grace of His Supper. Take with your physical hand and eat and drink with your physical mouth and digest with your physical stomach. But don’t allow your celebration to be merely physical. Rather, let the physical be the pathway for true spiritual growth in grace, faith, hope, and love. As you examine yourself in preparation for this covenant meal, pray that the Lord will open your eyes to see the amazing grace of the God-man toward you.