The Bread and the Cup: Beholding Glory
Many Christians view the Lord’s Supper as little more than a ritual. It’s something they do, but not with much understanding. This article is intended to help Christians think more biblically about the Lord’s Supper and to do what they do with greater understanding and joy.
The Lord’s Supper is a visible activity Jesus commanded. Like baptism, it occurs publicly and visibly in the local church. Unlike faith or repentance, you can see the Lord’s Supper happen. But what is visible in the Lord’s Supper is not the main thing. It isn’t that Jesus Christ wants us to look really hard at the bread and cup or that they bear some magic powers. Rather, Christ wants us to see something beyond the bread and cup. They are the symbols of something far greater, far more real—something invisible. The bread and the cup are symbols of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. By issuing the command to eat and drink, Jesus was directing us to gaze into the invisible world, beckoning us to look in four directions to see the Gospel made visible.
Looking Back The Lord’s Supper recalls the night Jesus was betrayed. The procedure would have been familiar in that first Lord’s Supper in the Upper Room when Jesus and His disciples celebrated the Passover meal. The Passover looked back to God’s act of delivering Israel from Egypt. The bread and the cup were passed by the head of the household to the family members, and they all ate and drank to remember God’s work of salvation. The Lord’s Supper differs from the Jewish Passover because Jesus changed things a bit. Both the bread and the cup point the mind’s eye back to Jesus, God’s Passover Lamb, symbolising His body and blood. It is a time to remember Him.
Yet, the Lord’s Supper is not a static display of the bread and the cup. It isn’t like a tombstone that reminds us of the life of the dead in history. The Lord’s Supper reminds us of more than a person. The Lord’s Supper is like a battle re-enactment. It is a memorial that we act out. We break the bread. We pour out the cup. Why would Christ require that we enact the memorial? A statue of a Passover Lamb would not be a sufficient memorial because the Lamb was slain, His body broken, His blood poured out. We re-enact His act of self-sacrifice in the Lord’s Supper. It’s a time to remember His sufferings.
The Lord’s Supper calls us to look back to the historical realities upon which our salvation rests—the life and death of the Son of God for us.
Looking Up The Lord’s Supper goes beyond breaking the bread and pouring out the cup. Christ told His disciples to eat the broken bread and drink the cup. Christ used ordinary bread and wine to symbolise His body and blood, and the Lord’s Supper is celebrated as a meal. Meals are eaten to sustain physical life. Christ broke the bread, took the cup, and then offered them to His disciples, commanding them to eat and drink. In response, the disciples reached out their hands to partake, and the food and drink nourished their bodies. So also today, we continue to reach out our hands to partake. That act of partaking—receiving, eating, and drinking—makes visible the invisible movements of our hearts. The hand that reaches out to partake is the hand of faith. The Lord’s Supper calls us to look up once again in faith to the one whose body was broken and His blood shed. It is a visible sign by which we recommit ourselves afresh through faith to Jesus Christ our Lord.
But we aren’t the only ones who make a commitment. At the Last Supper, Christ told His disciples that he was pouring out His blood to bring to them the benefits of God’s New Covenant, including the forgiveness of sins, the Holy Spirit, and a restored relationship with God (1 Corinthians 11:25). Covenantal commitments between parties in the ancient world were sealed in blood. By pouring out His blood, Christ committed himself to provide for His people all the promised benefits of the New Covenant. As we re-enact the pouring out of His blood in the Lord’s Supper, we hear Christ re-committing himself to us to provide the benefits of redemption. In the symbol of the cup, Christ displays to us His blood poured out to seal the New Covenant promises sure and certain.
In 1 Corinthians 10:16, Paul speaks of individual Christians partaking of the Lord’s Supper. Their partaking brings them into “participation” (or “fellowship”) with the Lord through faith. Partaking of the Lord’s Supper in faith is looking up into the eye of Christ as He looks into ours in a gaze of mutual recommitment and love.
Looking Around If the Lord’s Supper is fellowshipping with Christ through faith as we receive the bread and the cup, and if all of us are fellowshipping with and recommitting ourselves again to one Christ, that fellowship with Christ creates a fellowship between all who eat. Paul says this in 1 Corinthians 10:17. Partaking of the Lord’s Supper—the one loaf—joins “the many” into “one body.”1 Here are “many” Christians stepping across the line from “we all” to “one body.” Christ’s gift of the Spirit creates the invisible body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:13), and the Lord’s Supper, specifically the partaking of one loaf, creates the visible body of Christ, the local church (1 Corinthians 10:17).
This means that the Lord’s Supper is not just a private spiritual exercise. Many Christians observe the Lord’s Supper by closing their eyes, bowing their heads, receiving the bread and cup, having a nice time with Jesus, and then going on their way. Yet, the Lord’s Supper is much more than a fellowshipping with Christ. It must include a corporate, body-forming, body-defining component because the Gospel we celebrate in the Lord’s Supper has a corporate, body-forming, and body-defining component.
Christ gathers us in local churches because we need each other for our spiritual growth. Christian growth is a team sport; it is always played with the other Christians in your local church. The Spirit who gathers the local church together around the Lord’s Table equips every member to fulfil her role in the local church. Partaking of the Lord’s Table reminds us of God’s gracious gift of the body of Christ for every Christian’s spiritual health and growth and our responsibilities to one another as members of the body of Christ.
Looking Forward In all of this, the Lord’s Supper is just a shadow of something greater. At the table, I look back to His death for me so that I will not die, and yet my body is decaying daily. I look up and fellowship with Him, yet my sin breaks my fellowship with him daily. I look around at the visible body that the Lord’s Supper creates, yet it’s only us—not the full body of Christ. When will the full benefits of His death finally become mine? When will the gaze of love and commitment never be broken? When will the full body of Christ gather? The meal is so small. It’s just a taste.
For now . . .
In calling us to look in these three directions, the Lord’s Supper is calling us to look ultimately in one direction: forward. It calls us to look forward to the time when we will sit with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob around the table of the Father. It calls us to anticipate the Marriage Supper of the Lamb when he enters the joy of full union with His bride and their communion will be unbroken and unsullied by sin. It calls us to expect the ingathering of all the saints. It calls us to look forward to the New Jerusalem, the joy of God’s eternal kingdom, and unending life in His presence. It calls us to memorialise the sacrifice of the Lamb of God to bring us to glory. As we partake of the table, we do so in hope that God will soon bring to fullness the New Covenant Christ enacted when His body was broken and His blood shed. We partake until He comes (1 Corinthians 11:26).
Conclusion This is what our Lord and His apostles have taught us about the Lord’s Supper. Western individualism and existentialism have invaded this most sacred of all meals, making man the king. The Lord’s Supper has become much more about a private religious encounter that boosts me up for another week. A meal Christ intended would lift our eyes away from ourselves for one God-given moment of freedom from self-consciousness has become a time for introspection and self-determination. The New Testament pushes back. It calls us to look outside of ourselves to the historical reality of the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth for us. It calls us to renewed humility and faith in the Son of God. It locates our salvation in God’s promises, not human will or work. It calls us to submit ourselves to the other members of Christ’s body. It calls us to let go of this world and anticipate the world to come. Above all, it teaches us again that in heeding this call to leave all and follow Christ, there is life—life symbolised in partaking in another meal to sustain our life for another week.
The Lord’s Supper sets before us four scenes of glory: the crucified Son of God,2 our risen Lord seated above at the Father’s right hand,3 Christ with His people on earth,4 and the Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven.5 The Lord’s Supper calls us to respond to God’s work to give glory to His Son, Jesus Christ. Let us partake of the Lord’s Supper, then, to the glory of our Saviour, the One who was crucified (so we look back), raised up by God (so we look up), ascended to pour out the Spirit (so we look around), and coming again (so we look forward).
All of this for us.
This article is a condensed form of a sermon preached on October 2, 2023 titled Gathering Together As One Body. The sermon is available online: Gathering Together as One Body | Cornerstone Baptist Church of South Brisbane
David Minnick is the pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church in South Brisbane, Australia.
- This “one body” must be the local church since partaking of the Lord’s Supper does not join you to the universal church and make you a Christian. In addition, the “partaking of the one bread” that creates the “one body” is a localised activity. These Christians must cram into a single building and partake of a single loaf of bread. If you aren’t partaking of this loaf, you aren’t part of this one body. The ordinance is local, so the one body created must also be local. This “one body” is the local church. [↩]
- 2 Corinthians 4:4–6 [↩]
- 1 Peter 1:21 [↩]
- Ephesians 3:10 [↩]
- Mark 13:26 [↩]