Compare And Contrast Martin Luther And The Sacraments
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The Sacraments
He defined a sacrament as a physical act chosen by God to be a sign of His promise. In order for a ceremony to be a valid sacrament, there are two requirements: it had to be instituted by Christ and it must be bound up with the promise of the gospel. He reduced the seven sacraments of medieval Catholicism to only two. They are baptism and the Eucharist.
Water Baptism
Luther held that baptism confers the remission of sins and is necessary to salvation. In his Small Catechism, he explains the significance of water baptism.
It works forgiveness of sins. Sacrament of baptism is a vehicle for communicate the grace of God. It delivers from death and the devil, and gives everlasting salvation to all who believe, as the Word and promise…show more content… The law naturally developed into the gospel. The gospel is the same as the moral law, or the law of love. It just comes under a different name.
According to Zwingli, God has revealed His basic will throughout the Scriptures. We know it now in its fullest extent as the gospel, but actually we can find the elements of the gospel in the Old Testament and its moral teachings. According to him, the law flows into the gospel. The gospel is the most complete expression of God’s eternal moral law.
The purpose of the gospel is to make us whole and enable us to obey the moral law. It liberates us from the consequences of having broken the law and then gives us power to obey the moral law.
Zwingli gave greater emphasis on sanctification and holiness of life. He highlighted on the need to obey God’s moral law, to follow the teachings of Old and New Testament, to be holy in daily life.
The Church
Zwingli taught that the true church is the company of the elect, those whom God has chosen. It is invisible because we do not really know who the elect are. We can observe the signs of election, but only God knows the heart. When we see people who have been baptized, confess Christ, go to church, partake of the Eucharist, and live a Christian life, as far as we know they are elect, but only God knows for…show more content… If someone professes to belong to the church, he needs to live up to the standards of the church. If they do not, the church has the right and responsibility to discipline them and, if needed, the church can expel them.
Zwingli also said the church must be subject to the civil law. Zwingli advocated a close relationship between church and state.
The Sacraments
Zwingli reduced the seven medieval sacraments to two: baptism and the Eucharist. Zwingli made clear that the sacraments are simply symbols that identify people with the church. They do not confer inward spiritual grace. Baptism signifies that a person is joining the church at that time, although baptism itself does not cause him to become part of the church. It is an act of identification. Similarly, in the Eucharist, a person continues to identify with the church through an on-going pledge.
Thus the sacraments are signs or ceremonies that inform the whole church of the participant’s faith. The real significance is not an inward work in the individual but a corporate effect.
Regarding the Lord’s Supper, or Eucharist, Zwingli taught that it is a time of thanksgiving and rejoicing. Christ is not bodily present in the bread and the wine, but He is spiritually present in the ceremony. By faith Christ meets invisibly with His