Old Lutheran Quote of the Day

If Christ must die to make our redemption, He must live to apply it. If the Lord's Supper is a sacrament of the redemption made by His death, it is also a sacrament of the same redemption applied by His life. If it tells us that His body and blood were necessary to make our redemption, it tells us also that they are still necessary to apply the redemption they have made. He made the sacrifice once for all - He applies it constantly. We live by Him, we must hang on Him - the vine does not send up one gush of its noble sap and then remain inert. It receives the totality of life, once for all, but the sap which sustain it must flow on - its one, unchanging and abiding life put itself forth in new offshoots, and by constant application of itself maintains the old branches. If the sap-life ceases, the seed-life cannot save. Cut the branch off, and the memory of the life will not keep it from withering; it must have life in itself - and this it must derive successively from the vine. -- Krauth, *The Conservative Reformation* pp. 655, 656