So, What's the Bread and Wine for Again?

Have you ever wondered what the purpose of the sacraments (bread and wine/juice) is in Christian worship? The standard answer is something like, "They are signs and seals of the promise of God to save all those who trust in the work of Christ on the cross in their place, and they are meant to strengthen that same faith." If that's the case, then one wonders, "Does that means that God's promise is somehow deficient, or lacking, that it requires 'help' to benefit us?"As I was reading G.C. Berkouwer's The Sacraments, chapter 3, "Word and Sacrament" takes up that very question.

They cannot be identical, otherwise we would have no way of knowing their meaning, since neither would be authoritative over the other in communicating God's gospel to us. "If there is no explanatory and designating Word [that is authoritative over the sacrament], there is only a multiplicity of earthly elements which in themselves are meaningless. The signs become sacraments only by virtue of the Word of God." So it is the Word that tells us what the sacraments mean, as well as what God means for us in the gospel.

Is the sacrament therefore unnecessary, redundant, an accessory? Does it testify to some inherent deficiency or weakness in God's Word?

...the meaning of the sacrament cannot be deduced from the insufficiency or lack of clarity of the Word; it as to do with our insight...

...the "addition" [of the sacrament to the promise of the Word] does not presuppose the untrustworthiness of the word of promise, but rather intends to emphasize precisely the trustworthiness of the promise. ...this is only for the sake of our weakness, since we sometimes forget that God is not like us human beings...

The addition of the sacrament is not a critique of the mode of God's spoken revelation, but a critique of man's insensitive, unreceptive, resisting and contradicting heart.

BHT