Now we come to the final post in my series on the Lord’s Supper. Having learned about the theological background and spiritual meaning of the Lord’s Supper, we must ask the practical question of how we should observe it in the context of corporate worship.

Should We Observe It As A Meal?
In the early church, people partook in communion in the context of a full meal. They gathered in a home of one of their wealthier members, since their house was bigger and could accommodate more people, and believers brought foods, funds, and prayers to share with each other at the Lord’s Supper. Of course, they had the bread and wine, but they also consumed other foods in conjunction with them. 1 Corinthians 11:20-21 tells us that, in this situation, instead of sharing their sumptuous fare with the rest of the church, the wealthier members were sometimes “go[ing] ahead with [their] own meal[s],” the food that they brought, which were presumably better in both quantity and quality.

This abuse was so bad that the result was, “One goes hungry, another gets drunk.” The poorer members of the church have so little to eat at the Lord’s Supper that they go hungry, while the wealthier members of the church have so much to eat and drink that they get drunk! Paul’s concern here is not so much with drinking too much alcohol, although that’s a problem too, but his concern is with their selfish surfeit! Drunkenness is a picture of over-consumption.

You can hear Paul’s indignation in 1 Corinthians 11:22, “What! Do you not have houses to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I commend you in this?No, I willnot.” If you’re going to eat your fill of gourmet foods and fine wine, do it in your own house! This is not your own, private meal! This is the Lord’s Supper! Why must you profane the Lord’s Supper by “humiliat[ing] those who have nothing?”

Here, Paul acknowledges that we each “have houses to eat and drink in.” The ultimate purpose of the Lord’s Supper is not to fill our bellies, but to fill our souls, so it is not necessary to have the Lord’s Supper in the context of a meal. When our church used to meet in my home for worship, we did observe the Lord’s Supper in the context of a full meal. However, this became less feasible as we grew in size, and we had to move our services into a larger location outside the home. In our urban context, I believe it is a faithful application of Scripture’s teaching to observe the Lord’s Supper in a smaller scale, rather than in the context of a full meal.

How Frequently Should We Observe it?
In spite of the fact that Passover was the background of the Lord’s Supper, Jesus chose the bread rather than the lamb as the sign that would facilitate people’s remembrance of Him in the ages to come. And because Christ chose the bread, which was part of the people’s regular diet, rather than the lamb, which was a special meal eaten at the annual Passover, the church observed the Lord’s Supper not only on an annual basis, but whenever they gathered together for worship and broke bread together. That’s why Acts 2:42 describes the early church as regularly gathering for “the breaking of bread,” and that’s why Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11:26, “as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” The expression “as often” implies a frequent practice. This is why we celebrate the Lord’s Supper whenever we gather for worship on Sundays.

Should We Use Leavened or Unleavened Bread?
The fact that the early church observed the Lord’s Supper frequently in the context of corporate worship, and not merely in the context of the Passover, also explains why the early church did not feel compelled to use unleavened bread, as in the Passover. Notably, accounts of the Last Supper use the generic word for “bread” (artos) rather than the technical word for “unleavened bread” (azuma) (Matt. 26:26; Mark 14:22; Luke 22:19). Although the bread they broke at the Last Supper was most likely unleavened bread, the Lord did not specifically prescribe unleavened bread in the observance of the Lord’s Supper.

Furthermore, the Catholic custom of using unleavened wafers is of medieval origin, and Orthodox churches have preserved the earlier custom of using leavened bread (Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of Development of Doctrine, vol. 2; pp. 177-178). This is why our church uses leavened bread in the Lord’s Supper.

What about 1 Corinthians 5:6-7, which says, “Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed”? The word “leaven” used here does not refer to “yeast,” which was rare in the ancient world. “Leaven” is a fermented dough from an old batch that is set aside and combined with a new batch in order to produce fermentation in the new bread. Since yeast was not readily available, this was the way in which people baked bread without yeast. All you need is a first batch of bread that is fermented, then you can save a little bit of it to use for your next batch, and a little bit from that for your next batch, and so on.

The danger of this baking method, of course, is that with each subsequent bread, the chance for dangerous bacteria to grow increases. And this health concern of using old leaven for a prolonged period of time may have been one of the reasons why God commanded Israelites in Exodus 12:14-20 to purge their homes of all leaven during the annual Feast of Unleavened Bread. Paul is using this as an illustration to argue that the Corinthian church should purge the leaven (i.e. unrepentant sinners) from among them, lest the whole batch be contaminated. He is not arguing that Christians use unleavened bread in the Lord’s Supper. Moreover, since the bread we use is leavened with yeast, and not with leaven, it does not violate this imagery of the purity of the church either.

Should We Use Wine or Grape Juice?
In the absence of refrigeration and hermetic sealing, drinking alcohol was inescapable. Grape juice in the ancient world quickly fermented and became wine. This was a natural process, rather than an artificial process like nowadays where people use distillation to increase the alcohol content. In fact, people in this culture did the opposite, rather than distilling it to remove water and increase the proportional alcoholic content, they watered the wine down with two to three parts water to one part wine.

Moreover, ethanol and the acidity of wine often served to inhibit bacterial growth, so wine was considered a safer beverage than even water. This is why Paul tells Timothy in 1 Timothy 5:23, “No longer drink only water, but use a little wine for the sake of your stomach and your frequent ailments.”

We, however, live in an era of refrigeration and pasteurization, so that wine is not the only fruit of the vine available to us. When Thomas Bramwell Welch first invented grape juice, some people called it “Dr. Welch’s Unfermented Wine.” While drinking wine is not sinful in and of itself, 1 Corinthians 8:10-13 teaches us not to let indifferent matters of food and drink be an occasion to lead our Christian brothers and sisters into sin. Given that many people in our culture struggle with alcoholism, our church has chosen to use grape juice, instead of wine, in order to accommodate them. We believe that our use of grape juice is a faithful contextualization of the wine used in the Lord’s Supper.

Conclusion
I have written at length about very practical, but small, details regarding the Lord’s Supper. Let me close with Calvin’s general exhortation:

“In regard to the external form of the ordinance, whether or not believers are to take into their hands and divide among themselves, or each is to eat what is given to him: whether they are to return the cup to the deacon or hand it to their neighbour; whether the bread is to be leavened or unleavened, and the wine to be red or white, is of no consequence. These things are indifferent, and left free to the Church.” (John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 4.17.43.)

1. The Lord’s Supper: Was It a Passover Meal? (1 of 4)
2. The Lord’s Supper: What Does It All Mean? (2 of 4)
3. The Lord’s Supper: What Actually Happens? (3 of 4)
4. The Lord’s Supper: How Should We Do It? (4 of 4)

What actually happens at the Lord’s Supper? What practical benefits does it have for us?

John 6:51-58
51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” 52 The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” 53 So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54 Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. 55 For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. 56 Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. 57 As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. 58 This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate, and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.”

Cannibalism and drinking blood were strictly forbidden (Leviticus 17:10-11) by the Old Testament, so Jesus’s statement, “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you,” must have caused a violent, visceral reaction against it.

But Jesus isn’t speaking literally here. Verse 54 says, “Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.” But recall John 6:40, which says, “everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.” Note the close parallel. The end result is the same: eternal life and resurrection at the last day, but the way we get there in verse 54 is by “feed[ing] on [Jesus’s] flesh and drink[ing] [his] blood” and in verse 40 is by “look[ing] on the Son and believ[ing] in Him.” Those are conceptual parallels. Feeding on Jesus’s flesh and drinking his blood are metaphors for looking on the Son and believing in Him. That’s why Augustine, a fourth century theologian wrote, “Believe, and you have eaten.”

Well, then, does this passage have anything to do with the Lord’s Supper at all? Since John is writing to 1st century believers, after several decades of regular observance of the Lord’s Supper, the language of eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Jesus would no doubt evoke the Sacramental rite. John also seems intentionally to use language reminiscent of the rite. For example, earlier in John 6:11 when Jesus performed the miracle of multiplying the five loaves of bread, the miracle which led to this discourse, it says that Jesus “[gave] thanks” before distributing the bread to the people. The Greek for “giving thanks” is eucharistēsas, which is the word from which we get the English word “Eucharist,” a common name that Christians gave to the Lord’s Supper. This discourse also takes place during the Passover, which is the time when Jesus institutes the Lord’s Supper with His disciples before His death on the cross.

So this passage isn’t primarily about the Lord’s Supper, but it does have secondary implications about the Lord’s Supper.

Since the primary meaning of eating the bread of life is to believe in the Son, we must always remember that, without faith, the Lord’s Supper does nothing for us. As we say in Trinity’s Communion liturgy, “we receive [the bread and wind] by faith, which is the hand and mouth of our souls.” The Lord’s Supper is not a magical rite that autonomously conveys God’s grace to us. The grace we receive in the Lord’s Supper is contingent on our faith.

Transubstantiation Is An Error
This is why the Catholic doctrine of “transubstantiation” is an error. The doctrine asserts that at the Lord’s Supper, the bread and wine are transubstantiated, or transformed, into the physical flesh and blood of Jesus Christ. Though the surface appearance, the accidents, of the bread and wine remains unchanged, the substance of the bread and wine, they argue, is changed to the actual, physical flesh and blood of Jesus Christ. But as we have seen, this is a misinterpretation of the passage.

Memorialism Is An Error
It does not follow from this, however, that the Lord’s Supper is merely a memorial, that there is nothing spiritual happening in our eating and drinking. This is the mistaken assumption of many Evangelicals. Sure, we’re not eating and drinking the physical body and blood of Jesus, but we are partaking in the spiritual body and blood of Jesus.

Notice the verb used in verse 54. Before, Jesus merely spoke of “eating His body,” but in verse 54, Jesus speaks of “feed[ing] on [His] flesh.” The word “feed” here is a translation of a Greek word that means to “munch on,” or “chew,” and the word “flesh,” similarly, shifts the focus from the more abstract concept of “body” to the concrete concept of “flesh.” As Theologian Lesslie Newbigin writes in his book The Light Has Come: An Exposition of the Fourth Gospel (pp. 84-85), these words intentionally draw attention to the physical dimension of our spiritual consumption at the Lord’s Supper.

If the preaching during our Sunday worship is the proclamation of Christ, then communion during our Sunday worship is the participation in Christ. The sermon is the preached Word, the Lord’s Supper is the pictured Word. In the sermon, we hear the gospel, in the Supper, we see, smell, touch, and taste the gospel. At the Lord’s Supper, we enter into, partake in, commune with, the reality that we just heard proclaimed. What kind of participation is it?

(1) First, it is our participation in union with Christ,
(2) Second, it is our participation in the fellowship of the Triune God, and
(3) Third, it is our participation in the body of Christ, the Church.

When we eat and drink, the food enters our system and it becomes a part of us. It gets digested and provides energy for our body. Similarly, when we spiritually eat and drink Christ, He enters our system and we grow in our union with Him. So verse 56 says, “Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.” And through union with Christ, we enter into the fellowship of the church, which is the body of Christ. We grow into our unity with one another. And likewise, through union with Christ, we enter into the fellowship among the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Symbol and Substance
The Lord’s Supper is not a hollow ritual, an empty reenactment. That’s why Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 10:16-17, “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.”

Similarly, he warns in 1 Corinthians 11:27-29, “Whoever … eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.” This kind of dire warning makes no sense if the Lord’s Supper is all symbol and no substance.

The New Birth and Spiritual Sustenance
You can think about it this way. When we are born, we have life. Now, this life is irreversible and permanent. But it does not follow from this, that we don’t need any more sustenance. We must continue to eat and drink in order to grow and mature in the life that we have. We already have life, but we continue to eat and drink to sustain life. Similarly, when we are born again by faith, we are united, once and for all, with Jesus Christ and possess eternal life. The Lord’s Supper, then, is, like eating and drinking, a way by which we sustain spiritual life. It is a means of grace that God has given to the church by which we grow and mature in our union with Christ.

We should, therefore, seek this spiritual food, as regularly and eagerly we seek physical food. We need it until that day when our union with Christ and our fellowship with the Triune God are consummated.

1. The Lord’s Supper: Was It a Passover Meal? (1 of 4)
2. The Lord’s Supper: What Does It All Mean? (2 of 4)
3. The Lord’s Supper: What Actually Happens? (3 of 4)
4. The Lord’s Supper: How Should We Do It? (4 of 4)

The meaning of the Lord’s Supper is abundantly clear with the bread and wine representing the body and blood of Christ, but there is more than meets the eye in the rich tapestry of biblical theology woven in and around the sacrament. One can use the various names given to the Lord’s Supper to recall its rich meaning.

“Lord’s Supper”: New Covenant
Paul speaks of “the Lord’s Table” (1 Cor. 10:21) or “the Lord’s Supper” (1 Cor. 11:20), highlighting Christ’s presiding lordship over the table and the incongruity of partaking simultaneously in the Lord’s table and the sacrifices offered to idols (1 Cor. 10:1-22). This nature of the Lord’s Supper reminds us of our New Covenant in the blood of Christ. Jesus refers to the wine of the sacrament as “my blood of the covenant” (Matt. 26:28; Mark 14:24). Luke’s recollection is even more explicit, where Jesus says that it is the “the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20; cf. 1 Cor. 11:25). The author of Hebrews directly connects Christ’s atoning death to Moses’s sprinkling of the Israelites with “the blood of the covenant” (Heb. 9:19-21; cf. Exod. 24:6-8).

Every covenant-making ceremony involved a visual demonstration of the curse of the covenant should it be violated, and because Christ bore this curse of the covenant once and for all with His death, “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1-4). As the first instance of “poured-out” blood re-established the covenant between God and His people, pouring our of Christ’s blood establishes the covenant between God and His people once and for all. We belong to our covenant Lord, Jesus Christ, and to no other, and each time we participate in the Lord’s Supper we rehearse our exclusive allegiance to God.

“Breaking of Bread”: Passover and Exodus
The New Testament frequently refers to the rite as “the breaking of bread” (Acts 2:42; 20:7), and this terminology recalls the Passover and the Exodus. Even those who do not believe that the Last Supper was a Passover meal must admit that it occurred during the week-long celebration of the Passover, and that Paul refers to Christ as “our Passover lamb, [who] has been sacrificed” (1 Cor. 5:7). The broken body and poured-out blood represented by the bread and wine are a visual, tactile, olfactory, and savorous parable of Jesus’s death, and as surely as the bread and wine sustain and nurture physical life, the body and blood of Christ in the Lord’s Supper nurture and sustain spiritual life.

In all four Gospels, the Last Supper is preceded by Mary’s anointing of Jesus in preparation for his burial, and punctuated with expectation of Jesus’s impending betrayal and death (Matt. 26:1-29; Mark 14:1-31; Luke 22:1-23; John 6:22-71; 12:1-18; 13:1-30). Christ is our Passover Lamb on whose account God “passes over” our sins (1 Cor. 5:6-8; Rom. 3:21-26), and who redeems us from slavery to sin and death (Rom. 8:1-17; Gal. 5:1).

Furthermore, all four Gospels draw textual connections between the Last Supper and Jesus’s miraculous feeding of the multitude in the wilderness, and Matthew, Mark, and John pair the account of Jesus’s feeding of the multitude with the water-crossing episode, thus making the Exodus tie even more explicit (Matt. 14:13-33; Mark 6:30-52; Luke 9:10-17; John 6). Unlike Moses’s bread from heaven that provided temporal nourishment for the Israelites in the wilderness, Jesus is the “Bread of Life” that imparts eternal life (John 6). Thus the Lord’s Supper represents the Second Passover and Exodus.

It is important to note, however, we are not sacrificing Christ all over again at the Lord’s Supper. Christ was sacrificed to secure our eternal redemption “once for all” (Heb. 9:12; cf. Rom. 9:28). It demeans Christ’s once for all sacrifice on the Cross to call the Lord’s Supper a “sacrifice.”

“Eucharist”: Marriage Supper of the Lamb
The Lord’s Supper, however, is a sacrifice in another sense. It is “a sacrifice of praise to God,” as Hebrews puts it in 13:15-16. This is related to the word “Eucharist,” which comes from the Greek word meaning to “give thanks,” a language that all four Gospels closely relate to the Lord’s Supper (Matt. 15:36; 26:26-27; Mark 8:6; 14:22-23; Luke 22:17-19; John 6:11, 23; cf. Acts 27:35; 1 For. 11:23-24).

We give thanks for the meal before us, the body and blood of Christ given for us, but also for meal that is coming, because it “proclaim[s] the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Cor. 11:26) and is joined to Christ’s promise, “Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day” (John 6:54). Matthew, Mark, and Luke all include Jesus’s statement, “I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom” (Matt. 26:29; cf. Mark 14:25; Luke 22:15-18).

The meal points to the Kingdom of God that is already inaugurated, but which will later be consummated. Christ’s death and resurrection anticipate the day when God “will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Rev. 21:4). It points to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb, where we shall be the bride of Christ—all those who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb (Rev. 7:14; 19:7-8). So we give thanks for the meal before us, which guarantees the meal that is to come (cf. Matt. 8:11-12; Luke 13:28-30; 22:28-30).

“Holy Communion”: Family Formation
The Jewish Passover meal was traditionally a family affair, with the head of the household presiding over it. Jesus breaks this paradigm by calling out His disciples from their families and communing with them instead. In doing so, He radically redefines “family,” “for whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother” (Matt. 12:50).

This is the meaning behind Paul’s teaching that the Lord’s Supper is a “participation” or “communion.” In partaking in the Lord’s Supper, we commune with the body and blood of Christ, we are united with Him, and through Him with the rest of His body, the church. “Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread” (1 Cor. 10:16-17). In the Lord’s Supper, we acknowledge our new kinship in the family of God, united not by the blood of our fathers, but by the blood of Jesus Christ.

Because it depicts and dispenses the promise of the eternal gospel (Rev. 14:6) itself, the Lord’s Supper is inexhaustible in its spiritual value and theological meaning, and hardly the monotonous ritual void of power and meaning it is too often made out to be.

1. The Lord’s Supper: Was It a Passover Meal? (1 of 4)
2. The Lord’s Supper: What Does It All Mean? (2 of 4)
3. The Lord’s Supper: What Actually Happens? (3 of 4)
4. The Lord’s Supper: How Should We Do It? (4 of 4)