![[The Good Seed]](../images/thegoodseed.gif)
Take Eat This is my Body
By Lloyd Ellefson
Greetings in the name of the Lord. I plan to share some things about the blood. Obviously we are concerned about having a right understanding of the blood of Jesus. Israel used to be concerned about the blood of goats and lambs for the cleansing of the flesh. Today many are wondering how the blood of Jesus can cleanse us from sin, how we can drink it, etc. I hope this study will help clarify this subject, and bring light and understanding on it and its work in us today.
A lot of error has sprung up because of the idea that the life is in the blood. The misconception about the blood has arisen because of faulty translation in both the Old and New Testaments. "And any man from the house of Israel, or from the aliens who sojourn among them, who eats any blood, I will set My face against that person who eats blood, and will cut him off from among his people. For the life (soul) is in the blood, and I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the life (soul) that makes atonement." (Lev. 17:10-11) In v. 11 it says that the life is in the blood. In the Hebrew it says the NEPHESH is in the blood. The correct translation of NEPHESH is SOUL. This same word is used in Gen. 1 in reference to birds, fish, animals, insects. God made moving living souls. When God formed man out of the earth (Gen. 2), He breathed into him and he became a living soul. He was alive to the things which were created. However, he was not spiritual, and his physical body made out of the ground, placed certain restrictions upon him.
The offspring of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, each made an offering to God one day. Cain's offering was not acceptable because he just gave God vegetables or things out of the earth and they do not move. He did not offer something which had blood - a living soul that moves. There is a big difference between presenting an inanimate or animate offering to God. That which does not move cannot symbolize Christ's offering. Abel offered up an animal; this was pleasing to God because the soul is in the blood.
It is the blood that makes atonement for the soul. Over the years this has not been understood, so people sprinkle blood, call down the blood, plead the blood, etc. I think this totally misrepresents what the really blood is and how it functions in us because we have not had a transfer from natural to spiritual thinking about the blood. "Therefore I said to the sons of Israel, `No person among you may eat blood, nor may any alien who sojourns among you eat blood.' So when any man from the sons of Israel, or the aliens who sojourn among them, in hunting catches a beast or a bird which may be eaten, he shall pour out its blood and cover it with earth." (Lev. 17:12-13) This is obviously a reference to a wrong practice.
"For as for the life (soul) of all flesh, its its blood is identified with its life (soul). Therefore I said to the sons of Israel, `You are not to eat the blood of any flesh, for the life (soul) of all flesh is its blood; whoever eats it shall be cut off." (v.15) Again, the original word is NEPHESH and should be translated SOUL throughout. Why did God not want anyone to eat the blood of animals? This was of prime importance to Israel. In Acts we read that Paul and the others who went to the Gentiles were admonished to teach the Gentiles not to eat blood. This is still in effect today. The sacrifices were to be offered without the blood - it was always poured out; this pictured that the soul-life of an animal was not for man. We are not to be restricted to animal life and carry the mark of the beast if you please - a soul that has its limitations of earthiness, creation, self-preservation, etc.
However, in the New Testament we are told to drink the blood of Jesus Christ; if we don't drink the blood, we won't have life. We are to participate in the soul of Christ. He brings us into a new realization of who we are; He frees us from the limitations our earthiness has placed upon us so that we can become a true image of God in this life. We are brought near by the blood of Christ!
"Knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers." (1 Peter 1:18) Redeemed means to be "ransomed or bought back". We are not bought back by the things that are valuable in this life, like silver or gold. We are bought back by the blood of Jesus. On the cross the blood of Jesus was poured out. Nobody drank His physical blood. So being redeemed by the pouring out of the blood of Jesus is superficially true, yet it is also symbolic of a deeper, spiritual truth. However, before it can mean anything to us spiritually, we have to be taken out of slavery and be brought back into the liberty of the Spirit of God. This brings about a spiritual transition in us.
"But with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ." (1 Peter 1:19) This lamb pointed to the sinless Christ. There were many lambs slain in Israel, but when John the Baptist said, "Behold the Lamb of God", he pointed to a special Lamb. It is only the blood of the Lamb of God that redeems us! People still have to wait until Christ comes to them spiritually before they can participate in His blood.
"For He was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but has appeared in these last times for the sake of you." (v.20) The word "foundation" should read "disruption". Christ was slain as a lamb before the disruption of the world. The rule of God was disrupted because Adam accepted the mind of satan, the ruler over the kingdom of darkness; thus he became the god of this world. "The whole world lies in the wicked one." When satan got Adam and Eve into disobedience, a disruption in the world system occurred. It is essential that we understand that the world does not consist of creation, but of a rule. Jesus said, "My kingdom is not of this world."
Jesus was foreordained before the disruption of the world. There really wasn't any need of a Savior until after the disruption, but God had Him present beforehand; He had already planned the disruption and our redemption out of the world system.
"For He was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but has appeared in these last times for the sake of you who through Him are believers in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God. Since you have in obedience to the truth purified your souls for a sincere love of the brethren, fervently love one another from the heart, for you have been born again not of seed which is perishable, that is, through the living and abiding word of God." (1 Peter 1:20-23) Our regeneration is from incorruptible seed, so that which is born in us, is incorruptible. Every seed has a body, and every seed can bear fruit, every seed has a purpose in it of repeating whatever the seed had reference to in the first place, and in this place it was God the Father. "For, `all flesh is like grass, and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flowers fall off, but the word of the Lord abides forever.' And this is the word which was preached to you." (vv.24-25) We are really sharing, preaching and teaching an incorruptible seed; whether it is aborted or not depends on the individual. The carnal mind will not be convinced of these precious things. We must humble ourselves and be willing to receive a change of thoughts.
Peter said we are ransomed by His blood. RANSOM basically has the same meaning as REDEMPTION; it brings a release. Our soul is released from having the mind of the flesh dictating its sense of being to us. When our natural sense of being is changed to a spiritual sense of being, our mind is renewed. Our soul becomes aware of being a son of God and of having been born of an incorruptible seed. We have a spirit, soul and body. The soul is said to have a mind, emotion, and will. The soul of the Adamic man cannot be married or joined to the Spirit of God. The Adamic man is dead in trespasses and sins! No man seeks after God and every man has gone his own way. Because we are dead in our sins, our salvation cannot begin with ourselves! We cannot repent, turn away from our sin, nor turn to God. A natural person does not even want to! We are children of wrath and disobedience. Our salvation, like everything else, has to begin with God. Since God subjected us to vanity, He also takes the responsibility for us and ransoms us back.
Let's look at how this is accomplished. The natural blood of Jesus being poured out on the cross, cannot suddenly give us a legal right to go to heaven. This is not what the gospel teaches. In Acts 20:28 it says, "Be on guard for yourselves and for the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood." The church was purchased by His own blood! It was bought back by His own blood. That was not just a sacrifice which paid for our release. We actually have an identification with, and participation in His blood.
When Jesus was on the cross, the soldiers pierced His side with a lance, and blood and water came out. This has special meaning. When God made a bride for Adam, He took her out of Adam's side. Everything Eve was came out of Adam. They were one; but they were separated by becoming man and woman in the flesh. Obviously there is no man or woman in Christ, because man or woman is always related to Adam, the fleshly man; but male and female are the root of something God does. That is why in Genesis 1 it says He made them male and female. It wasn't until God had made a man and divided him, that we find man and woman mentioned. In typology, the church of God has come out of the side of Christ. The bride was made out of the blood and water that came out of His side. This is how He purchased the church. This is spiritually speaking - not something visible.
What was happening in Jesus Christ was something that was happening all the time. In Him there is neither male nor female. Christ has brought about a union instead of a separation. He came that we might be born of an incorruptible spiritual seed. We are talking about spiritual things. Christ was slain from the foundation of the world. He was in the prophets. "Before Abraham was, I am." Before Jesus Christ appeared on this earth, man was anti God; when Chist appeared man was anti Christ, because Christ truly represented God. That had never before happened! So you see, man has always been anti God, fighting Him, and rebelling against Him. As the Psalmist said, "No man seeks after God; every man goes his own way." They were dead in their trespasses and sins.
Now helpless man is in darkness, and there is no way that this man can recover himself - it is absolutely impossible. As far as spiritual life is concerned, he is dead. He is subjected to his flesh and to his carnal mind. Everything that begins in his body, grows in his body, and terminates in his body. No matter how much he tries for self-preservation, he cannot attain to eternal life. He needs something else inside of him to replace this body before it goes away. What he needs is the Christ, the recognition of what we are in the spiritual sense. Adam was a type (Romans 5:14) "the figure of him that was to come" - which is the Christ. So what was taken out of Christ? Everything that constitutes the church came out of the Christ. He did not marry a bunch of physical people; He married only that which came out of Himself. Now this may be a little difficult to understand, but he even talks about the Christ being bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh. That is actually what Adam says about Eve, now she is bone of his bone. So the church is actually a part of the body of Christ, which is spiritual. It is just not a bunch of fleshly people walking around that live and die, because Christ lives in a light which no man can approach, and only He has immortality. We have to see an absolute division, a sword, pass between the natural and the spiritual. So we see that Adam was a type, and the Eve taken out of him was part of his body, and so it is now that we see Christ was demonstrating a type on the cross, because His body was not a permanent eternal body, because you can see it. It was the Word made flesh, and the things we see are temporal. And so it was a temporal manifestation that passed away through the operation of man and God. Man was killing it , and God was putting to death man in this sense of the crucifixion , and in doing so we have the birth out of Christ, a bride, a covenant, of a new people who are part of Him, that can reproduce Him. We have to see that there must be some otaher aspect of the blood - that it wasn't just a literal figurative physical body with blood and water coming out of it that spilled on the ground. Obviously we know that Jesus Christ cleans both the spiritual and the physical in what He does - what is ransomed. I'm using a lot of scriptures here because I believe it is a good reference, another witness to us, and the scriptures are actually brothers in the Lord who got a revelation from God, and they spole it and wrote it just like the people are doing today. Thhis Bible is not one kind of a book that is irrefutable,or it doesn't have any mistakes in it, and it is not the Mediator between God and man - that is the Christ, which is the Spirit. The letter is dead, so we must be people who who can have the Spirit speak to us , and we have the Spirit so these things become meaningful. Hebrews has a lot of wonderful things about the Old Testament and New Testament, and the comparative things about that which was typology, and that which was the old priesthood and covenant, the blood, and the whole thing. "But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things to come, He entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation." (Heb.9:11) Previoous to this he says the tabernacle was only a figure for the time present, and it stood only in washings, cardinal ordinances, until the time of reformation. King James translation says "not of this building", but the word actually is CREATION. "not of this creation". We as human beings can be a type of the tabernacle more than the buildings that they had of Solomon and Ezra and so forth, simply because we are a type of a building not made with human hands. But this one - it is not of this creation. Christ is a new creation now - it has to do with things that are eternal, in the heavens. "and not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood, He entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption."(v.12) He didn't have blood of anything else but Himself. He went in on the basis of His own blood. What does that actually mean? I believe that His blood was really His soul. It carried the consciousness of who He was.And the consciousness of who He was as the Son of God, was the ability and the sense of being that made Him go through death, enter the first veil of the tabernacle, receive the enlightenment of the Spirit, and enter into the true divinity, the participation in Sonship and oneness with God. And this is what is demonstrated. All these things are actually senses???? of consciousness, because in the outer court we have death, washings, sacrifice and burning, and through this destruction of the old man and his old soul, his ways of being. He is able to go in through the veil, and become enlightened by the Holy Spirit, and see these lampstands produce like it says in Rev.1: , an image of the Son of God, or the Son of Man who represents the Son of God, and then that light is what makes our sense of being able to enter into the holiest by the blood of Christ. In the Old Testamenteverybody could come into the outer court, even the common man with his sacrifices and the priesthood. But into the first holy place only the priests could come, and not without blood. But into the holiest place only the high priest could come, onlly once a year, and that not without blood. So this is a picture of Jesus Christ coming down into our flesh, and throwing off all the works of man, all the disruption of this world, all the sense of evil, all the persuasion of the flesh, and entering into an anointing of the Spirit, which He did at the Jordan river, in which He heard God say, "This is My beloved Son." So the consciousness of coming out of the old man, the law, the offerings, sacrifices, etc. was as a sense of being that is only possessed by Jesus Christ; only He can pass through that death. It is only through His body of death that we can actually enter into the temple itself, because the outer court is NOT the temple. So the temple is a place of dwelling with God. Our first place of dwelling is as the Son of Man, because we have been raised from the dead in Adam to life in Christ, and we have become a new man. In Eph.2:11-16 it says that He has taken the uncircumcision and the circumcision through the peace of His cross, the blood of His cross, and He has made them one new man. It is still a man - who is an image of God. And this is the Son of Man who takes us in. Jesus Christ fulfills all these for us. This is what we talk about in typology. We have boldness now to enter into the holy place. Why? Because of His blood. Well, how does that affect me? If that was shed back on the cross,how can I go in any place? Where can I go? There is no place for me physically to walk into any kind of a temple today. I have to understand that through my regeneration of my spiri, so that I have the mind of Christ, and the sense of Christ's being, and that I can grow in a change of consciousness from humanity to the Son of Man to the Son of God through the operation of God in what Jesus Christ did down here as a Mediator. So we become a mediator between the inner and the outer as the Son, because we can touch both sonship and the Adam man. Of course, only the high priest could go all the way in, and come out again, and only by blood. If he didn't have the blood along, he couldn't go. Nothing else can make its trip into the holy place - no flesh, no water, no artificial light, no lampstands. This means that we have to identify with who the high priest was in his consciousness, where we wouldn't have any boldness to enter into oneness with God. So you see it is the work of redemption, or the work of the bloodis to bring our soul back into a loving realization of who we are, that we know these things now, and so we have boldness to enter into the holiest - into oneness with God. And that is exactly what Christ came to do. He didn't come just to spill His blood on the ground and become another sacrifice of a better lamb so that we could go to heaven. You will never consciously get rid of your sense of being of Adam and soul. You will only want to make it better unless ther is aa consistent identification with the death and the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit, and the realization of sonship, so that you can actually partake in what He did as a High Priest. "For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled, sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh" (v.13) I think if that is all you can do - is see these sacrifices as an external sacrifice of somebody, like Jesus even, sacrifice for your sin, you have some kind of a fleshly recognition that you would be justified by that. Most of our Christianity today is experiencing this type of legal cleansing of their mind, and they feel forgiven, but they can't understand spiritual things, and they live in sin and confession, sin and confession, etc. and never understand that Christ is not the minister of sin, that they are born of an incorruptible seed, and that nothing can damage it. "How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to werve the living God?" (v.14) O much more - the blood of Christ. But how is it going to work? It is going to purge my conscience from dead works, to serve a God who is living - not a God who is dead. Wow! I think that is wonderful! "And according to the law, one may almost say,all things are cleansed with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. Therefore it was necessary for the copies of the things in the heavens to be cleansed with these, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.(vv.22-23) So these patterns, these types, bulls, tabernacles, etc. were actually purified by the blood of goats and animals and the ashes of a heifer. So the external things can do this. But this is not enough for us today for he says in v.24 that "Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands." This has nothing to do with natural earthy things now. They are only figures of the true - in other words, they are not true. They are just a type or symbol. Like someone said, "You cannot wash clothes with a picture of a washing machine." "But into heaven itself" What did He do? He entered the holy places, into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us." So actually what He did was bring His soul or consciousness, which was in His blood - He brought that to God as an offering. God took this and poured it back in the Spirit to us so that we could understand that we are being ransomed by His soul, or the soul, the sense of being that is in Christ. When that comes to us, our sense of being is changed from natural to spiritual, from earthy to heavenly, from death to life, from darkness to light. We are redeemed by this blood which is the sense of being - that is why we do not partake in animal blood, because we don't want to identify with the soul of an animal. I believe when God breathed into Adam he became a living soul, when he became a living soul??? when He breathed into the disciples in John 20:22,25 He said,"Receive the Holy Spirit," and "Your sins are remitted". Wow! That is the Passover. Pentecost was the coming of the law. Fifty days after they ate the lamb, and had their passover, they came to Mt. Sinai and got the law. The law contained a building of the tabernacle - the law was a pattern. The law of the Spirit of life is Christ Jesus - if we get a new priest we get a new priesthood; He didn't come out of Levi, crossed over and came out of Judah and its administration of a heavenly tabernacle made without hands. We have a new law and a new priesthood, and this law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus contains in it the pattern for the temples, or the pattern for our dwelling in the Spirit with God. We live in this tabernacle of flesh, but we HAVE this one, made without hands, eternal in the heavens,and this is going to be the dwelling place we dwell in when this one is destroyed. "For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen,but at the things which are not seen;for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. For we know that if the earthly tent which is our house is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands,eternal in the heavens....We are of good courage, I say,and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord." (2Cor.4:17 -2Cor.5:1,8) We have to have this by faith(v.7), we have to live in this, we don't want to be found naked (v.3). The high priest was the only one who could go into the holiest, not without blood, so Christ fulfilled these things by actually bringing Himself, His sense of being, in heaven. He did not have any fleshly blood and body; He did not take His physical body up there. We are talking about the Son of God. He brought His own consciousness, sacrificed HIMSELFthat by His death(Rom.5: ) we are justified, but we are saved by His LIFE . in other words, it is His life coming back, it is His life coming to us in the Spirit, and then begins to renew our mind in the Spirit, to spiritual things, to realize justification in the Spirit, to realize a new birth in the Spirit, and our oneness with God - our sonship,our identification, our pilgrimage in the earth. Believe me, it is a whole new sense of being. "Since therefore , brethren,we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh,"(Heb.10:19-20) We can't get hold of that blood in any way. We can't enter anything in this earth with this body. This temple is in heaven, which these things were types of. That is a dwelling place with God. God sent the Word, His Son took on flesh, made an image that man could see, left us a testimony, told us that He was going to show us how to be taken out of death, and put into life. He let men crucify Him, reappeared in a physical form to show peopole that He was still alive, He passed into the heavens, He is gone into the eternal tabernacles, the eternal dwelling with God, and when He said, "I will come again" He comes again in the Spirit to us. And this is Him; the Spirit does not bring of Himself. The Spirit is not bringing any kind of supernatural power, etc. Time and again we read in the scriptures,"An evil and adulterous generation craves for a sign; and yet no sign shall be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet" and in Matt. 24: There will be signs and wonders. Some will come to Jesus and say, "Many will say to Me on that day,`Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in your name cast out demons, and in your name perform many miracles? And then I will declare to them, `I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.'" (Matt.7:22-23) We must not be fooled by any of these kinds of things. We can READ these things - they are letter. They will never bring us life unless the Spirit comes to enlighten us. And if you don't want to get rid of this old "I" this "me", this sense of being, and you want to retain that, make it better and get an imagination of blessing, and going to heaven, and everything is going to be nice, and you are going to see your relatives. You better let that die - if you don't, you are in trouble. Because a death is a death - it is a separation. We can shut off God so easily in our mind, by thinking of other things and keeping ourselves busy doing things. What we are actually doing is shutting ourselves away from God because God is always everywhere - He is omnipresent. He knows everything. We can't get rid of Him. Wherever we go, whether to the bottom of the sea, or the highest heaven, God is there!