“Jesus said to them, I assure you most solemnly – — you cannot have any life in yourselves unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood” (John 6:53 – Amplified).
Does that strike you as an offensive and unbearable message? It did many of the disciples of Jesus, they murmured at it; in fact, it was more than they could bear, and so they left Him! They willfully rejected the source of life; they looked back as did Lot’s wife, and became walking pillars of salt. In a sense, right then, they died!
As members of the body of Christ, we eat His flesh and drink His blood every Sunday morning, or do we? With the exception of sickness, have we ever deliberately absented ourselves from the Lord’s table? Can we mentally check back to the date of our baptism and recall a single Sunday when we failed to remember Him? If we find there have been many such Sunday mornings, when our absent Lord was indeed absent, do we still have “life in ourselves,” or has old man Death become securely entrenched in our spiritual lives?
Those brethren and sisters who find continual joy and spiritual refreshment in the remembrance of their Lord on the first day of the week need read no further. But there are many in the 20th century ecclesias who are in danger of not having life in themselves, because they continually fail to “eat his flesh and drink his blood.” Perhaps this verse has become “an hard saying” to some of us. Perhaps we should look further at these verses from the 6th chapter of the Gospel of John. “He who feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. He who feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood dwells continually in me, and I in him” (John 6:54, 56 – Amplified).
The reverse of these statements of Jesus must be equally true: he who does not feed on my flesh and does not drink my blood has not eternal life, and I will not raise him up at the last day. He who does not feed on my flesh and does not drink my blood does not dwell continually in me, and I do not dwell in him! And so we find a negative and a positive aspect to the Breaking of Bread. Let us look briefly at both.
Is it not true, whether concerning our religion, our work, or our family relationships—anything we are forced to do as a strict matter of obedience, becomes a negative influence in our lives, and is, therefore, incapable of really giving life? Jesus never pushed sinners, He led them. And so, if I have failed to break bread, it benefits me little for you to say: “Well, brother, you should have come because Jesus commanded that we do this in remembrance of Him.” If I have sinned to the point that I have allowed the Old Man of the Flesh to gain the mastery of my life so that I willfully fail to remember my Lord, then telling me to my face that I have broken a commandment will probably only get my back up a little higher, and cause Old Man Flesh to dig in a little deeper!
But if you come to me and remind me gently that Jesus spoke to His disciples in this fashion: “With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer” (Luke 22:15); and if you remind me that the margin of the Authorized version renders this, “I have heartily desired . . .;” or again if you pointed out that the Amplified renders this: “I have earnestly and intensely desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer,” then you would have me thinking! If it was the Lord’s pleasure to meet with His disciples before He suffered, then it must still be His pleasure to meet with them. If the Lord’s dying wish was expressed by: “I have earnestly and intensely desired to eat with you,” then how can I, as a professed brother of the Lord, spurn that dying wish? And what could there be in the Breaking of Bread service that was so meaningful to Christ, and yet that I obviously have missed, or forgotten? And then you might figuratively take me by the hand to 1st Corinthians 10: 16,17, especially to the Amplified:
“The cup of blessing of mine at the Lord’s Supper upon which we ask God’s blessing, does it mean that in drinking it we participate and share a communion (Greek: “koinania”—fellowship) in the blood of Christ the Messiah? The bread which we break, does it not mean that in eating it we participate in and share a fellowship in the body of Christ? For we, no matter how numerous we are, are one body, because we all partake of the one Bread, the One whom the communion bread represents.”
And there you could leave me to meditate, having brought me to my senses! By failing to break bread I had cut myself off from Life; by failing to break bread I had separated myself from fellowship with the Christ; by failing to break bread I had put myself in the position where Jesus would be forced to say: “I cannot dwell in him!”
And this is the error we so often fall into, isn’t it? How many brothers and sisters do you know who have absented themselves from the table of the Lord because they have forgotten that it was the Lord’s desire to meet with them there; or because they have forgotten that this is the only place where they can come to have the Life within themselves continually renewed; or because of some professed or imagined affront from another member of the one Body?
So many times when we search out the heart of the matter we find that a brother (and of course this could be a sister) has allowed Self to triumph over Spirit in his thinking to the extent that he has placed his relationship with his brethren ahead of his relationship with his Savior. And when the human relationship fails, as so often it does, then the brother who has been hurt withdraws within himself, and the sign of his surrender to Self is his failure to be present at the Breaking of Bread.
Surely the relationship which ought to automatically come first in our lives is fellowship with the eternal Yahweh through His Son! And if our God in His wisdom has decreed that this fellowship with Him can only be sustained and nourished by means of a memorial service instituted by this same Son on the eve of His crucifixion, what brother or sister is there who dares conclude that he or she can continue in that fellowship without following the appointed way?
If we could only stand for a moment in the shadow of that Cross nearly two thousand years ago; if we could only look up at that pain-wracked body hanging in unendurable agony; if we could only hear the words uttered by those parched and dying lips only hours before: “This is my body broken for you, this is my life blood shed for you” — how could we possibly willfully absent ourselves from His table? As a brother wrote not long ago: “If we were given even a glimpse of that most terrible sight; if sick with horror it came home to us that as much for our sakes as for any, as much for our sins as for anyone’s He hung and suffered there, never again, surely, could we give less than a ready and whole-hearted response to the poignant appeal Do this in remembrance of me.’ “
Let us think of those oft-quoted words of the prophet, only this time apply them to ourselves: “He was wounded for my transgressions, he was bruised for my guilt and iniquity; the chastisement needful to obtain peace and well-being for me was upon him, and with the stripes that wounded him I am healed and made whole” (Isaiah 53:5 – Amplified).
When we neglect the memorial service; when we turn our back, even if only momentarily, upon the Sacrificial Lamb; when we forsake the assembling of ourselves together; surely we place ourselves in the position of those who have “spurned and thus trampled under foot the Son of God, who have considered the covenant blood by which he was consecrated common and unhallowed” (Hebrew 10:29 – Amplified) . . . who have spurned . . . the Son of God! Here is the essence of our failure in deliberately absenting ourselves each Sunday morning. Suppose that, persistently and by deliberate choice, we turn aside from what has been brought within our knowledge and our reach; what else remains for us to enjoy? In a real sense we trample down the person of Him who is, and has been confessed as the Son of God. We deny that there is any sacred significance to the blood which has been to us the covenant seal of our own sanctification.
But what of the positive side of the Breaking of Bread? The new possibility open to a baptized believer is that of free access to God’s presence. In point of fact, an applicant for baptism who thoroughly understands the hope held out to him has within himself an intense desire to fellowship with his new Savior through the breaking of bread. He realizes that, following baptism, he can enter with a joyous confidence into God’s presence through the blood of Jesus. He knows that “the just shall live by faith (that is my righteous servant shall live by his conviction respecting man’s relationship to God”). (See Hebrews 10:38) -Amplified. Surely this is the crux of the whole matter, man’s relationship to God, a relationship that can only be maintained and nourished by continual and faithful attendance at the memorial service. It is a relationship which can result, over man’s lifetime, in a close, intimate union with the Father, through the Son, such union being the counterpart of the union existing between Father and Son (John 6:57). Let us think again of those words of Jesus: “I have earnestly and intensely desired to eat with you.” If we, as brothers and sisters of Christ, cannot sincerely and confidingly repeat those words as an indication of our own desire to break bread, then perhaps we should give ourselves five minutes of honest scrutiny to make certain that we have not lost that “life within ourselves.”
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One