Broken

Broken (body). (1 Co 11:24). It is interesting that Christ in the Passover implies but never states that the breaking of bread is the prophetic breaking of His body and of messianic prophecy itself. It is for Paul to give this interpretation. Christ says that the Passover bread is His body, but only Paul says it represents the broken body of Christ fulfilled, in 1 Co 11:24.

In Luke 22:19, the bread is described as “given”; the breaking and eating of it are for remembrance of Christ. In Matthew 26:26 and Mark 14:22, Jesus breaks the bread and commands the disciples to eat. When it comes to the wine, Jesus is more explicit about its meaning, interpreting it as the blood of the New Covenant—His life force—“which is shed for many” and “for the remission of sins” (Mark 14:24, Matt 26:28, Luke 22:20).

Christ’s body is symbolically broken at the Last Supper, and His blood is described as “poured out” (Philippians 2:17; see also this treatment of the drink offering). Both bread and wine—body and blood—are consumed in the present. But what, theologically, is being consumed?

The bread, Christ’s body, is for “remembrance.” This is not mere recollection but the recognition, understanding, and inward reception of the prophetic promises of the Old Testament. The body will be shamefully treated, humiliated, scourged, spit upon, and broken. But within that body resides the blood—its life force—which signifies the specific promise of Messiah’s death, and by extension, His resurrection. Jesus speaks of His body and blood as presently broken and shed, yet He is referring to the sure future fulfillment of what God has already declared in His Word.

Consider Zechariah 12:10 and Isaiah 53:5,10. The blood is “for the remission of sins” not because of abstract sacrificial symbolism, but because its exegetical truth and historical enactment form the final capstone and confirmation of Christ’s identity as the Prophetic Word—its ultimate expression before vindication by resurrection. It is also, prophetically speaking, the most difficult truth to receive. Yet it is precisely this—Messiah’s death—that becomes the definitive sign of essential righteousness. The resurrection, itself a Messianic oracle, is God’s own seal upon the faith that receives this fulfillment.

“Bread” and “body” signify the corpus of Old Testament prophetic scripture, whose promises—especially concerning Messiah—often bear relatively straightforward fulfillment. Blood, however, is more difficult to “swallow,” though no less scripturally attested. “Body” is the collective oracular witness to the coming Messiah, who would be rejected. “Blood” is a particular organ within that body—the death of the Messiah. The spiritual life of the prophetic body is bound up with this organ; when it is drained, the body dies. Before its shedding, the blood is the difficult but necessary future of the Messiah’s death. Afterward, it is the blood of redemption—believed and fulfilled.

Blood—understood as the present and coming life of the prophetic body—is the vital force that must be completely poured out. Only by being fully drained, unto death, can the prophetic body be restored as a permanent moral fixture in history.

A mere beating of the scriptures—a distortion, a rejection, a misapplication—does not bring about their death. Such treatment may scandalize the scriptures, but it does not fulfill them. Prophetic failure would require something far more severe: that the oracular body be emptied of its lifeblood, beyond all natural revival, so that only God can restore it through resurrection.¹

The prophetic scriptures and their Messianic promises are self-resolving. They represent the end point of the signifying process. A broken body, as in the case of Christ, represents the shameful and scandalous treatment of the prophetic Word—misread, reinterpreted, and denied by religious authorities. It is only the fulfillment of the greatest of all prophecies—Messiah’s death and resurrection—that restores their honor, confirms their truth forever, and raises them as a rallying standard for the world: a signal under which the goodness of God saves.