THE LORD'S TABLE IS MORE THAN A RITE
03/09/23 13:17
We need to embrace the meaning of the eucharist for every Believer and the church. The Lord’s Table can be what it is not meant to be – a time when we hope to get ourselves sad enough by contemplating the barbarity of the cross to do better for Christ. Sad enough to provide us with more impetus to stop doing the pesky enjoyable sins that put Him there. But he Lord’s Table is about the joy of Christ’s life being our life. The foundation of the Kingdom is that Christ becomes our life.
ONE WITH CHRIST TO BE OURSELVES AS SONS/DAUGHTERS
SADDENING OURSELVES UP is not the reason for the sacrament of the Lord’s Table. It’s a reminder and a celebration that we have been made one substance with Christ by the atoning work of the cross and the resulting incarnation of Christ in us. If ever there was a demonstration of Christ our life – of ‘those who eat Me will live because of Me’ the Lord’s Table is it. Yet Christ does not come into us because we celebrated at the Lord’s Table. Christ has become our life by being God with us. God giving Himself for us and God coming to live in us by the Spirit.
HIS LIFE FOR US AND AS US
Christ our life embraces justification and sanctification in the person of Jesus Christ. According to the vicarious humanity of Christ these analytically distinct categories are one in Jesus. Thus, Paul uses the words, ‘Christ our life’ without deducting anything from the fullness of the vicarious life of Jesus for all.
NOT ONLY ABOUT SIN
Myk Habets observes that, “No longer is salvation thought of as exclusively salvation from sin, alienation, and hostility, although those themes are clearly part of any biblical soteriology. Instead, union, communion and participation are more meaningfully incorporated. A retrospective focus is replaced with a prospective one without losing the strengths of the former. The ultimate goal of salvation is no longer to appease the wrath of an angry God but to attain to participation in the divine life through the Son by the Holy Spirit.” We were made to live in God and now we do. (1) Because you are one with Jesus, you and the Father are one. The meaning of the Lord’s Table is not only that Jesus forgives you. The meaning is that He sups with you and more. He becomes you. We call this life in the Spirit where one is a son rather than a beggar seeking scraps in the law.
(1) Habets Myk, Theosis in the Theology of Thomas Torrance, p 126.
ONE WITH CHRIST TO BE OURSELVES AS SONS/DAUGHTERS
SADDENING OURSELVES UP is not the reason for the sacrament of the Lord’s Table. It’s a reminder and a celebration that we have been made one substance with Christ by the atoning work of the cross and the resulting incarnation of Christ in us. If ever there was a demonstration of Christ our life – of ‘those who eat Me will live because of Me’ the Lord’s Table is it. Yet Christ does not come into us because we celebrated at the Lord’s Table. Christ has become our life by being God with us. God giving Himself for us and God coming to live in us by the Spirit.
HIS LIFE FOR US AND AS US
Christ our life embraces justification and sanctification in the person of Jesus Christ. According to the vicarious humanity of Christ these analytically distinct categories are one in Jesus. Thus, Paul uses the words, ‘Christ our life’ without deducting anything from the fullness of the vicarious life of Jesus for all.
NOT ONLY ABOUT SIN
Myk Habets observes that, “No longer is salvation thought of as exclusively salvation from sin, alienation, and hostility, although those themes are clearly part of any biblical soteriology. Instead, union, communion and participation are more meaningfully incorporated. A retrospective focus is replaced with a prospective one without losing the strengths of the former. The ultimate goal of salvation is no longer to appease the wrath of an angry God but to attain to participation in the divine life through the Son by the Holy Spirit.” We were made to live in God and now we do. (1) Because you are one with Jesus, you and the Father are one. The meaning of the Lord’s Table is not only that Jesus forgives you. The meaning is that He sups with you and more. He becomes you. We call this life in the Spirit where one is a son rather than a beggar seeking scraps in the law.
(1) Habets Myk, Theosis in the Theology of Thomas Torrance, p 126.
