Why did Jesus say to "do this in remembrance of Me" in Luke 22:19?

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.

173 Then (v. 19, 20) He institutes the memorial of His better redemption, of His self-sacrificing dying love. If He separated Himself now to God in His joy, it was not want of love to His disciples, but its fullest display. It was to be done "in remembrance" of Him. We remember Him suffering, dead, absent; we know Him as a present living Saviour. The new covenant is established in His blood. We cannot, in all the joy of fellowship with Christ above, forget what brought us into it. On one side, it is a body broken and blood shed; on the other, it is Himself and all the perfectness of love in dying for us. We are united to Him as a risen Christ, but He calls us to remember Him as a dead Christ. The blessedness of this last is in the work He did alone, by virtue of which I am put in union with Himself, alive again for evermore. As to man's part in it (v. 21-23), it was treachery and wickedness.

That night in Egypt was to be kept in perpetual remembrance by the people of Israel. That it might never be forgotten, the Passover was to be observed annually as a feast to Jehovah throughout their generations. "Ye shall keep it a feast by an ordinance for ever" (Ex. 12:14). There is a dangerous tendency in the human heart to forget, particularly in matters relating to God. How often in Deuteronomy — that book which gives us Moses' final addresses to the people — we come across such admonitions as "Beware lest thou forget," and "Take heed that ye remember." Peter's last epistle was written in order that his readers might after his departure have his teaching "always in remembrance." One of the marks of a backslider, according to this apostle, is his having "forgotten that he was purged from his old sins" (2 Peter 1:9). The Lord's Supper comes to mind here. The Saviour was on the eve of death when He instituted it. His wonderful course on earth was ending, and He was about to undergo the supreme anguish of Calvary. Only by His death could atonement be effected and salvation be made possible for sinful men. Yet even One so divinely unique as He, and a sacrifice so stupendous as the sacrifice of Himself, would be in danger of being forgotten by His own. Accordingly He gave to His disciples first the bread, and then the cup, saying, "This do in remembrance of Me" (Luke 22:19-20). Years after His return to heaven's glory, the Holy Spirit reiterated His words in 1 Cor. 11:23-25, adding, as often as ye eat the bread and drink the cup, ye do show forth the Lord's death till He come." Thus during the whole period of His absence on high the Lord's Supper remains with the Church as the memorial of her once-slain Lord and Saviour. The absurdity of encouraging any to partake thereof who have no saving knowledge of Christ should be apparent; for how can I recall to remembrance a person I have never known? Year by year the Passover feast was to be observed in Israel. In this way the goodness of God was to be kept alive in the minds of the people, and the mighty fact that He redeemed them from the bondage of Egypt, taking them into relationship with Himself on the ground of the blood of the lamb. Connected with the Passover there were to be seven days of unleavened bread. Leaven is everywhere in Scripture the type of evil. Thus in God's picture-book, as elsewhere in the plainest language, He insists upon purity of life and doctrine in all whom grace has sheltered beneath the Saviour's blood.

1894 15 It is to be remarked that only in Luke's Gospel and in Paul's Epistle to the Corinthians are these touching words of our Lord recorded. They give to us in the clearest and simplest terms His desire as to what should engage the thoughts of our hearts when breaking bread — the precious memory of Him crucified, and crucified for us. Another has pointed out that the word translated "remembrance" has an active signification of "recalling," or "calling to mind," as a memorial. The words then are to be read thus — "This do for the calling Me to mind." There is a striking contrast in this respect between the Lord's supper and the Jewish sacrifices. In them "there was a remembrance again made of sins every year." Their repetition called the sins to mind, i.e., proved that the sacrifices were inefficacious to put them away. On the contrary, when the Christian "breaks bread," he calls Jesus to mind Who has put his sins away by the sacrifice of Himself. Unspeakably precious memorial! which not only speaks peace to the conscience and hope to the soul, but fills the heart with the warmest affections for Him Who has so loved us when ruined and guilty, and so eternally redeemed us to God by His blood.

In Luke 22:19-20; 1 Cor. 11:20-26 there is brought before us the institution of the Lord's Supper. In Luke, we have its record by the Lord, and in 1 Cor. a reference to the ministry of the Supper which the Apostle had previously communicated to the saints at Corinth. It is mainly from the record in 1 Cor. 11. that our thoughts regarding the Supper are formed. That is to be expected, as in this epistle we have the truth of the administration of the assembly in the light of the fellowship to which we have all been called. Evidently the Corinthians had been meeting together, professing to take the Supper, but their conduct called forth the corrective reiteration which the Apostle had previously delivered to the saints at Corinth. In order to add weight to the seriousness of their conduct the Apostle calls their attention to the significance of breaking the bread and partaking of the cup, for he adds to the words of the Lord, "For as often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do announce the Lord's death till He come." This is the great appeal to self-judgment so that the Supper might not be partaken unworthily as the Corinthians appear to have been doing, but it is not that which the Lord has asked us to do; His request is simply that we might do this "for a remembrance of Me." The Lord does not say in what way we are to call Him to mind, but if we refer to the Scriptures in which there is a word of God to His own in regard to that which is to be remembered by them we will see that it is the significance of the incident in relation to the dealings of God with His people that is to be before them. The Passover and all the various Feasts inaugurated by the Lord God, were for a remembrance of the way in which He had acted towards His people and their relationship with Him. For us today, we can see how all these were shadows of that which was going to be true of the Lord Jesus and has been and is being effected by Him. When we come together in Assembly, we lose our individuality; we are part of a whole; this should make us sensible to the fact that the remembrance of the Lord and His death as it applies to us personally, should be before us before we come to the Assembly meeting, rather than when there. Surely each one of us should ever have before us the remembrance of our Beloved Lord in His sufferings and death on the Cross for us; we do not need to come together to bring this to remembrance. This ought to be continually before us, drawing out our hearts in love and thanksgiving to Him, and creating in us a desire to be in our place around Him in His own appointed way, in Assembly.

But we refrain from following the different teachings concerning the Lord's supper. What can be more evident than that the new feast He instituted is a memorial? The Passover feast was a feast of remembrance, and what He does here on that solemn night was a simple meal to commemorate the giving of His body and the shedding of His blood. The account given here of the institution of the Lord's supper is in harmony with the character of this first Gospel. The Holy Spirit gives the record to show the blood of the new covenant, which the lamb of God shed for many, in contrast to the Jewish Passover, the old covenant which was exclusively only for the Jewish people. If we turn to the Gospel of Luke, which is wider in its scope than the Gospel of Matthew, we read the words, which give to the Lord's supper decidedly the character of a memorial. "Do this in remembrance of Me." It is then simply this to remember Him, not to receive anything, but to remember Him and His love. This is still more enforced by another record which we have of this great memorial. We find a record outside of the Gospels altogether. This record was given by revelation to the Apostle Paul: "For I received from the Lord, that which I also delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus in the night in which He was delivered up, took bread, and having given thanks broke it, and said, This is my body, which is for you; this do in remembrance of Me. In like manner also the cup after having supped, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood, this do, as often as ye shall drink it in remembrance of Me. For as often as ye shall eat this bread, and drink the cup ye announce the death of the Lord until He come" (1 Cor. 11:23-26). And what better way could there be than the way He has shown in this request to remember Him, in this simple ceremony of breaking the bread and partaking of it and drinking from the cup? No doubt this request was fulfilled by the Saints of earliest date on every Lord's day; Acts 20:7 certainly gives one that impression; yet there is no law about it. The soul that is occupied with Him will ever long to fulfill that request He left in that night ere He was delivered up. "Till He comes" up to the time when we shall see Him face to face in the Father's house. It ever keeps Him, His death for us and His coming again as a bright and blessed reality before the heart.

In coming together, then, to break bread, we not only express the oneness of the body, show the Lord's death, and together await His return, but we specially remember Him. Self with its failures, self with its blessings, and self with its service, is lost sight of; PERSONS, however much loved and honoured in their ministry, are ignored; circumstances the most pleasing, or cares the most depressing, are allowed no place; while the LORD HIMSELF ― Lord as the One that died ― commands the heart and the mind of the saint. "This do in remembrance of ME." This makes the Supper beautifully simple, but unspeakably precious.

Let us imagine the scene in the upper room, where the Lord Jesus was with His disciples at the table. Ahead of Him lies the work of redemption that He is to fulfil. He is well aware of all the suffering connected with it and knows that He is about to lay down His life. Then He takes the loaf, gives thanks for it, breaks it and gives it to His disciples with the words, “This is My body which is given for you.” What love is expressed in these words of the Saviour, and what a proof of that love was He to give at the cross! Then He adds the meaningful words, “Do this in remembrance of Me.” Is it not as if He were saying, “Look how much I love you. I am ready to lay down My life for you”? Is He not appealing to His disciples’ love, when He says, “Do this in remembrance of Me”? Should it not be our joy to respond to that love of His? Does it not resemble a holy legacy that He has left us? Do we not wish to give Him joy in remembering Him in this way?

The Lord's supper then is to remind us of Christ, of His death; not of our sins but of our sins remitted and ourselves loved. It is in no wise the old covenant of condemnation, but the new covenant (God known in grace, iniquity forgiven, and sins remembered no more); not yet made with the houses of Israel set for ever the land under the reign of Messiah, but the blood shed which is its foundation, and we who believe, Jew or Gentile, having it in spirit, not in letter. (See 2 Cor. 3) Of this the cup especially is the pledge.

The Lord's supper refers both to the Passover and to Sinai: "This do in remembrance of me" evidently alluding to Egypt, and the occasion itself showing the one, "the new covenant in my blood" referring to the other. As Passover it is the recollection of deliverance through One broken for us - deliverance from judgment and wrath; as blood of the covenant, it puts us in a new relationship, on the ground of grace through the forgiveness of sins.