'Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us. Wherefore let us keep the
feast.' It is very remarkable that this is the only place in Paul's
writings where he articulately pronounces that the Paschal Lamb is a
type of Jesus Christ. There is only one other instance in the New
Testament where that is stated with equal clearness and emphasis, and
that is in John's account of the Crucifixion, where he recognises the
fact that Christ died with limbs unbroken, as being a fulfilment, in
the New Testament sense of that word, of what was enjoined in regard
to the antitype, 'a bone of him shall not be broken.'
But whilst the definite statement which precedes my text that Christ
is 'our Passover,' and 'sacrificed for us' as such, is unique in
Paul's writings, the thought to which it gives clear and crystallised
expression runs through the whole of the New Testament. It underlies
the Lord's Supper. Did you ever think of how great was the
self-assertion of Jesus Christ when He laid His hand on that
sacredest of Jewish rites, which had been established, as the words
of the institution of it say, to be 'a perpetual memorial through all
generations,' brushed it on one side, and in effect, said: 'You do
not need to remember the Passover any more. I am the true Paschal
Lamb, whose blood sprinkled on the doorposts averts the sword of the
destroying Angel, whose flesh, partaken of, gives immortal life.
Remember Me, and this do in remembrance of Me.' The Lord's Supper
witnesses that Jesus thought Himself to be what Paul tells the
Corinthians that He is, even our Passover, sacrificed for us. But the
point to be observed is this, that just as in that ancient ritual,
the lamb slain became the food of the Israelites, so with us the
Christ who has died is to be the sustenance of our souls, and of our
Christian life. 'Therefore let us keep the feast.'
Feed upon Him; that is the essential central requirement for all
Christian life, and what does feeding on Him mean? 'How can this man
give us his flesh to eat?' said the Jews, and the answer is plain
now, though so obscure then. The flesh which He gave for the life of
the world in His death, must by us be taken for the very nourishment
of our souls, by the simple act of faith in Him. That is the feeding
which brings not only sustenance but life. Christ's death for us is
the basis, but it is only the basis, of Christ's living in us, and
His death for me is of no use at all to me unless He that died for me
lives in me. We feed on Him by faith, which not only trusts to the
Sacrifice as atoning for sin, but feeds on it as communicating and
sustaining eternal life--'Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us,
wherefore let us keep the Feast.'
Again, we keep the feast when our minds feed upon Christ by
contemplation of what He is, what He has done, what He is doing, what
He will do; when we take Him as 'the Master-light of all our seeing,'
and in Him, His words and works, His Passion, Resurrection,
Ascension, Session as Sovereign at the right hand of God, find the
perfect revelation of what God is, the perfect discovery of what man
is, the perfect disclosure of what sin is, the perfect prophecy of
what man may become, the Light of light, the answer to every question
that our spirits can put about the loftiest verities of God and man,
the universe and the future. We feed on Christ when, with lowly
submission, we habitually subject thoughts, purposes, desires, to His
authority, and when we let His will flow into, and make plastic and
supple, our wills. We nourish our wills by submitting them to Jesus,
and we feed on Him when we not only say 'Lord! Lord!' but when we do
the things that He says. We feed on Christ, when we let His great,
sacred, all-wise, all-giving, all satisfying love flow into our
restless hearts and make them still, enter into our vagrant
affections and fix them on Himself. Thus when mind and conscience and
will and heart all turn to Jesus, and in Him find their sustenance,
we shall be filled with the feast of fat things which He has prepared
for all people. With that bread we shall be satisfied, and with it
only, for the husks of the swine are no food for the Father's son,
and we 'spend our money for that which is not bread, and our labour
for that which satisfieth not,' if we look anywhere else than to the
Paschal Lamb slain for us for the food of our souls.