What did Jesus mean when He said, "This is my body, broken for you"?

As they did eat (Mark 14:22) the Lord "took bread, and when He had given thanks He brake it, and gave to them, saying, This is My body which is given for you; this do in remembrance of Me" (Luke 22:19). He took bread, for He was inaugurating what was quite new; and He gave thanks. What a moment that must have been when He was heard giving thanks in view of His death upon the cross! Thanksgiving, not prayer, occupied Him at that time. How speaking is this to us! He knew — and His act of giving thanks showed it — that nothing could be added to enhance the efficacy of His atoning death, and nothing would be lacking that a sinner needs of sacrifice when that death should have taken place. The sufficiency and the abiding efficacy of His sacrifice His thanksgiving abundantly attests. His body given for us! The hour for that was at hand. And great though His sufferings would be — and who knows what they were but Himself? — His heart overflowed in thanksgiving as He surveyed in anticipation the rich and far-reaching results of His death. But instituting the supper for His own disciples, He concentrated their thoughts at the table on the benefits they would receive. "My body which is given for you." A substitute indeed! Of the broken bread they were to eat, the symbol of His body given for them, then in anticipation, afterward in commemoration.

Not that He partook of it Himself. He had desired to eat the Passover with them before He suffered (Luke 22:15), but this Supper was something new and different. This was something for them to do for His sake. This was to be a memorial of Him. Did He Himself require such a memorial? Does He need some tangible token to keep us before His heart? some memorial to bring us to His remembrance? Never; our names are engraved upon the palms of His hands. But do not we forget? Do not we often need reminding? He knew our weakness; and He took the bread, and said, "Take, eat; this is My body." And by these simple words He joined us up, so to speak, with Himself in His great work at Calvary and its results. It is as if He said, 'Make this your own, let this truth be yours, let it be within you, let it be assimilated in your very being; take, eat.'

Hence it is, beloved friends, that in the Supper we come so close to the blessed person of the Lord Jesus Christ. "This is My body," are the Lord's words. There is no need, however, for fanciful notions with regard to the bread. Let us be clear that the material is bread, and that it remains bread. He said, "This is My body," using, of course, a figure of speech, such as was often upon His lips. He spake in the pictorial manner of that nation to which He came. When He said "This is My body," He thereby attached a special significance to the loaf as His memorial. This, and nothing else, was to be the emblem which should set forth to them His body, and should for this reason recall to their minds the things done in His body.

The apostle states the circumstances of the institution of the supper very concisely, and very definitely: "The Lord Jesus the same night in which He was betrayed took bread: and when He had given thanks, He brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is My body, which is (broken) for you: this do in remembrance of Me." The Lord first took the bread; this was to be for a symbol: He was holding the bread in His hand. He said, "This is My body." What the Lord held was not really His own body; the loaf was not something to be worshipped and adored, then or afterwards; but it was chosen to be the emblem of His body, the thing for our sight and our lips. But if our hearts are not right at the supper, there will be no fulfilment of the Lord's word in our looking upon the bread, nor in our partaking of it; we shall miss its memorial character.

The Lord said to them there, "This is My body, which is broken [or given] for you: this do in remembrance of Me. After the same manner also He took the cup, when He had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in My blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of ME." Observe the repetition of the injunction, "This do in remembrance of Me", in connection with the cup as well as the loaf. The Lord Himself is speaking, consequently He seeks the remembrance of Himself — "of Me." It is of the utmost importance to remember that the Lord Jesus Christ is the central figure of this institution. He is there! It is He that makes the supper a reality by His presence; it is He that gives value and worth to our memorial service.

Accordingly, after the Passover Supper, He instituted the new memorial feast of the Lord's Supper which would remind them, and believers down through the centuries, of what He had done for them at Calvary's cross. The bread was emblematical of the body in which He suffered and completed the work of atonement and the cup would remind us of His blood which was shed on the cross for our sins. It was not, as some erroneously think and teach, that in the Supper the bread becomes literally His body and the contents of the cup become literally His blood, so that we actually eat His body and drink His blood as something which makes us more fit for heaven and gives us' the forgiveness of sins. The Lord was still bodily present with them when He instituted the Supper and surely He did not mean that, though He was bodily present, the bread and the cup He then gave them was also literally His body and His blood. No, He was thinking of the time when He would no longer be bodily present with them; thus He gave them, and believers throughout the Church age, the emblems of the bread and the cup which would recall Himself and His death on the cross vividly to their minds.

On "that night," knowing all that was before Him, He gave thanks, broke it, and said to them, "This is my body, given for you." Is there any difficulty in understanding what that bread meant? What could it be but Christ Himself personally in death?

The loaf which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? Here, we have communion, or fellowship, named again. This time it is in connection with the body of Christ. Now, the body of Christ, we gather from this passage, has a twofold signification. First, the loaf represents the body of Christ, which was given for us, that holy body in which He bore our sins upon the tree. "This is My body", the Lord said, referring to that sacrifice which He made of Himself in order that our sins might be purged.

The bread therefore is a symbol of the body of the Lord Jesus which was given for His own — given up to death for them, for us, for all believers — on the cross; and when we eat it, we are to remember Him. Attention to the word "remember" would save from many mistakes. We remember a thing that is past; i.e., we recall it to mind. So when we eat the bread at the Lord's Supper, we recall the fact that the Lord was once dead; we remember Him in that condition — the condition of death — down into which He went, when He bore our sins in His own body on the tree — when He endured all the wrath that was due to us, and so glorified God even about our sin. It is therefore not Christ as He now is, but Christ as He then was, whom we remember in the breaking of bread.

The cup also sets forth the same thing. "After the same manner also He took the cup, when He had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament [covenant] in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me. For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's death till He come" (vv. 25, 26). The wine, then, of which we partake is an emblem of the blood of Christ; and this in itself speaks also of death, for we cannot think of blood, as apart from the body, except in connection with death. Indeed, verse 26 emphasizes the truth that, both in eating the bread and drinking the cup, we show, announce, or proclaim, the death of the Lord. We cannot too earnestly insist upon this, that in the Lord's Supper we look back to a dead Christ; that we take it in remembrance of the fact that He once was lying dead — dead on the cross, and dead in the sepulchre; because He not only bore our sins, but was made sin — He who knew no sin — that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. Note well that it is not even a dying, but a dead Christ — not a dying Christ, a continual repetition of His sacrifice, as so many erroneously teach, but a dead Christ; "for by one offering He hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified" (Heb. 10:14).

285 The other sacrament, that of the Lord's supper, is equally significative. It represents definitely and specifically the death of Christ. "Ye do shew forth the Lord's death till he come." Nothing can be more emphatically death. "This is my body which was broken for you. This is my blood which is shed for many for the remission of sins." It is not, then, participating in incarnate living humanity, but in the death of Christ. Is the breaking of the body in death, the flowing of the very might, wisdom, and purity of Deity itself into the weak and poor elements of our nature? That all the perfections of Godhead were displayed there, so that God has been glorified in the work wrought about our sin is most true: His love, His righteousness, His truth, His majesty; but to say that death is the communication of the fulness of the gift of grace to humanity, and by humanity to us as life, is nonsense. It is death we celebrate in the eucharist: neither a Christ alive as man through the incarnation; nor a Christ alive again in resurrection; but a body broken, and the blood shed out, the sure emblems of death, and given as such; and therefore the Lord, when speaking of this glorious mystery itself, of His taking manhood and dying, says, "The bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give," not will take or have taken, though this were a necessary step towards it; but "which I will give for the life of the world:" that divine life in man, and in which God was truly manifested in flesh and amongst men, was shewn to be the object of flesh's hatred, and the new man took His place as head of the new race, when atonement had been made for fatal and otherwise irremediable sin; and on both the ordinances which the Lord instituted for our blessing as Christians, He stamped this truth of the death of the old man, and death to it; but that death became ours in a saving way, through Him who by the grace of God tasted death for us. Quickened together with Him, and raised up together, we own His death as our necessary door of entrance into life, and do not think of uniting two incompatible lives with one another. We were dead by, we are now dead to, sin through Jesus, and, alive in Him, feed on that precious sacrifice which He has wrought for us, making death our life and security for ever, where the power of Satan, where sin and all that belongs to it end with the life they attached to, and where a new life in righteousness has its origin, all trespasses being forgiven us, righteousness in Christ Himself before God, and righteousness by Christ in us before men.

First, He links the affections with it in the strongest way. It was the same night on which Jesus was betrayed that He left this memorial of His sufferings and of His love. As the paschal lamb brought to mind the deliverance which the sacrifice offered in Egypt had procured for Israel, thus the Lord's supper called to mind the sacrifice of Christ. He is in the glory, the Spirit is given; but they were to remember Him. His offered body was the object before their hearts in this memorial. Take notice of this word "Remember." It is not a Christ as He now exists, it is not the realisation of what He is: that is not a remembrance — His body is now glorified. It is a remembrance of what He was on the cross. It is a body slain, and blood shed, not a glorified body. It is remembered, though, by those who are now united to Him in the glory into which He is entered. As risen and associated with Him in glory, they look back to that blessed work of love, and His love in it which gave them a place there. They drink also of the cup in remembrance of Him. In a word, it is Christ looked at as dead: there is not such a Christ now.

It is the remembrance of Christ Himself. It is that which attaches to Himself, it is not only the value of His sacrifice, but attachment to Himself, the remembrance of Himself. The apostle then shows us, if it is a dead Christ, who it is that died. Impossible to find two words, the bringing together of which has so important a meaning, The death of the Lord. How many things are comprised in that He who is called the Lord had died! What love! what purposes! what efficacy! what results! The Lord Himself gave Himself up for us. We celebrate His death. At the same time, it is the end of God's relations with the world on the ground of man's responsibility, except the judgment. This death has broken every link — has proved the impossibility of any. We show forth this death until the rejected Lord shall return, to establish new bonds of association by receiving us to Himself to have part in them. It is this which we proclaim in the ordinance when we keep it. Besides this, it is in itself a declaration that the blood on which the new covenant is founded has been already shed; it was established in this blood. I do not go beyond that which the passage presents; the object of the Spirit of God here, is to set before us, not the efficacy of the death of Christ, but that which attaches the heart to Him in remembering His death, and the meaning of the ordinance itself. It is a dead, betrayed Christ whom we remember. The offered body was, as it were, before their eyes at this supper. The shed blood of the Saviour claimed the affections of their heart for Him. They were guilty of despising these precious things, if they took part in the supper unworthily. The Lord Himself fixed our thoughts there in this ordinance, and in the most affecting way, at the very moment of His betrayal.

Scripture is clear and definite on the subject of the Lord's Supper. The words are as distinct as possible, “As oft as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's death till He come.” Again, “This do in remembrance of Me.” We remember Him in death — the basis, center and spring of everything to us. The apostle calls attention to the fact that it was in the same night He was betrayed that our blessed Lord, in His thoughtful, unselfish love for us, instituted the feast, and this is full of touching interest for our hearts. But as to the feast itself — its significance — its object — its place, Scripture is most precise: “ye do show the Lord's death,” “Do this in remembrance of Me.” We remember a Christ who was dead; we call Him to mind in that condition in which, thank God, He no longer is. All this can only be by faith through the power of the Holy Spirit. There is no need to enter into sensational details; indeed such things are most offensive to all true spiritual feeling. We cannot keep too close to the actual, perfect language of Holy Scripture.