This Do In Remembrance Of Me

AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE BREAKING OF BREAD, IN JERSEY CITY, OCTOBER 27, 1889, BY J. U. ROBERTSON

Paul furnishes us with the key to unlock the mystery hidden in the symbols before us—the bread and the wine—in the words, "For as often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup ye do shew the Lord's death until he come." These things consequently are the memorials of Christ's death. They have a meaning of the most important and significant character, and are, without doubt, fitly and appositely chosen to declare it. That meaning is the whole essence, the true cause, the only reason of our coming together around the table. It is therefore necessary that we know and understand it perfectly.

We have two things, the bread and the wine, chosen to represent the death of Christ; and from Christ's own lips, as recorded by Luke xxii: 19, 20, we have the relation which they sustain to that death expressed in the words: "And he took bread and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, "This is my body which is given for you; this do in remembrance of me.” Likewise also the cup after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is shed for you." From this we perceive that the bread represents the body, and the wine the blood of Christ, who delivered this ordinance on the night that he became the Passover Lamb in reality and in truth. "This do in remembrance of me" is what Christ commanded, and Paul's words, already quoted, declare that remembrance to be of the Lord's death; so that we are left without any occasion to doubt concerning the thing that Christ requires us to remember; and that thing is his sacrificial death.

Why did Christ die? is the question that now arises from these premises. The answer which we get is expressed in a variety of ways, but they all have the same meaning and intent. He died as a sacrifice. "He was brought as a lamb to the slaughter." He was "cut off out of the land of the living."' He was put to death by violence in the midst of his days," as a divine condemnation of sinful flesh, or the fleshly nature which he inherited by his descent from Adam. By his violent death God condemned in a judicial manner in the flesh. Christ died unto, or for, or because of sin. Yet he himself was no transgressor, he had done no violence, “neither was deceit found in his mouth." He was holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, blameless, and, though tempted in all points like any of the children of Adam, sinless—a lamb in fact without, spot or blemish, a partaker of flesh and blood, a member of the Adamic family, made of a woman, made under the law, yet perfectly righteous, because of his implicit obedience to the commands of God. The creation of such a man was the direct act of God for the redemption and manifestation of that Seed which he had promised to Abraham, and which He had said should be as numerous as the stars of heaven,

The divinely created and inspired being, Christ Jesus, in whom the Father dwelt by his spirit in unmeasured fullness, and who therefore was in the form and character of God—His beloved Son, and the Man, my Fellow—nevertheless was found in the fashion of men, that is, in a nature condemned to a death from which there was no possible escape. The law of death, which came by sin, under which he was made, claimed him, and he had no alternative but to render his body up to its dominion. He had to die to satisfy its inexorable claim upon himself. Therefore he "humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.'' And when he gave up the spirit, and there hanged upon the accursed tree, outside the gate of Jerusalem, the lifeless body of Jesus of Nazareth, all the demands of that law which was promulgated in Eden were satisfied, not only for Christ himself, but for all men. Sin's flesh impaled upon the cross was lifted up in the sight of all the world; its condemnation was complete; and God's faithful decree pronounced upon Adam after his transgression of death for sin was, in the person of Jesus Christ, confirmed, and at the same time made of no further effect for such as should become partakers of Christ.

Christ died unto sin once and for all, but because of his perfect righteousness God raised him from the dead, and made him the beginning of a new creation. Being raised from the dead he dieth no more, death hath no more dominion over him, for he has become a partaker of the divine nature, and is alive for evermore.

Not only did Christ die to obtain eternal salvation for himself, but he also died to redeem others from the curse of death, and it is this aspect of the matter which especially concerns us when we shew forth the Lord’s death, until he come. It is our own interest in that death, our relation to, and connection with it which enables us to commemorate it truly and without condemnation to ourselves. In that discourse which is recorded in the sixth chapter of John we have from the lips of Jesus himself precise information on this most important matter. He said to the people who followed him, after the occasion when he had fed them in the wilderness by a miracle, “My Father giveth you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world. Then said they unto him, Lord, evermore give us this bread. And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life; he that cometh to me shall ever hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst. But I said unto you, That ye also have seen me, and believe not. All that the Father giveth me shall come to me, and he that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. For I came down from heaven not to do my will, but the will of him that sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day. And this is the will of him who sent me, that every one that seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life, and I will raise him up at the last day.”

The principal point and feature of this brief, yet pregnant address is the ascription of all the power and all the glory of the work of redemption to the Father. “My Father giveth you the true bread from heaven.” “The bread of God is he who cometh down from heaven and giveth life unto the world.” “All that the Father giveth me shall come unto me.” The Eternal Spirit, who is the Alpha and the Omega of the universe, the Diviser and Doer of every thing in it, which is to continue forever, is the Saviour of mankind. He is the Master Workman, up rearing a living temple, silently, unperceived by the world, according to the good purpose of his own will. Jesus of Nazareth was his willing, eager, enlightened instrument, and yet more than a mere instrument, for he was the intimate and beloved associate, the only begotten Son of the Eternal Father. He came to do his Father’s will, and that will only. But there is more than this here: Jesus was filled with the Spirit of the Father in unmeasured fullness. God dwelt in him, and God is the speaker of these words, which are so incomprehensible to the dwellers in the “unmeasured court of the Gentiles.” All the utterances of Christ when announcing doctrine are the words of the Almighty Maker of all things. In explaining these hard sayings to his disciples afterwards he said to them, “The words that I speak unto you they are spirit and they are life.” And in his prayer, in the presence of the eleven on the night of his betrayal, he says, “I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me.” The testimony of John the Baptist concerning Christ was, “He whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God, for God giveth not the spirit by measure unto him.” These things, therefore, spoken by Jesus were the words of God, conveying a meaning which it is life to know. To the multitude, whose ears were sealed, whose mental condition was profound darkness, unlit by a single gleam of light, these precious, infinitely precious, word were foolishness, utterly devoid of sense or meaning, a vexation to endeavour to understand.

Our position here is due to the truth in which we have been instructed by the goodness of God, to whom be blessing and honor forever. Amen. “No man can come unto me,” continued Christ, “except the Father, who hath sent me draw him.” This drawing is by being enlightened in the will of God, specially and specifically exercised in every individual case, although in a most natural manner apparently. “It is written in the prophets, And they shall all be taught of God. Every man therefore that hath heard, and hath learned OF THE Father cometh unto me.” It is an unspeakable honor and privilege far transcending every other position at present upon earth, to be able to shew forth the Lord’s death. Those who can do so are the taught of the Most High God, who has made them the objects of his special and loving regard from among the sons of men. For them Christ died, to redeem them from the curse inherited from their father, Adam, which consigned them to an eternal grave. When the spirit which was in Christ sad, “Verily, verily I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life; I am the bread of life, your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead; this is the bread that cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof and not die; I am the living bread which came down from heaven, if any man eat of this bread he shall live forever, and the bread which I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world, “ it meant that Jesus of Nazareth, the body prepared, was the flesh (“my flesh,” as the Spirit said) which would be given for the life of the world, in that it would be offered in sacrifice for that sin which condemned all the descendants of Adam of eternal death.

The blood of Christ simply means the same thing, that is, the sacrifice of Christ, which was a violent putting to death, a cutting off before its time of the life of Christ. “The body and blood of the Lord,” and expression used by Paul in his letter to the Corinthians, is the same thing as the flesh and blood of this discourse of Christ; and when he says that they who “eat and drink unworthily,” when commemorating the Lord’s supper, “will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord,” his meaning is clear, that they will be guilty of the death of Christ, in the condemnation, in fact, as those who put him to death. To eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of man is to become partakers of Christ, sharers in that death unto sin, participators of its priceless benefit; for he who dies that death is free from the sin which by inheritance held him in the bondage of corruption. To eat the flesh and drink the blood of Christ is to put on Christ, to become Christ’s, to have him dwell in your hearts by faith, to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and heights, and to realize the live of Christ, which passeth knowledge, ad to be filled with all the fullness of God. In other words, knowledge and obedience are the sum of the matter. Knowledge of the things f the Kingdom of God and the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and obedience, first in baptism, which is a transference into Christ out of Adam, and afterwards in a patient continuance in well doing till the end, are what is meant by the words, “He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood dwelleth in me and I in him; as the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father, so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me.” There is a life, which is beyond price, begotten in a man by the word fo God, which must be fed, or it will die, and its food is described thus in the words of Christ: “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word which proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” Christ brought that word near. He died to make it available to the sons of men. It was his meat. It became embodied in him in a living manifestation, so that his brethren should see and know how to live, both now and in that glorious world which is to come.

“For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup ye do shew forth the Lord’s death until he come” – until he come. Then all will be changed. Change of body – “We shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is,” most glorious, beautiful, strong; infinite strength is his portion, wise beyond present conception, honored – angels, powers, and principalities being subject to him, triumphant everywhere.

No longer in sorrow, no more care, no further anxiety; death eradicated from every atom of our bodies, and associated with the beloved Son of God in the administration of the world’s affairs, in an age when righteousness will be the characteristic feature, all this is hidden deep in the mystery which this bread and wine set forth.

The Christadelphian Advocate, January 1890, pgs. 5-10.