“A wolf in sheep’s clothing” is someone who seems nice on the outside, like a gentle sheep, but on the inside and actually is a ravening wolf. Then there is the “sheep in wolf’s clothing,” which appears on the surface to be harsh and scary but on the inside is actually gentle and good. (Coleridge used that metaphor to describe Calvinism, with its “wolf’s clothing” of predestination and reprobation covering the “sheep” of eternal security.) Here is what Luther does with the figure of speech of a wolf and a sheep.
The context is a sermon on the Lord’s Supper. Luther is dealing with an argument against his teaching that Christ’s body and blood are truly present in the bread and the wine. So we are digesting Jesus?, someone might object. Oh, no, says Luther. This kind of food digests us!
And that is what this spiritual food does: when the body eats it physically, this food digests the body’s flesh and transforms it so that it too becomes spiritual, i.e. alive and blessed forever, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, “The body will rise spiritually.” To give a simple illustration of what takes place in this eating: it is as if a wolf devoured a sheep and the sheep were so powerful a food that it transformed the wolf and turned him into a sheep. So, when we eat Christ’s flesh physically and spiritually, the food is so powerful that it transforms us into itself and out of fleshly, sinful, mortal men makes spiritual, holy, living men. This we are already, though in a hidden manner in faith and hope; the fact is not yet manifest, but we shall experience it on the Last Day.
Martin Luther, “A Beautiful Sermon on the Reception of the Holy Sacrament,” Church Postil: Easter, AE 37:100-101.
I’ll conclude with the commentary from our pastor (and my son-in-law), Ned Moerbe, who used that quotation in a sermon: “If death is incapable of corrupting the Body of Jesus, what makes you think that your stomach is any more powerful? Here again Luther gives us a powerful image when writing against those who claimed that if Christ’s flesh is eaten, nothing but flesh comes of it. This would be true if we were talking about a piece of beef or chicken or pork, but Jesus’ flesh is different. Jesus’ flesh is spiritual, not as in something that lacks substance, but rather it is a spiritual flesh that brings the spiritual blessings of the New Man.”
Photo, “Eating White Wolf,” by Tambako via Flickr, Creative Commons License
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