I hunger for the bread of God, the flesh of Jesus Christ
I long to drink of his blood, the gift of unending love
(Bishop Ignatius of Antioch, AD 110)
As a Protestant Christian, I was always excited to take part in the Lord’s Supper. We were taught that Communion was simply symbolic of “remembering” Christ. In most Protestant churches I attended over the years, partaking in the Lord’s Supper was optional and sometimes only enjoyed on “special occasions.” My heart yearned for more and the Bible seemed to point to something much greater. In fact, there is something much greater!
The Eucharist is not symbolic of Christ, but literally is Christ. In this mystery of faith, celebrated by Christians for the last 2,000 years, bread and wine are transubstantiated into the body and blood of Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit. This was believed by all Christians, in all places, at all times until the Protestant Reformation! The resurrected Jesus is truly present in this powerful and efficacious Sacrament referred to as the “Real Presence.” For apostolic Christians, Holy Communion is the absolute center of worship!
Protestantism is pastor-centric, while apostolic Christianity is Eucharist-centric.
The center of the former is a sermon, while the center of the latter is the Real Presence of Christ!
Jesus instituted the Holy Eucharist at the Last Supper. Matthew, Mark, and Luke each provide an account:
While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take and eat; this is my body.” Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins (Matthew 26:26-28).
While they were eating he took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them, and said, “Take it; this is my body.” Then he took a cup, gave thanks, and gave it to them, and they all drank from it. He said to them, “This is my blood of the covenant, which will be shed for many (Mark 14:22-24).
Then he took the bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which will be given for you; do this in memory of me.” And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which will be shed for you (Luke 22:19-20).
Jesus declares “this is my body” and “this is my blood.” There is no indication that Jesus was speaking metaphorically or symbolically, as affirmed in the Greek. A straightforward reading of what Jesus actually said in the three Synoptic Gospel’s immediately leads to a literal understanding of the body and blood of Jesus being offered in the Holy Eucharist.
The Disciples Interpret Jesus Literally!
(So, why shouldn’t we?)
How did the disciples interpret Jesus? Continuing John’s Gospel and the Bread of Life discourse, observe that God the Father draws people to believe. Jesus reiterates that faith in Christ is required for salvation and to receive His miracles:
No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him on the last day… Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life” (John 6:44, 47-48).
Jesus declares that the bread is His flesh:
I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world (John 6:51).
Hearing this, the disciples become unsettled and begin arguing:
The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” (John 6:52).
The disciples clearly understand Jesus to be speaking literally! Jesus does not correct them, but He does confirm the truth by a double “amen, amen” that in fact it is His flesh and blood that He is speaking about!
Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him” (John 6: 53-56).
In John 6:51, the Greek word phago is used which means “to eat or consume.” When the Jews began quarrelling over the correct interpretation, Jesus replied with a much stronger verb, trogo, which means to “chew, gnaw, or crunch” (John 6:54, 56-58). Jesus reinforces a literal, not symbolic, understanding of “eating” His flesh by this dramatic shift in the Greek, thereby removing any doubt about the correct interpretation!
What happens next is equally supportive. Scripture, sadly, says that some disciples became startled and stopped following Jesus. Why? They understood Christ to be speaking literally of His body and blood, which caused them great fear.
These things he said while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum. Then many of his disciples who were listening said, “This saying is hard; who can accept it?” Since Jesus knew that his disciples were murmuring about this, he said to them, “Does this shock you? What if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the spirit that gives life, while the flesh is of no avail. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe.” Jesus knew from the beginning the ones who would not believe and the one who would betray him. And he said, “For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by my Father.” As a result of this, many of his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him (John 6:59-66).
Unbelief caused many disciples to stop following Jesus. Like the virgin birth of Christ and His resurrection, by faith we receive the Holy Eucharist! Right here in Scripture, we see the first recorded “apostasy” in New Testament history! Did you catch that my friend? They left Jesus over His teaching on the Eucharist! At the root is their unbelief. Notice how Jesus said that even if they were to see Him ascending, they would not have believed it. In the flesh, we cannot understand how Jesus literally gives us His real body and blood. By the Spirit we come to understand the mystical works of Christ.
The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit (1 Corinthians 2:14).
If we do not open our hearts by faith, we will not experience the mystical works of Christ in our life. They denied the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, just as many still do today!
Not a Single Clarification
There is a trend in the Gospel of John worth noting and applicable directly to our discussion. John frequently provides clarifications when misunderstandings occur and guides the reader to see the correct interpretation. When Jesus spoke symbolically, and the Jews understood Him literally, John adds clarification. For example, when Jesus spoke of the temple being His body (e.g., the Jews misunderstood) John appends clarification. Likewise, when Jesus speaks of living water, they misunderstand but John again offers consistent clarification.
Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking about the temple of his body (John 2:19-21).
On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified (John 7:37-39).
Then they said to him, “Who are you?” And Jesus said to them, “Just as I have been saying to you from the beginning. I have many things to say and to judge concerning you, but he who sent me is true; and I speak to the world those things which I heard from him.” They did not understand that he spoke to them of the Father (John 8:25-27).
John took great care to point out misunderstandings in his Gospel. In the case of the body and blood of Jesus, neither Jesus nor John offers any clarification! Zero!
Discerning the Lord’s Body in the Eucharist
Scripture has words of caution for those who refuse to discern the Lord’s body in the Eucharist. The Apostle Paul says:
He who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body (1 Corinthians 11:29).
If the Lord’s Supper, the Eucharist, were merely a symbol it seems strange to see how such judgment could occur.
The Eucharist is Real Communion
The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? (1 Corinthians 10:16).
The body and blood of Jesus is the uniting center for Christians. Can Christians have communion of the “blood of Christ” and “body of Christ” if the bread and wine are mere symbols?
Protestant Reformation founder Martin Luther (AD 1483 – 1546)
on the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist
Along my faith journey, I always anticipated most of Martin Luther’s beliefs would be anti-Catholic. However, what I discovered is considerably different! Before the Protestant Reformation, hardly any Christians believed in a symbolic or figurative Lord’s Supper; to the contrary, all Christians believed in the Real Presence of Jesus in Communion! While not all reformers adhered to his teachings, Martin Luther personally believed in the Real Presence of Christ!
Now here stands the Word of Christ: Take, eat; this is My body; Drink ye all of it; this is the new testament in My blood… But if the words remain with them, as they shall and must, then, in virtue of the same, it is truly the body and blood of Christ. For as the lips of Christ say and speak, so it is, as He can never lie or deceive.
For my part, if I cannot fathom how the bread is the Body of Christ, yet I will take my reason captive to the obedience of Christ (1 Corinthians 10:5), and clinging simply to his words, firmly believe not only that the Body of Christ is in the bread but that the bread is the Body of Christ… What does it matter if philosophy cannot fathom this? The Holy Spirit is greater than Aristotle.
Luther believed that Christ’s body and blood are truly present in the Holy Eucharist. Further, Luther dogmatically proclaimed that every Church Father since the time of the apostles believed in the Real Presence, too!
Who, but the devil, hath granted such a license of wrestling the words of the holy Scripture? Who ever read in the Scriptures, that my body is the same as the sign of my body? Or, that is the same as it signifies? What language in the world ever spoke so? It is only then the devil, that imposeth upon us by these fanatical men…. Not one of the Fathers, though so numerous, ever spoke as the Sacramentarians: not one of them ever said, It is only bread and wine; or, the body and blood of Christ is not there present. Surely it is not credible, non possible, since they often speak, and repeat their sentiments, that they should never (if they thought so) not so much as once, say, or let slip these words: It is bread only; or the body of Christ is not there, especially it being of great importance, that men should not be deceived. Certainly in so many Fathers, and in so many writings, the negative might at least be found in one of them, had they thought the body and blood of Christ were not really present; but they are all of them unanimous.
The disciples, apostles, early Church Fathers, and the founder of the Protestant Reformation Martin Luther all believed in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Unfortunately, Protestant Reformation leaders Ulrich Zwingli and John Calvin soon broke away from this 1,600 year apostolic teaching and began spreading their own individual ideas on the Holy Eucharist. Zwingli broke with Luther and believed that the Eucharist was only a symbol. Calvin disagreed and believed the Eucharist to be greater than a symbol, but less than the Real Presence of Christ.
If you are in a Protestant tradition today, to which of these three Protestant Reformation founders should you turn to find truth? Sadly, modern Protestantism has departed, not only from 1,600 years of apostolic teaching, but even their own founder’s teachings!
What did the earliest Christians believe?
Justin Martyr (AD 100-165)
We call this food Eucharist; and no one else is permitted to partake of it, except one who believes our teaching to be true and who has been washed in the washing which is for the remission of sins and for regeneration, and is thereby living as Christ has enjoined. For not as common bread nor common drink do we receive these; but since Jesus Christ our Savior was made incarnate by the word of God and had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so too, as we have been taught, the food which has been made into the Eucharist by the Eucharist prayer set down by Him, and by the change of which our blood and flesh is nourished, is both the flesh and the blood of that incarnated Jesus.
Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage (died AD 258)
And who is more a priest of the Most High God, than our Lord Jesus Christ, who, when He offered sacrifice to God the Father, offered the very same which Melchisedech had offered, namely bread and wine, which is in fact His Body and Blood!
Cyril of Jerusalem (AD 350)
For just as the bread and the wine of the Eucharist before the holy invocation of the adorable Trinity were simple bread and wine, but the invocation having been made, the bread becomes the Body of Christ, and the wine the Blood of Christ…
Augustine, Bishop of Hippo (AD 354-430)
That Bread which you see on the altar, having been sanctified by the word of God, is the Body of Christ. That chalice, or rather, what is in that chalice, having been sanctified by the word of God, is the Blood of Christ.
What you see is the bread and the chalice; that is what your own eyes report to you. But what your faith obliges you to accept is that the bread is the Body of Christ and the chalice is the Blood of Christ.
The Disciples and Church Fathers (and all Christians prior to the Protestant Reformation) believed in the Real Presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper. The center of worship for Catholic Christians, therefore, is the Holy Eucharist and not a sermon/preacher. For Catholic’s, Christ is the source and summit of worship – as Christians have done for over 2,000 years.
To dig deeper and discover the evidence for the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, please check out my book, Evangelical Catholic, here!
Troy
