For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them.
Does this refer to the Eucharist? In a sense, as it points forward to the feast of the Last Supper, but it does not mean that the regular consumption of the bread and wine is a pre-requisite for eternal life. Would you exclude all Salvationists and Quakers? Not to mention the Thief on the Cross. Don Carson gives several arcane references as to why this is not so and Ignatius back in the Second Century had already worked it out. So don't worry on this score if you have sometimes missed communion. The value of the Lord's Supper is to keep the cross always before us - so that we remain in him and he in us - but also as we share in the communion of saints. We eat and drink together as part of the Koinonia. We are all, however wealthy of important in this world's view, united in our abjectness before the Holy God. Penitent sinners before a pure and Holy God; we come for grace; undeserved mercy that is our only remedy.
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