“For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, ‘This is my body , which is broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’” 1 Corinthians 11:23-24
May 15, 2023
It has been referred to as “the Lord’s Supper,” but seems much less than an actual meal. The evening before He was crucified Jesus ate the Passover meal with His disciples. But in the midst of the meal something extraordinary happened. After the second cup of wine, the breaking of the bread came next as Jesus handed it to His disciples with the shocking words, “Take it; this is my body.” Like the prophets of the Old Testament, Jesus created a symbolic act and inaugurated the ordinance of the Lord’s Supper which has been perpetuated by church since then. The bread of the Lord’s Supper symbolizes the incarnation of Christ and His substitutionary death on the cross. If you are a Christian, do you regularly observe this sacred moment in history? By eating the bread we proclaim the life of Christ (incarnation, death, and resurrection). It was with His body that He carried out our redemption. The bread is a representation of His body, not equivalent to His body. Jesus was speaking in a literal, figurative sense. When we show a picture and say this is my granddaughter, what we mean is that this a picture of our granddaughter. A picture is a reminder. So in the communion service we are calling to mind Christ’s person and work. Such an act is not simply a trip down memory lane, it is a frame of mind which is an act of worship. Among other things, it is a celebration of all that Jesus Christ has done for us in His atoning death. Hopefully, this is a habit of worship in our life.
H
“Nowhere is God so near to man as in Jesus Christ: and nowhere is Christ so familiarly represented to us as in this holy sacrament [‘Lord’s Supper’].” Richard Baxter