Hunger for the Real Thing

This is a meal, and physically speaking it is a very plain meal. We have simple bread and red wine set before us. At the same time, you are invited to get a great deal out of it. You are summoned to feed upon Christ here, and all that Christ contains—and He is infinite—is available to you here. How can this be?

The best way to understand this is through our proverb hunger is the best sauce. Because this is a spiritual meal, and not an ordinary one, that hunger must be a spiritual hunger. The Lord instructs us that those who hunger and thirst for righteousness shall be filled (Matt. 5:6). What a glorious promise.

Notice that He places no limit on this. If we hunger and thirst for righteousness—the real thing—there is no such thing as gluttony. Over-indulgence is an impossibility. We may have as much as we want.

When the preacher in Ecclesiastes tells us not to be righteous over-much (Ecc. 7:16), he is not talking about an acceptance of infinite joy. He is there speaking of the petty fastidiousness that we frequently display in the name of religion, with biblical justifications gummed on the outside of it. Whenever we are overly-righteous it is because we have slapped together some kind of cardboard cut-out morality meant to approximate the glory of the Godhead, and the fact that we fail to represent Him (and fail spectacularly) should come as no surprise.

But here is the bread of life. The more you eat, the more you are filled, and the more you are filled, the more you are able to eat. Here is an infinite amount of the most intoxicating wine that ever was, and the more you drink it, the more sober-minded and clear-headed you become.

So come, and welcome, to Jesus Christ.