How Jesus Fulfilled The Old Testament Sacrifices AND How You Take Part In His Sacrifice!

How Jesus Fulfilled The Old Testament Sacrifices

AND

How You Take Part In His Sacrifice!

 

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish these things but to fulfill them” (Matthew 5:17).

 

It is common to relate that declaration of Jesus to all of the commands given in the Old Covenant: things like fulfilling Messianic prophesies, kosher laws, Sabbath observance laws, reacting to what defiles us, and cleansing what defiles us, et cetera. And that is true. But Jesus also came to “fulfill” all that God had established in the sacrifices that He Himself had set up to deal with our guilt. In other words, the very reason all of those blood sacrifices were established by God were done as “stop-gap” measures in anticipation of the permanent solution that His Son was going to provide. His “fulfillment” then REPLACES that which He has fulfilled. Because Israel’s leaders did not accept His sacrifice, then after a time that God deemed “enough,” HE stepped in and stopped their sacrifices by destroying their Temple in 70 A.D.

 

All of those sacrifices were established by God in order to deal with the “fundamental problem of the human race” – the problem of guilt, as created by the events described within Genesis 3: embedded guilt derived from shamefully recognizing that they had been deceived into distrusting and disobeying their Creator (“… she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they KNEW that they were naked” 3:6-7).

 

God eventually created a very DETAILED system of blood sacrifices to make us painfully conscious of sin within us, AND that it must be conscientiously dealt with, instead of the way that most of us modern secular people deal with it: merely assuming that we can learn a lesson from our “mistakes,” and then forgetting it and “moving on” with life.

One of the first aspects about sacrifices, was that the need to offer them had to be first recognized and accepted as needed because of our guilt! And the sacrifice had to be PERSONALLY offered; it was not something we paid others to do instead of us. As you can read in Leviticus, while only a priest who has not been defiled by our sin can actually offer that sacrifice on our behalf, even OUR hands get bloodied as a reminder that an innocent victim had to pay the price for our sins:

“Now the LORD called to Moses and spoke to him from the tent of meeting, saying, ‘Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, ‘When anyone of you brings an offering to the LORD, you shall bring your offering of livestock from the herd or the flock. If his offering is a burnt offering from the herd, he shall offer a male without defect; he shall offer it at the doorway of the tent of meeting, so that he may be accepted before the LORD. And HE shall lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering, so that it may be accepted for him to make atonement on his behalf. Then HE shall slaughter the bull before the LORD … And the priest shall offer all of it up in smoke on the altar as a burnt offering, an offering by fire as a soothing aroma to the LORD”’” (Leviticus 1:1-9).

Then, after offering that innocent substitute for our guilt, we participate in the sacrifice’s effect and receive its benefits by EATING it:

“Look at the people of Israel. Are not those who eat the sacrifices partners in the altar?” (1 Corinthians 10:18).

 

As mentioned above, Jesus’s offering of Himself to be the “Lamb of God” was the only permanently effective solution to the embedded guilt problem of Genesis 3. And His institution of the “Lord’s Supper” was a parallel to those old covenant sacrifices in the same way that the eating of those sacrifices was connected to the offering of them: we participate in the Christ’s sacrifice by eating what had been offered in sacrifice! He personally authorized and commanded us to “eat” HIM!

 

The Lord’s Supper, or “Holy Communion,” or “Eucharist” is given as the WAY we are to participate in His unrepeatable sacrifice: offered once but eaten OFTEN! Sadly, this idea will seem utterly alien for most Protestants. It seems that with regard to “reforming” the Lord’s Supper the only thing that most of the Reformers thought was needed was to reject the Roman teaching about “transubstantiation” – that once you reject the idea that the “substance” of the bread and wine was being replaced by the “body and blood” of Christ everything would be just okay! But most of them replaced Rome’s minor technical error with their theological tragedy! Rome had merely borrowed pagan Aristotelian philosophy to explain HOW Christ was literally present at the Eucharist and within the Eucharist, in accordance with the same literal understanding that has existed within the entire history of the church. But most Protestants have functionally DESTROYED the believe that He is truly and literally present at and within that bread and wine, and functionally accepted only the second part of what He had said: “Do this in my memory.”

 

But what most Protestants wound up discarding was actually APOSTOLIC: that God is a SACRAMENTAL God. In the New as well as Old Covenants, He has associated the administration of His promised gifts with actual physical matter and with the bodily actions associated with that physical “stuff”! In the first centuries it was ONLY the Gnostics that looked down on the mixing of “spirit” and “matter.” In the post-Reformation times it is only those who have been the majority of Protestants, minus the Lutherans and Anglicans who think that way!

But consider how God used water and the imposition of hands to impart some of His promised “spiritual” blessings:

USING WATER: Jesus and His apostles connected “salvation” not merely with invisible and unexpressed  “faith,” but a faith that was also willing to verbally and physically confess obedience to Him as “Master and Divine Savior” by immersing their body into water: “Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her WITH the WASHING of WATER by the word” (Ephesians 5:25-26). While that has been the understanding throughout the entire history of the church, it is common to hear today that “the instant you ‘believe in Jesus as Lord and Savior’ you are instantly ‘saved’!” They obviously either reject the authority of Peter, or assume that he did not know how to formulate his theology as well as they do!

 

USING HANDS: The apostles of Jesus associated the experienced entrance of His Pentecostal Spirit by the laying on of hands as God’s norm: “Now when the apostles who were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them, who, when they had come down, prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit. For as yet He had fallen upon none of them. They had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then they LAID HANDS on them, and they received the Holy Spirit” (Acts 8:14-17). The imposition of hands is also God’s way of transferring authority to those accepted to minister within His church.

 

USING BREAD and WINE: Well, Jesus also declared that He was going to use bread and wine to be the vehicle through which He enabled His apostolic disciples to be united to His sacrifice on their behalf, and to accomplish His many promises about becoming united with them at ALL levels of their being: spirit AND soul AND body.

Christ and His holy apostles have indeed given many promises about Him actually entering into experiential, mysterious, but literal union with those who have surrendered their trust and obedience to Him, promises such as: “Christ IN you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27); “And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: I IN them, and You IN Me” (John 17:22-23). “You know Him, for He dwells with you and will be IN you” (John 14:18). “If anyone loves Me, he will follow My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make our DWELLING with him” (John 14:23). “Or do you not know that your BODY is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?” (1 Corinthians 6:19). The “union” with us that He offers is with ALL that you are, which, as we are told, includes our spirit, soul, AND physical body (1 Thessalonians 5:23, Hebrews 4:12).

Well, not being Gnostics, Christ and His apostles also provided us with a MEANS by which to effect that tri-fold entrance and union! As with the saints of old, God’s people participate in the commanded sacrifice by EATING that which has been sacrificed! If you reject the physical aspects of the union that He is offering then you may wind up being more judged as Gnostic than as HIS version of “Christian”!

ALL of Jesus’s commands, teachings, and promises need to be taken much more literally than they are being taken within post-Constantinian Christianity. And, along with those promises are several statements, such as:

“Now while they were eating, Jesus took some bread, and after a blessing, He broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, ‘Take, eat; this IS My body.’ And when He had taken a cup and given thanks, He gave it to them, saying, ‘Drink from it, all of you; for this IS My blood of the covenant, which is being poured out for many for forgiveness of sins” (Matthew 26:26-28).

[Jesus deliberately chose to use the word “IS”! He also well knew how to use the term “is LIKE,” as He did numerous times (e.g., “the kingdom of God is LIKE…”)

 

“For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night when He was betrayed, took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, ‘Take, eat; this IS My body which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of Me.’ In the same manner He also took the cup after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in My blood. This do, as often as you drink it in remembrance of Me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes’” (1 Corinthians 11:23-26)

 

“So then, my dear friends, flee from idolatry. I am speaking to thoughtful people. Consider what I say. Is not the cup of blessing that we bless a SHARING IN the blood of Christ? Is not the bread that we break a SHARING IN the body of Christ? BECAUSE there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all SHARE the one bread. Look at the people of Israel. Are not those who eat the sacrifices partners in the altar? Am I saying that idols or food sacrificed to them amount to anything? No, I mean that what the pagans sacrifice is to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be partners with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot take part in the table of the Lord and the table of demons. Or are we trying to provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we really stronger than he is?” (1 Corinthians 10:14-22; some translations have “communion” instead of “sharing”).

[If you examine Paul’s language as carefully as it deserves, you will notice that he is saying that it is the “BREAD that we break” which is “sharing in” or “communion with” the “body of Christ.” The term “sharing” or “communion” – Greek: “koinonia” / “ κοινωνία” – creates the picture of “yoking,” so that where one element is, the other will be also. The picture, therefore, is that Jesus is “yoking” Himself to that Eucharistic bread and wine. And Paul makes sure that you do not jump to some “cannibalistic” conclusion by describing that Jesus is going to be present and unifiable in His resurrected and glorified/”spiritualized” body, not in that pre-transformed body that they were used to touching and seeing and watching bleed (1 Corinthians 15:35-50). But His “spiritual body” is EVERY bit as real as the body that they could touch! And there is no reason to assume that the bread and wine need to PHYSICALLY become something less than ordinary bread and wine in order for Him to yoke Himself to them. Imagine that you were with Him when He was sharing our flesh and blood. He could point to His body and say “this IS my body”, right? Did the fact that He was the eternal divine Son of God who was united to that fleshly body require that his fleshly body become something OTHER than a normal human body in order for it to be HIS body? Of course not! But if you were finally filled with the same faith that filled Thomas, at some point you would see BEYOND that human body and declare, “My Lord, and my GOD!” (John 20:28). Well He can yoke Himself to His special bread and wine without it needing to be changed away from being bread and wine, no? And if you really have “the faith OF Christ” (Galatians 2:16, Philippians 3:9, KJV) you will see BEYOND that bread and wine and behold your risen and glorified Lord and Savior in front of you!!! ]

 

“Therefore whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the BODY AND BLOOD of the Lord. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not DISCERNING THE LORD’S BODY. For this reason many are weak and sick among you, and many sleep. For if we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged” (1 Corinthians 11:27-31)

[For anti-sacramental Protestants to say that the “Lord’s Body” being “discerned” is the “CHURCH body,” as is so often done, is an example of exegetical “grasping at straws by a drowning person.” In the previous two chapters that he had written, the terms “body and blood” were specifically and clearly referring to the body and blood of JESUS! Therefore, to be “not discerning the Lord’s body” meant that they were not recognizing the personal presence and significance of the risen and glorified Jesus. Why should ANYONE want to deny a presence that is meant to delight, comfort, and strengthen?!]

 

Jesus emphatically declared that His flesh and blood are REAL food.

John 6“51 ‘I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world.’ 52 The Jews therefore quarreled among themselves, saying, ‘How can this Man give us His flesh to eat?’ 53 Then Jesus said to them, ‘Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. 54 Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. 55 For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. 56 He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. 57 As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me. 58 This is the bread which came down from heaven–not as your fathers ate the manna, and are dead. He who eats this bread will live forever’… 60 Therefore many of His disciples, when they heard this said, “This is a hard saying; who can understand it?” … 66 From that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more. 67 Then Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you also want to go away?” (John 6:51-67)

[Given the scandal of John 6, in which “many” of His disciples actually formally repudiated Him BECAUSE of that statement, it would have been psychologically impossible for His remaining disciples NOT to have associated His later, “This is my body… blood” with that scandalous event: they would naturally be thinking, “So THIS is what He was referring to back then!” The Church has always associated this passionate and emphatic declaration in John 6 with what He later declared in His last Passover meal with them. It is Protestantism that has destroyed the connection, declaring it to be merely a “poetic” way of describing an intimate union with Him. Strangely enough, that is PRECISELY what the Church has always meant by it as well, except that for Jesus and the ancient Christians, that union included our bodies as well as merely our invisible relationship.]

 

Whatever justification there may have been 500 years ago to not accept that Aristotelian term “transubstantiation,” the replacements for that concept provided by most Protestant groups have turned out to actually DESTROY the confidence and expectation that in the eating of that holy bread and wine a disciple is participating in a miraculous event, by which ALL of us – spirit, soul, AND body – enter into a literal and supernatural union with all that was accomplished by the sacrificial death of our Creator on our behalf, and also deepening and celebrating our complete union with Him, ALL of Him for ALL of us – His spirit in our spirit, and His soul within our soul, and His body within our body! Why on EARTH would anyone who loves Jesus even think about rejecting such a wonderful way of “knowing” God?!

At one point in my Protestant life, I had to accept the humbling knowledge that when it came to the Lord’s Supper I had been trained to be a heretic by my Methodist and Church of Christ mentors. However, I survived that humbling and wound up having that humiliation being wonderfully compensated for by the experience thereafter of knowing and even EXPERIENCING (through the eyes of a new faith) that I AM IN THE VERY PRESENCE OF HIM WHO CREATED ME! What a wonderful exchange!

 

Any form of “Christianity” that does not teach and lead its members to experience this form of Eucharistic union with Jesus is roughly analogous to a Christian husband and wife who have been taught that they are “one flesh” and yet do not even know about or experience any of the sexually created marital intimacy that is theirs by right and by command from God!

Most Evangelical, Fundamental Protestants, and – sadly – even Anabaptists are in that condition. One of the tragedies of our denominational fragmentation is that those who are more likely to have a personal relationship with the BIBLICAL Jesus are within traditions who do not know such possibilities of  that intense personal Eucharistic union with Jesus, and those whose traditions HAVE maintained that original Eucharistic mystery are less likely to have intense PERSONAL knowledge of the Jesus who is described within the New Testament! (Such has been MY experience, at any rate)

 

Our relationship with Jesus is to be somewhat analogous to that marital relationship: the sexual aspect only becomes beautiful and spiritual in the context of a marital relationship that TRANSCENDS the sexual aspect, one in which the sexual union simply incarnates and celebrates that deeper aspect. But, given that proper deeper relationship, their sexual union both cements and intensifies that deeper relationship: a true mystery that is experienced more than understood! The Creator of that sexual union is the same Creator who gave His children that Eucharistic union with Him. And with regard to gender, we are ALL “female” when we come to His Holy Eucharist!

I will conclude with a passage from Volume Two of my “Blueprint for a Revolution: Building Upon ALL of the New Testament”:

“You see, Pilgrim, the redemption, sanctification, and glorification spoken of in the Scriptures involve not only our spirits and our minds. The reason Jesus uses such “fleshly” language is because our flesh also has a call upon it to participate in the flesh of Christ, to be touched – even penetrated – by His perfected, glorified, and spiritualized flesh and blood. If the Holy Spirit is somehow involved within our spirit (1 Corinthians 6:17), and within our mind (Ephesians 4:23), it is also true that the Spirit is within and throughout our very bodies (1 Corinthians 6:19). Although the body has the curse of death upon it because of sin, and although it may not become transformed into resurrection glory until it has been sown and raised (1 Corinthians 15:42), nevertheless the body also has a share in this total communion with Christ (even though it of course does not have priority in that communion). Therefore, we are not to be shocked that God should tie the things of the spirit to actions of the flesh – the movement of the body through water is a part of being made regenerate, internal communion involves eating, salvation involves saying things out loud, et cetera. Perhaps it is because the glorified Christ is the food of the whole man that Ignatius (c. 110 A.D.) called the Eucharist the “medicine of immortality and the antidote that we should not die but live forever in Jesus Christ”(Note 1). And for this same reason, Irenaeus (c. 180 A.D.) reported that orthodox Christianity was in the practice of “announcing consistently the fellowship and union of the flesh and Spirit; just as the Eucharist consists of two realities – an earthly and a heavenly – so also our bodies, when they receive the Eucharist, are no longer corruptible, having the hope of the resurrection to eternity.” (Note 2).

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Please, PLEASE, let yourself be blessed by the wonderful treasure that He has created to be experienced in HIS version of that “Lord’s Supper,” “Holy Communion,” “Eucharist”! When He said, “This is my body which is given for you,” He was offering YOU His very self here and NOW in that holy Supper! “See that you do not refuse Him who speaks” (Hebrews 12:28).

 

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NOTES:

[1] Ignatius of Antioch, “To the Ephesians,” xx.2. The Apostolic Fathers, p. 68.

2 Irenaeus, “Against Heresies,” IV. xviii.5. The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. I. I suspect that Irenaeus and all the ancient brethren would consider Protestants (apart from Anglicans and Lutherans) to be under Gnostic influence.