…since you truly are unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us…
—1 Corinthians 5:7

We continue our journey from Egypt to the promised land. In the Old Testament the Israelites gathered manna every day. Jesus said that He is the true manna from heaven, and so people sometimes say that we need to gather fresh manna every day and feed on Jesus. There is no argument that we feed on Jesus every day. But in the Old Testament the Lord commanded them to gather manna for six days, and on the sixth day to gather a double portion, so as to rest on the seventh. On the Sabbath they found nothing on the ground. [Exd.16:23-26]

We no longer live by this principle, because every day is a Sabbath, or rest, for us. Just as the Lord finished His works and entered His rest, so we in this world have entered His rest. [Heb.4:9-10] Now we live in the promised land, the land of rest, and in this land the manna no longer fell. [Jos.5:12] And the manna is a type of Christ’s flesh. [Jhn.6:50-51] Paul writes that we no longer know Christ according to the flesh. [2 Cor.5:16] Then how do we know Him? According to the Spirit, of course. What happened on the road to Emmaus after Jesus’ disciples had tasted the bread? “Then their eyes were opened and they knew Him; and He vanished from their sight.” [Luk.24:31] How did they recognise Him? Not according to the flesh, of course, because they had walked with Him the whole way and could not recognise Him, but according to the Spirit!

Just as in the Old Testament, when the Israelites ate the produce of the land and the manna ceased [Jos.5:11-12], so in the New Testament, when the disciples ate the bread, Jesus vanished from their sight. The Israelites ate unleavened bread and parched grain [Jos.5:11], while the disciples ate the bread that Jesus gave them. [Luk.24:30] It is usually said that Jesus took Communion with them, but in Communion we eat His flesh, or the manna, whereas the Israelites and Jesus’ disciples ate unleavened bread, which is actually something quite different. So what are the unleavened bread and the bread Jesus gave the disciples a type of?

Paul writes: “Therefore purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” [1 Cor.5:7-8] So now we’re supposed to eat each other, are we? :-) Not at all; let’s go back to 2 Corinthians 5:16, where Paul writes that we no longer know Christ according to the flesh, to see what this new lump, or unleavened bread, is. The next verse says: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” [2 Cor.5:17] The new lump, or unleavened bread, is the new creation. When Jesus rose from the dead, He became the new lump, the new creation. Jesus is not a creature but God, yet being a man, He became the new creation. And since we are in Him, we too are a new creation, as He is.

Every time we come to know Christ, like the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, and receive a revelation of Jesus — not as He was in the flesh, but as He is now, glorified and “far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come” [Eph.1:21] — we eat unleavened bread and are accordingly transformed into His image from glory to glory. And as He is now, so are we in this world. [1 Jhn.4:17] Since He is our Passover and was sacrificed for us, we are now like Him — pure, without malice and wickedness, and unleavened!