PSALM SIXTY-NINE

21. They gave Me gall for My food, and in My thirst they gave Me vinegar to drink.

This is what the Jews did and do also allegorically when, after they have crucified the truth which is Scripture (namely, Christ Himself) and have twisted it to their own meaning and will, they try to mix bitter glosses with it, glosses that are hateful and blasphemous against Christ, as Moses prophesied, “Their wine is the gall of dragons” (Deut. 32:33). For the truth consumes us, and we consume it. It is our food, and we are its food. Therefore, when they should have been truth’s food which it would incorporate into itself, as Christ devours us and changes us into Himself, and we are His food, they were turned into the gall of the most bitter treachery instead, so that they could not be eaten, like that very bad fig in Jer. 24:2. Therefore the Lord also cursed the fig tree which had no fruit, and this He did not because of the fig tree but in order to give a sign of the synagogue that had to be cursed. Thereby the evangelists are showing us something, because they say that it was not the season for figs, as if to say: “That fig tree did not deserve the curse, but that which it signified, whose fruit He hungered for.” So also we are a drink for Christ and the truth, and, on the contrary, Christ and the truth are our drink, because we feast with the Lord in a mutual and exceedingly rich banquet, He with us and we with Him, as we are incorporated in each other. But the Jews have become vinegar and spoiled wine, of ancient vintage through unbelief. Behold, how great a sacrament these ungodly people unwittingly achieved against themselves! When the Lord tasted it, He did not want to drink it (Matt. 27:34). For the truth of the Scriptures and of faith does not receive them nor their glosses, but rather dies and is blotted out in them.
The heretics imitate the rage of these people in every respect. They likewise drink the truth with the gall of their own treachery and with the vinegar of their supremely arrogant understanding. But the tongue and the throat of Christ does not receive them. For the order of teachers tastes the bitterness of the dragon’s gall and therefore spits them out together with their own gall and vinegar. But all who sin with malice and presumption and partake of holy things while they are in sin act likewise. For they want to be incorporated with the Lord and drink Him, but they cannot. Today their number is very large. It includes all who purposely come to the church’s sacrament in pride and envy, in luxury and anger. Or they presume to be saved. But the Lord spits them out like the heretics and Jews, as long as they are such people. If they would mend their ways, He would assuredly drink them, and they Him. But there is no one like that among them. –Martin Luther