7. I Eat His Flesh; I Drink His Blood

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When the word “metamorphy” first came to me, I thought it would have to mean the same as “transubstantiation.” I wanted to keep both words, but I did not know how they would be distinguished in meaning.

As specific definitions for those two words as different parts of a connected process came to me over the last couple of weeks, I am just astonished and overwhelmed at the clarity of God. More than that, as we distinguish between these two words, we find all kinds of specific Scriptures falling into place and contributing a clear meaning beyond what we have known.

The Larger Context. The words we choose to convey God’s meaning are insignificant compared to the meaning they are meant to carry. These two words carry no barnacles of prior meaning for us, and thus they are useful.

To define them more specifically, however, we must place them into the larger context, for they together are the answer to the third question. (1) Why – the Ekenosis. (2) What – Symmorphy. (3) How – Transubstantiation/Metamorphy. (4) Who – Whosoever will. (5) When/Where – Right now and right here.

The Ekenosis. We always begin with the Father’s purpose. God wants to know each part of His creation and to be known by each. In order for that to happen, God must have an entrance into His creation. That entrance, then, is a created form, a Body, inside of which an invisible God can dwell and through which He can show His Love.

Ekenosis: 1. A description of the overall process by which God obtains His desire of entering into His creation that He might share the life of each one and be known by all as He really is. 2. The process of the incarnation; God manifest in the flesh.

Symmorphy. The second question is – What? Specifically, what is God-and-man-together?

Symmorphy: 1. The nature of God as one who reveals Himself through other Persons, Word and Spirit. 2. God and the Church sharing the same form. 3. As a scalable term, Jesus and I sharing the same form.

Symmorphy does not make me “God” or “Christ.” Rather, it allows for the clear distinction and honor of person, Father’s Person and my person, woven together by Jesus.

4. Father dwelling in and expressing Himself through His Church as their loving one another with pure hearts.

Transubstantiation. We have to know why, first and what, second – purpose and context. But “how” is how the why happens inside the what.

Transubstantiation: 1. The action of Jesus by which He causes His own substance, Spirit and Word, to become all the substance of our humanity, one spirit with Him and one flesh with Him. This transfer of substance takes place first with no change whatever in appearance (through faith). 2. The process of the substance of Jesus becoming my substance even while I remain the same human me. 3. The cause of “Christ as me.”

Abide in Me and I in you. Transubstantiation is the “abide in Jesus” part of the equation.

Metamorphy. Metamorphy: 1. The process of coming into harmony by being with. The process of taking on the characteristics of another by spending much time together. 2. Knowing Jesus Sent into us by speaking the same word that He is now made personal as us. 3. My human action of acknowledging all the good things of Christ inside of me, thus causing my story of self to be intertwined with Jesus.

Transubstantiation is Jesus action upon my spirit and my flesh and the writing of Himself upon my heart. Metamorphy is the action of my soul, in weaving the Words of Jesus into my own self-story. Abide in me and I in you. Metamorphy is “I in you.”

Metamorphoó. The Greek word, metamorphoó, appears four times in the New Testament, Matthew 17:2, Mark 9:2, Romans 12:2, and 2 Corinthians 3:18. The word appears only as a verb and not a noun. Two times it refers to Jesus and two times it refers to us.

The translators were successful in driving a powerful wedge between Jesus and Christians by translating this one word as “transfigured” towards Jesus and “transformed” towards us. Be transfigured by the renewing of your mind. – Are being transfigured into the same image by the Spirit. The last part of this process we will call “transfiguration.”

Transfiguration. Transfiguration: 1. A slight alteration in outward appearance as the full reflection of the change in inward substance. 2. The gentle kindness of Jesus and an open heart as the only face Christians have towards one another. 3. The resurrection out from the appearance of death; the outward physical part of our body swallowed up by life. 4. The face of the Father now known as our human faces towards one another. 5. The appearance of the Father inside creation.

When we place transfigure and transform against each other, we say, “Jesus is perfect and we are not, but we ought to be.” When we just use “transfigure,” we have the essence of Jesus now upon our own human appearance.

Who – Where – When. We now know where to place the second half of John Chapter 6, as well as how John 6:63 finds its full meaning. Jesus is using metaphors to speak concerning the active and living interchange between His action of transubstantiating Himself as us and our action of coming into harmony with Him inside our own self-story.

And the purpose of His offensiveness is to CONTEND with each one of us concerning the WHO, the WHERE, and the WHEN. My answer to that contention is and has been, “ME, right HERE and right NOW. Let it be to me.”

Active Interplay. We are now able to talk about the active interplay between Jesus, transferring His substance to us, and us, weaving His Spirit-filled Words all through our story of self.

Here is Jesus’ description of that active togetherness. – The one eating of My flesh and drinking of My blood has life age-unfolding, and I will raise him up in the last day. Indeed, My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. The one eating My flesh and drinking My blood abides inside of Me and I inside of him. Wow! Our definitions of transubstantiation and metamorphy are now clearly visible in these words.

Our Active Response. Symmorphy: Abides inside of Me and I inside of him. Transubstantiation: My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. Metamorphy: Eating of My flesh and drinking of My blood. Transfiguration: And I will raise him up in the last day.

Notice, however, that I will not use the words “transform” or “transfigure” in the JSV for Romans 12:2 and 2 Corinthians 3:18, but rather, metamorphosed, the action of metamorphy. Coming into harmony with Jesus by being with Him is our active response to Jesus transferring Himself to us inside our present humanity. And that is so good.

On the Page. Let’s turn in this lesson, now, to constructing the boxes on the pages of The Jesus Secret II. As I look at the page, I realize that I cannot provide the true sense of eating His flesh and drinking His blood unless I place John 6:63 first. Thus we will have three slightly smaller boxes titled, “My Words Are Spirit and Life,” “I Eat His Flesh,” and “I Drink His Blood,” preceded by the enflowing of Word. Because the boxes are smaller, there is no room for explanation, and so the wording must be the end truth, clearly and succinctly expressed.

The Enflowing of Word. The Spirit gives me life. The Words Jesus speaks into me are Spirit and they are life. Jesus words are my words; they belong to me, written upon my heart. As I speak those same words, my words are Spirit and life. I feed on Jesus; I live through Jesus just as Jesus lives through the Father. I eat His flesh - His words become my flesh. I drink His blood - His life becomes my life. I live and remain inside of Jesus; Jesus lives and remains inside of me.

The final line is, of course, symmorphy, the same as John 14:20 and the least considered part of these lines. Just as Jesus and the Father share a symmorphic relationship, so we and Jesus share the same symmorphic relationship.

John 6:63. The Spirit is giving life; the flesh benefits nothing. The words that I speak to you are Spirit, and they are life.

This line, as with all that God speaks, operates at several different levels at the same time. We could say that the Word is scalable, able to fit each one where they are. At the first level, Jesus is defining God’s purpose for metaphors, that God designed things inside our human experience, including eating and drinking, to convey to us His realities in the realms of Spirit. “The flesh benefits nothing” means, “If you were to actually cannibalize me, as you think I mean, it wouldn’t do a thing for you.”

The Meaning of the Metaphors. I no longer say that Jesus was “not speaking literally,” for His words are literal in the realms of Spirit and thus very much part of our present lives. Rather, Jesus was not speaking physically. Most Bible metaphors, then, are speaking of immediate heavenly realities acting now upon us, things that operate in conjunction with their counter parts in the physical.

“The words I speak to you” has a double meaning. First, Jesus is telling us that the things He said that offended so many are speaking of Spirit and of life, not cannibalism. But it also means our actual FOOD of Spirit and life.

My Words Are Spirit and Life. It is the Spirit that gives me life; it is the Spirit that writes the words of Jesus upon my heart. Jesus speaks His words into me as Spirit; Jesus is those same words inside my heart. I share one Spirit with Jesus. I feed upon His words; His words become my flesh. I share flesh with Jesus; I am one flesh with Him. The words of Jesus are my life.

The words Jesus speaks are in my mouth and in my heart. I speak those same words now concerning myself. My words, the words of Christ I now speak, are Spirit and they are life. As I eat of Jesus, so He is all my sustenance and becomes all that I am. As I speak His words as myself, so I come into harmony with His same pattern of expression, just like Jesus.

Deliberate Intent. My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. This line has just departed from the pile of meaningless statements and is now bursting with power and life.

True food and true drink are food and drink that do everything food and drink are meant to do. This is not processed food packed with sugar and chemicals. True food and drink sustain the body, heal the body, enable the body to grow when young, and replace the body with new atoms every seven years.

Let’s paraphrase. – “My ‘flesh’ and My ‘blood’ will do inside your life everything My Father means towards you.”

Eating and Drinking. We eat and drink all the time, a practice more intimately familiar to us than just about anything. We spend a lot of time, effort, and money daily in order to eat and drink.

To eat and drink is to place food and wine, already prepared, into your mouth, to chew it, and then to swallow it that it might pass into your belly. Then, inside of you, the food goes through a process as it is transformed into the fuel and building blocks of your body.

It is the words of Jesus that we eat; it is His Spirit that we drink. Yet Blood and wine also mean the absolute Atonement and the binding Covenant. Eating is FAITH!!!

Defining ‘Flesh’ and ‘Blood.’ Jesus said in the upper room that the bread and wine of the communion table are His flesh and blood. But again, His words do not elevate the physical communion service above its purpose, which is to bring Jesus into our minds in a formal setting together.

And the Word became flesh. Jesus’ Flesh is the Word made personal as each one of us, AND it is the Word made social as the Church together. Jesus Blood is the Life of the Spirit made personal throughout each one of us, AND it is the Life of the Spirit made social throughout the entire Church.

Fellowship. The body of Christ is the Church. The flesh of Christ is one another.

Eating of Christ operates at two levels at the same time; one cannot be real without the other. We eat of His words made personal as us, AND we know one another in purity as we break bread together. We drink of His Spirit, now our enabling force as well. AND we know one another in purity as we worship together.

In Christ Community, each local church, we share Christ in fellowship as our daily communion service. This fellowship is the true “mass,” not symbolic, but real LIFE!

I Eat His Flesh. I believe with all confidence that Jesus has become me. I call all that I am by Him. I speak the same words that are Jesus as my own story of self. I am confident that His words have become my flesh. I am also confident that His words have become my brothers and sisters in Christ. I receive each one of them as Jesus to me. As we know one another through fellowship, so also do we eat His flesh and become just like Him. We are confident together that we are His Body, coming out from God. We are sustained by Jesus’ words.
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None of this is new, for I have taught you to eat of His flesh right from the start.

I Drink His Blood. I believe with all confidence that Jesus has become me. I share fully the same One Spirit with Jesus. The Spirit is the ink of Jesus’ words written on my heart. I partake of Blood, an absolute atonement, placing me upon the Mercy Seat of God, the throne of heaven. I boldly partake of Blood as the Covenant that enables God my Father to share life with me. I drink the same Spirit with my brethren; we drink together as we worship the Father together. I know my brethren by the same Atonement and in the same Covenant.
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God is taking these familiar things and placing them, for us, into the power of His gospel.

The Boxes Last. Jesus causes His substance to become our substance, AND we partake of Him as Word and as Spirit and thus become like Him all through our soul. Knowing this exchange has caused so much meaning to bubble up out from the Father inside of us that we could write many lessons just as introduction.

I typically write the boxes for the Jesus Secret page last, after writing all the in-between stuff, including this conclusion. This allows a full and present understanding to guide the flow of words onto that page.

Certainty! I am mesmerized by the concepts of transubstantiation and metamorphy working together. In this great working, we could envision Jesus’ part as 99% of the labor and our part as 1%. When Jesus said that “My flesh is true food,” He meant that it is up to Him, in His focused determination, to cause Himself in Word and in Spirit to become us! Then, our tiny little part is nothing more than singing back to the Father those same words by which Jesus is spoken into us, returning Christ to Father from our lips.

Our transfiguration, our resurrection is CERTAIN!

Reading for Next Time. The next two pages in The Jesus Secret II are not John Chapter 7, but rather a concise layout of the meaning of the Feasts of the Lord in Israel’s year. We will use two lessons in the Zoom meetings to cover and to write those two pages. Thus I would suggest that you read Chapter 5 “The Original Feasts” in The Feast of Tabernacles before the next session.

Now the blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you; and the plague shall not be on you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt (Exodus 12).

Our Prayers. For a long time our prayers were very focused. I am not comfortable with the lack of focus the last while. We together have a job to do, and we must be doing it. Through the rest of this study of John, we will go back and forth between a prayer of metamorphy and a prayer of synergeoing with God to make specific things good.

This time it will be a prayer of metamorphy for ourselves and next time a prayer of synergeoing with God for others. Let’s respond in confident faith towards the Lord Jesus, that His Words and His Spirit are indeed our true food and our true drink, making us just like Himself as we partake.

Let’s Pray Together. “Lord Jesus, we acknowledge Your great desire towards us that we would be with You inside of the Father. We know that Your action as Savior to accomplish Your great purpose in our lives is greater than all the actions of creation.

“Lord Jesus, we look straight into You as You transfer Your substance to us to be our substance as well. As we partake of You, so You cause Your own words to become our flesh and You cause Your own Spirit to become one Spirit with us.

“Lord Jesus, You cause the entire story of our life, both in the past and in every present moment, to be Your own Story by substance. Lord Jesus, we know that our outward appearance does not change, for we remain as You made us.

“Lord Jesus, we are just overwhelmed at Your great transfer of Your own substance to us to be our only life, regardless of our human appearance. We take all that You are, Lord Jesus, into ourselves through faith. You have become us. And in this wondrous knowing that the Father sent You into us, Lord Jesus, we speak You back to the Father in return. We speak Your words, Lord Jesus, now made personal as us.

As we do so, Lord Jesus, as we live here inside of You, inside of Your words and Your Spirit, here inside the Father, so the whole expression of our lives comes into wondrous harmony with all that You are.

“Our face is Your face, Lord Jesus. We are transfigured.”