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What is Communion/Eucharist – What does it mean to Drink my Blood and Eat my Flesh?

(Ver 1.0) This Bible lesson is a response to a comment that was received recently from someone that caused us concern about what the content of the message contained. It was felt that this comment should not be handled privately but should be made into a public Bible lesson. This lesson will not be a long study, but it is still an essential truth about who our God is and what He has sovereignly chosen to do and to be. This lesson may not be for everyone. But hopefully it will be a blessing to some that may have the same question in their mind about the loving and infinitely good God that created us all.

However, this is a WARNING UPFRONT to caution readers that this Bible lesson may be offensive to some. It may not be considered politically correct which none of the Bible truly is. It is God’s Word that brings us Light, and this is highly offensive to those that love the darkness (Jn 3:19). But this lesson will be given in a spirit of Love, speaking the truth intended to only bring a gentle healing (Eph 4:15). To those that desire to know the True God and see His truth, this lesson should be easy to receive. Potentially others could be offended.

We will divide this lesson into the following sections:

  1. Introduction
  2. What Happened to the physical body of Jesus?
  3. Knowing there is Spiritual Realm and Natural Realm
  4. Can God Lie?
  5. Absolute Truths Come from the Mouth of God
  6. Conclusion

INTRODUCTION

Our commenter was responding to a lesson on what Jesus taught us in John 6 about we must drink His blood and eat His flesh to receive eternal life. There was a significant amount of discourse in this comment given on the subject of “the differences between literal and figurative” expressions spoken by God and by Jesus while in the flesh on the earth.

It was obvious our commenter took the words of Jesus to be literal and they claimed that this is how the Holy Spirit entered into them by them literally eating and drinking the physical body and blood of Jesus Christ. But what does their definition of “literally” eating His flesh and drinking His blood, mean to them?

Was this 1) a literal cutting from the flesh of the body of Jesus Christ piece by piece as Jesus’s words implied in John 6? Or was this just 2) a “figurative” sampling of man-made bread and wine that is representative of the actual reality of flesh and blood, as some believe in a ceremony called “Communion”? Or there are even some that believe 3) these naturally created human elements of bread and wine, when ingested in a religious ceremony called a Eucharist, become the literal flesh and blood of Jesus by some miraculous wonder. That is a tough lesson and is far more complex to be fully taught completely today. But we will go through some of the key thoughts today to try to understand how to view this subject from the eyes of God.

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE
PHYSICAL BLOOD AND BODY OF JESUS?

What happened to the literal physical naturally born body of Jesus? We know He was nailed to a cross (Jn 19:18), after being beaten by Roman soldiers (Jn 19:1). He hung on the cross approximately 6 hours (Mat 27:45) and died after His spirit left His body (Jn 19:30). The physical body was then buried in a tomb and sealed with guards standing outside for three days (Jn 19:38-42). On the third day the LORD Jesus was raised up from the dead and his physical natural physical body was glorified by God to be changed into an eternal resurrected body.

However, there are important facts to take note of. We know from John 20:17 that the resurrected body of Jesus and His Spirit, was on His way to see His Father in heaven when He saw a woman that was at the tomb. He told her not to touch Him because He had not yet ascended to His Father (Jn 20:17). In Hebrews 7:27 we learn another fact that Jesus was being made a High Priest for all of humanity on this first trip to heaven. We further learn that He was going up to offer up His blood to His Father in heaven, for it to be poured out in the Heavenly Most Holy Tabernacle (Heb 9:12) as the onetime payment for all sin.

Finally, notice what happened after Jesus returned from the Heaven Spirit realm back to the earth realm of natural humans. He appears to the disciples behind closed doors without opening one door. He looks at them and says “Behold, my hands and my feet and see that it is me”. This clearly means that His resurrected body still had the marks from the nails while hanging on the cross. Then He said, “See a spirit has not flesh and bone as you see I have” (Lk 24:39).

Pay close attention to see that Jesus never claims to have any blood in His body after His post-resurrection trip to heaven. This would be a problem for a literal interpretation of eating His flesh and drinking His blood after being raised from the dead. From Bible evidence there does not appear to be any blood in His resurrected body.

Plus, there is the Bible fact that Jesus did not ever offer His resurrected body as food to anyone to be saved after His resurrection. After all He did appear to humans for 40 days in the flesh and we can only find Jesus eating natural food with humans and never His flesh (Jn 21:12-14, Lk 21:41-43). Therefore, we are beginning to have some major problems with the commenter’s reasonings and interpretations of scriptures in John 6.

Finally, please notice that the physically resurrected body of Jesus went up to heaven in fulness being completely intact in Acts 1:9. The disciples witnessed this fact and the angel that was with them said to them “You men of Galilee, why are you staring up into heaven?” in Acts 1:11. Then the angel said to them, “this same Jesus which was taken up, shall return in like manner”. This simply means the literal physical resurrected body of Jesus went up with Him and will also return fully intact upon his return.

Therefore, the statements by Jesus to eat His flesh and to drink His blood appear to mean something completely different than a literal interpretation.

KNOWING THERRE IS A SPIRIT REALM
AND A NATURAL REALM

Therefore, we need to find the true interpretation of eating flesh and drinking blood. From the comment that was the implied meaning to the commenter. But is that what God said or meant? Does it really matter if we think what was written, meant something that God did not really say? Do remember what God said in Isaiah?

Isa 55:9  For as the heavens (the spirit realm) are higher than the earth (the natural realm), so are my ways (Spirit) higher than your ways (natural), and my thoughts (Spirit) than your thoughts (natural).

Wow! Isaiah wrote a very significant amount of truth for us to learn from. Within parentheses were added the God concept that is revealed in other parts of the Bible. It is absolutely essential for Bible students to interpret the Bible using the other words found within the Bible, and this will help eliminate the problem being addressed with the reader’s comment and analysis of what was spoken.

What was God saying in Isaiah 55:9? Our God who is the highest and greatest intelligent being ever, is explaining how His Spirit eyes sees things differently and His omniscient mind thinks things from a higher perspective of ultimate truth, than the limited human natural eyes and carnal human mind reasoning. The Apostle Paul emphasizes this problem in this verse:

1Co 3:1  And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ.

Do you see the Isaiah 55 connection? Paul could have said “Brothers, I could not speak unto you using “heavenly” words, ideas, concepts, and descriptions, because for now you are far too “earthly” focused. This is the exact same concept that Jesus spoke of in John 3:

Joh 3:12  If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things?

Do you see the same principles being taught by Jesus in this statement? Jesus is saying the same thing that Paul said in 1 Corinthians 3:1. And this John 3 statement was certainly based upon what is exactly stated in Isaiah 55 about God’s spiritual ways being way above the comprehension of childlike naturally thinking people. Jesus is literally saying “I am speaking to you using natural things, to point you to the far higher and greater spiritual dimension that you are unable to comprehend.

It is very easy to see how there could be a lot of confusion surrounding these words spoken by Jesus in John 6 about eating flesh and drinking blood until you see that Jesus is attempting to teach the greater spiritual truths using easier parallel God created natural realities. What we are being introduced to is an awesome concept for learning the truth in the Bible.

One God given rule of correct scripture interpretation is found in these statements above. Humans before being born-again are wholly natural thinking people. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 2:14, that the natural thinking man can never receive the things of the Spirit of God. Paul continues by saying, for these spiritual things are “foolishness” to the earthly thinking human. Finally, Paul reveals, Spirit Words from God are only discerned from spiritual minded humans. Do you see the problem being presented? This was a sovereign God design of hiding spiritual information from people who are not really committed to know the God that is speaking.

We were designed by God to only be able to fully view the spiritual truths hidden in scriptures correctly, only after being spiritually born-again (Jn 3:7), from God’s higher Spirit perspective and viewpoint. We can only do this by renewing our minds with His truths and rising above the natural realm of normal human thinking. This can only come from spiritual growth by reading His Words and being led by the Holy Spirit to see what they mean (1 Pet 2:2). Next, as a part of this study, we are going to focus upon one part of the comment to answer an important question.

DOES GOD LIE?

The commenter is unknown to us and everyone else, we will “in the spirit of love”, not identify the commenter. We also will not provide the entire comment and only address the most shocking points that insult, slander, and defame the character of God who made us all.

Here is the opening of the longer comment that was submitted:

The Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.
Jesus is not subject to OT laws like not eating flesh with the blood in it.
He made them. He can break them. He is God after all.

Suppose. Suppose God wanted us to literally eat his flesh and drink his blood. Would that be okay with you? Or would he need special permission?

Wow, these are very sad, hurtful, and offensive allegations, accusations and statements about the revealed character and nature of God who describes Himself to be “Love” in 1 John 4:8. Is it possible for God who is LOVE, to break His own commandments and laws? What is the character and nature of true “LOVE”? In other words, does the Creator God command His created man to do something that He would not do?  Does God give us a commandment and then make exceptions in certain cases for Himself to do otherwise? Is any of this fair and just? The commenter’s reasonings teach that God could be completely immoral and disobey whatever he told us to do simply because He is God. Is that the kind of God you know?

For example, if God instructed man not to eat any flesh with blood remaining in it in the Torah Law of Moses (Gen 9:4, Lev 17:14), then the commenter is saying that God must have changed His mind while Jesus was speaking to people on the earth when He told them to eat His flesh and drink His Blood? From this, the commenter is saying that God can do any of the following:

  1. God made the Law; therefore, He can break His Law.
  2. Jesus was never “subject” to the O.T. Laws (Torah) like eating flesh with blood in it.
  3. The final statement was “If God desired us to eat flesh with blood, does He need to ask any human if that is ok to do”?

Many human statements given without deep thought and allowing God’s personal involvement and participation with His Holy Spirit to instruct us and help us understand what is written, can bring about confusion with other unknown truths that could be found in the Bible, if searched. There are No Rightly Interpreted Bible verses that contradict with any other Bible verse. That would make the Bible just a human book of mistakes, instead of what it truly is, a book written by a far superior Spirit intellect attempting to communicate with people that know very little about anything spiritual as we ought. But since God is omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, He is smart enough not to forget what He says nor contradict what He meant. Today, we are about to discover that the Bible teaches us the following essential facts concerning God’s divine nature and character:

  1. Num 23:19 “God is not a man that He should lie”. This verse reveals whatever God says is a true statement and it cannot change.
  2. Mal 3:6 “I am the LORD and I change not”. God being unchangeable and Immutable are two other ways of saying that He will not say and believe one thing today is true and a completely opposite thing tomorrow is also true. Nor will He say one thing today and do the opposite tomorrow.
  3. Heb 6:18 “It is impossible for God to lie.” Here is another challenge to the claims that God does not need to always do what He says.  If God said He would do something and then changed His mind, He would be called a liar. This truth further binds God to do exactly what He says by His own sovereign choice and design.
  4. Duet 1:17 “You will not respect person in judgment”. Rom 2:11 “There is no respect of person with God”. Here is an example of how God commands man to be like He is. God is described to not respect any person, and He commands people to do the same. This teaches us God’s intent is for humans to do exactly what He says and does.

In these descriptions of our God, He is “Truthful”, “Honest”, “Fair” and “Just”? Perhaps some do not believe that God is “truthful” (Jn 15:26), “honest” (Num 23:19), “fair” (2 Chr 19:7), or “just” (1 Pet 2:23)? Perhaps some may not believe the Bible is God’s spoken words that instructs what He does and what we should do also. Or that it also teaches us who He is, what He does, and that neither of these will ever conflict. In other words, who God is, is what God desires for us to become. Then also what God does, must be exactly what God wants us to be like (Gen 1:26).

If some do not believe God has these qualities that proves these people may know a little bit about God, but they probably have never experienced a personal close relationship with Him. That should be truly concerning. Now let us go deeper into the Word of Truth to learn more about if we should drink His natural blood and eat His natural flesh:

Joh 13:34  A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.

We can find multiple commandments written to humans to do things that God has described as His character. For example, notice in the verse above.  We know in 1 John 4;8 God says He is LOVE. Then Jesus said in John 13:34 that we should love each other on the earth exactly as He personally demonstrated and showed us His love to us. How many people fully do this? Can you name one? Many people can act very kind to someone for a short time, until they are enraged and suddenly, they become a totally different personality with unimaginable changes in character.

People must redefine the true nature of God’s character of LOVE that is clearly described to us in 1 Corinthians 13 to justify their ability to not be held accountable for doing what He commanded us to do, Himself. According to the definition of the God kind of Love called “Agape”, people are supposed to rejoice in truth in verse 13. Therefore, God claims in His word that He will never lie to us as we previously saw in Numbers 23:19 and He will always do exactly everything that He has said.

If this part of the Bible is not true, then this would be easy for us to say the rest of the verses in the Bible is not true either. Either God must obey His written revealed Word, or He has suddenly become a liar and we better know we learned in Hebrews 6:18 God says it is “IMPOSSIBLE for Him to LIE”. This simply means if He has said it, He must also do it, or His character has changed to become like a human sinner. This would appear to teach us that we are following a book of fables that we cannot trust. But that should not be a description of His Word or His character. We can find it written over and over that we can Trust Him (Prov 3:5).

This is troubling for many religiously minded people in the world that define the word “sovereign” to means God can legally do anything and it is ok, because He is God. But we better be seeing things differently in the Bible because this is not truly stated as the definition of God’s sovereignty. There are many places in the Bible where God has said things, and He must place Himself personally under the words, commandments, and prophecies, to fulfill them.

Gal 4:4  But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law,

Notice what God said in this verse about His personal appearance upon the earth. God declares that there was a predetermined set time for His arrival, and if he would not have appeared at this set appointed time, it would have demonstrated to us that He was not powerful enough to fulfill exactly what He said would occur.  But we all know, this did not happen.

The next part of this statement makes it perfectly clear that during God’s manifested presence in human flesh (Heb 2:14), He purposefully chose to place Himself under His own written LAW (Torah) fully and completely. This chosen placement of being under the LAW of Moses forces the truth that if He would have violated any of the written LAWS, He would have become a sinner like the rest of humanity (Rom 3:23). This simply teaches us that Jesus fulfilled every requirement of the law while here on the earth in a physical form. Why did the sovereign God choose to do it this way?

Mat 5:18  For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.

Here is another statement from the mouth of God the creator of the heaven and the earth. Jesus personally said, “Not one jot or tittle of the law will pass away, until ALL BE FULFILLED”. That should cause us to believe something differently than what our commenter said. Since it was impossible for a human to keep the LAW, we know that only God could do this, and this is exactly what He chose to do. In other words, if God does not follow His own commanded LAW, He would be unable to fulfill it. Or are we going to redefine what “fulfillment” means next?

The Greek word G1096 translated as “fulfilled” means to “come into existence”. Wow, that changes a lot about how we should view these scriptures. They are not suggestions; they are all things that will come to pass and will be accomplished by God personally. In other words, they must ALL be viewed in the light of Jeremiah 1:12. In this verse God says, “I watch over my word to perform it” (NASB). This verse simply confirms the truth, that God will do everything that He has said.

Therefore, if He commanded a man not to eat flesh with blood, God as a man, would not do that either by His own choice of fulfilling the commandments. This would also mean that Jesus would never contradict the law by telling others to disobey the law either. This shows us that this would only be God sovereignly abiding by what He said, and He needs no one’s permission to make His spoken words good, and these words will never change.

We all know from scripture that the LAW was given to Moses directly by God (Neh 10:29). This makes the “LAW” the words from God’s mouth. According to Jesus, He claimed all these words were a divine prophecy that MUST be FULFILLED. This simply means God CAN NOT DO ANYTHING ELSE but make sure everything that He said completely happens as He said it would. This teaches a potentially radical need for a shift of focus to what was said. God is not declaring that we should all still be sacrificing offerings of animal sacrifices. No, we should change to learn that Jesus came into the world to accomplish the whole law for us, to save us in our inability to fulfill them for ourselves.

But we should know for 100% fact that the Bible is the inspired Word of the Living God according to 1 Timothy 3:16. This verse simply means the Bible came out of the mouth of God and was given to us by His Holy Spirit. This should make it simple to know that a Holy God is not someone that can lie and if we think He can say something and it does not restrict what He can do, we are potentially amazingly deceived. Him being a “sovereign” God does not make it acceptable for Him to lie, to steal, to murder, to be unjust or anything else that violates a pure definition of His character of LOVE, or His spoken words of LAW.

Did Jesus ever lie in the Gospels? Can you find a verse containing a lie from the mouth of Jesus? No, there are no lies from the mouth of Jesus. This also means that there are no lies from His Father God either.  Jesus made it very clear that “He only spoke what His Father said to speak” (Jn 12:49). Therefore, when Jesus said, “if you have seen me, you have seen my Father” (Jn 14:9), we can know what we see Jesus doing is what we know God does.

This teaches us that Jesus is the manifested true nature and character of the God who created us (Col 2:9). Therefore, if we cannot see Jesus do what you claim, then His Father could not do it either. Both manifestations of God are NOT LIARS. God must do exactly what He says, and He is bound to His spoken words eternally because His Words are Him. Remember what John 1:1 teaches us. In this verse God said “In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God. This simply means the Word of God does not ever change like we learned in Malachi, where God said that He never changes.

Yes, there are still spoken words that have yet to be fulfilled, because Jesus was also a prophet (Mat 13:57), and He told us of things that will soon come to pass at the end of the age (Mat 24). But unfulfilled words are still not words that are untruthful. Time does not cause words to be lies because they have not occurred. It only means we are supposed to expect them to happen at any moment, because they were spoken by God who can never lie. Isn’t this easily understandable? If God said it, the words were the truth, and they must happen to eliminate the possibility of a lie.

God’s words will always come to pass, and He will not violate them, and He must do whatever is necessary to make them occur. This is a better definition of being “sovereign”. No matter what the opposition, rebellion, lack of cooperation from humans, or the devil’s works to try to make them not happen, God is committed to make sure everything that He said that will happen, to happen. This completely contradicts a belief that God can say something and then not be bound to make it happen or follow it, that is not what “sovereignty” means, it is more like insanity to believe that God is an unreliable example for us to follow.

We can also find verses like Ephesians 5:1 where a human Christian is commanded to be “an imitator” of God. Therefore, if God does not have to keep His word, and can violate it, we are free to do the same by human logic. This would make us all “liars” (Rom 3:4), and on our way to hell according to Revelation 21:8.

Our commenter claims that since God sovereignly created His law, it is within His right of further sovereign choice that allows Him to violate the same laws. The commenter claims, “After all He is God”. Let us evaluate this reasoning by using basic morals that should be found in human relationships.

If a man marries a woman and they both promise to love, honor, cherish and be faithful to each other until one die, is it OK for them in 6 months or even 60 years to change their mind? In today’s Christian church this is the casual lie that has been embraced as acceptable. This is the same attitude that is being projected upon the God that created us. The logical reasoning is that if God can change His mind and it be OK, then all humans also can simply do the same. We are suddenly changing out the real God to be made into the image of a lost sinful human and ignoring His original designed intent for humans to be made into His image and conformed into His likeness (Gen 1:26).

This is the danger of not knowing the real Creator God or His written Word, people can be easily deceived into believing things that are baseless and unscriptural about a subject of critical importance. If we do not understand the very basics about God’s character and nature, we can be carried away to believe almost anything.

ABSOLUTE TRUTHS COME FROM GOD’S MOUTH

Continuing, let us learn that God is a Spirit of Truth. Psalm 31:5 describes God to be the God of Truth. This simply confirms whatever God says can be received by us to be unchangeable “Truth”. Then in John 14:6, Jesus said, “I AM the “way”, the “truth”, and the “life”. Jesus confirms that He is the God of truth in personal manifestation, using simple God created algebraic laws within mathematics. Then in John 15:26 we find a prophecy that Jesus will ask the Father to send the Holy Spirit who was also called the “Spirit of Truth”. So, we have one God in three manifestable personalities and presences, and they are ALL Named and called the TRUTH.

Therefore, no matter who is speaking, whether it be God the Father, God the Son, or God the Holy Spirit, none of His spoken words will ever contradict any other past, present, or future words spoken, since Truth cannot be changed. This was confirmed when God said in Malachi 3:6, “I am the LORD and I change not”. By placing an unchangeable God with His unchangeable Words this is the definition of “Absolute Truth” coming from God’s mouth. Because the Bible comes from a God that can never tell lies, His written Words are the most reliable and highest forms of never-ending truth that are available to humans.

There is a modern-day culture that is attempting to transform the Christian belief system based upon unchangeable Words of God, into an absurdity of relativism of there being “No Absolute Truths”.  In other words, whatever I want to believe about God, or the non-existence of any God is my choice, and it must be acceptable to everyone.  Then multiply this single person belief by 8 to 9 billion people and we have only chaos, confusion, and disorder.

This has been a slowly encroaching plot over the last 60+ years, to get people to accept one single lie as a normal truth after the next. But suddenly since 2012, the pattern of deception has increased and grown exponentially to lie after lie, every day of the week and almost a new lie every minute of the day. We cannot watch modern television news media and hear much if any, truth whatsoever, no matter what network you are watching.

But the removal of absolutes, is a perversion attempting to sway society away from a common unified set of truths, is a planned attack to destroy humanity and send them to hell. What are we being taught today in schools that violates God’s written fixed Truths?  We are seeing this happen more today than before in our lifetime. Here is just a short list of insanity ignoring absolute truths:

  1. One internet article from an intellectual PHD has been published in 2023 and has said that there are at least 81 identifiable genders of the human species. It is interesting that God who created us, said there are only 2 (Mat 10:6). That is a major problem, but who is correct? Romans 3:2 says let God be true and every other man a liar.
  2. People in the world claim that there are massive racial biases and hatreds in much of the population. This is being taught as absolute truth in schools and by governments. But God’s Word says we are all one race from the same two parents Adam and Eve (Gen 2-3).
  3. The world says now that a marriage can be between two women, or two men and this must be called normal. But Jesus said in the beginning God only made two humans, one male, and one female and God called them a husband and a wife. (Mat 19:4)
  4. A biologically confirmed male can be a female by human choice is normal and acceptable. This is being taught in schools ignoring scientifically irrefutable evidence of DNA, and the Absolute Truth of the Bible saying God formed us in our mother’s womb (Jer 1:5).
  5. A biologically confirmed female can be a male also ignoring scientifically irrefutable evidence of DNA and the Absolute Truth of Bible.
  6. Children can be murdered up to and even after birth now in more than one state. This is refuted in the Bible very clearly. First, the sixth commandment written is, “Thou shalt not commit murder” (Exo 20:13). A child is someone known by God before they are conceived (Jer 1:5). Babies are given a spirit at conception, that can hear, that can feel pain, that are aware (Gen 25:22-23, Lk 1:41). And this same internal developing body, soul, and spirit in their mother continues to grow and mature for years after being born. Modern 4D sonagrams are displaying the truth that these children inside the womb are the same as those outside of the womb. Please search and see for your self.
  7. Children are the responsibility of the state, and the parents have no rights to determine their children’s future or what they are indoctrinated with by the state. It is interesting that this is exactly what Nazi Germany did in the 1930’s. This is another attempt at the same agenda that removes God’s designs of family and places easily brainwashed children into doing whatever the governments want them to do. This is clearly a design of Satan to turn children against their parents to commit the sin of breaking the 5th commandment so that children do not honor their father and mother (Exo 20:12).

Humans, especially the youth, are being indoctrinated with ever changeable values to not know any of the “Absolute Truth” of God.  They have been taught that they came from apes, and now it has moved into the lie, that if I desire to identify as a monkey, that is my choice and you must accept me and support me, as I have declared and call me by whatever label I have chosen, regardless of evidence or facts. This philosophy is a very dangerous cliff to be walking to near to.

Isa 5:20  Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!

God warns of this coming change in culture in this verse of Isaiah 5:20. God says to us all, “Woe, unto those that try to call “evil”, “good”, and “good” “evil”. These same people will try to pervert “light” can call it “darkness” while calling “darkness”, their “light”. God goes further to say that these same people will begin to train people to call everything that is “bitter”, “sweet”, and everything that is “sweet”, a new type of “bitter”. This is complete insanity to those that have any common sense and know the truth and refuse to change to believe their lies.

This perversion of cultural shift has become dominant in the entertainment industries, like movies, television, and music. We have popular number one songs that claim, “I’m Bad” to mean something that should figuratively be a symbol of being “good” or “great”. We have government laws and mandates that claim women’s healthcare rights when it is really nothing but an agenda for “abortion” murder rights. There are examples after examples of these types of wrongs ignoring absolute truths of God’s written Word.

Regardless of what people think, say, or believe, there are “Absolute Truths”, and there will always be unchangeable laws of created truth that will never fail, and they all come from God! Nothing you can say or do, can overrule any of these God given and established laws (Heb 4:12). God has said in Deuteronomy 30:19, “I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing, therefore choose life…”. We are going to be faced with this choice every day of our lives, to choose the lies of the devil, or the truth of God. God was smart enough to tells the right answer. He said very plainly “Choose Life”.

CONCLUSION

One of the most interesting things about the commenter’s written words about a Bible lesson found on this website, is the fact that there are “No SUPPORTING” verses used to confirm and verify the given statements. This places the commenter’s opinion in isolation apart from the written Word of God, our only source of Absolute Truth. Do you recall what God said in Amos 3:3? Here God says, “How can two walk together, unless they agree?”. Please pay attention to find if there are supporting scriptures to agree with God in any lesson, and who is not providing any scriptures of agreement with God, and therefore only speaking an opinion.

This simply means that any words written or spoken without Scripture references are merely worthless personal opinions. I DO NOT CARE ABOUT MY OPINION OR YOURS! YOU SHOULD NOT CARE ABOUT EITHER ALSO!  THE ONLY FOUNDATION FOR ABSOLUTE TRUTH IS FOUND IN THE BIBLE, AND IF IT DOES NOT SAY WHAT YOU OR I ARE TRYING TO SAY, IGNORE THE TEACHING OR THE OPINIONS COMPLETELY!

What the commenter claims was, that if Jesus said for us to eat His flesh and to drink His blood, then it must be literal. It did not matter if the spoken words of Jesus the Son of God, violated the commandments of His Father God, that were given to Israel because He was God and could do whatever He wanted. They reasoned that because Jesus said He was the LORD of the Sabbath that therefore He could violate His Father’s own laws. We have hopefully learned from scripture that this is pure foolishness.  We have already seen the facts in the Bible that Jesus was completely born under the LAW and He said He came to fulfill the LAW and not to ignore it. You can never in any verse of the Gospels find where Jesus violated a single LAW. NEVER!

If He had violated His written LAW, this makes Him a sinner of the Commandments of God. Paul wrote in Romans 4:15, “that where there is no LAW, there is no violation of the law”. But we previously learned in Galatians 4 that Jesus Christ was born purposefully to be held accountable “under the LAW”. This meant any disobedience by Jesus is a violation of the written LAW and this would cause “sin” to have occurred. Hebrews 4:15 testifies that “Jesus was tempted in every way to sin like we are, but yet without any sin having occurred”. This literally means Jesus kept the LAW!

Therefore, Jesus Christ was unable to break a law to sin, for this would also make His Father a liar. God is the source of all truth. God must fulfill and keep His truth and is therefore bound by every word that comes out of His mouth and these words will never pass away. They are forever absolute truths.

What we have learned today, is the fact that Jesus used natural substances like human flesh and natural blood to teach us about far greater and higher spiritual realities. This simply means it was never God’s intention for Jesus to give His literal physical human body for an eatable substance for anyone to consume naturally, to obtain their spiritual salvation. This would not make a lot of sense for God or for us.

Eph 2:8  For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: 

Eph 2:9  Not of works, lest any man should boast.

The book of Ephesians is very clear that natural works will never save any human. God says to save the spirit of a human it takes “faith”. Faith is of the heart (spirit). Therefore, we do not get spiritually saved by doing natural human work and especially by physically eating anyone’s touchable physical body or blood and placing it in our natural physical stomach. There is too much flesh involved in this process.

But what was the body of Jesus Christ made from? We can read in John 1:14 that the “Word” of God was made “flesh” and dwelt among us. We previously learned that the Word was God (Jn 1:1), and we should know that God is a Spirit (Jn 4:24). Now we are beginning to learn more about what Jesus was speaking of.

Jesus’ salvation offered to us in the New Covenant comes from us receiving the spoken Word of God into our hearts (spirits) by faith and then confessing the risen from the dead LORD Jesus to be our LORD (Rom 10:9-10). Therefore, the symbolic flesh of Jesus is representative of the Word of God. This was the short answer to the much deeper question of what the blood and body is being told to us to be consumed.

We get a deeper application to the understanding of spiritual things in 1 Corinthians 11:24-25 where Paul describes the last supper that Jesus partook together with His disciples. Notice this was the “Passover” meal that is being participated in by Jesus and it was written to do this in the Old Covenant Law. Then Jesus said after taking the unleavened bread, this is my body. Next, He took the cup and said this is the New Covenant in my blood, this do often in remembrance of me.

Wow this can be a separate lesson by itself. However, notice that Jesus said we are eating and drinking this bread and blood many times, not just once? How many times do we receive the Holy Spirit to begin our walk of salvation with Him as our helper? Guess what, it is only one time. The Bible does not tell us that we eat and drink over and over, to become saved, again and again. After we receive the Holy Spirit once by faith, He comes in and abides and we become joined as “one” spirit, the Holy Spirit with our human spirit (1 Cor 6:17). This only occurs once.

Therefore, eating physical Passover elements of bread and wine, are NOT our salvation, only the refreshing of our spiritual remembrance as a memorial for what Jesus did for us 2000 years ago and a continual reminder for what we received by our faith once in our present natural life.

The Old Covenant was the natural pattern and a prophetic pointer for the coming New Covenant spiritual reality. The New Covenant partaking of physical elements of Communion or Eucharist is a spiritual memorial or monument found in our mind, for us to remember what was accomplished in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.

Thank you for taking the time to read and study the Bible at “Agapegeek”. God loves us more than we can imagine, but He will only take those with Him, that have accepted Him fully. Jesus is returning to catch away His Church Bride, and the wise virgins were ready when He came. The foolish virgins, who were not prepared, were not let in when He came. Which kind are you? It could happen much sooner than you think. Jesus said very clearly that it would happen at an hour when you think not.

If God wills, we will get back into other subjects that we have been learning previously, unless He directs to teach something new like today. God will continue to richly bless each of us, and His grace and peace will be multiplied to each of us through our growing knowledge of Him.

Understanding the Eucharist! Fellowshipping with the Body and the Blood of Christ! Part 2

Communion4(Ver 1.1) This is Part 2 in a Bible study series on the subject of the Eucharist.  This subject is also commonly called receiving “communion” in many church services.  Other common terms used to describe the Eucharist are the “Lord’s Supper”, the “Lord’s Table” and it is even mistakenly called the “Last Supper” by some.  Other preachers call it the “meal that heals” but that will not be my focus today.  I did a Bible lesson a long time ago on this subject and received another question concerning it and this will be a follow-up to that initial lesson with new details that requires your understanding.   If you have not read the first lesson in this series, I would suggest that you go back and start with “Part 1” first and then continue with this lesson to get the full impact of the teaching message.   Lesson 1 presented a radical new spiritual perspective on the subject of communion and the Eucharist.  The primary emphasis of that lesson was for us not to focus on just the natural elements or eating or drinking something physical in an ignorant religious ritualistic way to satisfy or appease the works of the flesh or the views of others around us using peer pressure to get us to participate.  We should rather find out what the elements and the actions represent and then learn why we are doing them in order to derive any spiritual benefits from acting in faith to God’s Word.  I know there are many that struggle with that belief and these still do not understand how to combine the act of partaking with the reason for doing the act and that is why I am teaching in this manner.  People need to learn that doing right things without right motivations, understanding and reasoning will be vain religious attempts to please God with no value or rewards.   I’d like to give you a definition from the dictionary of the term Eucharist to begin this lesson:

  • Eucharist: The Christian ceremony commemorating the Last Supper, in which bread and wine are consecrated and consumed.

As you can read from this definition the Eucharist is said to be a Christian ceremony.  Christians perform this ceremony but we will soon discover that this act is also imitated and perverted by the devil in many other false religious types of ceremonies.   A ceremony is defined as a formal occasion typically one celebrating a particular event or anniversary.   What we learn from this definition is that this is a planned occasion using planned items (bread and wine), planned actions (drinking and eating) and that this event involves willing planned participants that are present.   It is also interesting to note that this event is stated to be a ceremony that commemorates the “Last Supper” and that is true and simultaneously not true depending upon your point of view and application.   What I will say is that there is a connection between the two even though they are not the same events.   I guess I should stop and give you the definition for “commemorate”.  This word means “to recall and show respect for something or someone in a ceremony”.   That definition actually has great merit to what the rest of this lesson will be focused on.  But I do want to still stress that the Eucharist or the communion is not the Last Supper but rather just a recollection or memory celebrating its fulfillment.  The “Last Supper” and the “Eucharist” are actually two different suppers within two different covenants as we will discover as we continue to research these subjects in the Bible.

DISCOVERING COMMUNION VERSES

I would like to emphasize that the word “Eucharist” is not technically found in the Bible.   It is a theological term used to label an event described in the Bible much like the theological term “rapture” is used to define another stated event described in the Bible.   Please do not get caught up or distracted with finding or not finding a theological term and miss the lessons found in the Bible about the term.   I will tell you that the English term “Eucharist” has its roots in the Greek word G2169 EUCHARISTIA.   This word is used in 15 verses in the N.T. and was usually translated as a form of “thanksgiving” or “giving thanks”.   That seems to teach us that Eucharist participation should contain the attitude of “thankfulness” to God.  I firmly believe that and I hope that you will take hold of that and plant it within your heart going forward.

There are several ways to find scriptures on this subject and I will go over a few to help you get started.  One method of finding verses is to search the Bible for key words of the elements of the event.   For example we should be able to find “unleavened”, “bread”, “wine” or even a “cup” that holds the wine.   We could also search and try to find the direct word “communion”.   However, I want to teach you that the term “communion” is only found in the KJV Bible a limited number of times concerning this same event.   This English word “communion” comes from the Greek word G2842 that literally means “partnership”, “participation”, “communication” or “social intercourse”.    This Greek word is also translated as “fellowship”.  For example in this verse in Acts it was translated as fellowship with a direct connection next to the partaking of bread within the church:

  • Act 2:42  And they continued stedfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers.

The English term “fellowship” is the Greek word that is also translated as “communion” in other N.T. verses.   As you can see this term appears to be separate from the breaking of the bread by the inclusion of the word “and”.  However this word is still immediately followed with the partial description of the Eucharist where bread is broken and passed among the church members.   God appears to me to be linking these two things together for a reason.   Please notice after the description of “breaking of bread” there is an additional connection with “prayers”.  I would like you to consider that prayer should be a linked fellowship (communion) with God according to this verse.  What I can see being developed in this verse is that taking the bread and wine should be done with the same reverential attitude of fellowship (communion) with God as in our time of prayer.   Does prayer have anything to do with being thankful?   If you believe like I do that it does then this links us back into the subject of “Eucharist” again.  I hope that you can see how God linked these three subjects intimately together.  We will arrive at a better description of this “communion” as we continue.  Let’s move to another verse found in the New Testament that further helps to confirm what I have just alluded to:

  • 1Co 10:16  The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?

Here we find one of the primary reasons why this formal church ceremonial practice is often called “communion”.   Here in this verse God associates two different things that are present during the ceremony together with two other things that are not physically present during the ceremony.   I’d like you to take note of what this verse is teaching.   God is saying when you take the cup of wine (physically present) it is representative of you participating with the shed blood of Christ (not physically present).   I emphasize the fact again that I said “representative” because we do not literally drink His blood.  I know there are many people who believe that as we drink the juice or wine that it is transformed miraculously into the blood of Christ but that is not what the Bible teaches us as you should have learned this from the first lesson but this will be further confirmed with other witnesses as we continue.  Bread is the second element being emphasized by God to be broken and this bread (physically present) was representative of the body of Christ (not physically present).  What God is doing is taking naturally seen elements and using them to symbolically teach us about unseen spiritual elements and I seriously hope you comprehend the differences between physical and spiritual realities.

I could do a long lesson on what the specific elements represent today but that is not my primary emphasis.  I will introduce the fact that the bread is always stated to be unleavened.   Unleavened bread is simply a basic pure wheat cracker.  Unleavened bread is considered to be unadulterated bread and not bread that has been corrupted with other additive ingredients.  Leaven is a form of bread additive that according to Jesus causes the whole pure substance to become tainted.   Jesus taught us a lot on this subject in the Gospels.  Jesus warned the disciples to beware of the “leaven” of the Pharisees (Mat 16:6).   Jesus explained this leaven to be symbolically a substance of false teachings and hypocrisy.  If I had more time I would explain this in more depth and perhaps that will come in a future lesson.   The wine is always based on the fruit juice coming from the crushed grape and that is all symbolic of the blood of Jesus coming from the body of the Lord Jesus Christ.  Grape juice is even called the blood of the fruit in Genesis 49:11 and Deuteronomy 32:14.   Both of these are natural elements that symbolize and point us to the greater spiritual truths found in Jesus and if you want to learn more about them you can search your Bible for their keywords and read what they say.   If you do not understand any of these verses you are free to ask questions about them.

I want to highlight that in this verse in 1 Corinthians God says that when we eat and drink these two natural physical items (bread and wine) that we are “communing” with two unseen spiritual realities.   As I have repeatedly said this communing should be done with an attitude of thankfulness to God for giving to us what we did not deserve to receive.  These unseen gifted items clearly represent the resurrected eternal body of Christ and the shed blood poured out from His mortal body (John 3:16).   How can we commune with the blood of Jesus by physically drinking literal wine from a cup?   How can we commune with the body of Christ by eating a piece of literal bread?  You see those are excellent questions to consider and we need to learn that the only way we can do this is by gratefully setting our mind upon His shed blood and His body as we drink and eat.   Correct reflection and recollection are the keys for spiritual participation to occur.  This is exactly why God instructs the church in Colossians 3:2 to set their minds on things above (blood and body of Jesus) and not on the things down here (bread and wine).   Jesus Christ is above in heaven and the bread and wine are literally here on the earth.  Which ones do you believe are more important now?  This is all critical information to understand.   Let’s proceed to another verse in the N.T. concerning communion:

  • 1Co 10:21  Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord’s table, and of the table of devils.

Here is a verse that compares the church’s participation with eating and drinking the communion to be the antithesis or opposite of eating from the “table of devils”.    What we discover is that the church communion is called us eating from the “Lord’s Table” and that is the first major point to understand.   This is another reason why some churches call the Eucharist the “Lord’s Table”.   Can we literally sit at the Lord’s Table?   Stop and ask yourself where the Lord is right now?   Isn’t Jesus the Lord seated in heaven right now?   How then can we sit at the Lord’s Table up in heaven to eat and commune with Him?   I think you can see what I am doing by asking basic questions that need to be answered.

Anytime we sit at the “Lord’s Table” we are expecting to partake of His meal and food.  If we are seated at the Lord’s Table then we are in His presence and that means we are supposed to be communing with Him.   If God is a Spirit, is this a natural meal or a spiritual meal?  These are obviously symbolic figurative expressions and they are not to be taken literally while we are still physically present on this earth during the church age.   In order to fully understand these statements we need to examine the context more closely.   Reading in the preceding verses you should find that God was speaking of the natural people of the earth who were sacrificing their eatable offerings to idols.   This is a common practice in many foreign religions still today.  For example Buddhism still offers food to their statue gods.  God is basically synonymizing this eating of sacrificed idol food with eating from the table of spiritual devils.   Devils are real beings but they are clearly revealed to be unseen spiritual entities.   It is plain to me based upon this information that partaking of communion is the positive antithesis of the negative of eating natural elements sacrificed to devils.   This is a fascinating chapter to consider and learn from.  God basically says within the context that natural things are not the things that are important.  It is the spiritual forces behind the natural things being worshiped that need to raise the level of attention and concern for the participant.   This was one of the main points from lesson one and I just tried to show you that there are other witnesses in the Bible to what I taught previously.

Also within the context of this verse is a description of the priests of Israel which ate from the sacrificed items within the temple of Israel.   What we are learning from these repeated patterns is that the natural food items are insignificant but the focused attention of the spirit or spirits that they are being offered to is very significant.   Have you ever considered partaking of the “communion” or the “Eucharist” to be eating a sacrificial offering to God?   I believe after reading this context you should reevaluate your reason for your participation.   If it is not for the praise and worship of God then it could be misdirected.

DIRECTIONS OF CORRECTION

We will now shift our focus to a few new subjects and go through scriptures starting with God’s directions of correction written to the church at Corinth.   In this letter written to the church we are informed and firmly warned about acts of participating in the breaking of bread and the drinking of the wine that are very direct and to the point.   What we will soon observe occurring in this church was the mishandling of an intended righteous action.  Any good act or truth can be perverted into error by the human application of unbalanced extremism.   What you will find that was occurring in this warning was an example of combined human extremism with their human ignorance bringing God’s condemnation, rebuke and judgment upon their own heads.    You should be able to quickly recognize this as you read the verves:

  • 1Co 11:23  For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, That the Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed took bread:
  • 1Co 11:24  And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me.
  • 1Co 11:25  After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me.
  • 1Co 11:26  For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come.
  • 1Co 11:27  Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.
  • 1Co 11:28  But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup.
  • 1Co 11:29  For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body.
  • 1Co 11:30  For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep.
  • 1Co 11:31  For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged.

The context here is rich with valuable information.   I included several verses that are not usually included because they must not be ignored.   For example, the final verse that I gave you was where God writes through Paul “If we judge ourselves, we should not be judged”.   These are much ignored statements in the modern extreme Grace message.   I rarely hear any modern Grace preachers teach that we need to judge our own thoughts, motivations, spoken words and actions in order not to be judged by God.   But, that is clearly the Word from God for us right here and right now!   I know this because God speaks of us judging ourselves within the context of us partaking of the communion in church.   Clearly these are warnings written to saved church people.  Perhaps your church has eliminated communion along with the personal judging and that would be a clear sign to me that you are in the wrong church.  Perhaps your church still takes communion but has eliminated the context message of being a self-judge of your own actions.  You cannot separate one subject from the other simply because you do not want to view them together.  Believe in the whole of scripture or die with the selective part; it is your choice to make.

You can clearly read the context before these scriptures and see that Paul was rebuking the church in Corinth for getting drunk and having a party with the bread and wine in church.  They are rebuked and asked “Don’t you have a house to eat and drink in?”   In other words God’s communion was not there in church to fill your natural belly to eliminate your physical hunger or thirst.  This church was abusing the purpose for the whole ceremony being present.   God gives us a prime example of wrong human motivation for participating in communion.  This church has clearly misapplied wrong reasons and neglected the purpose for the communion.  This plainly proves to us that wrong motivations do not make right actions correct.   This again was what I have been attempting to teach in these lessons and God continues to place additional emphasis from His Word to confirm it.   Let’s go back and look at the first verse that I gave you and go through them verse by verse.

  • 1Co 11:23  For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, That the Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed took bread:

Paul starts out by telling the Corinth church in verse 23 that what he gave to them was what was given to him from the Lord.  Paul was not speaking of any literal bread or literal wine.  Paul was referring to spiritual things and the revelation of God’s Word that Jesus had personally given to him.   If you do not understand that you will soon be lost in the rest of the discussion in the chapter.   Let me give you another statement of rebuke written to this church:

  • 1Co 14:36  What? came the word of God out from you? or came it unto you only?

You can obviously see that Paul told them the Word of God came unto them and did not come through them.   This is normally God’s methods.  God gives to a teacher His word and tells him or her to go and tell my people what I have said.  This pattern is established repeatedly in the Old Testament and this pattern is continued in the New Testament.  Not everyone is gifted to teach, not everyone is gifted to preach, not everyone is gifted to prophesy and not everyone is gifted to evangelize.    Let’s continue with the rest of the first verse.

There are two basic realms of topic being discussed in this chapter 11 of 1 Corinthians.   The first and primary focus is upon spiritual things and the other secondary focus is upon natural things.   In order to distinguish which is which you must read, study and rightly divide each and every statement.   For example in verse 23 Paul starts out speaking of spiritual things from the Spirit of God and the Word of God and then at the end of the verse he finishes with a natural example of Jesus Christ partaking of the literal unleavened bread at the Passover meal which often called the Last Supper.   This is an excellent time to consider a new fact.   The Jewish Passover meal was often called the “Feast of Unleavened Bread” (Exo 12:17) and this was the forerunner for the communion/Eucharist in the modern church.  You see I do not believe that Christians are called to revert backwards to become Jewish in the natural flesh by observing the description or application of the letter of the O.T. law.   Therefore what the Jewish people did to observe the Passover is not for us in the church today.  However, I do believe that most of the Jewish feasts and festivals were designed by God to point us to Jesus Christ and therefore we should at least learn about them even if we do not participate in them.

The number one problem that I found with the O.T. Jews observing the Jewish Passover feast was the fact that almost everyone did it blindly without asking God or searching to find out why they were doing it and what it all meant.  Don’t get me wrong they did know that they were celebrating God’s deliverance of the people of Israel from Egypt when they observed the Passover.  But there was so much more than that linked to the ceremony in typology and symbolism than only a natural deliverance from a natural oppressor.   Like I have said in many other lessons, God’s O.T. typology points us to Jesus our spiritual deliverer that has freed us from satanic spiritual oppression and captivity.  If I had the time to teach the Passover today we would see how Jesus is found in almost every action and every element in some hidden form.

  • 1Co 11:24  And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me.

You can clearly begin to understand in this statement how the Passover symbol of bread in verse 24 represented Christ’s body that was broken for us.  Wow, Jesus makes it very self-evident to me that we need to take a closer look at all of the items found in the Passover supper and see how Jesus can be seen in each of them.    That would probably be a good future Bible lesson for me to do work on.  I want you to notice in verse 24 the reason Jesus states that we should eat the bread in the church today.   Jesus says explicitly that when we eat it we need to “remember” Him and what the bread represents.   The emphasis is placed upon the “remembrance” of Christ and not the natural bread eating alone.  In other words the greater priority is for our mind to be exercised to intentionally recall what was done for us by the broken body of Jesus.   This literally means to place the work of Jesus in the forefront of your mind and your thoughts while eating.   What God implies is what I have been repeatedly emphasizing.  When there is no mental recollection or reflection of Christ then the eating of the bread is worthless.   Do you understand the importance of what we are thinking when we do something in church?   What if you were thinking of your schedule tomorrow at work?   What if you were thinking of your boyfriend or girlfriend?  You could be thinking of a million different things that take away from any benefits of participating in the communion.   Jesus basically said it matters what your mind is focused on.

  • 1Co 11:25  After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me.

Let’s look at verse 25.   Here God describes the cup but more importantly was the wine in the cup.   Jesus was again informing us that the wine and the cup represent greater spiritual truths.   Do you remember what we are talking about here?   God is describing the Last Supper again when Jesus takes the cup at the end of the table that was reserved only for the coming prophet and says this is the New Covenant in my shed blood.   Wow, that is an awesome bit of information often ignored.   You see in the traditional Passover meal there was always one very special cup that was filled with wine but was never touched by anyone participating in the ceremony.  The cup is filled with wine and the door of the house is opened to allow the prophet Elijah to come in to take the cup.  This cup was a designated symbolic reference for the one that was to come announcing the final deliverance.  It was very clear to me that the Jewish people knew that they expected someone to come by this act but yet when He actually arrived on the earth they killed Him not understanding their Passover meanings.    I could spend a lot of time on the subject of Passover but yet that is not my goal so I will continue to talk about how these two elements of bread and wine from Passover were passed on to Christians to do a better job at discovering and remembering what they meant.

  • 1Co 11:26  For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come.

This is what I take away from what I have read so far.  Nowhere in the N.T. is the church instructed to participate in the Old Testament Passover meal going forward.   This old Passover supper was a meal that pointed the people of Israel to their coming Messiah.  Since Jesus has already come, died and was raised from the dead that meal has been fulfilled and the only two parts of that meal that were carried forward into the church was the partaking of the blood and the body of Christ for us to remember what He has already done for us in the past.   One meal in the Old Covenant was a forward prophetic symbolic supper and the other meal in the New Covenant is a reversal backward symbolic supper in remembrance of the death that has previously been accomplished by Jesus.  This was pretty clearly stated here at the end of verse 26.    Supper methods and elements have changed dramatically and a new perspective of looking at them was modified between the old supper to the new supper, but yet the bread and the wine elements remained true and constant and even unchanging symbols for both experiences and these represented the body and the blood of Christ the central figure of each.  You may recall that Jesus is described to be the unchanging one that is the same, yesterday, today and forever (Heb 13:8) and this is revealed to us by the same unchanging elements being passed forward from the O.T. to the N.T. even though they are two different meals.   Are you learning anything today?  I hope that you are.

Look at the first part of verse 26 and refresh your mind to what is being said.   The Holy Spirit through Paul writes that we should participate in eating the bread and drinking from the cup but yet God does not give us any indication to the frequency of how often this should occur.   I know some churches that do it once a month.  Others do it every time they meet together.    Therefore, there should be no condemnation for how often it is done as long as it is not ignored and never performed.    This is in sharp contrast to the law of God in the O.T.   The Passover meal was done on specific days of a specific month during the year only once.  This was perpetually performed every year by the Lord’s command.  Only after fulfillment was the Passover to cease for the people in the church.   Since the Passover was fulfilled by Christ this would indicate that this meal should have ceased for Christians but yet by law those in the Jewish religion are still bound to faithfully perform it annually even this year.  I think that is a sad state of lessons to learn from.   It teaches us we better learn as much as we can about why we are partaking of the bread and the wine today while we still can.  If we do it blindly like the Jewish people in ignorance we might be surprised to discover it was a futile religious act.

  • 1Co 11:27  Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.
  • 1Co 11:28  But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup.
  • 1Co 11:29  For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body.
  • 1Co 11:30  For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep.

Because of the length of this lesson, I’m going to quickly go though the other verses that I have given you from verse 27 to 30 because they all go together with what was just taught by God.   Verses 27 through 30 are simply ignored by modern extreme grace preachers.   In their ignorance they choose to look over a profound warning given only to Christians in church eating and drinking the elements of communion unworthily.   I know a sinner could come in to visit the church and partake of the symbolic elements in ignorance and yet I do not believe that is what God is referring to, based upon the context.

We can discover the target audience for this warning by observing the statements being made.   For example in verse 30 God says many are sick and weak “among you”.  The target audience of “you” must be the church and not the unsaved world since the entire letter was only written for the church’s benefit.   True the unsaved sinner might be among the church and even read the letter but God would have reworded the statement differently if it was only written about unsaved people.  Keep reading down in the next verse 31 and discover the fact that Paul includes himself in the subject statement with the personal plural pronoun “we”.   We represents a combined reference of union between those previously called “you” in verse 30 with the also “me” (the writer) in verse 31.   I’m going to say that again for some to grasp, Paul places himself in equivalence with those that were previously being spoken as “you” in verse 30.  That fact makes the warning clearly church centered and not unsaved world directed.  What Paul says is that if “We” (you and I) judge ourselves we will not be judged and that takes me back to what God said before.  Those in the church are given the responsibility for judging what they are doing, what they are thinking, what they are saying, eating, drinking and etc. or God plainly states that they will be judged one way or the other.

What is this judgment being spoken of in verse 31 and what are the consequences for being judged?   The answer is clearly stated coming from verses 27 to 30.  Many among you (the church) are sick, weak and sleep.  Sick and weak are physical deficits from being whole, well and strong.   Sleep on the other hand is a symbolic representation for physical natural death.   This is very commonly used in the N.T. to differentiate between the “eternal separation” from God described as the “second death” in Revelation 21:8.   I do not have the time to teach this fact fully about how when the Christian dies the body stays on the earth in a state of dormancy (aka sleep) in the ground but the living spirit of the saved person is found to be present with the Lord (2 Cor 5:8).   Let’s go back up in the verses to learn how they are connected with verse 31.

In verses 28 we are instructed to “examine” ourselves.   In verse 31 we were instructed again to “judge” ourselves.   Both verbs (examine and judge) are synonymous commands from God.  The Greek term examine (G1381) means to test or to try.   To try is a form of the word “trial” where a judge is always present.  If you are the one that is “tried”, God is basically saying that it is wisdom if you become your own judge while you can so that He does not have to do it for you later.   Go back to verse 27 and see how this trial is laid out before you.  In beginning this verse there is the stated crime of participating in the communion ceremony by partaking of the bread and the wine unworthily.   This Greek word (G371) translated as “unworthily” literally means someone who does something lacking any respect or reverence for what they are doing.  These are the acts of a mocker or even a person that mimics or imitates without the correct attitude of worship.  Wow, that is pretty strong if you ask me.   God says these types of people were found guilty.  Uh oh?   Again we see the implied trial being stated.  There is a crime being committed and the verdict of guilt being handed down.  Who is the judge?  There has to be a judge!

What God is doing is sandwiching the consequences for not being our own judge in between the commands to do it or else.   This is not rocket science but yet churches and preachers explain it away as being inconsequential and unimportant.   However, I will repeat the warning for the slow to learn.    Do not eat or drink of the symbolic blood or the body of Christ Jesus without first examining and judging your own past actions, intentions and motivations and then if there is found anything that is not worthy to participate that would be a good time to ask God for forgiveness according to 1 John 1:9.   I am not going to debate ignorant Christians that try to teach 1 John 1:9 was not written to Christians and that Christians do not need to do this.   If you can read the verse and the context you will see plainly that this is not true.  John the writer includes himself in the personal pronoun “our” again being a “you and I’ designation.   If John was required to confess his sins before God then you and I are also required to do the same.  If you do not believe me that is not my problem.  I tried to teach you and you rejected it.

CONCLUSION

I believe that I have covered many new things that are rarely taught in modern churches.   I have tried to teach you about the constant “bread” and “wine” that did not change moving from the Old Testament to the New Testament.  I have alluded to the fact that this constant will not change nor ever cease even in the heavenly meal that is to come.  I have not addressed this meal yet but these two elements will be found present when we are gathered to partake of them at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb.   So far I have mentioned three different meals all referred to as a supper in the Bible.  All of these are similar but all are completely different with increasing greater spiritual meanings.      One old Passover supper pointed us forward to the coming Messiah and the current Lord’s Supper within the New Covenant causes us to reflect backwards to what God did in Jesus Christ.   The future Supper to come is an entirely different subject and that will probably not be covered in this lesson series but may in a different new one.  I ended this lesson with God’s warning for doing something good and right with wrong reasons and I pray that you have learned this and take it to heart.    Thank you for taking the time to read and study the Bible and share what you have learned with your friends to help me spread the Good News of Jesus Christ.  God Bless!

Understanding the Eucharist! What is the Eucharist and Why do we Receive it? Part 1

(Ver 1.3)  This is a difficult question to answer and a much more difficult subject to understand than many people give it credit to be.    I had a reader ask me a question about why Catholics receive the Eucharist at every Mass?  He said that the Eucharist is given out every day in thousands of languages.  Do we have any scriptural basis for this and why would we do it so often?  This is Part 1 of a series of lessons on the subject of the “Eucharist”.  We will discuss; what it is, why we do it and how it applies to the modern church from a Bible perspective.    I will explore many different aspects of this subject and give you quite a few new perspectives on this subject.  I challenge you to read the entire series before you become a critic of any small part of the lessons.  I will definitely warn you up front what I teach you will be different than what you might expect me to say on the subject, but yet I will only use the Bible to explore this subject and I will do my best to keep my opinions completely out of the discussion.  What I am interested in is what God thinks about the subject and not what you or I think about it.  I find that God’s opinion is much more important to me than your opinion.

In asking Catholics why they participate in receiving the Eucharist, I found that a vast number of answers to that question was “I don’t know”.   Not one could give me a Bible verse or a Bible reason for receiving the elements of the Eucharist.  Some knew that the bread and the wine represent the Body and the Blood of Christ.  But why we receive it and participate in the ceremony, they could not tell me.  Is there any benefit to participating in this ceremony?   Is there a blessing attached to it?  Or do we do it just because it is the right thing that we should do?  What makes it the right thing to do?  This might become a widely controversial subject before I’m through, so if you are interested in learning the truth keep reading, otherwise you might want to stop here and go to another website or blog.

So now I will begin to teach you some of the things that I know from the Bible about this subject of the “Eucharist”.  There is absolutely no way I could tell you everything I know about this without writing a small book, so I will not be doing that.  So today is just the introduction to the subject and like I said, it will probably be totally different than what you might expect.   The Bible says that God is a Spirit (John 4:24).  God existed throughout all of eternity, outside of the dimensions of time and space limitations that we exist within right now.  The Bible says that God created the heavens and the earth (Gen 1:1).  So God existed prior to the existence of this physical universe.   We therefore know that the physical universe had a specific point of origin.  When God created man in this world, God breathed the breath of life into him and this was Adam’s spirit which came from God’s Spirit (Gen 2:7).   Hebrews 12:9 says that God is the Father of all spiritual beings.  Therefore, man is technically a spiritual being that lives within a physical natural body (1 Th 5:23).  Why is all of this important?   Sometimes I just need to state the Bible basics before I try to introduce you to more advanced spiritual subjects found in the Bible and I do this to help refresh your memory.  If you disagreed with anything that I have said so far, you will have greater difficulty with the remaining things to come.   Let’s take a look at a verse that is not directly about the Eucharist but yet applies indirectly by the stated application.

2Co 4:18  While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.

The Bible says that we need to focus our attention away from the natural physical things that we can perceive with our senses in the world and instead focus on the things that we cannot see.   This is a contrasting verse that is comparing the natural dimension to the spiritual dimension.   The Bible tells us clearly that those things that are natural and physical are just “temporal”.  The English word temporal is translated from a Greek word (G4340)  that means “temporary”.  Anything that is considered temporary is not eternal.  What God is saying is that this world is disposal and will change to the permanent some day in the future.   Therefore, physical things can be viewed as being “here today and gone tomorrow” or “easy come and easier go”.   What God is saying to us is that there exists nothing in this physical world that is visible that we can call “permanent”.  Do you understand this?  Only your unseen spirit which is present inside of your body right now will exist forever after your death and this existence will be either in heaven or in hell depending upon what you have done in this life to receive or reject the finished work of Christ Jesus.  Of course God will create a New Heaven and a New Earth someday and these will exist forever and we who have received salvation will live there (Rev 21:1).

So I have probably just confused you up to this point.  I have not even mentioned the “Eucharist”, or have I?   Let me ask you this, can you touch the “Eucharist”?  Can you smell the “Eucharist”?   Can you taste the “Eucharist”?   If you answer yes to any of these questions then they are natural physical things.  These natural and physical elements according to the verse that we just read in 2 Cor 4:18, these are just more temporary things that God says we should not be focused on.  Uh oh?  I warned you that this was going to be controversial, didn’t I?  That may make it sound like I am saying we should ignore them, but that is not what I’m saying at all.  What I am saying is that we should be focused on the eternal spiritual objects represented by these natural symbolic elements that are only temporary physical things used to teach us.  I am definitely not saying not to partake of these; I am just asking you to figure out why you are partaking of these and focus on the meaning behind partaking of them and not to focus on the physical bread or wine.  You see after you die, you can take the meaning with you into eternity, but the physical bread and wine will remain here on the earth and turn to dust.  Do you understand the difference between what I just said?  What I am attempting to do is to change your perspective from a physical viewpoint to a far greater spiritual viewpoint.  Let’s see what Jesus says about the Eucharist:

Mat 15:11  Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man.

Uh Oh?  Jesus didn’t even mention the Eucharist, did He?  As you should be able to clearly see He did talk about the Eucharist in an indirect reference.  Jesus is talking about something going into your mouth as natural food.  Unleaved bread and wine (grape juice) is normally used in the Eucharist church ceremony.   What exactly is Bread and Wine?  Here is another verse of scripture that is difficult to understand for many people.  Jesus is speaking about the difference between natural things and spiritual things again.  Jesus is saying that anything that you eat naturally and put into your mouth does not cause you to be “defiled”.  To defile something is to cause it to be “unclean”, “polluted”, or to be “profane”.  You can clearly see that Jesus is saying that it is not what you physically eat that causes you to sin and to become spiritually unclean.  What would be the opposite truth (antithesis)  to this statement that Jesus just made?  I believe that it would be “There is nothing that you can physically eat that will make you “clean”, “pure” and “undefiled”.   So what am I saying?  I am saying that the “Eucharist” is a physical representation of something that is a spiritual truth that is more important than the physical pieces that you handle with your natural hands and put into your natural mouths.  Jesus continues in this context to describe the things that you physically eat as being only natural things that are processed by the physical body and expelled down the toilet (Mat 15:17).   So what makes the Eucharist elements any different?  I think that is a very excellent question to consider.  It would only be different if you knew what it all meant and how it all applied to your life as you partook of these elements.  Without the knowledge and the reason for the action the action seems to be worthless to me based upon what Jesus just taught us about eating physical food.   What we are seeing now in the Bible is a pattern of truths being revealed to us.  There is a major difference between natural things and spiritual things.  The natural things are placed here as temporary teaching tools and the spiritual things are the eternal things to be focused upon.  Doing natural things without understanding the spiritual things behind them actually does you no good physically, emotionally or spiritually.  I pray that you are grasping these important concepts.

What I am trying to say is DO NOT do things just because you are told to do them or asked to do them by a preacher or a priest.  Do not do something just because others around you are doing them and you want to fit in.  People have been poisoned and died by following that type of reasoning, simply because the cult leader that they were following determined it was time for everyone to die.  What I am saying is find out why you are doing something in the natural realm using the Word of God and what it means and then use that information to determine if this what you should be doing.  Follow God’s Word and not any man, any priest, any preacher, any denomination, group or whatever.  Let God be True and every man a liar (Rom 3:4).   I am attempting to teach the difference between religion and a real relationship with Jesus Christ.  Religion is anyone partaking of a ritual set of elements without any knowledge of why they are participating.  Relationship with Christ is worshipping the God in the knowledge of the one that offered His body and His blood so that we could be saved while we remember Him through partaking the elements.  Let me give you another example of what I am trying to say from the Words of our Savior Jesus:

Mat 23:25  Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess.

Jesus is again contrasting the differences between temporary natural things and far greater spiritual things.  Jesus is telling those that He was speaking to, that they were hypocrites.    Why were they this way?  Jesus said they were focused only on the outside of the cup (body) and not the inside of the cup (spirit).  This was of course more symbolic representations for the temporary natural things of this world and the eternal spiritual things.  Being focused just upon the taking of the “Eucharist” without knowing the reason why you are taking it would be an example of this type of hypocritical religious behavior.   If you do something lacking any knowledge about why you doing it, the act becomes a pagan ritual or a religious rite that is attempting to please a god that you do not know and these are what Jesus was calling the actions of ignorant hypocrites.   By only doing something externally while not knowing the reasons why you are doing it internally, you could be falling into a deceptive pattern found within any godless religion in the world.  Do you understand that?    What would make the taking of the Eucharist in a church any different than participating in an Islamic temple rite?   I can literally see no difference between the two if they are both done in religious acts of ignorance.   This is another statement Jesus said about these hypocrites:

Mat 15:9  But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.

Jesus is clearly saying that these men worship God in vain, because they were teaching the “doctrines” and “commandments” of men.  So when you do something that you do not have any reasons for why you are doing it, how do you know it is not a humanly created doctrine of man?  Perhaps it could even be something that was designed by Satan to deceive you into a lie?   Jesus said by adding your thoughts on top of the Word of God, you render the Word of God to be of No Effect! (Mat 15:6)  These are all very strong words of warning to all those who practice religion and do not know God.  Your religion will not save you.  The partaking of the elements will not saved you.  Going to church will not save you.  Becoming a member of the church will not save you.  Being baptized in water will not save you.  I could go on and on but you get the point, I hope.

In these verses Jesus is talking about a strongly religious group of people of the Jews called the “Pharisees”.  These men came up with their own set of rules and outward traditions that they thought made them righteous in the eyes of God.  What you must know is God is much more concerned with the eternal spiritual you than He is with the temporary physical you.  What I am attempting to teach you today is that doing things in the natural are worthless if you are not aware of the reasons why they are to be done.   The Pharisees clearly did many good looking things externally in this world but internally they were corrupt and this was their downfall.  If we die physically and know Jesus Christ the Bible says that we will go to be with the Lord (2 Cor 5:8).  However, if you die physically and do not know Jesus Christ, then you are eternally lost in hell. Physical things done in your natural body are just temporary things and God is much more focused upon your eternal spirit and your soul that is inside your physical body that you cannot see.  Real salvation always starts on the inside in your spirit and shows up on the outside in what you do and say.  God changes your heart inside of you and this will always show up in the things you do on the outside later.  The opposite of this is Religion which is man’s attempt to change himself to please God and God said this will never work. (Gal 2:6)

Any Christian who can not give a scriptural reason for why they are participate in the “Eucharist”, do you now see why it might be important to find that information before the next time you blindly participate?   Does it make a difference if you do something with our without knowledge?  Is it just the fact that we did something that makes it right?  Is the fact that someone blindly participates in something that causes them to be in God’s favor?   I do not think that God would have written the Bible, if He wanted you to blindly parrot and monkey religious rites.    What makes Christianity different than any religion in the world?   It is the fact that we have a personal relationship with God and in other religions they are trying to just please a god that they do not personally know or understand.  So I’ll ask you again, does blindly following a ritual cause you to derive any benefit from what you did?  Not according to what Jesus just said in Matthew 23.  Jesus told us these were just the action of religious hypocrites.  Please do not be offended at what I just said.  I am not naming names and I did not call anyone this by name.  I’m just reading the Bible and people need to decide if the Bible applies to them or not.  I’m not your judge, so I will not judge you or whatever you do.

I think I will stop this introduction to the subject of Eucharist right here for now.  I know I did not attempt to define the term or explain what it is or how it applies to us today.  I think these will have to be future topics that we discuss as we continue to learn.  Today I wanted to get you to think afresh and I wanted to shift your focus off of physical natural things and get you to start focusing on lasting spiritual things.  Quit being a person who does something and does not know or understand why they are doing it.  There is a major difference between natural and spiritual things and it is time for the Church to realize it.  Are the temporary things in the world more important to you than the eternal spiritual things of God in you?  If they are God and anything else that I tell you from the Bible can’t help you.  Be blessed in the knowledge of Him that is Faithful and True.  If you have any specific questions or comments please feel free to share them with me.   If you have any experience with participating in religious rites without understanding the reasons why you are doing them, please share those also.  Until next time, God Bless!

If you would like to continue reading the next lesson in this series, you may go to “Part 2” now.