Do What Christ Did

There is no reason then, dearest brother, for anyone to think that the custom of certain people should be followed, who in the past held that water alone ought to be offered in the cup of the Lord. We have to ask whom they themselves were following. For if, in the sacrifice that Christ offered, no one is to be followed but Christ, then surely we must obey and do what Christ did and what he commanded to be done. He himself says in the Gospel, “If you do whatever I command you, from now on I do not call you servants, but friends.” And the Father bears witness from heaven that Christ alone is to be listened to, saying, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Listen to him.” [a]

So if Christ alone must be listened to, we ought not to pay attention to what someone before us may have thought should be done, but to what Christ, who comes before them all, did first. It is not right to follow the practice of a man; we follow the truth of God. God says through the prophet Isaiah, “They worship me in vain, teaching the commandments and doctrines of men.” And in the Gospel the Lord brings up this same saying again and says, “You set aside the commandment of God so that you may keep your own tradition.” And in another place he settles the matter: “Whoever breaks one of these least commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called the least in the kingdom of heaven.”

But if we may not break even the least of the Lord’s commandments, how much more are we forbidden to tamper with commands as weighty as these — so great, and so bound up with the sacred sign of our Lord’s suffering and of our own redemption — or to turn that sign, by a human tradition, into something other than what God appointed.

For if Jesus Christ, our Lord and God, is himself the high priest of God the Father, and first offered himself as a sacrifice to the Father, and commanded this to be done in remembrance of himself, then the priest who copies what Christ did is the one who truly acts in Christ’s place. He offers a true and full sacrifice in the church to God the Father only when he sets about offering it just as he sees that Christ himself offered it.

The whole discipline of religion and of truth is overturned unless what is spiritually laid down is faithfully kept — unless, perhaps, someone is afraid at the morning sacrifices that the taste of wine will leave him smelling of the blood of Christ. So the brotherhood is beginning to be held back even from Christ’s own suffering in times of persecution, because at the offering they are being taught to be embarrassed about his blood and his bloodshed. But the Lord says in the Gospel, “Whoever is ashamed of me, of him the Son of Man will be ashamed.” And the apostle speaks too, saying, “If I were pleasing men, I would not be the servant of Christ.” How can we shed our blood for Christ, when we blush to drink the blood of Christ? [i]

Does someone perhaps flatter himself with this thought: that although in the morning it is water alone that is seen to be offered, still, when we come to supper, we offer the mixed cup? But when we have supper we cannot call the people together to our meal, so as to carry out the truth of this sacred sign with the whole brotherhood present. And it was indeed not in the morning but after supper that the Lord offered the mixed cup. Are we then to hold the Lord’s cup after supper, so that by repeating the Lord’s supper over and over we may offer the mixed cup? [k]

Christ had to make his offering toward the evening of the day, so that the very hour of the sacrifice might show the sunset and evening of the world. As it is written in Exodus, “And all the people of the assembly of the sons of Israel shall kill it in the evening.” And again in the Psalms, “Let the lifting up of my hands be an evening sacrifice.” But we celebrate the resurrection of the Lord in the morning.

And because we make mention of his suffering in every sacrifice — for the Lord’s suffering is the sacrifice we offer — we ought to do nothing other than what he did. For Scripture says, “As often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” So as often as we offer the cup in remembrance of the Lord and of his suffering, let us do what it is well known the Lord did. [m]

And let this be our conclusion, dearest brother. If any of those before us, out of ignorance or plain simplicity, did not observe and keep what the Lord instructed us to do by his example and his teaching, the Lord in his mercy may pardon him for his simplicity. But we cannot be pardoned. We have now been warned and instructed by the Lord to offer the cup of the Lord mixed with wine, exactly as the Lord offered it, and to write to our colleagues about it as well, so that the law of the good news and what the Lord handed down may be kept everywhere, and there be no departure from what Christ both taught and did.

To go on neglecting these things and to persist in the old mistake — what is that but to fall under the Lord’s rebuke, when he reproves in the psalm and says, “What business have you to declare my statutes, or to take my covenant on your lips, when you hate instruction and throw my words behind you? When you saw a thief, you went along with him, and you have been a partner with adulterers.” [o]

To declare the righteousness and the covenant of the Lord, and then not to do what the Lord did — what else is that but to throw his words away and think nothing of the Lord’s instruction, and to commit thefts and adulteries that are not earthly but spiritual? While a man is stealing the words and the actions of our Lord out of the truth of the good news, he is corrupting and adulterating the commands of God — as it is written in Jeremiah, where he says, “What is the chaff to the wheat? So, look, I am against the prophets, says the Lord, who steal my words each one from his neighbor, and who make my people go astray by their lies and their recklessness.” And in the same prophet, in another place, he says, “She committed adultery with wood and stone, and even after all this she did not turn back to me.”

We ought to be anxiously careful, and to keep watch with fear and with reverence, so that this theft and this adultery do not fall to us as well. For if we are priests of God and of Christ, I do not know anyone we ought to follow rather than God and Christ, since he himself says plainly in the Gospel, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” So, to keep from walking in darkness, we ought to follow Christ and keep his commands, because he himself said to his apostles in another place, when he sent them out, “All authority is given to me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to keep everything I have commanded you.”

So if we want to walk in the light of Christ, let us not turn aside from his commands and his warnings. Let us give thanks that, while he instructs us for the future about what we ought to do, he pardons the past, where we went wrong in our simplicity. And because his second coming is already drawing near to us, his kind and generous favor lights up our hearts more and more with the light of truth.

And so, dearest brother, our reverence requires this, and our fear of God, and the position we hold, and the duty of our priesthood: that in mixing and offering the cup of the Lord we keep the truth of what the Lord handed down, and that at the Lord’s warning we correct what some appear to have been getting wrong. Then, when he begins to come in his brightness and heavenly majesty, he will find that we keep what he told us to keep, that we observe what he taught, that we do what he did. [u]

I pray you may always be well, dearest brother.