The little word “Until” is very important. Unlike the press, giving yesterday’s news, UNTIL speaks of the future, and the certainty of prophesied events. In this series we shall have a look at a few important references where “Until” occurs.
Part 1. For as often as you eat this bread, and drink this cup, you declare the Lord’s death till He come.
The gruesome spectacle of our Lord’s crucifixion and death is not something we like to dwell upon as we read the accounts in the Gospels. Some find they cannot watch this sequence in films such as “The Passion”. This is understandable. But there is great majesty connected with our Lord’s death because it represents the greatest victory ever achieved on earth by any human being. It was the Lord’s last victorious cry as He succumbed to death – “It is finished!” In other words He was saying, “I came to this earth for one reason, to give my life for the sins of the world, and now I have achieved what I came to do. It is finished. My task has been completed.”
It was because of this great victory that He was raised from the dead by the power of the Father, to declare to all the world that His death had been the instrument to bring salvation to mankind. But nowhere are we enjoined to perpetually remember His resurrection in the same way, only His death.
Flesh and blood, bread and wine, symbols of His death. Whenever we join together to break bread we make a declaration, a statement witnessed in heaven by the angels, and also the Satanic hierarchy, to the greatness of His victory.
“As often” surely cannot be equated with “as infrequently”. Some Christian groups only remember the Lord once a year. Others, once a month. Yet others each week when gathering for worship and fellowship. In the early church we are told that they “broke bread daily from house to house”. Someone living alone can do so daily at breakfast, remembering that he is part of a global church, and his membership within it. Each to his own persuasion.
“Till He come.” This is the prophesied end point of the series of remembrances. If we have been identified with Jesus’ death, we shall also be raised by the power of the Father to eternal life. As Paul put it when writing to the Philippians, “That I may know the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable to His death . . . . (until) . . . . the prize of the calling on high.”
