Preface To The Second Printing
1. Must God Plead With God?
   
2. How The Spirit Leads
   
3. Physical Reinforcements of Faith
   
4. Jesus' Physical and Spiritual Death
   
5. Is There Merit in Pain?
   
6. The Six Days of Creation
   
7. Adding Guilt to Anxiety
   
8. Wine and The Disciple
   
9. Revolution or Evolution
   
10. I Am That Disciple
    
11. When People Disagree
    
12. Is Unity Based Upon Seven Doctrines?
    
13. Our Seven Sacraments
    
14. Instrumental Music
    
15. The Mood of Worship
    
16. Justified Then Sanctified
    
17. Is Christian Our Name?
    
18. The Lord's Table
    
19. Righteousness That Exceeds
    
20. Neither Destroyed Nor Nailed To The Cross
    
21. The Right of Self-Protection
    
22. A Tree of Error
    
23. God is Limited
    
24. You Are Here
    
25. God is In Charge
    
26. Hook's Points
    
27. Lamentations of A Mediocre Preacher
    

OUR SEVEN SACRAMENTS

In our eagerness to be seen as the scripturally produced, undenominational church, we in the Church of Christ have insisted that we are neither Catholic, Protestant, nor Jewish. While it is good to be classified as neither of these, it is unrealistic to claim that we have no theological inheritance from any of those sources.

Just as we can see marks of the parents in the child, we can identify various theological concepts formulated by our predecessors marking the Church of Christ. Perhaps, we are more kin to the Catholics than to the Protestants. One of the most influential non-scriptural concepts affecting our fundamental beliefs is sacramentalism. The Catholic theologians, who devised the sacramental system, teach that a sacrament is a visible ritual or ceremony through which grace is poured into the soul. They have instituted seven of them: Baptism, Confirmation, Holy Communion, Penance, Matrimony, Holy Orders, and Extreme Unction.

Except in unusual circumstances, these ceremonies can be performed only by the clergy. The sacramental system binds the individual to the church, clergy, and hierarchy, for no spiritual grace can come outside the system. The development of the system of the sacraments established the power of the papacy and reinforced the authoritarian stance of the church. Only the church had the sacraments which were the avenues to God and salvation. The powers of excommunication and interdiction, which could withhold the sacraments from individuals and nations, demanded complete subservience to the one true church. All teaching and learning had to support this system or be denounced as heretical. It was a closed system allowing little individual freedom but offering security to all who had the spirit of bondage.

Sacramentalism is a reinforcement of legalism. Legal technicalities are emphasized in demanding that, to be effective rather than damning, the ritual must be done in a precise manner, by the right person, at the right time, etc. When we mix up the sequence of numbers in dialing the telephone, the call does not go through; likewise, one cannot get through to grace while ignoring the technicalities of the ritual. Following steps and patterns make it more a system of law keeping and less a saving relationship with Christ.

Sacramental religion is built upon the concept of infused grace, goodness, and righteousness. It is something accomplished in us which makes us good, pure, and Christlike. A ritual does it! It ignores that righteousness is imputed on the basis of faith rather than infused through our ability to keep ceremonies and laws. It is works oriented.

Our sacramental concept alters the purpose and meaning of our performance. It makes our activities an effort to please God and to gain his grace through keeping legal details of commands. And it makes us fearfully cautious lest we slip up on some technicality which would make our sincere effort bring a curse instead of grace.

In the Church of Christ we have transferred much of the sacramental concept into our purposes for participation in assemblies, singing, praying, teaching, giving, communing, and baptism. We might say that these have become the seven sacraments of the Church of Christ. They have become the rigidly controlled route to heaven, binding the disciple to the one true church and its overseers. Being tediously correct in each detail of performance is of high importance lest we fall short of the grace of God and arouse his displeasure. Anyone who questions or seeks to change any of these well­defined steps or patterns is looked upon as a troublemaker and, if he persists, he is dealt with as a heretic. When you accept an authoritarian religion, only that one way can be right!

Now, let us look at the seven sacraments of the Church of Christ to see how our inheritance has prevailed in our thought and practice.

1. In assemblies, "let all things be done for edification." God left it to us to conduct meetings that are relevant to the needs of those present so as to upbuild them. The value derived from assemblies is the strength gained from them. Traditionally, that purpose and practice has been altered among us. Now assemblies emphasize worship done through rituals in specific detail so as to fulfill commands, please God, and thus be made righteous. Thus grace comes through our ceremonial works rather than our growing in grace through strengthening the inward man.

2. Singing is for the purpose of teaching and admonishing one another-a horizontal outreach. But we have sold ourselves on the idea that we sing because we are commanded to as a ritual of worship which, when done technically right, pleases God, who then checks us as righteous-a vertical approach. But if anyone attempts to teach and edify by means of a quartet or by using a guitar, the blessing is withheld and the worshippers are condemned. The value of the performance is in doing it as required rather than in the good that is accomplished in us.

3. Because we are "commanded" to pray, we must be sure to keep that command correctly so that we will be in the good grace of the Father, according to our sacramentalism. The sincere prayer is in vain if one forgets to say "in Jesus' name" or if it is voiced by a woman in the presence of men! Such emphasizes the detail rather than the disciple being in a living, reconciled, communicating relationship with God.

4. Since we have classified teaching as an "act of worship" to please God, we have concluded that its performance satisfies God and credits a blessing whether it is relevant and uplifting or not. Even though the subject matter is learned, however, according to our contention, a blessing is not forthcoming if the teacher is of the wrong gender. The specifics of the performance must be correct for a sacrament to bless the soul!

5. Having made the giving of finances an "act of worship" also, we have given it sacramental value, if the specifics are met. But the blessing of giving is invalidated if it is not given on the first day of the week, or if the disciple has used his money to help others and has none left to "lay by in store" in the collection to support the system. He has robbed God of tithes and offerings! His offering must be "given to God" in worship rather than being used individually for the benefit of man.

6. What is the value of the Lord's Supper? Its value is in causing us to remember and declare the basis of our hope. Participation blesses us only in what it causes us to think. If our faith has not been reaffirmed and strengthened by this object lesson, then the ritual is fruitless. Sacramentalism expects mystical strength from the symbolic flesh and blood eaten and drunk just because Jesus said to do it. Such a concept allows one to "take communion" for a blessing and to be judged righteous without truly communing. It becomes a sort of magic ceremony that is effective when we work the right combination of unleavened bread, unfermented grape juice, the bread first, the cup second, separate prayers for each, separate serving, with no singing during the eating and the drinking, etc. But regardless of how vividly our participation might renew our memory and revive our faith, it becomes damning if any of the details are changed. That is sacramentalism in the truest sense of the definition.

7. Now, we consider baptism, our most emphasized sacrament. Isn't baptism a sacrament, a ritual or ceremony through which grace is conferred to the soul? Doesn't it change the soul from death to life, affecting a new birth in us? Most of our people have given affirmative answers to those questions. We have taught, and believe in, baptismal regeneration-that in baptism, divine action transforms and regenerates the soul in a new birth process.

   Baptism symbolizes, finalizes, and confirms the change that the convert has undergone rather than accomplishing the change. The conversion process is similar to the birth process. There is an insemination, a conception, a period of gestation, and a parturition or birth. The birth finalizes what has been taking place in the womb rather than being the cause of the life developing process. The parturition is necessary, but not the cause of life. Life is not conferred, infused, or poured into the fetus at birth, yet the life­giving process is incomplete without it.

   In similar manner, a sinner hears the gospel, develops faith, decides to submit his life to God in Christ, begins a process of reformation, and is baptized. Although baptism is necessary in this procedure, it is not the cause of life. Baptism confirms what has already been taking place in the person. The regeneration is a process finalized by baptism instead of being produced by it.

   At the completion of this birth process, righteousness is imputed rather than the person having been made righteous by an act of grace in response to a sacramental rite. The person is pronounced innocent, not made innocent by an act of God. The convert is accounted as being a new person rather than a new soul being poured into the body.

   Baptism imparts grace no more than belief, repentance, or confession does. These are all necessary for salvation. When baptism is said to save us, a part of the saving process is being put for the whole. That is a literary device known as a metonymy when the part is used for the whole.

   The above is in harmony with the Baptist view: "Baptism, as taught in the New Testament, is a picture of death and burial to sin and resurrection to a new life, a picture of what has already taken place in the heart, not the means by which the spiritual change is wrought." (International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, V.1, p. 387). That is a scriptural and Protestant teaching which avoids the sacramental pitfall of Catholicism.

   We see that this subject involves our understanding of how a person is justified at conversion and throughout life. Does God justify a man by accounting him innocent or by making him innocent? Is a man justified by having Christ's perfection given to his credit, or by having Christ's perfection put into his heart? Does God account us as regenerated because of our faith and commitment, or are we justified by renovation within the heart produced by the Spirit? Does God accept us while sinners by accounting Jesus' goodness to us, or must he change us into persons pleasing to him to be accepted?

   The latter choice of each of these questions attributes a sacramental effect to baptism through which a person is made clean, holy, and regenerated. It calls for justification by God's work of grace in man rather than justification by God's work of grace in Christ. This is a part of works salvation in which a person must cease to be a sinner before he is justified, instead of the sinner being justified by faith.

   Since ours is a religion of purpose, it is no small thing that we have changed the purpose for our activities in our assemblies. Our expectation of imparted blessing as a result of our works has allowed us to neglect the area of sharing with, and upbuilding, each other in mutual edification. Countless disciples have fainted and fallen out because the spiritual diet consisted so much of learning doctrinal and practical correctness instead of meeting their daily needs. The chief security we have felt has been in performing rituals of "worship services" with increasing frequency, but we have never been sure if we are performing enough. By such discouraging efforts to achieve the grace of God, we seem to forget that salvation is free and that righteousness is a gift.

   When we become able to abandon the sacramental ideas that we have inherited, we may then take more thought to minister to the needs of the body, both in the assemblies and in daily life, through caring service rather than rituals.