In his sermon, Eric Bechler discusses the doctrine of consubstantiation, contrasting it with transubstantiation. He explains that consubstantiation, a Lutheran perspective, maintains the bread and wine as physical elements while proposing a real presence of Christ's body and blood in the sacrament. The speaker emphasizes the distinction between Christ's human and divine natures, highlighting that while Christ's physical body cannot be omnipresent, His divine nature can. Definitions of 'carnally' and 'corporally' are provided, emphasizing their physical meanings. Bechler argues against the idea of physically consuming Christ's body and stresses that the Lord's Supper involves a spiritual presence through the Holy Spirit, where believers partake by faith, experiencing a spiritual rather than physical consumption of Christ's benefits.

Last week our focus was on transubstantiation. This week the main point here of this paragraph is to contradict the doctrine of consubstantiation, which is more the Lutheran perspective of the Lord's Supper. In this the bread and wine remain what they are, visibly bread and wine. But there is in the Lord's Supper nevertheless a mysterious and miraculous real presence of the whole person of Christ, body and blood, in, under, and along with the elements. They believe in a local presence of the physical body and blood of Christ in the sacrament.

And we talked a little bit about this last week with transubstantiation. Christ's physical body, Christ has two natures, a human nature, a divine nature, and his physical body can't be just like our own bodies can't be in more than one place at one time. However, in his divine nature, one of his attributes is omnipresence and His divine nature, therefore He can be in many, many places all at one time. So we talked about that a little bit in greater detail last week, and I think it still applies here for this. I don't know that we need to go so deeply in it, other than that's really the fundamental core point about it.

We have a disagreement with that. In the paragraph, in general, we have a contrast between the outward and inward, between the physical and the spiritual. A couple of words are used here in this paragraph that I just wanted to maybe for the young folks or others to talk about real briefly and look at the definition carnally and corporally. We see that spoken here. Carnally is based on the Latin root of caro meaning flesh.

So Noah Webster defines it as pertaining to or gratifying flesh. When we look at corporally, again from the Latin root there corpus meaning body, Noah Webster defines this as relating to or belonging to the body or material not spiritual. I think that's a really good point to make in the definition. I think it helps us to understand when we read carnally incorporated, think of the flesh, the body, that we have something physical here, material, not something. There's no meaning there of spirituality.

So when we look at that when speaking about Christ's body and blood, carnally and corporally, it has the meaning of his physical flesh and his body and the material sense. And when we touch base on that, It really can't be in more than one place at a time when we're dealing with the physical nature of Christ. And that's when we outwardly partake of the visible elements, we inwardly, by faith, receive and feed upon Christ crucified and the benefits of his death. We do not carnally or corporally feed upon Christ's body. He's present with us here when we celebrate the Lord's Supper by his Holy Spirit, and he is spiritually present to the faith of believers in the same way that the bread and the wine are present to our outward senses, we can see and touch it.

So the same kind of thing. That's all I had, not a whole lot on that for us this morning. Just the main point of, Again, looking at the difference between the inward and the outward, the spiritual or the physical, and just highlighting that.