This is a short summary. A more in depth article is coming soon.
Wouldn’t
it be logical to conclude that if some were getting drunk at communion, it would
indicate it was not physical blood but remained the fruit of the vine (1 Corinthians 11:21)?
Jesus preformed his first recorded miracle at the wedding
in Cana of Galilee (John 2). He turned the water into wine. The guests said
that it tasted like good wine. There was a change in substance and in taste. If
the eucharist the priest blesses actually changes to the body and blood of
Jesus, there should be a change in taste. If there’s not, it’s a symbolic
representation.
Jesus used another analogy regarding bread. The disciples
thought he was talking about literal bread and Jesus rebuked them in Matthew 16:8 and
said they had little faith because they did not understand it was symbolic.
Matthew
16:11-12,
How is it you do not understand that I did not speak to you concerning bread?—but to
beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” Then they understood that
He did not tell them to beware of the leaven of bread, but of
the doctrine of the Pharisees and Sadducees.
Similar to Jesus, believers are also called unleavened
bread. The reason for that is the church is the body of Christ (Romans, 12:5, 1 Corinthians 12:12-13 & 12:27). Leaven
is yeast and it’s symbolic of sin. Unbelievers are the leavened bread (Mark 8:15, Luke 12:1, & Galatians 5:9) who are still in their sins.
It’s clear the
unleavened bread we all partake in is spiritual in nature. 1 Corinthians 5:7-8, Get
rid of the old yeast, so that you may be a new unleavened batch as you really
are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us keep
the Festival, not with the old bread leavened with malice and wickedness, but
with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
The eucharist is gathering believers together to share in
the same loaf of bread. It’s to remind us that we are all partakers of the body
of Christ. 1
Corinthians 10:17, For we, though many, are one bread and one
body; for we all partake of that one bread.
John
6:35, Jesus
answered, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to Me will never hunger, and
whoever believes in Me will never thirst. If Jesus was talking about physical bread,
then we would eventually get hungry after eating it. Jesus is using a physical
metaphor for a spiritual reality.
Not only do I see scriptural evidence the body and blood
are symbolic but, it’s against Jewish law to consume blood. Deuteronomy 12:16, But you must not consume
the blood….
Leviticus
17:10,
‘And whatever man of the house of Israel, or of the strangers who dwell among
you, who eats any blood, I will set My face against that person who eats blood,
and will cut him off from among his people.
Jesus kept the law down to the last letter (Matthew 5:17-19). We now
have a conundrum if the eucharist is the literal body and blood of Jesus. Don’t
consume blood is part of the Jewish law. Jesus being God, fulfilled the entire
law down to the letter, and God can’t tempt his disciples to break the law and
sin. James
1:13, Let
no one say when he is tempted, “I am tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted
by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone.
Abstaining
from blood is still given as New Testament command (Acts
15:20 & 28-29).
Why in John 6:63 does Jesus say the flesh profits nothing and it's the
Spirit that gives life, if it's the flesh that gives life? Wine is called the
blood of grapes (Genesis 49:11), and is used to symbolically represent the
blood of Christ.
