Easter’s special twin blessings

The Easter holiday is a special time. Not special because people eat Easter double chocolate eggs but because we symbolically drink the blood and eat the flesh of Jesus Christ. We do this in remembrance of the Lord’s gracious sacrifice for us that brought us the twin blessings of salvation from sin and physical healing from sickness.
During Easter Christian believers identify themselves with the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We commemorate how Christ became our substitute and shed His blood for our salvation from sin’s penalty and power. We also recollect how Christ’s physical body was broken, marred and striped for our physical healing.
There is no better way to reflect on the significance of Easter than to partake of the Eucharist or Holy Communion. The Eucharist is a Christian religious ceremony in which Christ’s last meal with His disciples is remembered and celebrated.
In this feast of remembrance two important symbols are used in our identification and continuation with Christ’s sacrifice.
Firstly, we take the cup of wine and drink it in close fellowship as brethren. The cup of wine represents the blood of Jesus that was spilled on the cross to wash away our sins. It was through Christ’s shed blood that we were delivered from the kingdom of Satan and translated into the Kingdom of God.
This Holy Communion with its meaning of salvation and translation is for us what the Passover feast is for the Jews. During Passover feast, the Jews remember how Yahweh delivered them from the destroyer in Egypt after they had smeared the lambs’ blood on the doorposts of their houses (Ex. 12).
Secondly, we take the bread and eat it. The bread symbolizes the body of Christ which was broken through scourging by the soldiers at the whipping post.  So when we partake of the bread we are remembering how the broken body of Christ brought us physical wholeness and healing.
In the Exodus Passover, the Israelites ate the flesh of the lambs and got so physically strong and well that not even one of them was weak or sick during the forty-year journey to the Promised Land.  According to the Apostle Paul most Corinthian believers were weak and sickly because they failed to discern the Lord’s body.
Discerning the Lord’s body includes understanding why we partake of the Holy Communion, examining ourselves and confessing any known sin as well as refraining from anything that prevents us from enjoying love, unity and close fellowship with other believers.
It is amazing that three million Israelites obeyed the Lord’s commands to eat the flesh of the lamb and they gained strength and health that lasted for over forty years without any one of them falling sick. Yet a sizeable church at Corinth had many members who were weak and sickly and some were actually dying because of failure to discern the Lord’s body.
Today, many Christians treat the church as an infirmary where we come to compare wounds and sufferings. This should not be so if we learn to take the symbolic bread worthily. The church should be a house of mercy where the sick receive healing and the sinner salvation.
As we continue observing the sacrament of the Holy Communion we continue to enjoy the twin blessings of redemption namely salvation from sin and healing from sickness while rejoicing in the blessed hope of the return of our Lord.
It is quite sobering to realise that as Christians in Zimbabwe we are not only liberated from the spiritual bondage of sin and the physical bondage of sickness but also from the Colonial taskmasters. It is this freedom from Colonial rule that has brought a great measure of peace on our land and increased our freedom of worship.
It is to the glory of God that every street and corner of our nation is being filled with Christian worshippers. As we diligently work out our salvation with fear and trembling through diligent study and application of God’s word and fervent prayer we will soon make our freedom in spirit, in body and in politics a reality.
– For feedback call 0772 889 766 or e-mail mairos78@yahoo.co.uk