The Medicine of Immortality

I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world. JOHN 6:51

Near the end of his letter to the Ephesians, Ignatius urges them to come together often, in one faith and in one Jesus Christ, “breaking one bread, which is the medicine of immortality and the antidote that we should not die but live for ever in Jesus Christ.” It is one of the most quoted phrases in all early Christian writing. It is also one that Christians of different traditions have read in different ways, and it deserves to be handled fairly.

What he actually says

Let us begin with the words themselves. Ignatius speaks of the church breaking one bread. He calls that bread a medicine, and the medicine’s effect is immortality: it is an antidote against death, so that believers may live for ever in Christ. The language is the language of healing. Ignatius had already called Christ the “one only physician” earlier in the same letter. Here the physician’s medicine is given at His table.

He says more in two other letters. To the Philadelphians he writes that they should be careful to observe one eucharist, “for there is one flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ and one cup unto union in His blood; there is one altar, as there is one bishop”. And to the Smyrnaeans he writes of the false teachers that they stay away from the eucharist and from prayer, “because they allow not that the eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, which flesh suffered for our sins, and which the Father of His goodness raised up.”

Those are the key texts. They are short, and Ignatius does not stop to explain them. He is not writing a treatise on the sacrament. He is warning churches, in haste, against division and against a particular false teaching.

The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? 1 CORINTHIANS 10:16

The setting of the words

Read in their setting, the texts hang together around one concern. The Docetists denied that Christ had real flesh. So, Ignatius says, they cannot confess that the eucharist is His flesh, and they keep away from it. For Ignatius the reality of the Lord’s Supper and the reality of the incarnation stand or fall together. The flesh that is given at the table is the flesh that “suffered for our sins” and was raised. The false teachers’ absence from the table was of a piece with their denial of the cross.

The Philadelphian text adds the second concern: unity. One flesh, one cup, one altar, one bishop. The table is where the church is one, and those who set up a rival table divide the body. So the eucharist in Ignatius is never a private devotion. It is the gathering of the whole church around the one Christ.

For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread. 1 CORINTHIANS 10:17

How Catholic and Orthodox readers hear him

Catholic and Orthodox Christians have always read these lines as an early witness to their own faith that the bread and wine of the eucharist truly become, or truly are, the body and blood of Christ. They point out that Ignatius does not say the eucharist is a sign of the flesh of Christ, or a reminder of it, but that it is His flesh. They note that he speaks of an altar, and that he calls the bread a medicine that gives immortality, which is more than a memorial could do. There is real force in this reading. Ignatius plainly held a strong and realistic view of the sacrament, and no one should pretend otherwise.

How Protestant readers hear him

Protestant Christians have read the same lines differently, and they too have reasons. They point out that Ignatius was not addressing the questions of the sixteenth century — how Christ is present, whether the substance of the bread changes, whether the Supper is a sacrifice offered for the living and the dead — and that it is unfair to make him answer them. Lutheran readers find in him a confession of the real presence close to their own. Reformed readers note that Calvin, too, taught that believers truly feed on the flesh and blood of Christ at the table, by the Spirit and through faith, and they hear Ignatius in that sense. Others note that he can speak in the same breath of faith as “the flesh of the Lord” and love as “the blood of Jesus Christ”, as he does to the Trallians, which suggests that his flesh-and-blood language could be pictorial as well as literal.

It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life. JOHN 6:63

What all readers should grant is this. Ignatius took the Lord’s Supper with great seriousness. He did not treat it as an optional extra or a mere symbol that could be neglected. He saw it as bound up with the reality of Christ’s body, the unity of the church and the hope of eternal life. Whatever account a Christian gives of the sacrament, it should be at least that serious.

A medicine, not a charm

It matters that Ignatius calls the bread a medicine and not a charm. Medicine heals from within, over time, and it is taken by the sick. Nothing in Ignatius suggests that eating the bread works apart from faith and love; on the contrary, faith and love are, as we shall see, the beginning and end of everything for him. The bread is the medicine of immortality because it is the table of the Physician, who is Himself “true Life in death”.

Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. JOHN 6:54

And the medicine is given to a gathered people. Ignatius’s phrase comes at the end of a sentence urging the Ephesians to assemble “in common, every one of you severally, man by man, in grace, in one faith”. The immortality he speaks of is not a private escape from death but a shared life in Christ, received together. Christians who come to the table divided, or who come as isolated consumers of a religious service, have missed his point whatever their doctrine of the sacrament.

Coming to the table

For Ignatius, then, the Lord’s Supper was the place where the real Christ met His real people, and where death began to be undone. We may disagree about the manner of Christ’s presence. We should not disagree that He meets us there, that we should come often, and that we should come together.

For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come. 1 CORINTHIANS 11:26

Ignatius himself, writing to Rome, reached for this language when he spoke of his own longing: he wanted, he said, “the bread of God, which is the flesh of Christ”, and for a draught “His blood, which is love incorruptible.” On his way to die, the table of the Lord had become to him a picture of the heavenly feast he was hastening towards.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Before you next come to the Lord’s Supper, read John 6:47–58 and 1 Corinthians 11:23–29 slowly, and prepare your heart.

2. If you belong to a tradition that seldom celebrates the Supper, ask yourself honestly whether you have come to treat it lightly. If your tradition celebrates it often, ask whether familiarity has dulled it.

3. Find out what a Christian of another tradition believes about the Lord’s Supper, and listen to their reasons without arguing.

4. Is there anyone you would find it hard to share the table with? Take one step towards reconciliation before you next receive it.

5. Thank God today that Christ is the physician of both body and soul, and bring Him one sickness of your own.

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus, true Physician, You gave Your flesh for the life of the world and You feed Your people at Your table.

Forgive me for the times I have come carelessly, or divided from my brothers and sisters, or not at all.

Meet me when I break the bread and drink the cup; heal what is sick in me, and strengthen my hope of the life that has no end.

Make Your church one around Your table, until we eat and drink with You in Your kingdom. Amen.