1 Corinthians 11:23-26
I desire to offer a few brief remarks on the subject of the Lord’s Supper, for the purpose of stirring up the minds of all who love the name of Christ to a more fervent and affectionate interest in this most important and refreshing ordinance.
We should bless the Lord for His gracious consideration of our need in having established such a memorial of His dying love and also in having spread a table at which all His members might present themselves, without any other condition than the indispensable one of personal connection with Him. The blessed Master knew well the tendency of our hearts to slip away from Him, and from each other, and to meet this tendency was one, at least, of His objects in the institution of the Supper. He would gather His people around His own blessed Person—He would spread a table for them where, in view of His broken body and shed blood, they might remember Him and the intensity of His love for them, and from whence, also, they might look forward into the future and contemplate the glory of which the cross is the everlasting foundation. There, if anywhere, they would learn to forget their differences and to love one another — there, they might see around them those whom the love of God had invited to the feast and whom the blood of Christ had made fit to be there.
Thanksgiving, Not Mourning
The Supper is, purely and distinctly, a feast of thanksgiving — thanksgiving for grace already received. The Lord Himself, at the institution of it, marks its character by giving thanks, for “He took bread, and gave thanks.”
Praise, and not prayer, is the suited utterance of those who sit at the table of the Lord. True, we have much to pray for — much to confess — much to mourn over — but the table is not the place for mourners; its language is, “Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine unto those that be of heavy hearts.” Ours is “a cup of blessing” — a cup of thanksgiving — the divinely appointed symbol of that precious blood which has procured our ransom. “The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?” How, then, could we break it with sad hearts or sorrowful countenances? Could a family circle, after the toils of the day, sit down to supper with sighs and gloomy looks? Surely not. The supper was the great family meal — the only one that was sure to bring all the family together. Just so should it be at the Lord’s Supper. The family should assemble there, and, when assembled, they should be happy — unfeignedly happy, in the love that brings them together. True, each heart may have its own peculiar history — its secret sorrows, trials, failures and temptations, unknown to all around, but these are not the objects to be contemplated at the supper. To bring them into view is to dishonor the Lord of the feast and make the cup of blessing a cup of sorrow. The Lord has invited us to the feast and commanded us, notwithstanding all our shortcomings, to place the fullness of His love and the cleansing efficacy of His blood between our souls and everything, and when the eye of faith is filled with Christ, there is no room for aught beside.
If ever a feeling of sadness could have prevailed at the celebration of this ordinance, surely it would have been on the occasion of its first institution. Yet, the Lord Jesus could “give thanks“ — the tide of joy that flowed through His soul was far too deep to be ruffled by surrounding circumstances; He had a joy, even in the breaking and bruising of His body and in the pouring forth of His blood, which lay far beyond the reach of human thought and feeling. And if he could rejoice in spirit and give thanks in breaking that bread, which was to be to all future generations of the faithful the memorial of His broken body, should not we rejoice therein — we who stand in the blessed results of all His toil and passion? Yes; it becomes us to rejoice.
Preparation for the Supper
But, it may be asked, Is preparation necessary? Surely we need preparation, but it is the preparation of God, and not our own preparation. It is the preparation which suits the presence of God, which is certainly not the result of human sighs or tears, but the simple result of the finished work of the Lamb of God affirmed to be true by the Spirit of God. Apprehending this by faith, we apprehend that which makes us perfectly fit for God. The blood of the Lamb has put away every obstacle to our fellowship with God, and, in proof of this, the Holy Spirit has come down to baptize believers into the unity of the body and gather them around the risen and glorified Head. The wine is the memorial of a life shed out for sin; the bread is the memorial of a body broken for sin, but we are not gathered around a life poured out, nor around a body broken, but around a living Christ, who dies no more, who cannot have His body broken anymore or His blood shed anymore.
“The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? For we being many are one bread, and one body; for we are all partakers of that one bread.” It is an act whereby we not only show forth the death of the Lord until He comes, but whereby we also give expression to a fundamental truth: that all believers are “one bread and one body.” It is the Lord’s death and the Lord’s coming that are brought prominently before our souls in the Lord’s Supper.
The Solemn Circumstances
The circumstances under which the Lord’s Supper was instituted were particularly solemn and touching. The Lord was about to enter into dreadful conflict with all the powers of darkness — to meet all the deadly enmity of man, and to drain to the dregs the cup of Jehovah’s righteous wrath against sin. He had a terrible morrow before Him — the most terrible that had ever been encountered by man or angel. Yet, notwithstanding all this, we read that on “the same night in which He was betrayed, [He] took bread.” What unselfish love is here! “The same night” — the night of profound sorrow — the night of His agony and bloody sweat — the night of His betrayal by one, His denial by another, and His desertion by all of His disciples — on that very night, the loving heart of Jesus was full of thoughts about His church — on that very night, He instituted the ordinance of the Lord’s Supper. He appointed the bread to be the emblem of His broken body and the wine to be the emblem of His shed blood, and such they are to us now, as often as we partake of them, for the Word assures us that “as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord’s death till He come.”
As the cup of Jehovah’s righteous wrath against sin, of which He was about to be the bearer, was being filled for Him, he could, nevertheless, busy Himself about us and institute a feast which was to be the expression of our connection with Him and with all the members of His body.
At the precious and most refreshing institution of the Lord’s Supper we find the bread broken and the wine poured out — the significant symbols of a body broken and of blood shed. The wine is not in the bread, because the blood is not in the body, for, if it were, there would be “no remission.” In a word, the Lord’s Supper is the distinct memorial of an eternally accomplished sacrifice. None can communicate thereat with intelligence and power, save those who know the full remission of sins. It is not that we would, by any means, make the knowledge of forgiveness a term of communion, for very many of the children of God, through bad teaching and various other causes, do not know the perfect remission of sins. Were they to be excluded on that ground, it would be making knowledge a term of communion, instead of life and obedience. Still, if I do not know, experimentally, that redemption is an accomplished fact, I shall see but little meaning in the symbols of bread and wine. Moreover, I shall be in great danger of attaching an efficacy to the memorials themselves that belongs only to the great reality to which they point.
C. H. Mackintosh, adapted from
Thoughts on the Lord’s Supper