What did Jesus say at the Last Supper?

The record in Luke is deeply affecting — so tender, so touchingly personal. "And when the hour was come, He sat down, and the twelve apostles with Him. And He said to them, With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer: for I say to you, I will not any more eat thereof until it be fulfilled in the kingdom of God. And He took the cup, and gave thanks, and said, Take this, and divide it among yourselves; for I say to you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God shall come. And He took bread, and gave thanks, and brake, and gave to them, saying, This is My body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of Me. Likewise also the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new testament in My blood, which is shed for you." Luke 22:14-20.

The Lord's Supper. — From the celebration of the paschal supper Luke proceeds to tell Theophilus of the institution of the Lord's Supper. This, we learn from his gospel, was quite distinct from the other, though instituted at the same table. It was also something quite new, and has a feature peculiar to itself. No service is there like it, for it is wholly eucharistic. Now the Lord was as the host. It was His supper, and the disciples were the guests seated at His table. Of His supper, of course, He did not partake. Of the passover He did. Then He was one of Israel commemorating in the appointed way the national deliverance from judgment in Egypt. At the supper He was the Dispenser to His disciples of that which was to be the memorial of His death. The two were very different in object and in character. At the passover there was remembered the goodness of Jehovah towards Israel; at the Lord's Supper there was to be before the mind the death of the Lord Jesus. To be eaten with unleavened bread, the bread of affliction, was the Divine command about the former (Deut. 16:3); thanksgiving, and that only, characterised the latter. The former was wholly retrospective; celebrating the latter, we look back and look forward, for till He come, as 1 Cor. 11:26 states, we show the Lord's death who died for us, and eat of His supper in remembrance of Him (Luke 22:19).

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.

Then, having taken the cup and given thanks, He gave it to them, saying, "Drink ye all of it. For this is my blood, that of the new covenant, that shed for many, for the remission of sins." This was to assure their souls the sea was dry, the fire was quenched, the sword had drunk its fill, and the overflowings of that blood were for their stay and joy in the way. The cup once filled with wrath had been emptied and its dregs wrung out, and instead, the blood, which told of pardon, peace with God, and separation from a world of sin and woe, now filled it to its brim. Real and absolutely true for the soul and faith as the Lord has made the cup of His blood which we drink, yet He goes on distinctly to declare that the fruit of the vine is not His blood; for He says He will in no wise drink of that until He drinks it new with us in the kingdom of His Father.

In Luke 22 we see our Lord with the disciples not now as a prophet, but about to become a sacrifice, meanwhile giving them the sweetest pledge of His love. On the other hand, there is the hatred of man, the weakness of the disciples, the falsehood of Peter, the treachery of Judas, the subtlety and terrors of the enemy who had the power of death. The day of unleavened bread comes on, and the passover must be killed; and Peter and John go to prepare it. According to the Lord's word, the place was given. "And when the hour was come, he sat down, and the twelve apostles with him. And he said unto them, With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer: for I say unto you, I will not any more eat thereof, until it be fulfilled in the kingdom of God." (14-16.) It was the last act of communion of Christ with them. 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 paschal cup. He was about to drink of a far different cup, which His Father would give Him — the anti-type of the passover, and the basis of the Lord's Supper. But as to the cup before them, He says, "I will not drink of the fruit of the vine, until the kingdom of God shall come." It was about to come morally; for Luke holds to that great principle — the kingdom of God was about to be established in what you may call the Christian system. The phrase in Luke does not import some future dispensation or state of things about to be above or below, in visible power, but an imminent coming of God's kingdom, really and truly here. 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 Ghost."

Still, in the face of all, the Lord pursues His path of love and holy calm; and when the disciples inquire His pleasure as to the place for eating the paschal feast, He speaks as the conscious Messiah, let Him be ever so rejected: "Go into the city to such a man, and say unto him, The Master saith, My time is at hand; I will keep the passover at thy house with My disciples" (ver. 18). As the twelve were eating, He tells out the grief of His heart: "Verily I say unto you, that one of you shall betray Me" (ver. 21) — which fails not to elicit the reality of their affections and their deep grief. If Judas imitated their inquiry of innocence, fearful that his own silence would detect him, and, it may be, counting on ignorance because of the Lord's generality of expression ("one of you"), he only thereby hears his doom brought personally home. Prophecy was accomplished, "but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed."

(Vv. 34, 35). Moreover the coming parting would mean that the disciples would be left without the powerful bond of the personal presence of the One they all loved. Hence the Lord gives a new commandment, "That ye love one another; as I have loved you." It has been suggested that the Lord speaks of this command as a new command, in contrast to the old command, well known to these Jewish disciples, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." The new commandment is, "That ye love one another as I have loved you." Christ loved with a love which, while never indifferent to evil, yet triumphed over all the power of evil. If we love one another after the pattern of Christ's great love, we shall not suffer evil in one another, but we shall find a way of dealing with the evil without ceasing to love one another. Nothing but the bond of love, after the divine pattern, will hold together a company of people each having a distinct personality, with different shades of character, and diverse temperaments.

The first thing that He declares to them, in His grace, is, that if He was going away, it is not to abandon them, but to prepare them a place elsewhere, that is, in His Father's house. There, there was not room for Him alone (perhaps He alluded to the temple?) but abodes for them also; and then He Himself would come for them, so as to have them with Him where He was Himself. He could not dwell with them down here, but they should be with Him; and He would not send to seek them, but He would come Himself to take them to Himself. Precious and tender love that associated His own with Himself, according to the place they had in His heart, and according to the eternal counsels of the love of God. Instead of the kingdom of an earthly Messiah, they would have the eternal and divine glory of the Son of man in heaven, to be like Him, and with Him. Man having entered there, consequent upon redemption, the place was prepared for them. It was not a question of preparing them for the place (that is the subject of chapter 13), but of preparing the place for them. The presence of their Forerunner, where He was going, accomplished it. The blood made peace according to divine righteousness, the water prepared them to enjoy it. The entrance of Christ left nothing to be done that they might enter; only the co-heirs must be gathered, and till then, the Lord remains seated on His Father's throne.

This was the blessed and prayerfully waited-for moment the Lord had predicted the night before His death: "I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it sees him not, neither knows him; but ye know him; for he dwells with you, and shall be in you. … But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said to you" (John 14:16-17, 26). "But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send to you from the Father, he shall testify of me" (John 15:26). "Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak; and he will show you things to come. He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall show it to you" (John 16:13-15).

"When then He washed their feet and took His garments and reclined again, He said to them, Know ye what I have done to you? Ye call Me the Teacher and the Lord, and ye say well, for I am. If I then, the Lord and the Teacher, washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one another's feet; for I have given you an example, that even as I did to you, ye should also do. Verily, verily I say to you, A bondman is not greater than his lord, nor yet an apostle greater than He that sent him. If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do (or, practise) them."

Now, the Lord Jesus did feel the traitor's heartless ways (and we may learn it yet more from Psalm 109.) Surely also we ought to feel it, instead of merely treating it as a thing, that must be, and which Scripture prepares us for, or which God's goodness turns to gracious ends. All true enough; but are these the platitudes that content us before His troubled spirit? Or is not the sense of His sorrow to fill the heart in presence of this ineffable love, which endured all things for the elect's sake? Yea, it was from all: our Lord has to meet shame in those He loved best. "They began to enquire among themselves which of them it was that should do this thing." (Ver. 23.) There was honesty in these hearts; but what ignorance! what unbrokenness of self! "There was also a strife among them, which of them should be accounted greatest." Other evangelists, as well as Luke, mention that, when He was in the midst of His miracles and teaching, they were full of their unseemly rivalry; Luke mentions it where it was beyond comparison most painful and humiliating — in presence of the communion of His body and His blood, and when they had just heard of the presence of the traitor in their midst, who was offering to sell their Master for thirty pieces of silver! "And he said unto them, The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and they that exercise authority upon them are called benefactors. But ye shall not be so: but he that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger; and he that is chief, as he that doth serve. For whether is greater, he that sitteth at meat, or he that serveth? is not he that sitteth at meat? but I am among you as he that serveth." What grace! what a pattern! But forget not the warning. The patronizing, of the lordly benefactor has no place in Christ's mind for His followers. To serve was the Lord's place: may we prize it! (Verses 24-27.)