A Ransom Meal

The Lord has prepared a Table for us, and this Table is like all His other works—beyond marvelous. The Table is set simply—red wine and simple bread.

The Lord teaches us that this bread represents His body, broken for us. This wine represents His blood, shed for us. His physical body was broken outside Jerusalem two thousand years ago, but His mystical body is gathered here in this room. We are knit more closely together in that body as we, in love, partake of these elements that are, strictly speaking, not His body. But we are, strictly speaking, His body, and He is the Head of it.

The Bible also teaches that the body and blood of the Lord was a ransom payment (Mark 10:45; 1 Tim. 2:6). This payment was made, not to the devil, but rather to the holy wrath of the Father. This is how we were redeemed. “Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot” (1 Pet. 1:18-19). So Jesus Christ died as a propitiation, turning aside the wrath that we entirely deserved (1 John 2:1-2).
But then, when God the Father received this payment, what did He do with it? He received what Jesus presented to Him in the courts of Heaven, and then He made a meal out of it. Not only so, but the meal is a celebratory meal, a meal of thanksgiving, a meal of Eucharistic thanks. There is no better evidence of the fact that the sting of death is over and done, that the curse of the law has passed far away from us, as far as the east is from the west. Think of it. The ransom payment was made, God’s wrath was satisfied, and then God prepared a meal out of the ransom payment, and told the ransomed to eat it in the fullness of gratitude.

So come, and welcome, to Jesus Christ.