The Body and the Blood—Part 3
November 13, 2006
Dear Friends
The representation of the cup, we concluded, is a threefold leap to get the core of the matter. The wine represents the blood of Christ, but the blood of Christ really signifies his life. Wine=Blood=Life.
Similarly, the body of the Lord has a threefold representation to get to the core of the message. Bread=Body=Will. This is slightly more difficult to conclude, but equally compelling once we examine the evidence. The first part, Bread=Body, is easy. We read “And as they did eat, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and brake it, and gave to them, and said, Take, eat: this is my body.†(Mr 14:22) It is the second part, Body=Will, that takes a little more effort.
We see the connection in Hebrews 10. We covered the significance of this passage before (refer to TFTW “Misquotes” in the New Testament on April 10, 2006). If you follow the train of thought, the writer is connecting the sacrifice of Jesus’ body to the sacrifice of Jesus’ will. The physical body of Jesus represents to us how he overcame the desires of the flesh. Despite being tempted in all points as we, he never sinned. His will was perfectly sacrificed. Again, like the blood, we can put way too much emphasis on the physical while the emphasis of Scripture is on the spiritual.
Let’s take a look at the passage:
Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me: in burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hast had no pleasure. Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God. Above when he said, Sacrifice and offering and burnt offerings and offering for sin thou wouldest not, neither hadst pleasure therein; which are offered by the law; then said he, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God. He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second. By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. (Heb. 10:5-10)
The law was very specific as to the condition the animal must be in to be an acceptable sacrifice. “And if his offering be of the flocks, namely, of the sheep, or of the goats, for a burnt sacrifice; he shall bring it a male without blemish.†(Lev. 1:10) The physical body of Jesus was not an acceptable sacrifice in the Mosaic sense. Imagine bringing a lamb to the priest in the mangled condition Jesus was in at the foot of the cross. The priest would throw us out of the Temple in a second. Yet, this was not the offering of Jesus. It was his perfectly sacrificed will. Not only in Gethsemane had he said “not my will, but thine be done,†he had said that his entire life. The cross was simply the crowning moment of sacrifice of his will. As the writer to Hebrews says plainly, it was by the sacrificed will of Jesus that we were sanctified, not his physical body.
The reason that Jesus wants us to focus in on the Bread=Body=Will connection every week is that this is our challenge: to follow suit in the sacrifice of our will. As important as the ritual of taking the bread and the wine is, it pales in comparison to the reality of sacrificing our own will and giving our own life in sacrifice to our Heavenly Father. We need to be reminded of this all the time. It is only in really and truly understanding the true significance of the body and the blood and its implications for our day to day life that we truly fulfill Jesus’ command to “remember him.†There is nothing magical in us taking bread and wine any more than it was magical for a man to die on a cross. It is the sacrifice of life and will on the part of both parties—Christ perfectly and us imperfectly—that make these sacrifices the truly pleasing acts that the Lord requires.
Have a great week,
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