The Body and The Blood

The Lord ’s Supper is the revelation and the declaration of the Blood of the Lamb, the Lamb of God, slain from the foundation of the world. We try to make more of the mystery than we should. God saves us by satisfying His wrath for our sins on the body of His own Son. This is the thing to remember as we eat the unleavened bread and drink the wine. It is a simple meal revealing a POWERFUL mystery. The mystery is best understood taking into account the children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (special mention Moses and David) whose covenant PROMISES God made with Israel are not made null by the New Covenant, they are upheld by it for those who will receive Jesus and the New! The New Covenant was the PROMISE He gave to the Jews in Jeremiah Ch.s 30-31. And THAT is a stunner to most who discover it, both Jews and Gentiles, that THE NEW COVENANT was a covenant first for the Jews and then for the Gentiles!

I’m not Jewish but I have learned to call Jesus the Messiah. We gentiles have for more than 16 centuries rejected His Jewishness and His committed promises to the progeny of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He was their Lamb first, and has graciously in time also made His Way, Truth and Life a gift to gentiles who believe. The Old Testament, so ignored, even by Jews, shows it all. Additionally there is more to early church history than most know. Greek/Roman philosophy in the early church did drive all Jews and things Jewish into disrepute, even anathematizing them. They changed the Sabbath from the 7th day to the 1st. Constantine wed the church and the state and we are still trying to get that big WRINKLE out. In the spirit of Balak and Balaam were many anti-Christs who carried into the churches HATRED of the Jews, of Judah!

We are saved by faith, we remember Him who saved us to life by His death at the Messianic passover meal we gentiles have called the Lord’s supper. Our fellowship/partnership/koinonia/communion is WITH Him by grace and truth through faith. It does not require the meal, but the meal is very important. His “job” is to save, heal and deliver. Ours is to repent, believe, fellowship and remember. Our relationship to Him Savior/Healer/Deliverer is remembered, memorialized at the meal the bread and the wine we remember for they today are a remembrance and  the declaration of His DEATH on our behalf.  This is the remembrance of what some have called the divine exchange. Catholics frankly have it very wrong as the say by priestly invocation and rites the bread and wine become literally His body and blood. Some say the mass is in that respect is a recrucifixion of Jesus! I see that point. The bread and wine were not literal flesh and blood on the night before He was crucified. IF THEY WERE.. WOULD THE ONCE FOR ALL CRUCIFIXION OF THE SON OF MAN BE NECESSARY? Why, if they were not then...  are the suddenly now?

The exchange and the change in us are from corrupt flesh to a cleansed spirit. This is from the operation of the power of God by His Spirit. That does not require bread or wine let alone those turned into HIS literal body and blood. When I saw The Passion, I knew I was saved the moment in Gethsemane that the the soldier struck Jesus on the head. MY HEART WAS WOUNDED BY THE PORTRAYAL of the event. So we might feel some wounds by the portrayal of the crucifixion as it was prophesied at the Last Supper. I think it to be a moment in a meal when some sobriety and solemnness should be observed, and we might again be struck by the tragedy of His death necessary to gain our greatest need.

If we were to be healed and delivered by the literal physical substance of Jesus body and blood it would be the blood we needed today. Jesus healed by laying on hands and prayer, and also by mud, spit and and washing in a pool. How can one man’s brokenness, His stripes His wounds heal me? How can any blood at all remove the guilt and the shame of sin?  It is the power of the word, the promises and the Spirit of God  which accomplished all this on the cross. Countless were crucified, only one of them was God in the flesh. The accomplishment was done and finished on the literal cross by the literal Historical heaven sent Son of the Living God. The faith that saves us is the substance of things hoped for which come by the power of the One we crucified. The blood Jesus shed saved us because Jesus and Abba says it does.  And we must believe Them when they say it is so! ByTheir Great Power they are  known to be TRUE. It was sinless human blood, yet apart from the sinless aspect it was just human blood. If Jesus is present where two or more gather, it is not to be crucified again. We don’t need to spill His blood a second time. The power of Jesus blood is in it sinlessness at the one and only time it was shed,  that done in “the definite plan and foreknowledge of God” and in the promise of God’s word. It was the PROMISE He gave to the Jews in Jeremiah Ch.s 30-31. And THAT is a stunner to most who discover it, both Jews and Gentiles, that THE NEW COVENANT was a covenant first for the Jews and then for the Gentiles!

Jesus got what I deserve. I get what He gives by a forensic exchange: my criminal guilt for His sinless innocence.

Some believe in transubstantiation. I believe the bread and wine (or juice) remain bread and wine. Jesus declaration was that He and His Father were the source and sustainer of life and of everlasting life. Jesus Body was real human flesh and His Blood was real human blood, BUT HE SAID TO THOSE WHO COULD NOT EVEN COMPREHEND:

It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. John 6:63

The bread and the wine are just bread and wine.  Jesus body and blood are something else. The teaching Jesus gives us incorporating them as symbols representing the once and for all breaking of His body and shedding of His blood. In John 6 and at the Lord’s Supper, these symbols show that we must consume the life of Jesus in the spirit not in the flesh. We must declare His blood was spilled instead of ours, His Body broken instead of ours and His everlasting life imparted to us by the grace of His tasting death for us. ALL VALIDATED by His resurrection! That really can be given without ever celebrating the Lord’s Supper with bread and wine, it was to the “good” thief on the cross next to the Lord. NOTWITHSTANDING the Lord’s supper is a purposeful event in church life. I believe Jesus was saying to the Jews, the Passover meal is now a changed meal. No longer will you remember the exodus, the lamb and Moses foremost in this meal. Now from this time on REMEMBER ME whenever you eat it. For the Jews that was once a year! Yet I think now we are rightly free to eat  weekly, monthly or daily remembering. IT IS THE REMEMBERING that is important, I believe without that sincerity, the Lord’s presence is offended, and we are then chastened for our vainess. It’s not just what we get, it’s how we got it, by God’s Son’s death. It is the remembering which enables our hearts to be strengthened.

We need to immerse ourselves daily in the Spirit of the Living God. We can have real fellowship with Jesus by other means, in prayer, Bible reading/study, and in fellowship with the saints. We should immerse ourselves and remain wet in the waters of life, drinking His Word, and burning with His Fire a Fire which does not destroy. Even breathing His Fire!