The New Life

The New Life.
with our Lord, by communicating Him inwardly
to us.^
This is what the Heidelberg Catechism intends in
Question and Answer 76.
" What is it to eat the glorified body of Christ and
to drink His shed blood ?"
" It is not only to receive with a believing heart the
whole sufi"ering and dying of Christ, and thereby to
obtain forgiveness of sins and eternal life, but also
therewith, by the Holy Spirit, who dwells alike in
Christ and in us, to be so united more and more with
His blessed body, that we, although He is in heaven
and we are upon earth, are nevertheless flesh of His
flesh and bone of His bone, and so live and are governed
eternally by one Spirit, as the members of our
body by a soul." *
This deeply inward union with Jesus, even with
His body and blood, is the great aim of the Lord's
Supper.
All that it teaches and gives us of the forgiveness
of sins, of the remembrance of Jesus, of the
confirmation of the divine covenant, of union with
one another, of the announcement of the Lord's
death till He comes, must lead to this : complete
oneness with Jesus through the Spirit.^ "He that
eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood abideth in
Me, and I in him. He that eateth Me, he shall live
by Me.'
1 lyuke i. ;
37
i Cor, ii. 9, 12.
2 Matt. XX vi. 28 ;
Luke xxii. 19 ;
John vi. 56, xv. 4 ; i Cor. x. 17,
xi. 26 ; Rev. iii. 20.
* " Der Heidelbergische Catechismus, " § 28, v. 76.
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