An exchange with a Catholic friend and myself about the actual Passover meal got me stu mped. They believe they are literally eating the Messiah’s body and blood. He used the example of the actual meal where after the Passover lamb was killed they all ate it literally afterward. This, he says, shows Christians are to eat literally Messiah. While I strongly disagree, I am trying to find a response to address his example. What verses show the comparison NOT valid.
In the year 1215 Pope Innocent III decreed the doctrine of transubstantiation, meaning that once an ordained priest blesses the bread of the L-rd’s Supper, it is transformed into the actual flesh of Messiah and when he blesses the wine, it is transformed into the actual blood of Messiah (though both retain the properties of bread and wine and are never changed to actual flesh and blood). The support passage cited most frequently is John 6:32-58 and especially verses 53-57, “Yahshua said to them, ‘I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life … 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 him … so the one who feeds on me will live because of me.’” Yahshua used physical concepts of eating and drinking to teach spiritual lessons. He said in John 6:63, “The words that I speak unto you, [they] are spirit, and [they] are life.” Eating His flesh and drinking His blood are symbolic of fully and completely receiving Him in our lives.
The Passover is a memorial, a “remembrance” pointing to the body and blood of Yahshua (Luke 22:19; 1Corinthians 11:24-25), not the actual consumption of His physical body and blood. In contrast, transubstantiation is viewed by the Roman Church as a “re-sacrifice” of Yahshua for our sins or as a “re-offering and re-presentation” of His sacrifice. This directly violates Scripture, which says that Yahshua died “once for all” and He does not need to be sacrificed again (Hebrews 10:10; 1Peter 3:18). Hebrews 7:27 declares of Him, “Who needeth not daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifice, first for his own sins, and then for the people’s: for this he did once, when he offered up himself. ” Further, the law strictly forbids drinking blood. “Whatsoever soul [it be] that eateth ANY MANNER of blood, even that soul shall be cut off from his people,” Leviticus 7:27. The clean food laws of Leviticus 11 andDeuteronomy 14 don’t list humans. Being sinless, Yahshua would not violate these ordinances in His teachings. And He never gave the Catholics or any other church the authority to transform his flesh and blood, real or imagined.
