Expositions of Holy Scripture: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and NumbersMaclaren, Alexander
Religion
Expositions of Holy Scripture: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers
Maclaren, Alexander
Bible. Pentateuch -- Commentaries; Bible. Pentateuch -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.
What an incomprehensible stretch of authority Christ put forth, if He
were no more than a teacher, when He brushed aside the Passover, and
put in its place the Lord's Supper, as commemorating His own death!
Thereby He said, 'Forget that past deliverance; instead, remember Me.'
Surely this was either audacity approaching insanity, or divine
consciousness that He Himself was the true Paschal Lamb, whose blood
shields the world from judgment, and on whom the world may feast and be
satisfied. Christ's deliberate intention to represent His death as
expiation, and to fix the reverential, grateful gaze of all future ages
on His Cross, cannot be eliminated from His founding of that memorial
rite in substitution for the God-appointed ceremonial, so hoary with
age and sacred in its significance. Like the Passover, the Lord's
Supper was established before the deliverance was accomplished. It
remains a witness at once of the historical fact of the death of Jesus,
and of the meaning and power which Jesus Himself bade us to see in that
death. For us, redeemed by His blood, the past should be filled with
His sacrifice. For us, fed on Himself, all the present should be
communion with Him, based upon His death for us. For us, freed bondmen,
the memorial of deliverance begun by His Cross should be the prophecy
of deliverance to be completed at the side of His throne, and the hasty
meal, eaten with bitter herbs, the adumbration of the feast when all
the pilgrims shall sit with Him at His table in His kingdom. Past,
present, and future should all be to us saturated with Jesus Christ.
Memory should furnish hope with colours, canvas, and subjects for her
fair pictures, and both be fixed on 'Christ our Passover, sacrificed
for us.'
THOUGHT, DEED, WORD
'It shall be for a sign unto thee upon thine hand, and
for a memorial between thine eyes, that the Lord's law
may be in thy mouth.'--EXODUS xiii. 9.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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