Transcript

Hi folks, and welcome back to The Original Church.

Did the original church have seven sacraments?

Well, the short answer is, no, they didn't. But if I left it there, that would kind of be deceptively simple.

In order not to oversimplify the truth, give me a few minutes and I'll tell you the whole story.

Because, while the original church did not have all seven sacraments, they had more than you might think, and I'm going to have videos on some of the individual sacraments to come later.

Now, we're going to do this a bit backwards today.

First, I'm going to talk about which sacraments the original church had and didn't have, and then we're going to talk about exactly what a sacrament is, or what it meant to the original Christians.

The traditional seven sacraments are Baptism, Confirmation, the Eucharist, Confession, now more commonly known as Reconciliation, the Anointing of the Sick, which used to be called the Last Rites, Ordination, and Marriage.

Now you may have heard that some Christian traditions claim that there were only two and the Eucharist.

But in the original church, those two sacraments were actually two in one.

First, Baptism always included Confirmation.

Baptism and Confirmation were one rite until about the third century.

In fact, Baptism also included an anointing with oil, but not for the sick.

Confirmation was the laying on of hands to confirm the baptism.

It was the moment when the person received the Holy Spirit.

And Baptism, with Confirmation, was considered the seal of the Christian life.

And you can see this in the book of Revelation.

In the book of Revelation, Baptism is called the seal, to be sealed for God.

It's the opposite of the mark of the beast.

So you can either be marked for the beast, or you can be sealed for God.

And that seal is Baptism, but not just Baptism.

It's Baptism with Confirmation.

Second, the Eucharist always included or assumed the confession of sins.

Paul wrote to the Corinthians that they should examine themselves before receiving communion.

This is an examination of conscience.

And the Didache states it very matter-of-factly, break bread and give thanks, having first confessed your sins.

Now the Eucharistic prayers would have included prayers of confession.

So private sins were covered by that unison prayer before the Eucharist.

But public sins had to be confessed publicly by standing up in front of the congregation.

Now all of this became formalized in the third century, but I'll have another video on that.

So the two sacraments that many people think of as the main two were actually each two in one.

And so right there you have four of the seven sacraments.

The church fathers referred to Baptism and Confirmation together as the two-fold sacrament.

And you would never go to communion in the original church without first confessing your sins.

Now I've already talked about ordination in the New Testament in the video on bishops.

Ordination was started by Jesus himself based on that master and apprentice relationship and on the idea of commissioning people to go out as apostles, to do ministry, and eventually to take over for the master when the master retires or dies.

Like confirmation, ordination has always included the laying on of hands, as we see in 2 Timothy.

It was formalized as a ritual later, but it's there from the beginning.

So that's five.

Also there from the beginning is the anointing of the sick.

And look at the letter of James, chapter 5. In that letter, James talks about how the bishops and pastors have the authority to heal the sick with anointing and prayer.

So that makes six.

The only sacrament that really didn't exist in the original church was marriage, which is ironic because it's actually the oldest.

I mean, it was instituted by God at the beginning of the Bible in Genesis.

But it's the only one that the original church did not actually have as a sacrament.

Now Christians got married, of course, but it was not within the church because in Roman culture the church had no authority to recognize or legalize a marriage.

And so again, I'll have another video on marriage in the original church, but what I can tell you right now is about the only thing we get at the very beginning is a statement by the Bishop Ignatius of Antioch that couples who want to have a union within the church and be recognized by the church should get the bishop's blessing before getting married.

But the truth is many Christians in the original church could not have a legal marriage because of the restrictions of Roman law.

So again, we'll get to that in another video.

So you can see in the original church, six of the seven sacraments were there.

The only one that wasn't really there as a sacrament was marriage.

But what exactly is a sacrament?

Some people define a sacrament according to what Jesus received, and this becomes a kind of rationale for limiting the number of sacraments to two, baptism and the Eucharist or Holy Communion.

But that definition is misguided because it limits the idea of Jesus' participation to his human nature only or to what he received.

Because Jesus did participate in the forgiveness of sins, in ordination, and even in marriage, not as one who received those sacraments, but as one who instituted them, who presided over them, or who blessed them.

And although he was not sick, he was anointed in preparation for his passion and his burial, and he commissioned his disciples to anoint the sick.

And just as Jesus gave his disciples the authority to baptize, heal, and forgive, that authority was handed down to the bishops and pastors after them to baptize, to heal by the anointing with oil and prayer, and to forgive sins.

So what did the original Christians think that a sacrament was?

Notice that in the original church, the sacraments are not called symbols, rites, rituals, or even signs.

They're called the mysteries.

In Latin, that would be the word sacramentum, which is where we get our English word sacrament.

It is a mysterious and sacred event.

In Roman culture, a sacramentum was a moment of union of the divine with the human.

On the human side, it was like a sacred vow, creating a new loyalty and signifying a whole new way of life.

So for example, to join the Roman legions, one would make a sacramentum, a sacred vow, and it probably came with a brand or a tattoo.

On the divine side, a sacrament is something that God does.

It's a divine act.

It is divine intervention in that moment.

It's a miraculous event, which means that to receive a sacrament is to be changed forever.

So a sacrament is both a vow and a miracle, a sacred mystery.

In fact, for the original Christians, a sacrament is not primarily something we do at all.

A sacrament is primarily something God does.

It was never thought to be simply something that commemorates a past event, as if baptism was a public recognition of a prior decision.

A sacrament is not just an outward sign of an inward faith, as some might say.

A sacrament was always believed to be actual divine intervention happening in that moment.

It's a creative act of divine power, a work of God in the recipient, making the recipient a new creation.

So it's not just a recognition of something we did, something that was done in the past.

For example, the Eucharist was not simply a recognition or a remembering of Christ's passion, and ordination was not simply a recognition that someone has the gifts for ministry.

It was a moment in which God was granting that person the gifts for ministry.

A sacrament gives you something you did not have before.

By the laying on of hands, a person being ordained is granted what they will need to do that job, and God, by God's grace, is filling in the gaps where their own gifts might be lacking or weak.

The church fathers said that the church is like a hospital.

The clergy are the doctors, and the sacraments are the medicine.

So to receive a sacrament is to come out on the other side changed, healed.

And this is part of the reason why a funeral is not a sacrament.

It's not something that changes a person, and it's not something that God is doing in that moment.

So always remember this, a sacrament is not primarily something we do, but it is primarily something that God does, and that is why we consider it a means or a channel of God's grace.

This is also why the church fathers said that there is no salvation outside of the church.

There's no salvation outside of the church because there are no sacraments outside of the church.

And it is through the sacraments and through the grace that comes to us in the sacraments that we are saved.

And that's how it was in the original church.

Cheers.

Hey, thanks for watching this video all the way to the end.

I really appreciate that.

Please share this video with your friends, and please join me in the original church community on Locals.com.

Don't forget that if you join the original church community on Locals.com,

you can join me each week for a live, in-depth, chronological Bible study.

It's live-streamed every Saturday, but you can watch it later if you're not available.

So join me for that, and I'll see you there.

I hope to see you there.

I hope to see you there.

And I'll see you there.