5.23.26 – The Lord's Supper, Part 2

I ended our study yesterday with a question on people's minds. In Matthew's account, he adds the phrase "for the forgiveness of sins": "This is the blood of my covenant for the forgiveness of sins." The question people ask is, "Doesn't that prove this is the sin sacrifice?" Is Yeshua saying that blood for forgiveness means substitution? Penal substitution? Penalty paid? Transactional language? No. It means Jeremiah's language. Jeremiah 31—the very passage Yeshua invoked when he spoke of the new covenant—says, "I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more." Matthew points us to the prophetic promise of new covenant forgiveness (Jer. 31:31–34). We will return to this because it changes how we see John 1:29.

The Lord's Supper becomes sacramental. This is important. Even though suffering, blood, and death are in the background, the table's focus is never on death as payment. It focuses on covenant participation—the life made available through Messiah's life-giving blood. There is no altar, no slaughter at the table. The disciples are not sprinkling wine on one another. But Yeshua takes elements from the Last Supper meal and invests them with sacrificial meaning that resonates with those at the table: His disciples who understand the Pesach, the Passover lamb, and all its associations. So the bread becomes body, the cup becomes blood, and the meal becomes the way followers remember, participate in, and memorialize the meaning of His death and resurrection. Yeshua ritualizes this as His blood. He gives them a cup, not a corpse. He gives them participation. The focus is not on the spectacle of violence that will occur the following day. He gives them a meal of remembrance that carries the meaning of His death and resurrection to this day—to every one of us.

There is a strange reference at the table, which I mentioned in John. He does not say, "Look at this wine." He does much more. He does not say, "Here is the wine—remember it. Look upon it from a distance and remember me." He says, "Drink it." The wine is obviously symbolic, but the covenant transformation it signifies is as real as the blood from Sinai.

To see why you should choose this image, we go back to Exodus 24. Moses reads the words of the covenant, the people respond, he takes the blood of the offerings, and splits it on the altar and the people. Both sides are marked with blood. The blood bonds both sides with the same life substance. In Exodus 24, it touches the altar (representing God) and touches the people (representing the other part of the covenant). They are joined, bound, made one in covenant. That is what blood does there. It is not paying for anything or absorbing wrath. It bonds the people into a single covenant.

Now bring it to the table. He takes the cup, gives it to the disciples, and says, "This is the blood of my covenant" (Exodus 24). He is the covenant mediator (1 Tim. 2:5). They receive the cup; bonding happens again, but in a deeper mode. Moses sprinkled blood from the outside. Yeshua takes this cup of symbolic blood and tells them to internalize it. Drinking is participatory, not a form of sprinkling. The same covenantal function—bonding—is internalized. He could have said, "Look, here's the blood, think about it," or "Dip your finger and put some on your forehead." Instead, He said, "Drink it." It is an elevated bonding ritual inside this covenant. Drinking joins them, makes them participants in a deeper way.

The writer of Hebrews reads the Lord's Supper the same way. In Hebrews 9:19, he returns to the Exodus 24 ceremony. He says even the first covenant was not inaugurated without blood. Blood requires blood inauguration. Blood is life given over for covenant mediation. Death is the access point. Death is necessary, but not because sacrifice glorifies death. Death releases the lifeblood through which covenant access is established. Blood is the operative covenantal medium. Hebrews insists blood inaugurates the new covenant, but not animal blood—the blood of the Son. That distinction is the entire reason the new covenant can do what the old could not. Animal blood could mark, bond, inaugurate the Sinai covenant, purify the sanctuary, and ordain priests—covenantal work—but it could not finally accomplish what the prophet promised. It could not write the Torah on the heart, give the Spirit, forgive grave sin, or bring the new covenant. Why? Because animal blood is not the life of the tzaddik (righteous one).

Go back to part one of this Counting of the Omer series: the chen (grace/favor) of the righteous one, the merits of the faithful mediator, the standing before God earned through demonstrated faithfulness and binding connection to the people. Moses had that chen. The high priest had it functionally when he was worthy. But Moses died; the high priest died. Their chen could never do this. Yeshua's chen is different. His standing before the Father is demonstrated through His perfect life of complete faithfulness. In Paul's language, the fullness of deity dwells bodily (Col. 2:9). His blood—in the language of these past 48 days—is the life of the chen-bearing tzaddik through whom God's people meet.

The new covenant required something beyond animal blood. (Remember, there is no actual blood in the cup—Leviticus 17:10–12 prohibits that.) This is why one of the weirdest verses in the New Testament can now be understood. John 6 stops sounding like cannibalism: "Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood..." That is strange, isn't it? People have wrestled with it. The disciples were confused. But after the supper—after seeing Yeshua as the shelamim (peace offering)—as the Passover lamb whose meal the people share, as the tzaddik through whom God's life is given—John 6 looks different. It is the same logic Yeshua gives at the table, given in advance. Now it is realized at the table. His people participate in His life. They receive it. They abide in Him; He abides in them. The point is union, communion, participation in the life of the Son. The lamb gives life to the people; the people receive life. The cup was not the cup of divine rage. The cup is the cup of covenant life. Paul says exactly this: "The cup of blessing that we bless, isn't it a sharing in the blood of the Messiah? The bread we break, isn't it a sharing in the body of Messiah?" The word sharing is koinōnia—participation, communion, fellowship, shared life. Paul does not say the cup reminds us that blood existed. He says the cup is participation in the life-giving blood of the Messiah—present tense, active, real, right now, today.

That is the world of the shelamim, which is what Passover was: the worshiper shares the holy meal; the table bonds the worshiper to God and community. It is not just mental reflection; you are supposed to do something. Covenant participation—that is the Lord's Supper. It is a covenant meal joining God to people through the Son and joining people to one another. Listen to all that bonding. There is a metaphysical transformation—a real change of status, access, identity, and relationship before God. The blood marks the Israelites as covenant people. It ordains Aaron and his sons; they are marked for priestly service. In the restoration of the metzora (the leper), blood is applied as part of his movement from near-death to life. In each case, blood does not communicate punishment. It communicates access, belonging, consecration, and transformed status. Something changes. A person who cannot enter now can enter. Slaves become covenant people. A man not functioning in priestly service is ordained to enter God's holy space. This is a metaphysical transformation, and that is what the Lord's Supper does for you and for us.

In Messiah, we are a new creation (2 Cor. 5:17). We are redeemed from death, washed with water, forgiven of grave sin, and receive the Spirit. The Torah is written on our hearts. We are marked as covenant people. Every time we take the bread and the cup, we are not re-crucifying Jesus; we are remembering and participating in the covenant reality that His death and resurrection have brought to transform us. And yes, it is proleptic. We taste now what will be complete then. We participate now in the life that will one day fill creation. Holy again (Jer. 31:33–34; Rom. 4:17; 11:25–27).

Now we come back to John 1:29, because John does not only say, "Behold the Lamb of God." He also says, "who takes away the sin of the world." That raises the question we will address tomorrow.

Shabbat Shalom!
Alan