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| by Erik Wait |
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In the 16th century, the Words of Christ that were intended to bind the church together in the gospel became the very words that kept the Reformation from being solidified as Martin Luther debated Ulrich Zwingli over the meaning of “This is My Body… “
The Latin phrase “Hoc Est Corpus Meum” were the words of consecration used at Mass, spoken by the Roman Catholic priest as the bread he held and supposedly “transubstantiated,” changed the bread into the literal into the body of Christ. Luther rejected transubstantiation but clung to the belief of a “real presence” in, around the bread of Christ in the bread of Communion (i.e. consubstantiation) while Zwingli, held that “is” should be read here as “signifies.”
So the entire ludicrous debate and the division of the Reformation boils to this - “It all depends what “is”… “is.”
But if we actually read the Words of Christ, what we find is that He says, “This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” (Luke 22:19) There is nothing in the Bible that requires a metaphysical analysis of the sacrament of bread and wine, or an attempt to reduce them down to their lowest undividable elements. Nor are we told to theorize how it is how the Holy Spirit works through the bread and wine other than by faith.
We are simply told “do this in remembrance of Me.”
One wonders when you hear Paul say of the eating of “spiritual food” and “spiritual drink” that came from the rock, “…and the rock was Christ” (1 Corinthians 10:1-4) why they didn’t have a theory of transubstantiation (or consubstantiation) for the rock that provided water for Israel in the Old Testament.
Theologians can be so silly at times!
The only detailed explanation that we have of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper in the New Testament is found in Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthian Church. In this letter to the church the apostle uses the word “body” (Greek: soma) in many ways. In 1 Corinthians 1:5 Paul refers to the absence of his literal physical body from the church and in chapter 7 he refers to the body of the husband and the wife, that each does not have authority over their own body but rather the spouse does. (1 Corinthians 7:4)
The body of the husband and the wife are so identified with each other that not only does each member not have exclusive “say so” over their own body, but elsewhere Paul ties the idea of the body of the husband and the wife together such that when the husband takes care of his wife in a loving fashion he is taking care of his own body. In doing so he is acting towards her the same way that Christ the husband acts towards His bride, the church, as the husband, “nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church because we are members of His body.” (Ephesians 5:28-30)
This is why Paul refers to the church as the body of Christ when he states, “For even as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ.” (1 Corinthians 12:12) So closely is Christ the husband at one with His bride the church, that even though Paul says he had persecuted the church (1 Corinthians 15:9), when he had been confronted by Jesus on the road to Damascus the Lord asked him, “Saul, Saul why are you persecuting Me?” (Acts 9:4)
Far from asserting a strange Greek philosophical notion of the sacrament, Jesus and the Apostle Paul provide us with a covenantal understanding of the bread and wine that is analogous to the relationship between the covenantal relationship between the husband and the bride. It is an identification of unity such that what is true of the one is said to be true of the other as he asks the church at Corinth:
“Is not the cup of blessing which we bless a sharing in the blood of Christ? Is not the bread which we break a sharing in the body of Christ? Since there is one bread, we who are many are one body; for we all partake of the one bread.” (1 Corinthians 10:16-17)
The bread that we eat is the body of Christ – it is that which was crucified for our sin and raised from the dead.
The bread that we eat is the body of Christ – it is the church for whom was crucified and raised from the dead.
In our partaking we declare the gospel that unites Jew and Gentile by faith into one body as Paul tells us “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until He comes. (1 Corinthians 11:26)
If we cause division in the church we declare a message that is contrary to this gospel, which is why Paul had to confront Peter to His face for siding with the Pharisees and not eating with the Gentiles (Galatians 2:11). This is also why Paul tells us many at Corinth were sick and dying (1 Corinthians 11:30-34) and therefore remedies the problem by exhorting them:
“But a man must examine himself, and in so doing he is to eat of the bread and drink of the cup” (1 Corinthians 11:28)
when he gave us these words of institution:
“For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus in the night in which He was betrayed took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, ‘This is My body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of Me.’ In the same way He took the cup also after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until He comes.’” (1 Corinthians 11:23-25)
The solution to the problem of the sin of division of the body and the partaking of the Lord’s Supper is not to further the division by withdrawing from the table. Rather in the examination of unity the bread and the cup and the body of Christ, we are to come to the realization of the sin of causing division, recognize and repent of that sin and in doing so bring unity to the body of Christ, the church, and in doing so “eat of the bread and drink of the cup.” |
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