Let’s Just Take Jesus at His Word By Rev. William Snyder
“This is My body... This is My blood.” H I G H E R T H I N G S __ 20
Little else shows more clearly the amazing mental gymnastics that people must attempt in order to deny or misapply the clear words of Jesus than do the various interpretations of these two statements. At the time of the Reformation, the Roman Catholic Church taught transubstantiation, that the bread and wine of Christ’s Supper are changed into His Body and Blood, only appearing to be what they once were. Luther and Ulrich Zwingli both rejected
transubstantiation. But while Zwingli taught that the Supper was and remained bread and wine and that whatever consumption there was of Jesus was purely “spiritual,” Luther simply took Jesus and Paul at their word.
