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Bread
In Lewis Sperry Chafer's Systematic Theology, he calls bread "the staff
of life," the most universal and the most complete article of human
food. So, when referenced in the Bible, bread is the symbol
of God's supply for human needs. Therefore, bread has been
considered a sacred element, even by the Egyptians. For the
Jews, bread sustained a typical significance, but to the Christian, it is symbolic.
The Staff of Life
The Bible uses the term "bread" to indicate physical nourishment in
general. In "Genesis 3:19, God said to Adam, "By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food (bread)." The word bread occurs
twenty-five times in the book of Genesis and over a hundred times in
the Pentateuch. In Exodus 16:4, manna was bread which God
rained down from heaven for Israel. In Old Testament times,
bread was often the only item of food. Because of these facts
nothing could serve better than bread as a symbol of God's care.
The Typical Significance
The best examples of the typical significance of bread are the wave
loaves, which were waved before God during the Feast of Pentecost
(Leviticus 23:17-20). The antitype is the Church as seen by
God ever since her beginning on the Day of Pentecost. The
feast which immediately preceded Pentecost in Israel's calendar was the
Feast of First-Fruits, and it anticipated Christ in His
resurrection. He became indeed the First-Fruits of those who
slept (1 Corinthians. 15:20). In God's perfect order, the
Feast of Pentecost occurred just fifty days after the Feast of
First-Fruits. This careful measurement is indicated by the
words in Acts 2: 1, "And when the day of Pentecost was fully
come." On this succession of feasts and the meaning of the
wave loaves, Dr. C. I. Scofield wrote, "The feast of Pentecost,
(Leviticus) vs. 15-22. The anti-type is the descent of the
Holy Spirit to form the church. For this reason leaven is
present, because there is evil in the church (Matthew. 13:33; Acts 5:1,
10; 15:1). It is now loaves, not a sheaf of separate growths
loosely bound together, but a real union of particles making one
homogeneous body. The descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost
united the separate disciples into one organism (1 Corinthians. 10:16,
17; 12: 12, 13, 20). The wave-loaves were offered fifty days
after the wave-sheaf. This is precisely the period between
the resurrection of Christ and the formation of the church at Pentecost
by the baptism of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:1-4; 1 Cor. 12:12,
13). With the wave-sheaf no leaven was offered, for there was
no evil in Christ; but the wave-loaves, typifying the church, are
'baked with leaven,' for in the church there is still evil" (Scofield
Reference Bible, pp. 156-57).
Christ said that He was the Bread which came down from heaven (John
6:41), and that His flesh must be eaten and His blood must be drunk in
order to receive eternal life (John 6:48-58). In John 6:63,
He said, "The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they
are life," and He explained that He is referring to spiritual rather
than physical realities. In John 6:60, the people said, "This
is a hard saying; who can hear it?" However, Christ also
declared that this same gift of eternal life is conditional based upon
believing on Him (John 6:47). In John 6:29, He said, "This is
the work of God, that you believe on him whom he has sent."
Also, in John 6:37, He said, "All those the Father gives me will come
to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away." It
follows then that the demand for His flesh to be eaten and His blood to
be drunk is an intensified and realistic figure pointing to the actual
reception of Christ as Savior. This figure of speech or
intensification of truth corrects the error that to believe upon Christ
means no more than an acknowledgment of the historical fact of Christ,
including the worthy purpose of His life and death. Saving
faith can be exercised only if there is Spirit-wrought vision and
understanding and if the individual becomes committed to Him as a
living Savior. It is one thing to believe that Christ
represents all He claimed to be, but it's another thing to depend upon
Him with complete abandonment for a personal salvation. The
true believer can say with Peter, "Lord, to whom shall we go?
You have the words of eternal life" (John 6: 68). This
testimony becomes clear evidence of the kind of confidence which rests
in Christ alone. Just as food and drink must be received in
order to sustain physical life, Christ must be received in order to
sustain spiritual life.
This is why Christ chose bread as the symbol of His flesh, as if
something to be eaten; and, wine, "the blood of grapes," as the symbol
of His blood. It is in Jacob's prophecy of Judah that this
passage about "the blood of grapes" occurs. Genesis 49:11
says, "He will tether his donkey to a vine, his colt to the choicest
branch; he will wash his garments in wine, his robes in the blood of
grapes." Also, Genesis 14:18 says that Melchizedek met
Abraham and "brought forth bread and wine," using symbols of a
completed redemption. In John 8:56, Christ said, "Abraham
rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad. Abraham
was the sole example of the outworking of grace as seen in the New
Testament; and, Abraham, being "born out of due time," saw the finished
work of Christ and was saved in the same way in which all are
saved. The receiving of the bread and wine speaks of
redemption and also of a constant appropriation of Christ as the branch
draws upon the vine. Also the breaking of bread is a
testimony directly to Christ respecting this vital dependence upon
Him.
Owen Weber 2012
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