We have seen that the cup of the Lord’s table signifies His blood. In the Old Testament there was a prohibition against drinking blood (Gen. 9:4; Lev. 17:10). In God’s economy there is only one kind of blood that is good for us to drink, and that is the blood of the Lord Jesus. In principle, drinking the blood is the same as eating the loaf: whatever we drink saturates us and becomes our being.
The body of the Lord Jesus is signified by the loaf, the bread, and His blood is signified by the cup with its content. Here is a picture of the Lord’s blood separated from His body. This separation signifies death. Hence, in 1 Corinthians 11:26 Paul says, “As often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you declare the Lord’s death until He comes.” The Greek word rendered “declare” means that we proclaim, announce, display, the Lord’s death. To take the Lord’s supper is to declare and display the Lord’s death.
In order for the Lord Jesus to become our food, entering into us as our life supply, it was necessary for Him to pass through death. If He had not been crucified, He could not be our food.
Much of the food we eat day by day must first be put to death. For example, before you can eat a chicken, that chicken must be slain. Eating a chicken requires the death of the chicken. In like manner, in order for us to eat Him, the Lord Jesus had to die. Whenever we eat the bread and drink the cup of the Lord’s table, we declare the Lord’s death.
We have seen that the Lord’s table signifies the Lord Himself, His death, His resurrection, and His mystical Body as His increase. How is the Lord’s table related to His resurrection? We may say that whenever we eat the Lord and digest and assimilate Him as our life supply, we experience an inward resurrection. We may use eating physical food as an illustration. Often before dinnertime I am tired and weak. But after eating a nourishing meal, I am revived. I would even say that I am “resurrected.” The food I eat contains a life element that causes me to be revived. In a similar way, when we eat the Lord Jesus, He becomes the resurrection life within us.
The bread of the Lord’s table also signifies Christ’s mystical Body as His enlargement. This enlargement is for the producing of the new man. In addition, it is also a matter of the development of the seed, the gene, of the kingdom.
In chapter four of Mark we have the seed of the kingdom, but eventually we shall have the full development, the manifestation, of the kingdom, and its full development will be the full growth of the new man. This means that eventually the new man will be the kingdom of God.
Furthermore, the kingdom of God is certainly not a matter of organization. No, in its totality the kingdom of God is an organism, the new man, produced by Christ’s replacing us through His death and resurrection. How marvelous! If we see this, we shall realize that as the Lord was instituting His supper in Mark 14, He was preparing the disciples to receive His death and resurrection.