IT is good to remember that we eat the given body of Christ. One with Him in His glorious state, it is not of them that we partake in the supper. Enjoying vitally this position infinitely exalted, we remember the sufferings which have purchased it for us; our hearts, our consciences, our souls are nourished with the broken body; it is to Jesus dead that our thoughts recur, and to a love more powerful than death. If the body had not been broken, as Gentiles we should have remained strangers as regards the promises, and sinners destitute of all hope.
A living Messiah was the crown of glory for the Jews; but, if He is lifted up from the earth, He draws all men. His broken body is the door for sinners from the Gentiles. On this the heart of the Christian is nourished, not merely as on manna come down from heaven, which typifies Jesus a man upon earth, nor on Jesus in the heavens (where we are one with Him)—it is there the hidden manna; but on the devoted victim of propitiation, which I see brought to the altar, and, there sacrificed, slain for us—a victim full of love and of devotedness.
I pause before this mysterious scene, where He, all alone (for no man could be there save to bend his head and adore), where the victim of propitiation, the man Jesus, presents Himself before the face of Him, who, in His offended majesty, comes out to take cognizance of sin in order that we might find on the tracks of the righteousness of God which has burst forth and is accomplished, nothing but an infinite and immutable love; the love of the Father enhanced by the accomplishment of the eternal righteousness to His glory. It is the precious Savior, humbled to death, that we have here His body given (and one could not go lower down), and His blood shed out of His body. In that manifestly it is not a question of Jesus, such as He is at the present time; for He is glorified. This natural life He has left for us. He only presents it to God as a thing given elsewhere; but He speaks here of, a double effect of the blood which He has shed; first He speaks of it as the foundation or, at least, the seal, of the new covenant, and, secondly, as the foundation of the remission of sins of many: that is, the basis of the new covenant is now laid, and moreover it is not a question of an act which relates to Jesus only to show His obedience: this blood is efficacious for the sins o others.
Although the covenant is not formed with us, it is established in Him before God, and we are in Him below. What is the consequence of it? We drink of blood. If a Jew had drank of blood under the old covenant, it was death. Could a man be nourished on death? It is the fruit of sin, it is his condemnation, it is the wrath of God, as the blood in the body was the life; and a Jew had no right to that. But Christ has suffered death. And can the Christian be nourished on death? Yes; it is salvation, the death of sin, the infinite proof of love. It is his life, the peace of his soul, the deliverance from sin, before God. What a difference! We drink of His blood. The proof of salvation and of grace, and the source of life. Nevertheless, it is Jesus dead of whom it is a question here.
There is (Heb. 13:20) another expression to which allusion may be made: God has brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant. This shows us that Christ Himself is above, and has been raised according to the efficaciousness of the blood He has shed to satisfy the glory of God. He, the only and the beloved Son of the Father, charged Himself with our responsibility and our sins, and these with the, glory of God in this respect; and if this glory had not been completely satisfied, He could not evidently either rise again, or appear before Him whose majesty required that nothing should fail to the work. But He accomplished this work gloriously, and in that the Son of Man has been glorified, and God glorified in Him; and He is ascended on high, not only as Son of God, but according to the efficaciousness of His work, in virtue of which He appears before the Father, the everlasting covenant being thus established in His blood. The question here is not of an old, or of a new covenant, which refers to particular circumstances, but of the intrinsic and essential worth of the blood of Christ.
We have, then, the blood of the new covenant and the remission of sins. The disciples were to drink of it, as they were also to eat of His given body, such is their portion: to be nourished on the death of Jesus, and to show it till He come.