In 1 Corinthians 10:16-17 and 21 Christ is unveiled as the contents of the Lord’s table. These verses reveal that His blood and His body, which compose the Lord’s table, are for the believers’ fellowship, which signifies that the many believers are one bread, one Body.
In 1 Corinthians 10:16 Paul says, “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the fellowship of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the fellowship of the body of Christ?” Here the word fellowship refers to the believers’ communion in the joint participation in the blood and body of Christ. This makes us, the participants in the Lord’s blood and body, not only one with one another but also one with the Lord. We, the participants, make ourselves identified with the Lord in the fellowship of His blood and body. The apostle’s thought here is to illustrate how eating and drinking make the eaters and drinkers one with what they eat and drink.
The believers’ fellowship implies their mutual enjoyment of Christ by eating and drinking Christ. In ancient times, when people gathered together for fellowship, they feasted by eating and drinking. The children of Israel brought their produce of the good land to the feast, offered it to God, and feasted with God and with one another for their enjoyment. Likewise, the Lord’s table is the Lord’s feast. When we come to the Lord’s table, we come to a feast of two courses, His blood and His body, both of which are for the believers’ fellowship.
The fellowship of the blood and the body of Christ implies that Christ’s blood is separate from His body, indicating that it is now possible for us to feast on Him. In order to become our feast, Christ, the Son of God, had to be processed. In verse 16 we see that His blood and His body are now on the table, a place of feasting. This implies that Christ has been incarnated, crucified, and resurrected. If Christ had not been incarnated, He could not have blood and a body. If He had not been crucified, His blood could not be separated from His body. If He had not been resurrected, He could not be on the table as our food. In other words, through incarnation Christ put on a human body with blood and flesh (Heb. 2:14), through crucifixion His blood was separated from His body (John 6:53-55), and in resurrection He is served to us on the table as a feast for our nourishment and enjoyment. Therefore, on the table we see Christ’s incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection.
When the Lord Jesus ate with His disciples and established the table, He “took bread and blessed it, and He broke it and gave it to the disciples and said, Take, eat; this is My body” (Matt. 26:26). Then taking the cup and giving thanks, “He gave it to them, saying, Drink of it, all of you” (v. 27). By speaking in this way concerning His body and blood, the Lord is presenting Himself to us for our enjoyment. He gives Himself to us as our food supply so that we may enjoy Him. Christ, the all-inclusive One, has given His body for us to eat and His blood for us to drink. He has given us Himself so that we may partake of Him and enjoy Him by eating and drinking Him.
As the all-inclusive One who presents Himself to us for our enjoyment, Christ is the embodiment of the Triune God—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. He is God incarnate, the One who lived on earth as a man for thirty-three and a half years, who died on the cross to terminate the old creation, who resurrected physically and spiritually, and who became through resurrection the life-giving Spirit. Today the One who presents His body and blood to us is Christ as the life-giving Spirit. This wonderful Christ is everything to us for our enjoyment. All that He is, is for our participation and enjoyment.
The Lord’s table with the blood and body of Christ is the reality of Christ as the good land. The table is signified by the good land, which was a table to the children of Israel. When they were dwelling in the good land, they feasted on the table enjoying all the rich produce of the land. The various aspects of the produce of the land are types of the riches of Christ. Furthermore, Christ Himself is to us, the New Testament believers, the good land as the table. Therefore, whenever we come to the Lord’s table to enjoy Christ as the all-inclusive One, in our experience we are in the good land, enjoying the riches of the land. This means that the good land has become a table, a feast, for our enjoyment. At this table, this feast, both God and we are satisfied. The table is a feast for our enjoyment. To come to the table is to enjoy Christ as the good land.
To eat the body of Christ is to have fellowship with Christ. It is to participate in Christ and to become one with Him. The Lord’s table is the true enjoyment of the Lord Himself. The Lord’s table is not only a matter of meeting on the Lord’s Day; this table should be our enjoyment every day, even continually. Day by day the Lord is our good land, our feast, our table. Christ is our table, our feast, and our land. As the good land, Christ is a rich feast for our enjoyment.
God in Christ is edible and drinkable; He is good for food and drink. Thus, we can eat Him, drink Him, and enjoy Him.
At this juncture, we need to consider that the entire Bible is a book of eating and drinking. From beginning to end, the Bible reveals the matter of eating and drinking the Lord. In Genesis 2 God presented Himself as the tree of life (v. 9). The first commandment God gave to man concerned man’s eating. Jehovah God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may eat freely, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, of it you shall not eat; for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (vv. 16-17). According to this commandment, man must eat rightly; that is, man must eat God as the tree of life. If man eats wrongly, that is, if he eats the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he will die.
Exodus 12 reveals that at the passover the children of Israel held a feast, through which they were saved by eating the passover lamb. When considering the passover, many Christians pay attention only to the striking of the blood of the lamb on the doorpost, which caused the judgment of God to pass over the children of Israel. They are familiar with verse 13, which says, “When I see the blood, I will pass over you,” yet they overlook verse 8, which says, “They shall eat the flesh in that night.” They neglect the fact that along with the striking of the blood there was the eating of the flesh of the lamb; that is, after striking the blood on the doorpost, the children of Israel ate the flesh of the lamb. It was through eating the flesh of the lamb that they obtained energy to walk out of Egypt and to pass through the Red Sea. Christ as our Passover is a feast that saves us, a feast in which we eat Him as the Passover lamb. As the Passover lamb, Christ has two elements—the blood for redeeming and the flesh for feeding. The blood of the passover lamb, which signifies the precious blood of Christ, is for our redemption; the flesh of the passover lamb, which signifies the divine life of Christ, is for our satisfaction. As the Passover lamb, He not only redeemed us but also satisfies us.
Leviticus goes on to show that nearly all the offerings that were presented to God were food not only for God but also for His serving ones, the priests (2:3, 10; 6:16-18, 26; 7:6-7, 14-15, 31-34). The priests were destined to live by these offerings, because they ate what they offered to God. The offerings are types of Christ; as the Lamb of God (John 1:29), Christ is the totality, the aggregate, of all the offerings (Heb. 10:5-10). The offerings signify God in Christ for us to enjoy and even to eat, digest, and assimilate that we may be mingled with God. As the priests, we must eat Christ as the offerings for our priestly diet (1 Pet. 2:5). The more we enjoy Christ as such a diet, the more we will be nourished, qualified, strengthened, and supported to serve God in a priestly way.
Psalm 36:8-9 also unveils that we may eat Christ as the fatness of God’s house and drink the Spirit as the river of God’s pleasure. “They are saturated with the fatness of Your house, / And You cause them to drink of the river of Your pleasures. For with You is the fountain of life; / In Your light we see light.” Figuratively, fatness means abundance; specifically, the word refers to the (fatty) ashes of sacrifices (Strong). Thus, the fatness of God’s house comes from the sacrifices, the offerings, all of which typify the all-inclusive Christ (Heb. 10:5-10). The fatness of God’s house, therefore, refers to the riches of Christ (Eph. 3:8). The fatty ashes of the offerings are the signs of Christ’s accomplishment through His death (cf. footnotes 121 in Lev. 4 and 101 in Lev. 6, Recovery Version). Psalm 36:8-9 reveals the Divine Trinity in His divine dispensing as the enjoyment of God’s people in His house. The fatness refers to Christ, the Son; the river of the divine pleasures, to the Spirit as the river of water of life (John 7:37-39; Rev. 22:1); and the fountain of life and light (Psa. 36:9), to the Father as the source of life and light (John 1:4; 1 John 1:5; Rev. 21:23; 22:1-2, 5). These verses indicate that the entire Bible was written according to the controlling vision that the Triune God is working Himself into His chosen and redeemed people to be their life and life supply in order to saturate their entire being with the Divine Trinity, that is, with the Father as the fountain, the Son as the fatness, and the Spirit as the river.
In the New Testament the Lord Jesus called people to come to Him both to eat Him as the bread of life and to drink Him as the living water. In John 6 the Lord Jesus said, “I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me shall by no means hunger” (v. 35). He went on to say, “He who eats Me, he also shall live because of Me” (v. 57). In John 7 the Lord cried out, saying, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes into Me, as the Scripture said, out of his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water. But this He said concerning the Spirit” (vv. 37-39).
The tree of life is mentioned not only at the beginning of the Bible, in Genesis; it is also mentioned at the end of the Bible, in Revelation. In Revelation 2:7 the Lord unveils Himself as the tree of life in the Paradise of God for God’s people to eat in order to become the overcomers. “To him who overcomes, to him I will give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the Paradise of God.” The Paradise of God in this verse is the New Jerusalem (3:12; 21:2, 10; 22:1-2, 14, 19), of which the church is a foretaste today. We are enjoying the crucified and resurrected Christ as the tree of life, the food supply in our spirit, as a foretaste today in the church. If we daily enjoy Christ as the tree of life, we will be overcoming Christians.
In keeping with the divine revelation in the entire Bible concerning eating and drinking Christ, we need to experience and enjoy Christ by eating and drinking Him day by day and moment by moment. Otherwise, we will become religious Christians who merely have forms, regulations, and teachings yet do not have practical and personal enjoyment of Christ. What we need is not mere forms, rituals, or teachings but a living Christ Himself who is edible and drinkable. We should know that Christ is edible, drinkable, and enjoyable, and we must all eat and drink Him. Eating and drinking Him is a crucial aspect of our experience and enjoyment of Christ.