There is quite a difference between regarding the prayer of thanksgiving at Communion as an appropriation of Christ’s atoning sacrifice on the cross for our salvation and regarding that thanksgiving as a sacrifice for the forgiveness of sin. There is no evidence that the early church confounded the two in such a way that they regarded the Communion as a repetition of Christ’s sacrifice. Rather, the New Testament, in the clearest possible terms, speaks of Christ’s death on the cross as the unique sacrifice, which never needed to be repeated and which once and for all put away sin (Heb.
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