And having taken a loaf, when he had given thanks, he broke [it], and gave [it] to them, saying, This is my body which is given for you this do in remembrance of me.
On the night before He died, Jesus sat at the table with His disciples. He took bread, gave thanks, broke it, and put a lasting memorial of Himself into their hands. Two questions follow: what does the bread mean, and why does He ask us to remember Him?
The timing was deliberate. He gave this supper on the worst night of His life. Betrayal, denial and desertion were all waiting for Him.
The Lord was about to enter a dreadful conflict with all the powers of darkness. He was about to meet all the deadly hatred of man, and to drink to the last drop the cup of God's righteous wrath against sin. He had a terrible day ahead of Him — the most terrible ever faced by man or angel. Yet despite all this, we read that on "the night when he was betrayed" He took bread. What unselfish love this is! That same night was a night of deep sorrow, the night of His agony and bloody sweat. One disciple betrayed Him, another denied Him, and all of them deserted Him. On that very night, the loving heart of Jesus was full of thoughts about His Church.
Before He broke the bread, He thanked God. The cross was right in front of Him.
What a moment that must have been, when they heard Him giving thanks in view of His death on the cross! Thanksgiving, not prayer, occupied Him at that time. How this speaks to us! His act of giving thanks showed what He knew. Nothing could be added to increase the power of His atoning death. Once that death had taken place, nothing a sinner needs from a sacrifice would be missing. His thanksgiving fully proves that His sacrifice is enough, and that its power lasts.
Luke's wording is personal. Matthew and Mark record "for many." Luke records "for you," pointing straight at the people at the table.
Notice the difference in the words that set up the Lord's supper. Matthew and Mark have "My blood shed for many." Luke has "My body which is given for you" and "My blood which is shed for you." His love shines out in these words. Luke alone gives His loving request, "Do this in remembrance of Me."
So does the bread change? No — the words paint a picture.
"This is my body," are the Lord's words. There is no need, though, for fanciful ideas about the bread. Let us be clear: the material is bread, and it stays bread. He was using a figure of speech, the kind often on His lips… By saying "This is my body," He gave the loaf a special meaning. This loaf, and nothing else, was to be the emblem of His body, and so bring His body back to their minds.
He asks us to remember a Person. At the table everything else gives way to Him.
In coming together to break bread, we not only express the oneness of the body, show the Lord's death, and together await His return — we remember Him in a special way. Self drops out of sight — self with its failures, self with its blessings, self with its service. PEOPLE, however loved and honoured in their ministry, are ignored. The most pleasing circumstances, or the most depressing cares, are given no place. Meanwhile the LORD HIMSELF — Lord as the One who died — commands the heart and the mind of the believer. "Do this in remembrance of ME." This makes the Supper beautifully simple, yet precious beyond words.
The verse holds a command as well as a memory. That command calls for company.
In this loving request we have something to do, as well as someone to remember. It is also the expression of one body. "Do this" means an act we carry out with others. When we are alone, we may have sweet memories of the Saviour's precious words and ways, and of His suffering, even to death, for us. But here is something to do… If I do not do it, I do not carry out His mind.
This meal is not the Passover. The two look in different directions.
At the passover Israel remembered the LORD's goodness toward them; at the Lord's Supper the death of the Lord Jesus was to be before the mind… The passover looked back only. Keeping the Lord's Supper, we look back and we look forward, for as 1 Cor. 11:26 says, we show the Lord's death "until he comes." He died for us, and we eat of His supper in remembrance of Him.
- Love that night. He gave the supper on the night of betrayal — the setting proves the love behind the gift.
- Love thanking. He gave thanks before He broke the bread: His sacrifice would need nothing added to it.
- Love for you. Luke's "given for you" narrows the vast work of the cross down to the people at the table.
- Love pictured. The bread stays bread; it is the chosen emblem that brings His body back to mind.
- Love remembered. "In remembrance of Me" asks for Him, not for our benefits. "Do this" makes it an act we carry out together — looking back at His death, and forward to His coming.
In like manner also the cup, after having supped, saying, This cup [is] the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.
Luke's account of the last supper moves in two stages. First comes the Passover meal with His twelve disciples. Then, after it, He hands them something new: a cup He calls a covenant in His own blood.
One commentator marks the exact point where the old meal ends and the new one starts.
In Luke's account, the Passover Supper and the Supper He set up are clearly separate: verses 15-18 give the one, verses 19 and 20 the other. The Lord's words about the Passover show that the old order was closing.
Older English translations call the cup a "testament," meaning a will, and say the blood was "shed" where the ESV says "poured out." Commentators say the word means a covenant — an agreement — and that the context settles it.
"Testament" is here quite out of place; what does someone who guarantees a promise have to do with making a will? The word in itself can carry either sense... The context decides with certainty. In Matthew 26:28, Mark 14:24 and Luke 22:20, forgiveness of sins is tied directly to the "new covenant" (not testament), just as in Jeremiah 31:31-34. And what has "blood" to do with a "will"? That it should be the basis of a covenant is a familiar truth.
Jeremiah had announced a new covenant centuries earlier. Here the Lord adds what Jeremiah never said.
At last, in the upper room in Jerusalem, speaking only to the twelve disciples, the Lord referred to it — and in a way that showed heaven had not forgotten it... But He added two important details to what Jeremiah had revealed. First, the covenant would rest on the blood of a sacrifice. Second, that blood would be His own... The covenant will not be made with Christians, but with the house of Israel and the house of Judah — though Christians share, even now, in blessings connected with it: the knowledge of God and the forgiveness of sins.
The Lord gives the cup on its own, after the meal.
And so with the cup "after the supper," who could hesitate as to what that cup set forth? He Himself says, "In My blood." It is not blood inside the body, but blood apart from it, separated from it — that is, in death. The so-called "sacrifice of the mass" denies all of this.
Matthew's Gospel records "for many." Luke records "for you." One writer says this makes justification — being counted right with God — a personal matter.
Luke's point was not to say "for many." That was most fitting in Matthew's Gospel, because it shows that the power of Christ's blood reaches beyond the Jew... In Luke it is more personal, and so it deals more closely with the heart and conscience. Many a man accepts justification by faith in a general way. But the moment you make it personal, he shrinks from taking the place of a justified man, as if that would be too much for God to give him! In truth, no one can go on with God properly until divine grace settles the personal question. So the Lord here settles it for them personally.
That same blood is why a believer can come to His table at all.
From these words we learn that the blood of Christ is the only ground on which we can be at the Lord's table at all... Why is it that we can be in such sacred nearness without fear and dread? Why are we not ashamed of ourselves, with our eyes full of tears because of our sins? The answer lies in the words, "This cup is the new covenant in My blood, which is shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins. It is shed so that you may be with Me at My table, a blood-washed company that will remember My death and sound My praise through all eternity."
Commentators note a gap between the shedding of the blood and the making of the covenant.
The new covenant rests on the blood which is drunk here in symbol. The old covenant was set aside. Establishing the new one required blood. At the same time, the covenant itself was not yet established; but God had done everything on His side.
So where does that leave Christians?
Israel will enjoy the blessings of the new covenant, and that covenant will rest on the blood of Christ. Yet when the Lord set up His supper, He mentioned that covenant and then tied the blessings of the disciples — and ours too — not to a covenant that has never yet been made, but directly to His precious blood, shed long ago on the cross... We have nothing to do with the new covenant, though the blood it rests on is the blood in which we have an everlasting interest.
- Blood first. A covenant needs blood. Jeremiah never said whose blood it would be; the Lord names it as His own.
- Blood apart. The Lord gives the cup on its own. Blood outside the body means one thing: death.
- Blood for you. Luke's "for you" turns a wide truth into a personal one and settles the conscience.
- Blood as ground. That blood, and nothing else, lets a believer sit at His table without shame.
- Blood before the covenant. God's side is finished. The covenant itself still awaits Israel. Meanwhile, those who trust Christ already draw their blessing straight from the cross.