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CHRIST IN DEATH
Without food we lose strength. Our food is Christ Himself. But we go on to observe that spiritual nutrition is obtained in more than one manner. We read of feeding upon Christ as the manna, that is, upon Christ as the Incarnate Son of God. But we are also called to partake of His flesh and His blood: “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you” (ver. 53). This to the natural mind is a mysterious statement, as some said upon hearing it, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” And to drink His blood was even more startling; for they knew this was an express prohibition under the law of Moses. Yet the Lord spoke definitely of eating His flesh and drinking His blood, and moreover, was emphatic in stating its necessity. Apart from it, He said, “Ye have no life in you.”
Now it is evident that while manna, the bread from heaven, has special reference to the life of Christ, the flesh and the blood must refer to His death. Blood circulating in the body is essential to life, while apart from the body it offers evidence of death. Hence when the soldier pierced the side of the crucified Lord, the issuing blood and water proved that death was there. Upon this witness Roman justice concluded that the legal sentence had been satisfactorily executed, and the same evidence appealed, but differently, to the sorrowing apostles and those with them.
Sacrificially, it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul. The sin of man constituted an impassable barrier between the perfect life of Jesus and the life of the best of men. But the sacrifice of Christ was the judicial end of the natural man, and therefore forms the means whereby the believer can enter into and appropriate the life of Christ which He displayed here below.
As a matter of history we find that not until the death of Christ was the characteristic life of Jesus in any sense reproduced in His followers. The incompatibility of the life of the disciples in its springs of action with that of their Master is frequently to be observed in the Gospels. In this chapter, for instance, we find that many were unable to walk with Him any longer. They were those who accompanied the Lord, heard His words, and witnessed His marvelous deeds, yet there was a strange lack of imbibing the Spirit of Christ. See, again, the case of James and John when the Lord sent messengers to a Samaritan village that the inhabitants might receive Him. Upon their refusal these two foremost apostles said, “Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them?” (Luke 9:5454And when his disciples James and John saw this, they said, Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them, even as Elias did? (Luke 9:54)). The Lord rebuked them, saying, “Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. The Son of man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them.” But their speech revealed the disparity between their thoughts and motives and those of the Master.
Even at the close of the Lord's ministry this partition wall between their souls and Him had not disappeared. At the last Supper, with all its solemn associations and intimations, it was made clear that the apostles had not taken their Master's yoke upon them. They were not, like Him, meek and lowly in heart; for they quarreled there among themselves who should be the greatest in the coming kingdom. They were seeking for the pre-eminence, and thus showed that they had not fed upon Him who “emptied himself and became a bond-servant.” They had not made His life their own.
The truth is that only through the death of Christ could His life be manifested in His disciples. He came to give His flesh for the life of the world. When His blood was shed, the way was thereby opened for their union and communion with Him. After His resurrection, He breathed upon them that they might receive the Holy Ghost, and be endued, in power, with that new life in the character peculiar to Himself.
It is thus taught that something more than mere acquaintance with the Lord Jesus Christ was necessary to become a faithful witness of Him. There was no union with Him in incarnation, but the link was in His death, and in the life which was beyond death,
THE DISPLAY OF LIFE
This important principle of conduct is not generally recognized. Perhaps the most common form of teaching is that Christian life consists in the study of the glorious example revealed in the Gospels and in meditation upon His words and deeds. But while this is true it is not the whole of the truth, and it is not the truth before us here. For we learn that it is by way of His death that we become associated with His life. And the display of that life is inseparable from eating His flesh and drinking His blood.
The contemplation of the perfections of Christ coupled with the knowledge that they were utterly beyond our attainment in any degree would but plunge us into the mire of dark despair. His perfect example would be but a mockery to us. And apart from His death we could but miserably fail to walk as He walked. But in the knowledge of His death for us and of our death with Him there follows in measure the practical incorporation of His life in ours, Christ dwelling in our hearts by faith.
In the Epistle to the Philippians there is a practical exposition of this manner of life. Paul, the “prisoner of Jesus Christ,” pours forth the Christian experience of his heart. He sets before himself and others the embodiment of the mind of Christ as it was exhibited in this world (chap. 2). This is genuine Christian experience—not as some would have it, the realization of one's inward depravity, and of an ineradicable susceptibility to evil. The latter is the gloomy experience of self, true but not inspiring; it is in no sense the experience of Christ.
This life shining through the apostle's communications to the saints at Philippi takes the character of joy and peace and liberty and delight. This character is the more striking when we remember how all the energy of the writer in self-denying gospel service was frustrated by his protracted imprisonment, while his very chains alienated his fellow-believers from him. But in spite of this suffering and this spiritual privation his personal Christian joy beams forth with exceptional brilliance.
Why was this? It is evidently the result of his own communion with Christ at that time. He was then treading a pathway of suffering in close imitation of his Master who loved and served, and was hated for it.
During the ministry of Christ there was a heart here and there which recognized Him, but this was exceptional. The majority came to hear Him because there was something new, or they came to Him for healing, but there was no heart-exercise, no conscience-work. How did this astonishing apathy appear to the Lord Jesus Christ in whose heart there were supernatural energies of love and life? In His unparalleled service He was cramped and straitened by the obduracy of man, but there was no murmuring, no diminution in the intensity of His love and service for man. He was unchangeably the same. His was a voice, one would think, that would have commanded the fealty of all mankind; but this was not the result of His service. However, in spite of the repulse of His love, He went forward and administered the water of life to a single poor woman at the well. For the Son of God learned obedience in this way, “by the things which he suffered.” But the light of this divine testimony, so perfect in Him, was not extinguished at Calvary: after His resurrection, it shone afresh in the lives of His believing followers, as we may see from the Acts and the Epistles.
THE HABIT OF COMMUNION
But while the Christian pathway commences with the appropriation of Christ in His death, it is necessary for this appropriation to be continued to the end: “Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day” (ver. 54). This statement looks on to the end of the journey when the ideals of the believer's new life will be realized fully. But this involves the formation of the habit of eating and drinking continuously. There must be the bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus that the life also of Jesus may be made manifest in our mortal bodies (2 Cor. 4:1010Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. (2 Corinthians 4:10)). So the Lord said here, “He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood dwelleth in me, and I in him” (ver. 56). This implies the practice of this habit.
Here we have two things: (1) our dwelling in Christ, and (2) Christ in us. First, there is dwelling in Christ, which involves unbroken communion with Him, and this it is the privilege of every believer to enjoy. The habit of it is implied by the phraseology—dwelling, abiding; it is not to be intermittent and spasmodic.
Christ Himself walked thus in connection with the Father who sent Him. All circumstances found Him in the fullest heavenly intercourse. It was His meat to do the will of Him who sent Him.
In a similar manner we are called to abide in Christ. Eating in scripture is a figure frequently employed for communion. The peace offering was the particular sacrifice which set forth the communion of Jehovah and of the priestly family and of the people of Israel. The sacrifice itself was dedicated to God, and the fat and the blood were Jehovah's exclusively, while the character of what constituted the portion of the priests and the people was based upon its being a sacrifice, agreeing thus in type with what we have here, viz., that Christian communion is founded upon the death of Christ.
In the New Testament, fellowship is enjoined as an essential feature of Christianity. And there exists a formal expression of this fellowship as well as the inner personal side, the latter being the subject of this chapter. The outward sign is the communion table which the Lord established as the central institution for His own. In meeting together for the purpose of eating bread and drinking wine in commemoration of His death, a visible expression of this fellowship is made by the church.
Again, in Luke 15, the father and the restored son are depicted at the same table, feasting together upon the fatted calf. They have found a common interest, a common joy, and the central feature of this communion is the slain calf, representing, of course, the Lord Jesus in His death, which is the meeting-place of God and the rescued sinner for the holy joy and rest of communion. “We joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the reconciliation” (Rom. 5:1111And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement. (Romans 5:11)). Through Him we have constant access into the Father's presence, and have, therefore, fellowship with the Father and the Son.
CHRIST IN US
The necessary corollary to our dwelling in Christ is His abiding in us. If we are in Him for personal peace and joy, He is in us for testimony in the world. Here also we must look to Christ Himself to learn the meaning of the phrase. Let us refer to that occasion when the Lord told His disciples that they knew the Father and had seen Him. Philip expressed incredulous surprise at such a statement, saying, “Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us.” The Lord explained to the apostle His meaning: “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.... The Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father in me” (John 14:8-118Philip saith unto him, Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us. 9Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Show us the Father? 10Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works. 11Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me: or else believe me for the very works' sake. (John 14:8‑11)).
In the life of Jesus Christ therefore the Father in His love was communicated to men. Looking at and through Him, so to speak, the realities of heaven were seen. This then was the wonder of that life, though but feebly recognized even by men of faith. For it was the glory of God that the Father should be thus amply displayed. In like manner the believer is called to live the new life, so that Christ, not self, is seen abiding in him.
The power to effect this testimony is obtained by feeding upon Christ. There is no reference in this chapter to the Lord's Supper, which had not been instituted, when the Lord said, “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.” This cannot refer to partaking of bread and wine, since the possession of eternal life constitutes the antecedent claim to the commemoration of the Lord's death in the appointed way.
We have here not an occasional, but a continuous and habitual act. It is the quiet appropriation of the beauties and graces of the Lord Jesus Christ. The very contemplation of the Lord of glory is formative, and brings our lives into correspondence with Himself.
This effect is not the result of conscious effort. When food is eaten the necessary assimilation of it by the body is not an act of will. It is a natural process operating automatically. So it is spiritually; we look upon Christ by faith as revealed in the word, and we become like Him. In ordinary life the force of the living example is fully acknowledged. And in the spiritual world it has its powerful influence in molding the Christian character.
In conclusion: the Son who is the only source of life is also its support and maintenance. Our part is to realize by faith the continual presence of the Lord Jesus Christ, who died for our sins, and in proportion to the activity of this faith we shall be changed into the same image.
W. J. H.