With Jesus’ institution of the Lord’s Supper, he brings forth wine again. This in effect gives us wine bookends of his ministry. Water to wine in His first miracle. Then on the night before His crucifixion, it was wine in order to show forth the blood of the covenant. In this, we see that in Jesus, who is the new and better covenant, we have the one who brings together the joy of the new covenant represented by the water to wine at Cana while at the same time wine is the blood of Christ to us in the Eucharistic meal. Jesus takes upon Himself the maledictory blood oath in our place and we are given the wine which celebrates the good in good Friday. As Christ’s younger brethren we drink the wine of Cana at the table because He took upon Himself the wrath of God that should have justly found us all being plagued with the death that the water to blood was to God’s Egyptian enemies in the Old Covenant. Christ took the curses for the penalty of sin that we might drink the wine of Cana.
The
comment by the Master to the Bridegroom at the end of the Cana record about the quality of the wine is a double entendre. The obvious meaning is, of course, quite literal, but the underlying motif is covenantal in meaning. In redemptive history, the new and better covenant is “the good wine kept until last.”