1201. The Bread From Heaven

The Bread From Heaven

Dr. I. M. Haldeman beautifully says: "Jesus is the Bread of God.

"That which constitutes Him as bread, he says, is His flesh, His human life. He will give that life for the world. He will so give it that His Blood shall be of avail to men. They shall eat His flesh and drink His Blood. He is speaking in the terms of sacrificial death. It is His announcement that He came to die. In this He stands in contrast to the first man. The first man came to live and not die. All his history through ages of suffering and dying has been a protest against death. Jesus came into the world to die and then live. His life from the birth song through the benediction of His living was projected deathward. * *

"He came down from Heaven to be the Bread of God.

"That He originated in Heaven and not earth is evidenced in the relation which He affirms He sustained to His own will. He came not to do His own will. In this He is apart from all men; for, from the hour when the first man sinned to the last child born, the law of human nature has been, and is, self-will. If nothing else could reveal His Heavenly origin the complete enthronement in His human life of the Divine will would be the apocalypse of it.

"Before He became the Bread of Life, before He took humanity into union with Himself, He was the eternally begotten Son of the Father in Heaven. The flesh which He purposed to give in sacrifice could not be a humanity under the original claim of death; otherwise, He could not give His life in sacrifice. It would not have been His to give. It must be a humanity wholly free from that claim. * *

"Thus from eternity He was foreknown as the Bread of God for men.

"Bread is made of wheat ground beneath the upper and the nether millstones. It is that flour which was mixed with water, with the corruption of leaven, put into an oven of fire and brought forth as bread to give life to men.

"All this was to be true of Him.

"He was the wheat ordained of God. On the Cross He was ground beneath the upper and the nether millstones of judgment. The corruption of humanity was laid upon Him. He was made sin for us. Water is a symbol of the Living Word. He was there as the Word of God and according to the Word of God. By the furnace blast of the fire of God, the downsweep of the wrath of His holiness, the essential antagonism of God to the sin of the world representatively seen in that Cross, He became the Bread of God. The Bread men must eat if they would satisfy the hunger of the soul. The Bread they must eat and the Blood they must drink if they would live forever.

"Believing on Jesus is appropriating Him for what He claims Himself to be.

"In claiming to be the Bread of God, in demanding that men shall eat of His flesh and drink of His Blood, He affirms Himself to be a sacrifice for sin and a personal substitute for the sinner. The Epistles are the expansion of His doctrine. Every doctrine in the Epistles roots itself back in His words. The Epistles declare that once in the end of the age He has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. He gave Himself for our sins. He bare our sins (the penalty of them) in His own body on the tree. He died the Just for the unjust that He might bring us to God. Believing on Him as the Bread of God owns Him for this claim. * *

"He must be the Bread of Life to you. To get Him as the Bread you must eat His flesh, drink His Blood. To eat His flesh and drink His Blood you must claim Him as your sacrifice for sin. Anything less than that is not believing on Jesus unto eternal Life."

Autor: R.E. NEIGHBOUR