Jesus Christ's body is a multi-faceted symbol. Sometimes Christ's body is a symbol of His death, but at other times it is a symbol of life. So, it says here that the Passover bread represents Christ's body. When Jesus uses bread as a symbol for His body, it is a symbol of life, even eternal life. We won't turn to it, but John 6 explains this symbol very clearly. There, Jesus speaks of bread that endures to everlasting life. He speaks of the bread of God, the bread of life, and the living bread. When Jesus says that He is the living bread (John 6:51), it means that His flesh is not merely something that leads to eternal life, but He indicates a body that is alive. As we partake of the bread, we become one with the living Savior.
The concept of death is not entirely absent, because Christ's life in the flesh ended - horrifically. As I said, it is a complex symbol. But the bread itself is a symbol of the sinless life that Jesus lived, up through its awful end, rather than just the end. It is not a symbol of a broken body. When we symbolically partake of Christ's flesh, we are joined to His sinless life. God accepts us into His presence on the basis of Christ's flesh, as it says in Hebrews 10:20. The new and living way is through His flesh. In the peace offering, man in shown accepted by God. Our acceptance is based on Christ's sinless life, and only a body undefiled by sin has blood that is worthy to pay our death penalty. But He had to live flawlessly in order for the sin offering to be effective, and we partake of that perfect life at Passover. And just as bread strengthens mankind physically, so the bread of life strengthens us spiritually because we are partaking of the sinless life of the Creator.
