When He says, “This is the cup of the new covenant in my blood that is poured out for you for the forgiveness of sins,” He uses the same word for the pouring out of sacrificial blood in the tabernacle and covenant sacrifices. To eat and drink the blood of those sacrifices would have been to drink unto death, so God enacted a protective prohibition against such.
But when Jesus came, He came to give us life (Joh 10:10); He is LIFE (Joh 11:25). Jesus made eating His flesh and drinking His blood the whole point of the New Covenant, because His sacrificial, resurrected, eternal life is literally and uniquely present there. “Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life” (Jn 6:54).
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