We are the bride of Jesus Christ, and we are in the process of being knit together with Him, bone of His bone and flesh of His flesh.
This glorious and supernatural process is being accomplished by the Holy Spirit and the Word, the Holy Spirit and the sacrament. There are things being accomplished here by the Spirit which the natural man cannot and will not comprehend. The doctrine is so great that we cannot grasp the entirety of it at any one moment. Rather, God stoops for us, and gives us first this truth, then that one; first, this flavor, then that one; first, this taste, then that one.
We are joined to Christ on the basis of His death—which is why we have the signs of bread and wine, body and blood—but we are being joined in fact to a living Christ. We are being knit together with our living and resurrected Lord. We do not feed upon a dead body; rather, we are joined together with Him in the power of an indestructible life, and we are being built up into that life.
The grapes that made this wine were once alive, but now they are dead. The grain that made this bread was once alive but now it is dead. This is the mystery of physical eating. Life, death, and then another life sustained. But there is a contrast. In this Supper, we eat spiritually, by faith, but in the eating we partake of that which is alive, alive forevermore. Because Christ has died, once for all, death no more has dominion over Him. This is a table, not a tomb. Because of His death, and the power of His resurrection, and the nature of that resurrection, we are privileged by God’s grace to eat life itself. And in having us do this, God is bringing us up into that life, fitting us for it. What we are eating is what we are becoming—truly alive.