Eating

By eating, we mean the use of food and gathered meals as opportunities to engage in the spiritual practice of feasting. God created trees “pleasant to the sight and good for food” (Genesis 2:9), and created us to eat: “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food” (Genesis 1:29). After the flood, animals were included in the good food God gave us: “Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything” (Genesis 9:3).

In the Old Testament, the food laws of the Old Covenant were meant to make visible the distinction between God’s people and the nations. The way Israel did food was different than how pagans did food. Their culinary distinctiveness marked them out as holy before God and man. In the New Testament, the food laws (and all laws of the Old Covenant) are done away with now that Christ has come. These laws and customs were “a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ” (Colossians 2:17). The law and ceremonies of the Old Covenant pointed to (shadowed) the greater reality, Christ.

So, when we think about that holiness principle in the dietary laws of the Old Testament, our holiness is not determined by what we eat. Now, our holiness is marked out in a greater way by whose we are, Christ’s, and through Christ we still do food differently. But it doesn't have anything to do with what food we eat. It has to do with how we eat it. Paul, addressing false teachers trying to force believers to maintain the Old Covenant food laws, rebukes them and writes “For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer” (1 Timothy 4:4-5). We do food differently than our non-Christian neighbors. We maintain the holiness and distinctiveness of our eating by recognizing the substance of Christ which those laws pointed us to and offering a sacrifice of praise and prayer for our food to God.

Second, we can engage in gracious outreach through food and gathered meals. In the Old Testament, God structured the seasons and years of Israel around fast days and feast days. These feasts always included welcoming those in need and those outside the family into the feasts (see, for example, Deuteronomy 16:13-15; 14:26-29). They were instructed to invite individuals who could never provide anything in return. This act of providing a feast for those who cannot repay pictures God’s redemptive project of providing gracious gifts to those who cannot pay him back (Isaiah 25:6-8; 55:1-3).

In the New Testament, God sent his Son as the great culmination of Israel’s feasts; He is the bread of life (John 6:35). Now, those who make up God’s multinational people through Christ are no longer under obligation to practice Israel’s ancient feasts and rituals (Colossians 2:16). What did Christ do as the greater substance of the Old Testament feasts when he came into the world? He feasted (Matthew 11:19; Luke 5:29). Who did he feast with? Those who spiritually and physically were outcasts, and those who could bring nothing spiritually to the table. Jesus did spiritual and physical outreach through these meals and feasts, and he calls us to have that same kind of evangelistic purpose of gracious outreach in our feasting to physical outcasts and spiritual outcasts (Luke 14:12-14).

For Jesus, dinners are for evangelism and mercy ministry. He illuminates and expands the abiding principle of the law and the true picture of God’s redemption found in how we distinctly feast as the people of God. We are those who welcome our neighbors knowing they could never throw us a feast in return. The Bible ends with a picture of our future with Jesus feasting with his bride: “Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb” (Revelation 19:9). By feasting in holiness and in gracious outreach, we picture for our neighbors and the world who Christ is and what he invites sinners to join him in through the gospel, the Marriage Supper of the Lamb at the end of time.