Going through pregnancy for the first time has had a profound impact on me physically and emotionally, even as it has caused me to contemplate spiritual matters from a new experiential basis. One does not necessarily have to be a woman or a mother to grasp certain scriptural truths, but even as God can use all of our life experiences to draw us into a deeper knowledge of him, so pregnancy can be eye opening.

Over the past few months, my mind has often turned to that most famous of all pregnant women in scripture: Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ, a.k.a. Virgin Mary, Mother of God (a term meant to emphasize the full divinity of Christ), God-bearer, and especially among our Roman Catholic friends, the Queen of Heaven. The aspects of Mary’s story that have most captured my thoughts while pregnant are 1) her place as the last in a long line of women through whom God’s promise was fulfilled, and 2) her bodily connection with our Lord. When combined, these two truths have profound theological implications that we ought to consider, especially in light of Christ’s own words.

The Women Who Brought Forth the Seed

Our first mother, Eve, is well known for her fall into sin. Deceived by the serpent into eating the forbidden fruit, she became the subject of a terrible curse when God said to her, “I will greatly multiply / Your pain in childbirth, / In pain you will bring forth children…” (Genesis 3:16) There are two possible ways to interpret this curse: as a narrow declaration indicating an increase in physical pain during labor or a more general curse upon women’s efforts to procreate, resulting in both physical and emotional pain…even the death of mother or child.

I personally favor the latter interpretation, which cuts to the heart of a woman’s unique identity. There are certainly many ways that men and women are different, but none is as biologically obvious as the fact that women can bear children and men cannot. Our bodily organs are different for this very reason. Historically, women were primarily valued for this reproductive ability, as they were generally weaker physically and thus unable to dominate in other ways valued by society.

Only a few cultures in history have placed a higher value on other capabilities of women or allowed their identity to be drawn from something beyond than their familial roles: ours is one of them. I say this not to make a value judgment, but simply to state a fact about how women have been treated. The curse that God declared about pain in childbirth impacted who Eve was physically and emotionally, even as it has for countless women throughout history.

Nevertheless, a glorious promise was also announced when God said to the serpent, “And I will put enmity / Between you and the woman, / And between your seed and her seed; / He shall bruise you on the head, / And you shall bruise him on the heel.” (Genesis 3:15) Traditionally regarded as the first declaration of the gospel, this was a prediction that a male descendant of the woman would ultimately defeat the serpent, who scripture clearly indicates was the devil. (e.g. Revelation 12:9) Although God proclaimed that the penalty for Adam’s sin was death, (Genesis 3:19) we see in the very next verse that Adam “called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all the living.” (v. 20) That is not a message about the passing on of death, but rather the passing on of life that will ultimately bring salvation.

This likely explains the Apostle Paul’s otherwise odd statement that “women will be preserved through the bearing of children if they continue in faith and love and sanctity with self-restraint.” (1 Timothy 3:15) In that portion of Paul’s letter, which is most famous for its prohibition against women teaching or exercising authority over men, he appeals to the story of Eve’s sin in Genesis chapter 3 to make his point. This is why I believe that his conclusion regarding “the bearing of children” in v. 15, which could also be translated from the Greek as “the child-bearing”, is likely pointing to Eve’s role as mother of the living and the way that God brought about the coming of the Messiah through childbirth.

True, our Lord’s conception was supernatural, but he was still carried to term in his mother’s womb. We confess that his physical body was composed in part from her DNA. Not only that, but he was nourished in her uterus by her blood, and after birth he was sustained by her milk as he nursed from her breasts. There was an intimate, one flesh relationship between our Lord and his mother in which his life was sustained by her body.

Now consider that Mary was the last in a long line of women. The seed of Eve was not a son to whom she herself gave birth. Rather, she gave birth to one of the seed’s ancestors, even as generation after generation of women continued giving birth to the family line. Each one passed on their DNA and nourished their children with their own bodies, until finally Mary gave birth to Jesus and he nursed from her breast. Therefore, one could almost say that there was a physical connection stretching through the ages connecting mothers with the children of promise, even as the fathers were connected through the passing on of their DNA. Most powerful to me is the way that all those women had to nourish their children with their own blood and milk to bring about God’s plan of salvation.

The Body and Blood of Eternal Life

What I have just stated would be truly incredible in and of itself, but it is only half of the story. The first half showed us the essential role that women have played at every stage of salvation history. The second half reveals how this was all a picture of what Christ does for us here and now. You see, even as Christ was sustained by the body and blood of his mother Mary, so she was in fact sustained by his body and blood.

“I am the living bread that came down out of heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread also which I will give for the life of the world is My flesh…He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats Me, he also will live because of Me.”

John 6:51, 54-57

Christ stated very clearly that even as a developing infant must be nourished by its mother’s body and blood to have physical life temporally, so we must all partake of his body and blood to have spiritual life eternally. Two errors are typically made with regard to this text: some diminish the meaning of Christ’s words or explain them away, while others interpret them in such a literally physical manner that they risk missing the spiritual point.

The first is an error because it ignores the clear words of Christ that we must partake of his sacrificed body and blood. That he really meant this and it was a hill to die on is demonstrated by the fact that many of his disciples turned away from him as a direct result of his words. This makes it likely that they interpreted it not as a mere metaphor or parable, but as a proposed reality. Jesus is not recorded telling any of them, “Come back! I didn’t mean it literally!” His words were certainly literal in that they described a true reality.

However, it does not follow that his words should be understood in an overly or solely physical manner. It is clear enough that a portion of Christ’s flesh and a vial of his blood is not delivered to each church weekly by Amazon Prime. That would be cannibalism, on top of which it would compromise the real physical nature of Christ’s body, which has a limited size and cannot be in all places at once as his divine nature can be. Even so, many Christians throughout history—probably a sizeable majority—have held that we must somehow partake of Christ’s body and blood in a physical manner to receive its spiritual benefits. They do not believe that the bread and wine cease to look and taste like bread and wine. Rather, they declare that a miracle occurs in which these elements are substantially transformed into the physical body and blood of Christ so that they might be physically consumed.

I believe this viewpoint misses the contrast Christ makes between the physical and the spiritual, the temporal and the eternal. He draws a distinction between the manna physically consumed by the Israelites in the wilderness, which was highly temporal in nature, and the type of sustenance his body and blood provides: namely, life that is eternal and spiritual. (e.g. John 6:31-35, 49-51) I therefore conclude that it is not necessary for the Christian to physically eat Christ’s body and blood to have eternal life, but rather to spiritually eat them, for the benefit we receive from that body and blood is not primarily physical but spiritual.

Obviously, this has great significance for how we view the sacrament variously known as the Lord’s Supper, Communion, Eucharist, or the Mass. We must not deny that Christ’s body and blood are offered to us in this sacrament, for he said the following himself at the Last Supper.

“And when He had taken some bread and given thanks, He broke it and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me.’ And in the same way He took the cup after they had eaten, saying, ‘This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in My blood.’”

Luke 22:19-20

When Christ spoke these words, he was present in bodily form before his disciples holding physical bread and wine that was separate from his body. His physical body and blood had not yet been offered up for mankind: that would happen the following day. I therefore believe the point he was making was largely spiritual. He indicated that the bread and wine symbolized the body and blood that were about to be offered, and that in the sacrament that would be celebrated by the Church throughout its history, bread and wine would continue to symbolize that body and blood. The physical eating of bread and wine would point to the spiritual nourishment received from Christ’s body and blood, which though physically offered up at Calvary are united with the believer in a spiritual manner.

It is necessary for us to feed upon that flesh and blood to have spiritual life within us, and in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper the saving benefit of that flesh and blood are applied to us anew. That is not to say that the effect wears off and we must feed on it constantly to continue living—no, that was what the ancient Israelites experienced with the manna. The bread of life that Christ provides, his body and his blood, has the power to save forever, as indicated by the author of Hebrews.

“Every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins; but He, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time onward until His enemies be made a footstool for His feet. For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.”

Hebrews 10:11-14

This is why the orthodox Church (in the broadest sense of those terms) has always rejected the idea that the body and blood of Christ are re-sacrificed on the altar of the Lord’s table. Yes, even Roman Catholics reject this idea, though Protestants have sometimes claimed otherwise. However, my Roman Catholic friends do go farther than me in their descriptions of the grace offered to us in the sacraments, for they teach that a Christian can go back and forth between a state of grace and the lack thereof. (The causes of these changes are mortal sin and its eventual confession and forgiveness.) This means that a person’s degree of justification before God can ebb and flow along with their progress in sanctification. Receiving Christ’s body and blood again in the Mass is intimately connected with one’s continuance in salvation.

I respectfully disagree, for I do not understand justification and sanctification to work in such a manner. Our salvation flows out of our union with Christ, through which we are regenerated, justified, and sanctified. This union does not require constant topping up, such that if we miss the Lord’s Supper one week, our union is compromised. (That is not quite what Catholics suggest, but it can seem that way.) No, it is a union that lasts forever. We are eternally united with the body and blood of Christ, which has the power to save forever. Even as a husband enters a one flesh relationship with his wife, so Christ enters a one flesh relationship with His bride. And while human marriages may fail, the marriage of the Lamb is inviolable.

What then does it mean that we receive the body and blood of Christ anew in the Lord’s Supper? Only God could give us a perfect explanation, but this is certainly a sacrament in which the grace and promises of God are offered to us. Even as physical washing in water assures us that our sins are spiritually washed away, so the physical consumption of bread and wine assures us that we are spiritually nourished by the body and blood of Christ. And while baptism occurs once to mirror the once-for-all forgiveness made possible through union with Christ, so the Lord’s Supper occurs regularly to remind us of his ongoing provision for our every spiritual need and the certainty of our future salvation.

As a mother’s milk allows her child to keep growing physically, so the body and blood of Christ allow us to keep growing spiritually. As a developing infant relies on its mother’s blood to stay alive, so we need the blood of Christ to have spiritual life in ourselves. The sacraments symbolize this saving union with Christ.

His Body, His Choice, Our Salvation

The popular Christmas song “Mary Did You Know?”, written by Mark Lowry, includes the following statement made to Mary: “This child that you delivered will soon deliver you.” What a beautiful statement about how the physical and the spiritual come together in the Incarnation! It was necessary for our Savior to enter a physical human body that he might be put to death and raised physically, for the glorious future God promises us is not an escape from our physical bodies but a resurrection and glorification of the same. Even so, we should also acknowledge the dichotomy in scripture between the physical/earthly/temporal and the spiritual/heavenly/eternal. One passage describes this particularly well.

“So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown a perishable body, it is raised an imperishable body; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. So also it is written, ‘The first man, Adam, became a living soul.’ The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural; then the spiritual. The first man is from the earth, earthy; the second man is from heaven. As is the earthy, so also are those who are earthy; and as is the heavenly, so also are those who are heavenly. Just as we have borne the image of the earthy, we will also bear the image of the heavenly.”

1 Corinthians 15:42-49

Notice that Paul does not enter into some kind of Gnostic thinking where the body is done away with in favor of a disembodied spirit. Instead, he contrasts what is possible naturally—that is, according to the conditions within which we live in this sinful, cursed world—and what is possible supernaturally or spiritually. The problem is not our bodies themselves, but the sin that has cursed them. To finally restore us physically, Christ must restore us spiritually. He must raise us up from the “earthy” to the “heavenly”. The book of Revelation speaks of a New Heaven and New Earth, so while our future existence will not be devoid of an earth, that earth will not be “earthy” or “natural” in the way Paul describes. It will not bear the curse of sin.

Right now, our physical bodies are wasting away and dying. The body and blood of Christ do not reverse that temporal reality. Rather, they bring life to our dead spirits, preparing us for an eternal reality to come. While the ancient Israelites ate the physical manna in the wilderness and died, the spiritual application of Christ’s physical body and blood to us ensures that this first death has no power over us. We are restored spiritually in this life and will be restored physically in the life to come.

“For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body. For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he already sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it.”

Romans 8:20-25

All of this occurred because Christ offered up his body for us. Remember those words: “This is my body which is given for you.” A mother also has to make a kind of sacrifice of her body. While modern medicine has ensured that most women do not perish from the experience of childbearing, pregnancy certainly brings a number of inconveniences and a great deal of pain to a woman’s body. For this very reason, many women do not desire the pregnancies that come to them. They do not want to make the physical sacrifice that is involved in bringing a child to term and putting it up for adoption (assuming they have no wish or ability to care for it after birth). They proclaim, “My body, my choice!”

Jesus Christ had a choice. He knew the high cost that would be required to give us the gift of life. After all, he was the one who said, “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13) A human being can make no greater sacrifice than his or her body, for we do not have the power to lay down our eternal souls. In giving his body and blood to us, Christ was truly loving us to the greatest extreme. As the Apostle John wrote in his account of the Last Supper, “having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.” (John 13:1) What made this especially remarkable was that it was a free choice made with full recognition of the suffering involved.

“For this reason the Father loves Me, because I lay down My life so that I may take it again. No one has taken it away from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This commandment I received from My Father.”

John 10:17-18

Jesus gave everything humanly possible to establish a life-giving union between himself and his bride. He did not shrink from the physical sacrifice involved, but “for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame”. (Hebrews 12:2) In this way, he was the antithesis of our current cultural moment, which looks upon the sacrificial giving of life as a potential obstacle to joy rather than its source. Granted, not everything about pregnancy and motherhood is joyful, not every woman will become a mother, and there are some in our culture who still see the value of children. But in general, our culture tends to scoff at those who are dependent, and what could be more dependent than a developing infant, completely reliant on its mother’s body and blood for life? Even so, we are completely dependent on Christ’s body and blood for eternal life.

“And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”

Ephesians 2:1-7

Few human acts echo Christ’s statement, “This is my body which is given for you,” as clearly as childbearing. Perhaps that is why God used childbearing to bring the Savior into the world, that those who gave of their bodies might receive from his body: not only those women in Christ’s ancestral line, but all who trust in him. Now that we are united to Christ, we present our bodies as “a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God…” (Romans 12:2) There is nothing—not even our own lives—that we ought not sacrifice if God requires it of us. This does not mean that we endure any and every form of abuse without defending ourselves or those requiring our protection, for Christ was not a masochist. But when it is crystal clear that God requires something of us, we must be willing to lay down our resources or even our lives for the kingdom of heaven and one another.

This is something that has become clearer to me during pregnancy. Even if you have never been or will never be pregnant, you can hopefully sense how this message applies to your own life. These are spiritual truths relevant for all, rooted in the example of Jesus Christ. May we, when called by God, answer as Mary did: “Behold, the bondslave of the Lord; may it be done to me according to your word.” (Luke 1:38)

All scripture quotations are from the 1995 New American Standard Bible, copyright The Lockman Foundation.