B009UHDQXC EBOK by Green Chris

Author:Green, Chris [Green, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Nourished for the Journey: The Benefits of Eating Christ

According to the Fourth Evangelist, this believing, this ‘eating’ and ‘drinking’ of Christ’s ‘flesh’ and ‘blood’, produces an excess of blessings. All of these benefits can be summed up in saying that to eat Christ is to receive nothing less than – abiding intimacy with Christ himself. ‘Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them’ (v. 56).[1039] Not only Christ himself, but the believer also receives in him communion with the Father in and through and with the Spirit. ‘Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me’ (v. 57). In John’s Gospel, to ‘abide’ describes both true personal allegiance to Christ and unbreakable intimacy with him,[1040] an intimacy that expands out from Christ’s intimacy with the Father to embrace, to take in the believer. The ‘intra-divine life is mediated to believers through Jesus’.[1041] That is to say, ‘… the believer’s union with Jesus not only parallels but participates in the union between the Father and the Son’.[1042] To put it another way, believers take up the same ‘space’ occupied by the Word who is ‘with’ (pros) God (1.1), and ‘close to the Father’s heart’ (1.18). In fact, it would not be an exaggeration to say that Christ’s flesh and blood are that ‘space’, or, at least, a ‘door’ into it.

To be brought into the divine life in this way is also to have one’s life shaped into a Christ-like form. Feeding on Christ is to be consumed by him, ‘eaten up’ with zeal for God (2.17), so that God’s will becomes the energy-giving source of one’s life. As Jesus says, ‘My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work’ (4.34). Also, partaking of Christ is accepting and embodying the way of life he pioneers, models, and perfects – the way of self-emptying service, the way of the cross. ‘To eat Jesus’ flesh is to take his humanity into our own, identifying with him in lowly service at the cost of life itself’.[1043]

Finally, then, we can turn back to the passage and draw out from the text’s embedded sacramentality a few implications for a Pentecostal theology of the Lord’s Supper.

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