A Short Biblical Theology of the Lord’s Supper

The Lord’s Supper is a meal of bread and wine that both commemorates Christ’s death which secured our forgiveness by God and anticipates Christ’s return which will secure our full restoration by God.

Consider what the apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 11:23-29: 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, 24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”25 In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. 27 Whoever, therefore, 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. 28 Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. 29 For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.

What we see in these verses is that the Lord’s Supper has meaning that is grounded in the past, the present, and the future.

The Past

The Lord’s Supper is itself a remembrance of what Jesus accomplished on the cross in our place long ago.  That’s exactly what he told us this meal would be about when He said, “Do this in remembrance of me.” 

However, the work of Jesus on the cross and the Lord’s Supper that signifies it has deeper and older roots in the past. The existence of God’s people in the Old Testament was grounded in the work of God at the first Passover in the book of Exodus. At the tenth and final plague, God brought the ultimate judgment on the land of Egypt for their mistreatment of Israel, but as He did, He provided a means of salvation for his people. A lamb was slaughtered, and the blood of the lamb was put on the doorframes of the houses of God’s people. When the angel of death came, the homes where the lamb’s blood was visible would be spared that tenth plague, which was the death of the firstborn son.

In a very real sense, the lamb died instead of the firstborn son of the household. Consequently, the Passover meal was to be a continual reminder of the great salvation that God brought to his covenant people through a great act of judgment.

Now fast forward to the final meal that Jesus had with His disciples. Just before His betrayal and arrest, they all shared the Passover meal. However, Jesus brought a new significance to this ancient practice.

Consider what Jesus said in Matthew 26: Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.” And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, “Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. (Matthew 26:26-28).

Jesus symbolically associated the bread and the cup with His body which would soon be broken and His blood which would soon be shed.

Jesus, as the truer and better Passover Lamb, provided the “blood of the covenant” – the new covenant that He would ratify through his death and resurrection. Therefore, as the Passover meal served as the foundational meal and remembrance of the Old Covenant, so the Lord’s Supper is the foundational meal and remembrance of the New Covenant.

As the Passover meal served as a reminder of the deliverance that God achieved for His people in bringing them out of slavery to Egypt, the Lord’s Supper serves a reminder of the deliverance that Jesus, God the Son, achieved for His people in bringing them out of slavery to sin.

The Present

However, the Lord’s Supper is not simply looking to the past.  The apostle Paul also says that it has implications about our present reality as well.  After all, we take the Lord’s Supper only after examining ourselves to be sure we are in right relationship with God and right relationship with each other.

In fact, in verse 29, Paul says if we eat and drink without “discerning” the body, we eat and drink judgment on ourselves—judgment that apparently led to the death of some in the Corinthian church. This is of course serious business. “Discerning the body” is more than simply recognizing what the bread and the cup represent.  It is a recognition of what the church body represents as well — that together we represent Christ Himself, and how we treat each other represents Christ himself.

Further, when we partake in the body and blood of Christ, we also experience the presence of Christ together. Paul would say just a chapter before that, “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?” (1 Corinthians 10:16).

Now, exactly what this “participation” in the body and blood of Christ means has been historically debated in the church. For our part as the local church known as Faith Fellowship, our doctrinal statement says that we “memorialize the death of the Redeemer.”

Memorial is a word that can sound a bit removed though. So does belief that the Lord’s Supper is a “mere memorial” of Christ’s death, make it unimportant?

Not at all!

God calls His people to remember and anticipate, and in so doing, we are participating in the body and blood. Maybe think of how “we memorialize the death of the Redeemer” like this.

So one of the the fiercest and bloody battles of WW1 happened in 1918 at a place called the Belleau Wood in France. This is the battle where the Germans were reported to have called US Marines “Tefelshunde”, the devil dogs. There was hand-to-hand combat with close range weapons, bayonets, and fists for an entire month of until finally on June 26th, a single radio transmission was sent from the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines to Allied High Command, “Woods now US Marines entirely.”

At the dedication of the memorial that commemorated the Battle of Belleau Wood these words were said about the hope of the obelisk and statue that was placed in the ground to mark the sacrifices made on that bloody June of 1918:

“Now and then a veteran will come here to live again the brave days of a distant June. Here will be raised the altars of patriotism; here will be renewed the vows of sacrifice and consecration to country. Hither will come our countrymen in times of great depression and even failure, and take new courage from this shrine of great deeds.”

So when times are hard, come back to this place. When life doesn’t make sense, remember what was done at this place. Remember the sacrifice. Remember the courage.

That is exactly what is meant when we say that we “memorialize the death of the Redeemer.”

Remember what God has done. Remember the bread and cup as a shrine of my great deeds. Revisit it. Look back at that point in history and take courage and hope from what Jesus did.

This was the practice of the Passover and is the practice of the Lord’s Supper: times to remember God’s deliverance of His people. The Lord’s Supper however is so much greater a remembrance as our deliverance is not from temporal slavery to Egypt, but eternal slavery to sin. So if we think of participating in a remembrance of a great event in history is important, how much more remembrance of this!

The Lord’s Supper is hardly a “mere” memorial that we remember then but rather something we presently participate in as the memory of Christ’s work and reality of Christ’s presence is there with us.

The Future

Finally, there is a future tense in Paul’s teaching because in partaking the Lord’s Supper we “proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” The celebration of the Lord’s Supper serves as a proclamation of Jesus’ death which anticipates His return. Jesus himself, when He inaugurated the Lord’s Supper, ate it in anticipation of the future (Matthew 26:29).

The ultimate outworking of God’s salvation plan is often associated with the promise of a great banquet (Isaiah 25:6). The Lord’s Supper serves as a foretaste of that great banquet so when we partake in the bread and cup together, we anticipate the Second Coming of Jesus. In this sense, the Lord’s Supper is a dress-rehearsal, so to speak, of the Messianic banquet that is coming.

That’s why a posture of joyous anticipation fits the Lord’s Supper just as well as somber remembrance.  We are capturing all these emotions in this one memorial of what Christ has done, is doing, and will do.