1. The things signified in the sacrament.

It is one of the characteristics of a sacrament that it represents one or more spiritual truths by means of sensible and outward signs. The outward sign in the case of the Lord's Supper includes not only the visible elements employed, but also the breaking of the bread and the pouring of the wine, the appropriation of bread and wine by eating and drinking, and the partaking of them in communion with others. The following points should be mentioned here:

a. It is a symbolical representation of the Lord's death, I Cor. 11:26. The central fact of redemption, prefigured in the sacrifices of the Old Testament, is clearly set forth by means of the significant symbols of the New Testament sacrament. The words of the institution, "broken for you" and "shed for many", point to the fact that the death of Christ is a sacrificial one, for the benefit, and even in the place, of His people.

b. It also symbolizes the believer's participation in the crucified Christ. In the celebration of the Lord's Supper the participants not merely look at the symbols, but receive them and feed upon them. Figuratively speaking, they "eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His blood," John 6:53, that is, they symbolically appropriate the benefits secured by the sacrificial death of Christ.

c. It represents, not only the death of Christ as the object of faith, and the act of faith which unites the believer to Christ, but also the effect of this act as giving life, strength, and joy, to the soul. This is implied in the emblems used. Just as bread and wine nourish and invigorate the bodily life of man, so Christ sustains and quickens the life of the soul. Believers are regularly represented in Scripture as having their life, and strength, and happiness, in Christ.

d. Finally, the sacrament also symbolizes the union of believers with one another. As members of the mystical body of Jesus Christ, constituting a spiritual unity, they eat of the same bread and drink of the same wine, I Cor. 10:17; 12:13. Receiving the elements, the one from the other, they exercise intimate communion with one another.

2. The things sealed in the Lord's Supper.

The Lord's Supper is not only a sign but also a seal. This is lost sight of by a good many in our day, who

have a very superficial view of this sacrament, and regard it merely as a memorial of Christ and as a badge of the Christian profession. These two aspects of the sacrament, namely, as a sign and as a seal, are not independent of each other. The sacrament as a sign, or — to put it differently — the sacrament with all that it signifies, constitutes a seal. The seal is attached to the things signified, and is a pledge of the covenanted grace of God revealed in the sacrament. The Heidelberg Catechism says that Christ intends "by these visible signs and pledges to assure us that we are as really partakers of His true body and blood, through the working of the Holy Spirit, as we receive by the mouth of the body these holy tokens in remembrance of Him; and that all His sufferings and obedience are as certainly ours as if we ourselves had in our own persons suffered and made satisfaction to God for our sins." The following points come into consideration here:

a. It seals to the participant the great love of Christ, revealed in the fact that He surrendered Himself to a shameful and bitter death for them. This does not merely mean that it testifies to the reality of that sacrificial self-surrender, but that it assures the believing participant of the Lord's Supper that he personally was the object of that incomparable love.

b. Moreover, it pledges the believing partaker of the sacrament, not only the love and grace of Christ in now offering Himself to them as their Redeemer in all the fulness of His redemptive work; but gives him the personal assurance that all the promises of the covenant and all the riches of the gospel offer are his by a divine donation, so that he has a personal claim on them.

c. Again, it not only ratifies to the believing participant the rich promises of the gospel but it assures him that the blessings of salvation are his in actual possession. As surely as the body is nourished and refreshed by bread and wine, so surely is the soul that receives Christ's body and blood through faith even now in possession of eternal life, and so surely will he receive it ever more abundantly.

d. Finally, the Lord's Supper is a reciprocal seal. It is a badge of profession on the part of those who partake of the sacrament. Whenever they eat the bread and drink the wine, they profess their faith in Christ as their Savior and their allegiance to Him as their King, and they solemnly pledge a life of obedience to His divine commandments.

—excerpted from Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology, pp. 650-651.