The Irreplaceable Spirit & The Means of Grace

Introduction

If a stranger was so fortunate as to wander into a gathering of Reformed and Presbyterian pastors today, he might hear one man put this question to another: “What kind of a man are you?” He would then likely hear the second man reply, “I’m an ordinary means of grace man.” How exciting for the stranger to have wandered in to such a gathering!

Reformed and Presbyterian people love to talk about the ordinary means of grace, and rightly so. They are a kind gift that Christ gives to his Church. Christ, as the only Head of his Church, has given to it “outward and ordinary means whereby [he] communicates to his church the benefits of his mediation” (WLC 154, emphasis mine). These ordinary means are usually understood to be the Word and sacraments (along with prayer). Through these means the gospel of salvation for sinners is held forth. Through these means the good news of God’s full work to redeem and restore his people unto their chief end is proclaimed. Through these means dead men can become living men. Through these means God’s people are nourished and strengthened in their faith unto mature godliness. 

The ordinary means are a kind gift. We ought to make much of them. Christ’s ministers ought to speak often of them to Christ’s people. Christ’s people ought to speak often of them to one another. Might it be said of all of us, “they are ordinary means of grace people.”

 

Someone Missing From The Means

Recently, two events occurred that together made it clear to me that a most vital aspect of the ordinary means of grace was yet underemphasized in my own thinking. First, a few weeks back I had the privilege of teaching a lesson on the ordinary means of grace to a group of adults whom I serve as a pastor. The lesson emphasized God as a gracious God. I tried to make clear man’s need for grace because of sin and our dead hearts, and that grace is found only in Christ. I worked through what the means of grace are—Word, sacraments, and prayer—from the Scriptures and confessional standards. I also addressed the ordinary in the ordinary means of grace. The adults in the class were engaged, and I finished feeling the lesson had gone decently well. 

Then a second event occurred. A couple weeks after teaching the lesson, with the ordinary means of grace freshly in my mind, I began rereading the little book, The Plan of Salvation, by Benjamin B. Warfield. I had read it in seminary and wanted to revisit Warfield’s clear, methodical sifting through different conceptions of how God works his saving will across different theological traditions. 

In his chapter titled, “Sacerdotalism,” Warfield works out the primary lines of how the Roman Church understands God’s will and work to save in relation to the Church. The sacerdotalist maintains that God wills to and does save sinners, that God’s grace must come to a man or woman in order for one to be saved. But, Warfield writes, “according to this system God the Lord does nothing looking to the salvation of men directly or immediately: all that he does for the salvation of men he does through the mediation of the Church, to which… he has committed the whole work of salvation.” In the terse words of Herman Bavinck, according to this system, “The Church is the means of grace.” 

 

Reformed & Presbyterian Is Not Sacerdotalism

In a word, sacerdotalism teaches that God wills the salvation of men, but he leaves the working out of salvation, the chief work of dispensing the grace of salvation, to the earthly institution that is his Church. The Church becomes the only dispensary of grace. The working out of God’s will to save becomes dependent on secondary causes—the actual dispensing of grace comes through the sacraments by men acting as human agents. Where the secondary causes are absent, grace is absent.

This is clearly an error that must be refuted. It puts up conditional walls between men and the God who saves particularly and personally. 

Warfield goes on to discuss churches downstream from the Roman Church. He discusses Lutheranism which loves to talk about the means of grace and their vitality in the life of the believer. In distinction from the Roman Church, Lutheranism stresses not the Church but the Word as the chief means. This distinction is in the right direction. But Warfield points out that there remains in their system a most serious problem. One that I did not immediately notice:

“It remains sufficiently sacerdotal to confine the activities of saving grace to the means of grace, that is to say, to the Word and sacraments, and thus to interpose the means of grace between the sinner and his God. The central evil of sacerdotalism is therefore present in [the Lutheran] scheme in its full manifestation, and wherever it is fully operative we find men exalting the means of grace and more or less forgetting the true agent of all gracious operations, the Holy Spirit himself, in their absorption with the instrumentalities through which alone he is supposed to work.” 

Warfield’s words hit me like a ton of bricks. There is a most important Someone missing from the Lutheran conception of God’s saving work. While loving the means of grace, it was possible to overlook or underemphasize the one working in the means of grace. 

Reflecting on this recent lesson, I went back to my notes and saw that I had tried to extol the good things that are the means of grace. But, I had also unconscionably treated as barely more than a footnote the true agent of all gracious operations, the Holy Spirit himself. I have grown to love talking about and extolling the excellencies of the ordinary means of grace. And, I have found it is all too easy to forget to extol the most important Someone working in and through the means.

 

The Spirit & Effectual Calling

The grace of the means of grace is God’s grace to needy sinners. The means of the means of grace are God’s means of working his grace of salvation unto needy sinners. God the Holy Spirit is the Personal Agent at work in and through the Word and sacraments. It is the Spirit’s work to take the things of Christ, his benefits as Mediator, and to apply them unto God’s people from the beginning to the end of their salvation (John 16:14). We must make much of the Spirit who works. The means are powerful instruments in his hands. 

The effectual call of God calling dead men unto life, is “by his Word and Spirit” (WCF 10.1). The Reformers, says Bavinck, have rightly stressed that:

“The Spirit can work and sometimes does work without the Word. When the Spirit joins Himself with the Word, He does so because of His free choice. In accordance with His good pleasure He usually does work in connection with the Word, and in the place where the Word is present and preached, namely, in the sphere of the covenant of grace, in the communion of the church. … While combining His operation with that of the Word, [the Spirit] Himself personally penetrates to the heart of man and renews it to eternal life.”

Paul tells believers that “God chose you as the firstfruits to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth. To this he called you through our gospel” (2 Thess 2:13-14). Here we are told of the internal and external means together—the Spirit calls internally by the external call of the Word. The Word is a vital means, only as the Spirit actively and personally works his working in and through the Word in the person called to new life and faith. 

 

The Spirit & Saving Faith

The saving faith by which a person comes to receive and rest upon Christ for salvation “is the work of the Spirit of Christ, … and is ordinarily wrought by the ministry of the Word” (WCF 14.1). Paul shows the importance of the ministry of the Word for faith with beautiful progression over Romans 10:13-17, driving home his point in verse 17: “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.”

This faith that believes the Word is itself “the gift of God,” worked by the Spirit of God (Eph 1:17-19, 2:8, see also John 3:5, 1 Cor 2:10-14). Heidelberg Catechism 65 adds that the Holy Spirit “works faith in our hearts by the preaching of the gospel and strengthens it by the use of the sacraments.” 

In total, when Westminster Larger Catechism 155 speaks of the Word as a means, it stresses that “the Spirit of God maketh the reading, but especially the preaching of the word, an effectual means” unto all God’s purposes in and through the Word of Christ. Likewise, with particular clarity, the Larger Catechism says that “the sacraments become effectual means of salvation, not by any power in themselves, or any virtue derived from the piety or intention of him by whom they are administered, but only by the working of the Holy Ghost” (WLC 161). 

 

The Sovereign Grace of the Holy Spirit

From beginning to end, the Spirit works through the means for the calling and building up of Christ’s people. As Paul says in Philippians 2:13, “It is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”

The Spirit is Christ’s Spirit. He is the promise of Christ (John 14:26, 16:7-8, 13-15). He ministers Christ to his people. What Christ accomplishes by the Spirit the Spirit applies to Christ’s people. Bavinck writes,

“The Holy Spirit freely puts Himself in the service of Christ. And in the Spirit and through the Spirit Christ gives of Himself and His benefits to the church. … [Christ’s] entire prophetic, priestly, and kingly activity He continues to carry on in a spiritual way from His place in heaven. He fights only with spiritual weapons. He is a king of grace and a king of might, but in both kinds, He leads His regiment out through the Holy Spirit, who, in turn, makes use of the Word as a means of grace. By that Spirit He instructs, comforts, and leads His church, and dwells in it. And by the same Spirit He convicts the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment.”

 

Conclusion

Brothers and friends, let us make much of the ordinary means of grace. Let us be ordinary means of grace people. But might this be so of us only as we make much of the Spirit who works in and through the means. It is the Spirit who works for the good pleasure of the Father, the Son, and himself in the lives of his called, justified, adopted, sanctified, and soon to be glorified people. He delights to be in the service of Christ. Might we delight to be served by him. 

In the words of Warfield, let us “turn to God the Holy Spirit in humble dependence upon him as our gracious Savior, our personal Lord and our holy Governor and Leader.”