In Remembrance of Me
“Did you learn anything from that?” These are words that my dad would ask of me at pivotal points in my formative youth. Most generally they came after a bad decision, but sometimes he would ask that after something had gone particularly well also. Many decades have gone by since hearing those questions, but they are still vividly remembered. Why? He wanted me to remember key beneficial facts and principles that could guide my steps through life. I knew the reminders were given out of love.
Remembering good things is spiritual food for our faith. It is something that lives through generations. The Apostle Paul wrote, “By faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts; and through it he being dead still speaks” (Hebrews 11:4). By faith, Abel made an animal sacrifice to God, not based on what seemed right to himself, but according to what God required. Each time we reflect on his example, Abel symbolically speaks to us in terms of faithfully yielding our own will to God’s.
The apostle then brings the thought process forward to the Church of God in his own time, to an even greater example. “To Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel” (Hebrews 12:24). God was well pleased with Abel’s sacrifice offered in faith. But the blood of Christ’s sacrifice was infinitely more precious than the blood of Abel’s, just as Christ is infinitely greater than Abel. Whereas the blood of Abel’s sacrifice could only avail for himself, Christ’s blood avails for the sins of all who will come to repentance in any age.
Christ was and is the Mediator of the new covenant. Paul describes it this way: “For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people” (Hebrews 8:10). Through Christ’s complete sacrifice the inner man can ultimately be completely changed. Any believer can come to think and act, from deep within, on God’s law and the loving principles of it. There is simply no other sacrifice or example like it.
Therefore we are reminded: “And when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, ‘Take, eat; this is My body which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of Me.’ In the same manner He also took the cup after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in My blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me’” (1 Corinthians 11:24-25). Remembering is spiritual food for our faith and for our growth.
Marshall Stiver
