For I say unto you, that I will not eat any more at all of it until it be fulfilled in the kingdom of God.
This was the last Passover meal Jesus would share with His disciples before the cross, and He points past it to a fulfilment still ahead. Two questions follow: what fulfils the Passover, and which kingdom is He waiting for?
The Lord opens the meal by telling them how much He wanted it.
First of all, His desire is to eat that Passover meal with His disciples. He was the only One who knew what it meant. To Him it spoke of a burden no mere man ever carried or could carry. And yet He longed to eat that Passover before He suffered. He knew it came right before His death on the cross. Yet not one of the disciples wanted to eat it with Him as much as He wanted to eat it with them. This is love, and love is self-sacrificing.
This was the last Passover of its kind. Its meaning pointed forward to the cross.
So far, this was the last Passover kept as God meant it to be kept. When the Lord died and the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost, the Mosaic ritual began to fall away. Believers from among the Jews came to see that their place was outside the camp, and they left Jerusalem and the temple behind. The Lord's death fulfilled the Passover, just as the coming of the Holy Spirit fulfilled the feast of weeks. The blood of the Passover lamb was a picture of the blood of Christ. He is our Passover, and He has been sacrificed (1 Cor. 5:7). But at that moment the Passover was not yet fulfilled. So the Lord took part in it.
He eats with them. He does not drink with them. Then He puts something else in its place.
I think the account of the Passover in Luke shows the old system passing away and the new coming in. He shows true love to His disciples by eating with them for the last time — a token of affection, but He will not eat it any more. Then the Passover cup — fellowship and joy in it — He does not take at all. They are to divide it among themselves; He will not drink of it till the Kingdom of God comes. Then He sets up the new thing in His body broken — the remembrance of a new and better deliverance — and the Cross, the new covenant in His blood.
The change was not a repair of the old arrangement. The whole footing is new.
In the next place the Lord breaks every link with the old order of things. He says, "I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God." In this verse the question is not setting up the kingdom, or establishing it as things were. He is about to establish things on a wholly new basis through redemption, through the work He was about to do before God.
Commentators differ over the timing of "the kingdom of God" here. Some read it as the kingdom that was about to arrive in a new, moral form:
It was about to come in a moral way. Luke holds to that great principle: God was about to establish His kingdom in what you may call the Christian system.
Others place it further ahead, at the day when Israel sees the One they rejected:
He would not eat the Passover again until its spiritual meaning is fulfilled in the kingdom of God. His own death did fulfil the meaning of the Passover. But Israel stays blind to this until they "look on Me, on Him whom they have pierced" (Zech. 12:10), and He will bring in the kingdom for that nation. Only then will the Passover be fulfilled for them.
He shares the food. He passes the cup to them untouched. One writer reads this as a refusal of gladness.
Why did He not take the cup? The Passover rules did not require it. "Now," said the Lord, "I will not taste joy." As an obedient Jew, He kept the Passover, but joy waited for Him in the kingdom. Till then, He knows no earthly joy.
- Desired — He longed for this meal knowing it was the last before the cross; He wanted it more than any of them did.
- Fulfilled — the Passover pointed forward, and His death answered it: "Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed."
- Finished — the last true Passover closed the old system. In its place He gave bread and cup, the memorial of a better deliverance.
- Delayed — commentators differ on the timing. Does "the kingdom of God" mean the kingdom coming now in a moral way, or the day when Israel sees the One they pierced?
- Deferred joy — He ate but would not drink. The cup of gladness waits for the kingdom.
And having received a cup, when he had given thanks he said, Take this and divide it among yourselves.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
For I say unto you, that I will not drink at all of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God come.
Jesus has just eaten His last Passover with His twelve apostles. He gives thanks over the cup, then hands it on without drinking. His words draw a line. Table joy with His friends on earth ends here, and only the coming kingdom will reopen it.
Luke records two cups that evening. This one belongs to the Passover meal. It is not the supper Jesus gives His disciples a moment later.
It was this cup that He told them to divide among themselves — not that of the Lord's supper. Our Lord Jesus never took part in His own supper. He shared the Passover supper, but not His own. For this is for us, being the witness of a redemption which He wrought for us (not for Himself, of course)... The Lord's Supper speaks to us of perfect peace through His suffering. He did not need it: He gave it all to us.
One writer explains His refusal from the history of the feast itself.
The original rules for the Passover say nothing about a cup. As Deuteronomy 16:3-8 shows us, there was no room for one, because the feast in the month of Abib was not a feast of joy. What God had instituted, the Lord conformed to. Of what man had added, the Lord did not partake. He did not, however, condemn the cup as wrong. But the time for joy that goes with full redemption had not come, so He did not drink of it Himself. When He had given thanks, He handed it to His disciples to divide among themselves.
There was a reason He would not drink.
He eats with them: He will not drink. Another cup was before Him. As for this cup, they were to take it, and divide it among themselves. It was not the Lord's Supper, but the Passover cup. He was about to drink of a far different cup, which His Father would give Him — the reality that the Passover pointed to, and the basis of the Lord's Supper.
Elsewhere Kelly names what that other cup held: "the cup of God's wrath against sin, in contrast with the joy symbolized by the ritual of the Passover" (William Kelly).
Why does the verse speak of wine at all?
The fruit of the vine is the sign of social joy, "wine which cheers the heart of God and man." They sprinkled it again and again in the burnt offerings and the peace offerings. Now, of this fruit of the vine He would drink no more, while His disciples would drink deeply of His death, the true drink... So His social life with His disciples here on earth was closed. It would never be renewed in the same way. They would enter spiritually into the power of His death, and one day they would be with Him again in joy in the kingdom of His Father.
Turpin sees Jesus taking openly the place that had always been His:
He was always the true Nazarite here on earth — separate from men, though living among them in all the grace of His heart. But now He openly takes up the character that had always been His inwardly.
Commentators differ on when that kingdom comes. Kelly points out that Luke does not use the phrase the way the other Gospels do.
The other Gospels connect it with the future. Luke speaks of what was to be made good shortly — "righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit."
Another writer sees the same promise pictured long before, when Melchizedek met Abram after a battle:
He met him with the fruit of the vine which, as we know, is to be drunk in the kingdom. He refreshed Abram with a feast after the warfare was accomplished, and gave him a blessing from the possessor of heaven and earth. His acts, therefore, were those of one who was standing in the kingdom.
Luke gives the bare fact. The other two accounts add something.
Mark adds that in the coming Kingdom the fruit of the vine will have a "new" character. Matthew adds a further detail: the drinking will be "with you."
- Cup one. The cup He hands over is the Passover cup, not the Lord's Supper. He never drank His own supper, because it stands for a redemption He worked for others.
- Cup two. He passes the cup of joy because His Father holds out another cup to Him — the cup of God's wrath against sin.
- Cup refused. Wine is the sign of shared gladness. By refusing it He closes His social life with the disciples on earth and takes openly the place of the true Nazarite, separate from men.
- Cup promised. The delay is not a cancellation. Melchizedek's feast after the battle shows that the fruit of the vine belongs to the kingdom, once the warfare is over.
- Cup shared. Mark adds that the wine will be "new." Matthew adds that it will be drunk "with you" — not alone, but at a table shared again.