The Cross is Where Law and Gospel Meet

 

The cross is universally recognized as the main symbol of Christianity.    This seems strange to some since the cross was the instrument by which Jesus Christ was put to death.   The New Testament itself makes it a symbol of the Christian religion however.  St. Paul writing to the Galatians said “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world” (Gal 6:14).   Indeed, the association was made by Jesus Christ Himself.  When He asked His closest disciples first, Who men said that He was, then second, Who they, that is His disciples themselves said He was, He received St. Peter's confession "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God" (Matt. 16:16)  Praising this response as having been revealed by the Father, He then began to explain to His disciples that His being the Christ meant that He would go to Jerusalem, be put to death on the Cross - a particularly cruel form of execution ordinarily reserved for the worst of criminals - and would rise again from the dead on the third day.  (Matt. 16:21)   He then told them that if they wanted to be His disciples they must deny themselves, take up their crosses, and follow Him.  (Matt. 16:24)    Taking up the cross was not a reference to wearing a cross as a piece of jewelry.   It was a reference to the condemned criminal being forced to carry the crossbeam to the execution site, as He Himself was forced to do (with Simon of Cyrene being forced to help Him).  (1)

 

 

In a book that was quite popular when I began my theological education, John F. MacArthur Jr. used Jesus' call to take up the cross to hopelessly confuse Law and Gospel.    The book received the endorsements of all sorts of evangelical celebrities and even contained an introduction by an orthodox Anglican priest, the late J. I. Packer, who definitely ought to have known better.  (2)   While I am more reluctant to speak negatively about MacArthur after his behaviour of the last two years – the Solzhenitsyns and Niemollers and Wurmbrands who stood up admirably against the Satanic public health totalitarianism usually came from among the heretics and schismatics whereas the leadership, even that which is ostensibly orthodox, of Apostolic Churches behaved abominably - the confusion of Law and Gospel is deadly error, which is particularly obnoxious when it is tied in to a theology of the cross.   It is in the Cross of Jesus Christ, which bears the shape of the meeting of two paths, that Law and Gospel meet, and it is because of the Cross that they must never be confused.

 

 

Law and Gospel, when juxtaposed and contrasted, refer to the two Covenants, the Old Covenant God established with Israel through Moses at Mt. Sinai and the New Covenant He established with believers in Jesus Christ - both individually and collectively as the Church - through Christ's Death on the Cross and Resurrection.   The Law Covenant takes its name from the Books of Moses in which the terms of the Covenant are set out.   The Gospel Covenant takes its name from the Christian kerygma - the message of Good News that we proclaim to the world about how God has sent the Promised Redeemer, His Son Jesus Christ, how He has accomplished the salvation of the world through His Death on the Cross, and how He rose again victorious over death.     The emphasis in the contrast is on the opposite principles by which the two Covenants operate.   The principle upon which the Law operates is exactly what its name would indicate.   God commands and requires obedience, men obey and are rewarded and they disobey and are punished.   It is summed up in the words "do and live" (Rom. 10:5, Gal. 3:12).   The principle upon which the Gospel operates is that of grace - God's favour, freely given in Christ.   The Gospel tells us that God’s grace has been given to us in Christ, we receive it by faith, by believing the Gospel.  It is summed up in the last thing Jesus Christ said on the Cross before committing His Spirit to the Father – “It is finished” (Jn. 19:30).

 

 

St. Paul explains the contrast between the two principles this way:

 

 

For what saith the scripture?  Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness.  Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt.   But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.  (Rom. 4:3-5)

 

 

Later in the same epistle he declares the mutual exclusivity of the two principles.   In talking about the “remnant according to the election of grace”, i.e., ethnic Israelites who believe in Jesus he says:

 

 

And if by grace, then it is no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace.  But if it be of works, then is it no more grace: otherwise work is no more work. (Rom. 11:6)

 

 

St. John expresses the contrast at the beginning of his Gospel:

 

 

For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.  (Jn. 1:17)

 

 

The mutual exclusivity of the principles of Law and Gospel does not mean that there was no grace in the Old Covenant or that there is no law in the New.   The Tabernacle/Temple, with its daily sacrifices, and especially the Day of Atonement was all about the forgiveness of sins and reconciling the offender to God which is only accomplished through grace.   These did not accomplish the removal of sin, but they pointed forward as St. Paul explains in his epistle to the Hebrews, to the One Sacrifice of Christ at the heart of the Gospel which did.   Jesus, after the Last Supper in which He instituted the Sacrament of the Eucharist declaring the Cup to be the “New testament in my blood, which is shed for you” (Lk. 22:20), gave to His disciples a New Commandment “That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another” (Jn. 13:34), a Commandment both similar and different to the Two Greatest Commandments in which He declared the whole of the Law to be summed up.   What the mutual exclusivity does mean is that the Law and the Gospel have their own ends to accomplish, that neither can accomplish the ends of the other, and that it is disastrous to try and accomplish the end of the Gospel by means of the Law.   When the Law is used for its own end rather than that of the Gospel the two complement each other.

 

While the Law forbids sin and requires righteousness it is incapable of producing the righteousness it requires (Rom. 7).    This is not the end for which the Law was given.   In contrasting the glory of the Law with the greater glory of the Gospel St. Paul described it as the “ministration of death, written and engraven in stones” and the “ministration of condemnation” (II Cor. 3:7, 9).   This is the end for which the Law was given.   It was given to condemn.   As a Covenant, the Law was made with a specific people for a specific time.   Its message, however, is for all people in all times, and that message is to the effect of “this is the righteousness God requires, you do not measure up, you are a sinner, you are condemned”.   The condemnation in the Law’s message for us is not a maybe condemnation – “you might be condemned if you don’t shape up”.   It is a certain condemnation, a judgement that is already past, a sentence hanging over all of our heads.

 

 

The Gospel tells us that God, out of His Own love and mercy, has done everything that needs to be done to rescue us from this condemnation.   He has given us His Only-Begotten Son as the Saviour He promised back when our first parents fell into sin (Gen. 3:15)   That Saviour, Who was without sin (Heb. 4:15, I Pet. 2:22) took our sins upon Himself when He was nailed to the Cross (I Pet. 2:24) and by His Suffering and Death, a work of perfect redemption (Rom 3:24, I Pet. 1:18-19) and propitiation, i.e., turning away of wrath (Rom. 3:25, I Jn. 2:2) He obtained for us the righteousness of God (II Cor. 5:21, Rom. 3:21-22, 26).   That the work of salvation is complete and nothing more needs to be added to it was proclaimed by Christ as He died (3) and by His Resurrection (4).   This is God’s free gift to us (Rom 3:24, 6:23, Eph. 2:8) proclaimed in the Gospel to all who believe.    Believing is not something we do to add to or complete what Jesus has done.   Faith merely receives what is brought to us through the proclamation of the Gospel.   (5)   The salvation proclaimed in the Gospel is as certain as the condemnation proclaimed in the Law.

 

 

When Law and Gospel are used for their own distinct purposes these messages complement each other.   God, through the message of certain condemnation contained in the Law, works repentance – brokenness, humility and contrition – in our hearts, preparing them for the message of certain salvation proclaimed in the Gospel by removing the impediment to faith that is our own self-righteous delusion that we can earn God’s favour.   Through the Gospel, when it is received in faith, God works love in the hearts of believers (1 Jn. 5:19), which love is the source of the only human works that are in any way acceptable to God.

 

 

When Law and Gospel are mixed the certainty of both messages is compromised.   The Law, adulterated in this way, ceases to be the message of certain condemnation to the sinner.   The Gospel, similarly adulterated, ceases to be the message of certain salvation to the believer.   Both become the same message in which both condemnation and salvation are uncertain.  

 

 

It was by going to the Cross that Jesus fulfilled all the demands of the Law.   It was by fulfilling the demands of the Law at the Cross that Jesus gave us the Gospel.    It is in the Cross that Law and Gospel meet each other and we should not try to force them to meet anywhere else.   The call to discipleship illustrates the point very well.

 

 

Contrary to the way it is explained in the typical sermon, i.e., your “cross” being some non-specific burden that is particular to yourself, Jesus’ original hearers would have understood the call to deny themselves, take up their crosses, and follow Him quite literally as a call to follow Him to their deaths.   Since it was made in the context of predicting His Own Death and Resurrection an obvious opportunity to do just this was provided along with the call.

 

 

At the Last Supper Jesus told His Apostles that they would be scattered like sheep and that St. Peter in particular would deny Him three times.   St. Peter vehemently vowed that though he were to die with Jesus, he would never deny Him.   All the others joined in and said the same thing.   Of course, things turned out exactly as Jesus predicted.   The Apostles scattered after the arrest at Gethsemane, St. Peter followed Him to Caiaphas’ palace, where he denied knowing Jesus three times before the cock crow signaled the dawn.   None of the disciples were crucified with Him that day.  

 

That is not where the story ends, however.    Jesus went to the Cross Himself.   He completed the work of salvation for the Apostles and for the rest of the world.   He died – and then He rose again.   The Cross led to the Empty Tomb.   The Empty Tomb led to the Ascension from the Mount of Olives.   The Ascension led to the sending of the Holy Spirit on Whitsunday.   At Whitsunday St. Peter proclaimed Christ to the multitude and three thousand were converted.   Later, after healing the man lame from birth, he proclaimed Christ to the crowd at Solomon’s Porch in the Temple.   He and St. John were arrested and brought before the priests and the Sanhedrin who ordered them not to speak or teach in Jesus’ name and they answered that they “cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard” (Acts. 4:20).   Arrested again and miraculously delivered from prison, the Apostles were brought again before the Sanhedrin where St. Peter with the others declared “We ought to obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).   Much later, St. Peter was indeed crucified as a martyr for Christ, as Jesus Himself predicted when after His Resurrection He forgave and restored him (Jn. 21:18-19).  

 

 

It was the Cross that made the difference.   Up to that point, the call to discipleship operated on the principle of Law which cannot produce that which it demands.   Then Jesus fulfilled the Law at the Cross and ushered in the Gospel.   Under the Gospel, discipleship operated on an entirely different basis, the basis of grace and liberty and the power of the Holy Spirit, and what was demanded under Law was produced under the Gospel.

 

 

Had a certain evangelical celebrity from Sun Valley, California understood this he would have written a very different book indeed.

 

The Law and the Gospel meet in the Cross.   Don't try to bring them together anywhere else.

 

 

 

 

(1)       The multiple references to the carrying of the transom, both in Jesus' call to discipleship and in the Gospel accounts of His and Simon's being made to do so, demonstrates that the  familiar T/t - shaped complex cross was the Cross of the Crucifixion and not the crux simplex or "torture stake".   All the earliest writers who make any allusion to the kind of cross used indicate that it was the T-shape.  Claims to the contrary arise from the delusions of hyper-Protestants like the nineteenth century Rev. Alexander Hislop who start from the premise that the Catholic - not just papal, but actually Catholic, held by all Churches everywhere since the most ancient times - understanding of everything is wrong.  In Hislop's case he thought that everything Catholic was not just wrong but a fraud designed to pass off Babylonian paganism as Christianity.  He saw the T in the familiar cross shape as a reference to Tammuz, the Sumerian/Babylonian deity with some similarities to the Adonis of Greco-Roman mythology after whom the Babylonians named a summer month which name was borrowed by the Jews for their tenth civil month/fourth religious month in the Babylonian Captivity and remains the name of that month in the Jewish calendar to his day.   Hislop, on the basis of no evidence other than his own conjecture and imagination, identified the mythological Tammuz with the son and supposed reincarnation of the Nimrod mentioned in Genesis as an early king of what became Babylon.   All of this deserves to be mocked as the risible nonsense that it is.

(2)       The same year (1989) that this book, The Gospel According to Jesus, was published, MacArthur was defending his "Incarnational Sonship" doctrine before the Independent Fundamental Churches of America.   Incarnational Sonship is a gross heresy.   By denying the Eternal Sonship affirmed in the Nicene Creed and deriving Christ's Sonship from the Incarnation it implicitly teaches Sabellianism by confusing the Persons of the Father and Holy Spirit, the Latter being the Agent in the Incarnation.   MacArthur has since recanted this view.

(3)       “It is finished” also has the sense of “paid in full”.

(4)       “Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification” (Rom. 4:25).   The parallel structure of the verse indicates the second “for” has the same sense as the first.

(5)       Proclaiming the Gospel is something done both by individual believers and by the Church collectively.   With regards to the Church it is a more formal Ministry than it is with the individual believer.   Proclaiming the Gospel is part of the Ministry of the Word which includes preaching in the sense of giving a sermon, teaching if that is distinguished from preaching, and even just the reading of the Scriptures.   The Ministry of Sacrament is another form of proclaiming the Gospel.    Unlike the Ministry of the Word, which involves Law as well and is the Ministry where the danger of confusing or mixing the two must especially be guarded against, the Ministry of Sacrament is pure Gospel.   In Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, the physical elements of water, bread, and wine become vessels through which the Word of the Gospel is conveyed tangibly.   The Absolution is another form of proclaiming the Gospel although it is a bit of a stretch to maintain that it is also another Sacrament as our Lutheran friends do seeing as there is not really a physical element comparable to water, bread, or wine.   It is part of the Ministry of the Keys, the Gospel Key that is the counterpart to the Discipline/Excommunication which is the Law Key, and as such belongs to the Apostolic Government of the Church.   Those who have inherited the errors of the Puritans, and specifically the Puritan error of associating the priestly office with the Law and the prophetic office with the Gospel - it is obviously the other way around, the prophetic office being all about rebuking people for sin, the priestly office being all about provision for forgiveness of sin – would regard the sacerdotal assertions in this footnote as legalistic.   Ironically, these also generally follow the Puritans in advising people to look to their own works for evidence of their election, which is another way of telling people to put their faith in their own works.   With regards to individual believers, proclaiming the Gospel is less of a formal Ministry and consists of verbal communication – although the quote attributed to St. Francis of Assisi (amusingly fact checkers assert he didn’t say it even though what they really mean is that no evidence exists from his own time that he said it which hardly constitutes proof of the negative assertion – they would be on firmer ground if they could find an alternative attribution) “Preach the Gospel at all times.  If necessary, use words” bears keeping in mind.   So does the similarly themed poem that includes the lines “The Gospel is written a chapter a day/In the deeds that you do and the words that you say/Men read what you write whether faithless or true/Say what is the Gospel according to you?”

 

The Bread of Life

 

The institution of the Eucharist is recorded in all three of the Synoptic Gospels. It took place towards the end of the Last Supper, the final Passover meal that Jesus ate with His Apostles before His betrayal, arrest, trial, and Crucifixion. The account of the institution is brief in each of these Gospels. Here is how St. Matthew tells it: 

And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body. And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. But I say unto you, I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom. (Matt. 26:26-29) 

Interestingly, the fourth Evangelist, who provides the longest account by far of the Last Supper – all of chapters thirteen and fourteen take place at the table, and a conversation which began there and continued as they went on their way to the Garden of Gethsemane occupies the next three chapters - omits any mention of the institution. Paradoxically, however, it is St. John who provides the fullest doctrine of the Eucharist earlier in his Gospel when He provides us with the Lord’s discourse on the bread of life in the aftermath of the feeding of the five thousand in the sixth chapter. There are those, of course, who would deny any connection between what the Lord has to say about eating His flesh and drinking His blood in that chapter and the Eucharist, but these merely illustrate the old saying that there is none so blind as he who refuses to see. To agree with them requires believing that on two separate occasions Jesus made reference to His flesh and blood as food and drink but meant something completely different by it each time. This is possible, perhaps, but hardly likely. While words can have different meanings in different contexts, this whole elaborate image of eating flesh and drinking blood, does not lend itself well to multiple uses. 

At the beginning of the sixth chapter of his Gospel, in introducing the account of the feeding of the five thousand, St. John notes that the Passover was approaching. While one wants to be wary of reading too much into details such as this, the fact of the matter is that an understanding of the Passover and how it relates to the significance of Jesus’s death is absolutely essential to making any sense out of the Eucharist. The orthodox Fathers were right and the Gnostic heretics very wrong indeed about the ongoing importance of the Old Testament for the Church under the New Covenant. 

The original Passover comes from the book of Exodus and from the central event that gave that book its title. The children of Israel, who had moved to Egypt in Joseph’s time, had grown to nationhood there but had been subjected to slavery. God, hearing the cries of the Israelites, had raised up Moses and sent him to speak to Pharaoh on His behalf to demand the release of His people. God sent a series of judgements of increasing intensity upon Egypt but each time Pharaoh hardened his heart and refused to let Israel go. Then, in one final judgement, He slew the firstborn of every household in Egypt, from Pharaoh’s down, prompting Pharaoh to not just let Israel go but to actively drive them out. The Israelites were instructed, on the night in which this was to take place, to take a lamb per every one or two households, depending upon their size, kill the lamb before the assembly of Israel, mark the sides and lintel of the door of their homes with the blood, and eat the flesh of the lamb. Those whose houses were so marked by the blood would be spared from the judgement on Egypt. The Israelites were commanded to repeat this on the anniversary of the event, the Ides of Nisan, perpetually. 

The Israelites, celebrating the Passover every year, looked back to how God had delivered them from bondage in Egypt. The Passover, however, and the deliverance it commemorates, also looked forward to the greater act of deliverance that would inaugurate the New Covenant promised in the Old. Just as the physical bondage of the Israelites in Egypt depicts the spiritual bondage to sin which has held the human race captive since the Fall, so the killing of the lamb depicts the death of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, Who offered Himself up as the one, true, and final sacrifice that would effectively remove man’s sin as a barrier between man and God. St. Paul, who in his epistle to the Hebrews explains how all Old Testament sacrifices are types of Christ and how Christ is the final sacrifice that once and for all accomplished what all previous sacrifices could only illustrate, spells this out in his first epistle to the Church in Corinth when he writes “For even Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us” (1 Cor. 5:7). 

This context is essential to understanding what the Lord was saying when He instituted the Eucharist, and in that context His words make perfect sense. After the lamb of the Old Passover was slain, and the protection of its blood was applied to the door of the home, the flesh of the lamb became the meal which the family ate. The Passover was not complete without the eating of the lamb. In the Eucharist, God offers the flesh and the blood of the “Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world” as food and drink, in a way that unites all the different sacrifices and offerings of the book of Leviticus. Read through the book of Leviticus and you will see what I mean. Apart from the various sacrifices and burnt offerings in which an animal was killed, there were grain offerings or oblations – called “meat offerings” in the Authorized Bible – of flour and oil, or of unleavened cakes made of the same, and drink offerings or libations of wine. Through the bread and wine of the Eucharist, corresponding to the oblations and libations of Leviticus, the flesh – and even the blood, which, of course, was never consumed in the Old Testament – of the one true Sacrifice become the food and drink which nourishes the souls and spirits of the faithful in perpetuity. 

When considering how the temporal shadows of the Old Testament depict the eternal verities revealed in the New – how anybody can read the eighth through the tenth chapters of Hebrews without recognizing that St. Paul was a Christian Platonist is beyond me – the differences are often as striking and significant as the correlations. We have noted one such difference already – that there was no drinking of the blood along with the eating of the flesh in the Old Testament, and, indeed, there was a strict prohibition of the consumption of blood which was the only dietary restriction to be carried over into the Church by the decree of the Apostolic Council at Jerusalem after the conversion of the Gentiles. The offering of the blood of Christ as drink through the wine of the Eucharist stands out, therefore, as the sole Scriptural exception to this rule. This, of course, corresponds to the most obvious way in which Christ’s one final and true sacrifice is the sole exception to the Scriptural prohibition on human sacrifice. 

There is only one example in the Old Testament of God commanding a human sacrifice. (1) That can be found in the twenty-second chapter of Genesis and is the familiar story in which Abraham is commanded to take his promised heir, Isaac, to Mount Moriah and sacrifice him. Abraham obeys the command, but is stopped from killing his son at the last minute by a voice speaking from heaven. This had been a test of Abraham’s faith, a test which he passed and was rewarded with a magnification of the promises of blessing which he had previously received in earlier chapters. Multiple allusions to Christ are evident in this chapter. Abraham, in answer to an inquiry from Isaac, expresses his faith and speaks prophetically when he says “God will provide Himself a lamb.” It is a ram, not a lamb, that is sacrificed later in the chapter, for the ultimate fulfilment of the prophecy awaited the coming of Christ, the Agnus Dei. In the repeated praise of Abraham because “thou hast done this thing, and not withheld thy son, thine only son” there is a hint of exactly how God would ultimately “provide Himself a lamb.” It is, of course, in the coming of Christ, that the promise that all the nations of the world would be blessed through Abraham is finally fulfilled. 

Elsewhere in the Old Testament human sacrifice is strictly prohibited. The Israelites are forbidden from practicing it in the Mosaic Law and are told that this is one of the abominations that is bringing divine judgement upon the nations that preceded them in Canaan. The apostasy that later brings the judgements of the Assyrian destruction of the Northern Kingdom and the Babylonian Captivity upon Israel involves their lapsing into pagan idolatry including human sacrifice. 

To understand why Christ’s sacrifice was acceptable and, indeed, the only truly efficacious sacrifice, when all other human sacrifice was condemned as abominable, it is helpful to observe the reversal of direction that occurs in the New Testament. Sacrifices in the Old Testament were called offerings. Whether the offering consisted of animals – lambs, rams, doves, etc. – flour and oil, or wine – it was something that the faithful brought to God. This was the ancient concept of a sacrifice. It was dutifully brought to the altar by the faithful as a tribute owed and dutifully offered up to the deity by the priest. The direction was always upward.  

While the sacrifice of Christ does fit this pattern when the participants are correctly identified, as we shall see momentarily, the New Testament sets it in the context of the Gospel where the overall direction runs the other way. Repeatedly in the New Testament Jesus Christ is depicted as God’s gift to mankind. The most beloved words in all of Scripture are “For God so loved the world that He gave His Only-Begotten Son that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” While the Incarnation as a whole is what is meant by the giving of God’s Son, that there is a focus on His death as the atoning sacrifice is evident from the verse that immediately precedes the one just quoted. 

In the old sense of the word sacrifice, a tribute which man offers to God, human sacrifice was an abomination. God repeatedly rejected even the sacrifices He Himself had ordained if they were offered in a wrong spirit, and He regarded the ritual slaying of other human beings as a crime crying out for His wrath and judgement. Christ’s death, insofar as it was an act for which other human beings were responsible, whether it be the disciple that betrayed Him, the religious leaders that conspired against Him, the Sanhedrin that unjustly condemned Him, the mob that howled for His Crucifixion, the Roman magistrate who knowing Him to be innocent signed His death warrant to appease said mob, or the soldiers who cruelly beat and crucified Him, was most certainly a crime. When God accepted it as the sacrifice to end all sacrifices, it was not as an offering from the hand of other men. The Victim Himself was the High Priest Who offered Himself on behalf of the sinful world, by knowingly and meekly submitting to this injustice. Indeed, since Jesus Christ was God as well as Man, He was simultaneously the Priest, Victim and the Recipient of the offering. 

This is why Christ’s sacrifice accomplished what no other sacrifice could do. Sinful man, bringing his tributes to God, had nothing to offer Him which could atone for his trespasses and rebellion. Only God Himself, Incarnate in the Person of Jesus Christ, could make such an offering and that offering was Himself. While Christ in His Crucifixion offered Himself up to God as the true sacrifice which took away the sins of the world, His having come into the world to do so was itself a gift in the other direction, from God, in His infinite goodness, mercy, and grace, to sinful man. 

This same reversal of direction can be seen in the Eucharist. In the Old Testament the grain offering was brought to the altar, a portion was burned, and the rest became bread reserved for the priests. The drink offering was poured out in its entirety upon the altar. Under the New Covenant, the bread and wine are consecrated at the altar, and then distributed among clergy and laity alike, as the means whereby the whole Church partakes of the Body and Blood of the true Paschal sacrifice, Jesus Christ. 

It seems incredible that anybody at all familiar with the Old Testament and the book of Hebrews could make the mistake of disconnecting Jesus’ discussion of Himself as the Bread of Life with its vivid imagery of eating His flesh and drinking His blood in the sixth chapter of St. John’s Gospel from the Eucharist and interpreting these references as meaning nothing more than the reception of the verbal communication of the Gospel message. It is not surprising, however, that those who do make this mistake are the same people who think that going to Church is an academic exercise in which the important and essential part is hearing a lecture, and everything else is just cosmetic trimmings, the less of which there are the better. Such people belong to the class of Protestant that we have had cause to consider in the context of other issues recently, who see their Protestantism as a rejection of the Catholic and not just the Roman. This kind of Protestantism always swings the pendulum too far in the opposite direction of Rome. Whereas the early Reformers, who merely rejected the Roman and not the Catholic, rightly took exception to the papacy’s claim that Christ’s sacrifice, clearly stated by St. Paul to have been offered up once and for all, is re-offered on the Eucharistic altar, this other kind of Protestant goes to the extreme of rejecting the Scriptural and Catholic doctrine that the faithful are fed in perpetuity by that Sacrifice through the Sacrament. Whereas Dr. Luther and the other Reformers rejected the papacy’s explanation, derived from Aristotelian philosophy, of the Sacramental Presence of Christ because it went too far and asserted the post-consecration absence of the bread and wine, this other kind of Protestant tends to reject the Sacramental Presence altogether, or to explain in in some way that is just as nonsensical as transubstantiation. 

What is truly puzzling is that in this present crisis in which Satan, through his demon-possessed minions among bureaucratic practitioners of the modern-day witchcraft of medical science, successfully shut down the Churches around the world back at the beginning of Lent and has kept them closed for months, allowing them to re-open only if they met insane and anti-Christian requirements such as restricting their numbers, which translates into the thoroughly unchristian practice of turning people away from Church, or admitting people only if they agree to wear the devil’s diaper on their face, the strongest opposition to all of this nonsense has come mostly from the kind of Protestant who believes the Bread of Life is communicated only verbally, and who thus logically ought to have the least objection to being forced to do everything online. 

Surely it is time for those with the Apostolic ministry who recognize that it is through the Eucharist that the Bread of Life is communicated to the faithful to speak out against this Satanic oppression. 

(1) However we understand Jephthah to have fulfilled his rash vow in the book of Judges, there is certainly no command from God that he sacrifice his daughter in the text.