Feasting on God

Matthew 26:26-28 NIV

While they were eating, Jesus took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, "Take and eat; this is my body."  Then he took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them, saying, "Drink from it, all of you.  This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”

Why Have the Lord’s Supper?

Perhaps you have wondered why we have the Lord’s Supper.  Of course Jesus commanded us to hold the Lord’s Supper and so we do it but that does not explain why He wants us participating in it.  Christian and quasi Christian groups have a variety of explanations for its regular practice.  Some believe that we literally eat the physical body of Christ when we take the bread.  Others say it is just a symbolic ritual that helps us reflect on Christ and what He did for us.  Many think that you gain salvation by eating the bread and drinking the grape juice.  So is it just a religious ritual without any real benefit to us other than getting us to think about God or does its practice have eternal consequences for those who do or don’t participate?

Let us for a moment reflect on the actual words Jesus used when He told His disciples to eat the bread he offered them and drink from the cup.  "Take and eat; this is my body."  Then he took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them, saying, "Drink from it, all of you.  This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”  Consider the two parts to this: 1. Take and eat.  This is my body.  2. Drink from it all of you.  This is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.  In the supper, it is the body of Christ and the blood of Christ that is at the center of it.  What are we told to take into ourselves?  It is the body of Christ and the blood of Christ.

Lest we get confused in this, we are not physically eating Jesus’ flesh or swallowing His blood.  That would be a grotesque violation of God’s law as even after the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, the Church is commanded not to drink blood.  Eating human flesh is just as revolting.  Yet consider what the body and blood are.  The body is the substance of Christ; what makes Him who He is.  It is Jesus Himself…His personality, His character, His way of life.  If you want to know how that looks, what His personality and lifestyle is, go no further than the Sermon on the Mount.  There you find how He thinks, the way He does things, His habits and approach to every relationship and task He undertakes. 

The blood is the life of Jesus.  When God commanded His people not to drink the blood of any creature, He insisted, "You must not eat the blood of any creature, because the life of every creature is its blood; anyone who eats it must be cut off."  (Leviticus 17:14 NIV)  It is the blood that keeps you alive, what makes you alive.  Without the blood, there is no sustaining force to empower you.  The blood is how you are able to live and thrive.

So what does Christ give us with His body and blood?  We have Him: His personality, His character and the force of His life.  Consider this statement of the Bible.  I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. (Galatians 2:20 NIV)  What an amazing assertion!  Christ can actually live in us.  Not figuratively or symbolically but in reality He becomes a part of you when in faith you accept His entrance into your life.  Jesus made the promise that, "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.” (John 14:23 NIV)  We have here the spectacular declaration by Jesus that as close as the Father and the Son are, so are the Father, Son and any of us who love Christ and obey Him.  This is a real union within the Christian; all God possesses in His nature, His holiness, goodness, faithfulness and love becomes the believer’s.  Remember what Jesus taught in John 15?  He is the vine and we are His branches.  His life flows through ours and empowers us in every way.  Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.  "I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. (John 15:4-5 NIV)

Jesus made the promise that His people would do the same kinds of things He did.  I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. (John 14:12 NIV)  He was not pushing for imitation.  He was describing how we would look if we are connected to Him as branches are attached to a vine.  He is comingled with us so that it results in the impossible circumstance of in any way being able to separate where we end and He begins.  We become one.  Consider this declaration in the Bible.  But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit. (1 Corinthians 6:17 NIV)  Could this be any clearer?  Much like how bread and grape juice become inseparable from the body once it is digested, so too, when we unite ourselves with the Lord, we become one new being that cannot split into two.  One in spirit is much more than just some sort of fraternal partnership, it is the actual joining of Christ and you into a new creation.

Consider carefully this insistence in the Bible of just how profound is your union with Christ.  It is because of him (God) that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God — that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. (1 Corinthians 1: 30 NIV)  Let us look closely at this statement for a moment.  It is because of God’s decision that we are put into Christ and made a part of Him.  Because of that, each Christian has His wisdom and not only that, His righteousness and His holiness and His deliverance or redemption.  The union of you and Jesus Christ is complete.  It results in all His perfection becoming yours.  And how can this be?  It is by faith in Christ, that simple acceptance that He truly did die for your sins and raise you up into a new life with Him joined to you.  When you eat the bread and drink the grape juice, you do so with the same faith that saves you from your sins.  You eat it and it becomes a part of you just like the love and holiness and goodness and rightness of Jesus is a part of you.  We do take God into us when we celebrate the Lord’s Supper.  Not in reality but in actuality.  The bread does not become His earthy flesh and the juice does not become His gooey blood but better than that, He actually becomes a part of us because by faith we take the bread and the grape juice and make it ours in a union between us and Christ that truly make us one.

Individuality Vs. Personality Part 2

Individuality Vs Personality

Part 2

John 17:11b NIV

Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name — the name you gave me — so that they may be one as we are one.

Are You Personal Or An Individual?

We fight a constant battle between individuality and personality.  Our individuality wants to elbow others away from us and our personality stretches out to connect.  Personality in its purest and rawest form is presented to us in Genesis 2 when God created the woman as part of the man and declared what physically was true and that is that they were “one flesh”.  The man said, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called 'woman,'for she was taken out of man." For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. (Genesis 2:23-24 NIV)  Jesus indicated that this oneness of husband and wife is more than just the same physical source of being found in Adam and Eve…it reaches a far deeper level of union which when broken is disastrous.  'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife,  and the two will become one flesh.' So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate." (Mark 10:7-9 NIV)  The Apostle Paul in his letter to the Ephesians said that the union of husband and wife is like the union of Christ and the Church and he called it all a mystery.  "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh."  This is a profound mystery — but I am talking about Christ and the church.  (Ephesians 5:31-32 NIV)

What we see is that in marriage God brings the husband and wife together and supernaturally joins them into a union…there is a bridging brought about by God of two personalities.  Every marriage starts out this way…God linking the two together physically and psychologically.  It is our sinful press for individuality that elbows husbands and wives apart.  Our troubles in marriage spring from this urge to be individuals rather than personalities put together by God.  The more we hold on to our outdated view of who we are, that we are “on our own”, the more damage we inflict upon ourselves because in marriage, we are not on our own.  We are joined and if we don’t elbow each other apart we find we become bigger and better personalities in the union.  Husbands and wives grow as people when they are married and become more than they would have been unmarried because that is the sense of being joined by God.  If I add you to me, I become more than I was before there was both of us.

Jesus in His prayer before He was crucified set in place the ultimate goal of Christian people being formed into the Church.  He called upon a miraculous union, "My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.  I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one:  I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. (John 17:20-23 NIV)  This is actually a stupendous assertion of Jesus.  The union of Christian people is to be as complete as what exists between Christ and the Father.  If we consider the insistence of Jesus that if you see Him, you see the Father and that He and the Father are one, this is an amazing prayer. (Consider John 14: 9; 10:30 NIV)  Can we in any way fathom the depth and height of their oneness….oneness in knowing each other’s thoughts, oneness in purpose, oneness in loves and desires and values?  If the infinite God can know our thoughts and live within our mind, cannot Jesus and the Father do the same?  Would not their intimacy be at that level?

What sort of form will our oneness take when we are together in Christ?  Consider the assessment of Paul in Galatians regarding the relationship Christians have.  There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.  (Galatians 3:28 NIV)  The assumption most make is that all this is saying is that in heaven there will no longer be ethnic, cultural or sexual categories of people and although that may be true, there is a hint of something much more.  The statement that we are all one in Christ Jesus implies a unity that is supernaturally derived from being redeemed from sin by Jesus Christ.  What He did in us, taking away the Sin that separates us from God, He also does between us.  That same Sin will stop being a barrier separating us.  It is so much more than just us getting along with each other that Jesus Christ accomplished by taking our Sin from us on the Cross.  He is in it bringing us together so that we will have the same kind of intimacy and affection with each other that the Father and Son have.  Just as the Father and Son share their thoughts, loves and will in a complete union of personalities, so we too are to have that same union with each other.

Let us look at the one more aspect of our oneness in Christ.  The Apostle Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians spoke of something that many Christians have not at all fully thought through.  The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body — whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free — and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.  Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. If the foot should say, "Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body," it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body.  And if the ear should say, "Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body," it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body.  If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be?  But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body. (1 Corinthians 12:12-20 NIV)

Even though the Apostle Paul was using the concern in the church that some Christian abilities were more valued than others to teach this matter of the Church as a body, the teaching goes beyond just whose duties and abilities are most important.  We have here the very outcome of being a personality and able to connect with others in Christ.  We are a body…many parts but one body.  As Christ fills us more and more, this will become a reality that we are a body and each of us parts of the body.  The direction we are heading, and this is the direction…we are not there yet,is that there is developing a greater combining of our lives with an increasing importance to the part each of us play in how everyone else lives in Christ.  Our sinful individualism tries its best to elbow the rest of the body away.  This Sin leads us to think we are not just an eye but we also are a foot and the eye wants to be the kidney and the kidney thinks it should be and is the ear.  But that is the myth.  I am something to the body and you are something to the body but you are not two or three somethings and I am not two or three somethings.  I am what God has made me and you are what God made you and without each other, we are wrecked.  It is absurd to think I don’t need you.  I must have you and you must have me and it goes on and on like that.  The hands and arms and nose and eyes all live through one another in a body and it is that way as we become more and more in Christ.  All individualism gets knocked to smithereens.  The personality of you is joined to the personality of me and the personality of a third and it goes on and on because Christ has put us together.  The Christian who because of anger or fear or pride or self-righteousness tries to disconnect from another Christian is simply hating himself and shredding his life apart.  The love of Christ demands that we stay together…not just stay together but love each other and make each other better by being together.  We are a wreck when we separate; it is a great loss to us when we separate…but when we join with each other, and stay joined with each other, in Christ, our lives become bigger and greater and fuller than we could ever have imagined. The goal of this day is to make a go of building your life with someone else who God has brought your way.

The Great Moment

The Great Moment of our "turn around" is never at the spot when everything changes but at the point at which we decide for God.  When a paralytic was carried to the home where Jesus was teaching, the turn around was not when the man arrived.  It wasn't when Jesus bent over the cripple and told him to walk.  It wasn't even those rapid fire nanoseconds when healing flashed through the paralytic's legs.  The turn around was when it was decided to go to the Lord for help.  Repentance is a turn around.  The cry to God for help is a turn around.  The lostness that is discovered in the heart is a turn around.  As we come to grips with the  realization that every hope we have must end with God and if the truth be known, starts with Him, we meet the turn around at our doorstep.  Faith is the turn around; it is the spot at which we go outside ourselves and the miserly universe and seek the treasure trove of God's grace.  This world is never enough and will never provide us with enough.  We are always left with an empty pang in our stomach when all we do is rely upon this world for what we long to have.  It is more than metaphoric that the prodigal realized where he should have lived all along when his stomach growled uncontrollably.  We seek the Father not to get something in the end but because He is the beginning and the end.  All joy and peace and love and contentment are found ultimately in Him and although we may mistake some carnal longing for its heavenly desire, even in our most lustful cravings, we have in them the opportunity to fill our stomach with the bread Jesus offered the crowd on the hillside.   His broken body and poured out blood come to us at the moment of our hunger pangs and if we are wise, we will feast on them.  Given the voracity of our appetite, the only way we can ever be filled is by turning to Christ and letting Him fully satisfy us.    When you decide to go after the Savior, He saves you beyond the saving  you sought.

Why are you downcast, O my soul?  Why so disturbed within me?  Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God. Psalm 42:5-6a NIV

The Rise of Obedience

Salvation through Jesus brings us eternal life but the working out of that new life is practical and daily.  It is when we obey God and do what He says in those moments of clarity that more of us (body soul and spirit) becomes free of the chaos and sticky brokenness brought on by sin.  A little act of disobedience, one that seems trivial, can set a chain of events within and without us that can destroy much of the progress we have made toward heavenly joy and peace.  Disobedience is the great drug that intoxicates us and brings hidden destruction.  We grow in grace and freedom and joy as we simply by faith do what the Lord tells us to do.

Body and Soul

I was asked recently by one of my children what I thought he would be like if he had a different biological father or mother.  Of course this seems like a sensible enough question except for one misconception.  We don't exist as a person outside the body we have been given. The soul came into the man after the body was formed and not before.  Adam became a living soul or nephesh after the Lord breathed into the body the breath of life.  Before that, there was no "soul" of Adam.   There is no scriptural evidence for baby souls or incubating souls waiting somewhere for God to distribute into bodies.  Rather what we have is that the physical body initiates the birth of the soul.  Thus when the body is formed, the soul comes into place, is breathed into it by God.  The body is picked out and then the soul is created.  When the egg is fertilized by the sperm, it is a mystical moment of conception, not just with the forming of the body but the initiation of the soul as God puts life into place.  We don't exist before the body comes to be but when we are brought to life, we are from the outset God's life.  He breathes into the body its being, its soul.  David talked about the work God did knitting him together within his mother's womb and creating him stitch by stitch as it were.  But moving down just a bit in Psalm 139 to verse 16, we come to the most interesting part of this .  When God saw us in His mind before we were even formed, our days were already established; they were written in His book.  It is as if out moments are a part of our DNA; the days we have written even within our body.  But take this one step further.  Ecclesiastes 3:11 indicates that our bodies also contain eternity in them; the heart is the receptacle of forever.  The body is no mere addendum to the soul...and the soul is not as U2 implies stranded in "some skin and bones".  The body and soul are intertwined as one, each a part of the whole God established when He decided to create good.  The body is either the whipping post or idol of humanist thinking.  It must be neither.  It is created by the Creator to establish the person Christ died to save. You are peculiar in the best sense of the word.  Made by God, particular to God, defined by God, known by God, loved by God.