WORSHIP is the free adoration, and for us in the holiest, of those who have been brought nigh by sacrifice—who know God as love, who know Him as a Father, who has sought in grace worshippers in spirit and in truth, and brought them in cleansed to do so. The worshippers once purged should have no more conscience of sins. By one offering Christ had perfected them forever; such is Scripture truth (see Heb. 10.); and then they worship, adore, praise in the sense of perfect, divine favor, and a Father's love. They have boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way He has consecrated for them through the wail. It is not that Christ is doing it in heaven actually in the (so-called). triumphant church (there is no church triumphant), and they on earth in the militant.
They enter in spirit into the holiest, into heaven itself, to worship there; and hence it high priest made higher than the heavens was needed for them, because their worship is there: they do not offer the sacrifice in order to come in, they are within in virtue of the sacrifice. And this is the place the symbols of Christ's broken body and shed blood have in worship. The worshippers are in spirit in heavenly places. Christ in spirit is in their midst, and they own and remember that blessed and perfect sacrifice by which they can so worship—by which they have entered in. Doubtless they feed on Christ in spirit, but that is not the point we are on now. The Christ that is represented in the Eucharist is a Christ with a broken body, and the cup is His shed blood, not a glorified Christ in heaven. It is His death, a broken body and the blood separated from it, life given up in this world, that is before us. We may in spirit eat also the old corn of the land, be occupied with a heavenly Christ; assuredly we may, and blessedly so, but that is not the Christ which is here. We eat His flesh and drink His blood, i.e. separate from His body—not only the manna which was for the desert and ceased in Canaan, the bread that came down from heaven; but the additional and necessary truth of His death.
Sacrifice is that by which we approach to God as coming from without: worship, adoration, and praise when we have got within. The Jewish temple-service had the character of sacrifice in general, because they could not go within, the Holy Ghost signifying by the un-rent veil that the way into the holiest was not yet made manifest. But we pass through the rent veil into the holiest, and worship there as in the holiest. Knowing withal God as our Father, we recognize—remember with adoring thankfulness—that sacrifice, that rending of the veil, that breaking of the body, that shedding of the blood, through which we can so enter, purged from all our sins and reconciled to God. Christ is in the midst of two or three gathered in His name, but it is a living Christ in spirit, not His body broken and shed blood. Having Him in our midst in spirit, we celebrate His precious death; we do this in remembrance of The Eucharist is a symbol and sign of the dead. Christ—a broken body and shed blood. Christ is personally in heaven. He is present in spirit in the congregation; as He expresses it "In the midst of the church will I sing praise unto thee.”
They were to do that, i.e., use the emphatic symbols of His death in remembrance of Him. Hence it is the center of worship, because hereby know I love, because He lay down His life for us. Here He glorified the Father for me, so that I can enter into the holiest, then the veil was rent and the way opened; but here was the perfect work accomplished by which I, as risen together with Him, can say I am not in the flesh. In the heavenly Christ I say, by the Holy Ghost, I AM in Him and He in me. It is being in Him, being united to Him, He in our midst in grace, a dead Christ I remember. I do not, in the joy and glory in which I have a part, through and with Him, forget that lonely work in which He bore the sorrow and drank the pup of wrath. I remember with touched affections the lowly rejected Christ, now that I am in heavenly places through His solitary humiliation ... The remembering Him, that divine person in His solitary suffering and perfect love to His Father, is the most touching of Christian affections, the basis and center of all true worship, as the efficacy of the work wrought there alone admits us to worship at all. The drinking of the blood apart points it out as shed. We show forth the Lord's death emphatically, not a glorified Christ, but we do so as associated with Him the glorified man, who Himself purged our sins, remembering with thankful hearts how we got there, and above all Him who gave Himself up that we might.—An Extract.