Christ Reveals the Eternal

And when He had taken a cup and given thanks, He gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you; for this is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for forgiveness of sins.” Matthew 26:27–28

These words to the disciples when Jesus inaugurates the sacrament which we call the Lord’s Supper. We may notice something odd, or at least unexpected, because Jesus says the cup is his blood “which is poured out” and not “which will be poured out”. He says this on Thursday evening even though he won’t die until the next day. Literally, his blood had not yet been poured out.

Paul’s account of that event in 1 Corinthians 11:24 quotes Jesus as saying, “This is My body, which is broken for you”. Some Greek copies of this letter read simply “which is for you”. In the first version the bread is already his broken body though his body has not yet been broken. In the second reading the bread is “for them” though it had not yet been “given” on the cross. Why is the language in the present tense and not the future tense? Why say “is” when it seems like it ought to be “will be”?

We are noticing the simply stated and yet deeply profound truth, that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). What happens in specific events during Jesus’ earthly life is what has always been true. In these events we have the revelation of the eternal nature of God and not the occurrence of something new for God. We might think that when Jesus goes to the cross God becomes the God of the cross, but this is not true. God has always been the God of the cross, though he was not known to us in this way until Jesus was lifted up.

The moment of the Son becoming incarnate in the womb of Mary reveals that God, in another and very real sense, has always been incarnate. Nothing changed in the nature, heart, mind, or will of God. Instead, by taking on human flesh within history God reveals himself to be, in a mystical way of thinking, the eternally incarnate God. 

In Jesus, God is showing us not a new and evolving self but his eternal self through what takes place in the course of time. Returning  to the verses with which I began, the body of Christ has always been broken and his blood always poured out. John can rightfully call Jesus “the lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Revelation 13:8). The cross, though it occurs as a historical event within the created world, reveals an eternal God whose love has always been cross-shaped.

This spiritual, and not fleshly, manner of thinking about God requires us to suspend our habit of looking at things chiefly through the lens of history, as if the sequence of historical events is the deepest reality. We typically think of history as true, when we ought to think of God as True and history as the revelation of him. God is all that is Real, and earth’s history is an unfolding of the divine reality for our wonder and joy.

For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him. Colossians 1:16

What may not occur to us, wedded as we are to seeing history as what is ultimately real, is the possibility that what Paul is saying here is less about Christ being at the beginning of history’s timeline but Christ being its beginning. Though Jesus is born somewhere in the middle of history, he is actually its source, its beginning, and the Creator. In a spiritual way of thinking which ponders eternal realities rather than historical and time-bound events, creation happens when Jesus Christ is born. The heavens and earth that we read are created in Genesis, are created by, in, and for Jesus. 

Obviously, this is not a historical way of thinking, which is about the only way we  ever think. Looking at eternal things beyond and without reference to time, itself a created thing, forsakes history as the standard and instead adopts Christ as the true and real standard. True history begins when God becomes man, the first real human.

Because Christ is himself the real beginning, we look back at what occurred before Christ in time and it is all remade and understood differently. We have a new point of beginning . . . when God sent his Son . . . and everything that had already happened in time changes and takes on new meaning. When we think like Christians, everything’s true beginning is in a manger in Bethlehem. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word became flesh (John 1:1, 14).