Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Mark 14:22
And as they did eat, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and broke [it,] and gave to them, and said, Take, eat: this is my body.
22 25. Institution of the Holy Eucharist
22. And as they did eat ] On the departure of the Traitor the Saviour, as though relieved of a heavy load, broke forth into words of mysterious triumph (Joh 13:31-35), and then, as the meal went on, proceeded to institute the Holy Eucharist.
Jesus took bread ] that is one of the unleavened cakes that had been placed before Him as the Celebrant or Proclaimer of the Feast.
and blessed ] giving thanks and pronouncing the consecration, probably in the usual words, see above, Mar 14:16.
Take, eat ] “Eat” is omitted here in the best editions.
this is my body ] St Luke adds, “ which is being (or on the point of being) given for you; ” St Paul (1Co 11:24), “ which is being (or on the point of being) broken for you,” while both add, “ do this in remembrance of Me.”
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Mar 14:22-24
Jesus took bread.
The symbols of Christs body
I. Let us glance at the gospel feast, as exhibited to our view in our periodical approach to the table of the Lord. What is it that we are to feast upon? What is it of which Jehovah Jesus says-This is My Body, and this is My Blood? It is His own Person-the glorious, perfect, complete God-Man. It is His redemption work, accomplished and perfected by Himself, which constitutes the gospel feast.
1. The redemption which constitutes good for our souls is perfect. Christ has not done His work by halves. He has not left His work in an unfinished state.
2. Moreover, the redemption that is in Jesus Christ is personal; and if it be not so, there is no eating of it. If you come to a meal, to make it personal, you must participate; you must receive for yourself.
3. Moreover, it is a permanent redemption.
II. Let me pass on to notice the ordained guests. He took and brake it, and gave to them-His disciples. I do not believe that Judas was there at that moment, though some people do. I shall not stop to argue that point, however. There are two things, and only two things, essential to a welcome guest. The first is, vital godliness, as an essential qualification; and the second is, the imputed righteousness of Christ as the essential robe.
III. Let me now press on to speak of the orthodox viands that we expect to feast upon, of which my precious Lord says-Take, eat, this is My Body, and this is My Blood. The sacrificed Lamb is the great feast itself. This was ordered under the Levitical dispensation every morning and evening-a lamb to be sacrificed and presented to the Lord-the lamb of the Passover; and the same sacred emblem, pointing to the precious Christ of God, is declared to be the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world; and just such persons as I have been describing were welcome to partake of it. This feasting on the Lamb, the atoning Blood, the perfect satisfaction, and the sacred acceptance thereof, is announced by God Himself as a thing with which He is well pleased; and the soul that is under the teaching and the operation of the Holy Ghost can find nothing to feast upon short of It. If I go to some places I have nothing but a dinner of poisonous herbs: I mean the beauties of rhetoric, the eloquence of the creature, heathenish morality, and nothing to profit the precious soul that is born from above. The believer is able to do what the Israelites were commanded to do: he is able to eat a whole lamb; he is able to partake of a whole Christ. So we may well say again, having Christ, I possess all things. Do not talk to me of feeding upon frames and feelings, and groping amongst ifs and buts, and peradventures, and probabilities, and contingencies, and conditions and uncertainties-they are enough to make all the people of God like Pharaohs lean kine, if they do not absolutely starve them to death.
IV. Let me now lead on your attention to the masters words-This is My body; and This is My Blood of the New Testament, which is shed for many. Mark, I beseech you, that this sacred gospel feast is intended to nourish not the fleshly, but the spiritual existence. (Joseph Irons, M. A.)
The communion service
It is hardly necessary to remark, that almost every transaction of human life has its appropriate ceremony, its established order and process. In our most familiar intercourse we have oar known forms of salutation. The system is natural in its origin, and beneficial in its effects. In religion above all other subjects, established forms are valuable. They fix attention on the duties which we assemble to perform. They give its due solemnity to the most interesting of all human concerns. They impress more deeply the sentiments of piety on the heart. They support uniformity and sympathy in the public worship of God. Would it not then be unwise and ungrateful if we did not commemorate by some appropriate ceremony the most important transaction of the gospel, the sacrifice and death of Jesus Christ. Such has been prescribed by Him who had the undoubted right to prescribe it, the Author of that religion, which it is intended to support. The fitness and propriety of a commemoration appointed by such authority will not be called in question.
I. The memory of the most interesting events is apt to fade from the mind, unless occasionally revived by reflection on their respective circumstances, or by some suitable and regular commemoration. Even the sentiments of friendship require to be kept alive by tokens of regard. The disciples had seen the miracles of Christ. From the minds of those who had not teen them, at the distance of almost two thousand years, the genuine religion of the gospel might have been lost, had it not been cherished by the ordinances of the Church.
II. Before the publication of the gospel to the world, the natives of every heathen nation had their respective offerings to their Gods. They knew not from what authority their sacrifices were derived. They did but imperfectly understand the meaning of the ceremonies of their own worship. Their expectations were limited almost to temporal advantage. When we partake the sacrament we unite in an act of worship, of which we know the authority, intention, and benefit.
III. The sacrifices of the heathens, and the festivals that followed them, were usually attended with cruelty to inoffensive animals, disgraced by immoral practices, and performed at ruinous expense. The sacrifices of the Jews were designed to typify one efficacious sacrifice of the Redeemer of the world. Our sacrament is not the sacrifice itself. It is only the festival after it; commemorating the sacrifice, and urging our claims to the benefits, which it was intended to convey. By the prudent regulations of our Church no indecent excess can disgrace this act of our worship. The exhortations to repentance, faith, and charity are Scriptural.
IV. The last recommendation of our ceremonies at the sacrament is the fitness and propriety of the substances employed on that solemn occasion. From the wisdom and goodness of Him who prescribed them this was to be expected. Instead of the slaughter of animals, select and perfect, but within the reach of the poor;-instead of incense and spices which are only found in a few favoured regions of the earth, and which when found are more costly than appropriate, our Saviour has directed us to employ the simple elements of bread and wine; produced in every country; which may be obtained without delay or difficulty. These elements are fit emblems of the benefits to be derived from the solemnity; nay, the strengthening and refreshing of our souls by the Body and Blood of Christ. (W. Barrow, LL. D.)
The Lords supper
I. The bread. This signifies our need of spiritual food from Christ. We have a spiritual life within, as real as the physical life, and needing just as much a constant supply of nourishment. When General Grant took the Federal army at Chattanooga it was feeble and dispirited because it was almost destitute. The food of the army was hauled with difficulty over mountain roads and the supply was totally insufficient. His first movement, on assuming command-and it was that which eventually led to victory,-was to repair the railroads, and open up communication, so that the army soon had everything it needed. There is a like necessity in the spiritual life of Christs army. We are worth very little in the service of Christ, except as we are spiritually nourished. The soul is easily starved by lack of appropriate food. And our spiritual nourishment must come from Christ.
II. The bread was blessed by Christ. The significance of this act was that God the Father was recognized as having a part in the work of the Son.
III. The bread is broken by Christ. Why is this? Here is a reminder of the sufferings of Christ. This, said Christ, is My Body which is broken for you The broken bread is designed to bring to our minds His sacrificial work. And it is worthy of remark that our Lord broke the bread Himself. He did not delegate this to another. So did Christ voluntarily surrender Himself to death. Therefore, He affirms in one place, doth the Father love Me, because I lay down My life, that I might take it again. No one taketh it away from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. There is a peculiar value in the sacrifice of Christ, in the fact that He was not forced to it. All He did and suffered was voluntary. It was because He loved us. It was in the infinite tenderness of His heart that He became our Saviour.
IV. The bread was distributed to the disciples by Christ. Here is suggested our complete dependence on Christ for salvation.
V. The second part of this symbol. The use of the cup, as well as the bread, gives the idea of completeness. The two necessities for life are food and drink. When both are given there is fulness in the provision. The spiritual food symbolized in the supper covers all the needs of the soul. He who has Christ has what causes want to cease.
2. The doubling of the symbol also serves for emphasis. Thus Elisha, Hannah, and Job received double portions, that is, an unusual amount.
3. There is also climax. The giving of the cup presents not only the old thought suggested in the giving of the bread, but something more, which is even more important.
VI. The cup. The cup is symbolic of the Blood of Christ; and the blood of life. The juice of the grape, as it is violently pressed from the grape and procured by the grapes destruction, fittingly represents the Blood of Christ poured out for us.
VII. Eating the bread and drinking the cup. Our Saviours directions to His disciples regarding the Supper were very simple. They were, Take, eat. Drink ye all of it. And the one hint our Saviour gave as to the meaning of this reception of the Supper was in His words: This do in remembrance of Me. To this the apostle added the inspired comment: For as often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye proclaim the Lords death till He come. From this language several things are plain. We are taught that our eating the bread and drinking the cup is a confession of Christ, a pledge to serve our Lord, and an act of fellowship as Christians. But it is, above all, a reception of Christ by faith. Our very act of taking the bread symbolizes the way in which we are to be benefited by Christ. We can not have Christ except as we open our hearts to Him. We are to give Him loving welcome. We are to rejoice in Him and accept Him, just as we do the food for the body, in the assurance that He will build us up in life and health. We must cherish the thought of Christ with the same loyalty with which we cherish earthly friendships. We remember earthly friends when they are out of our sight, recognizing their interests and rights, keeping ourselves in proper attitude towards them, and allowing no one else and nothing else to come between them and us in such way as to make us forgetful of them or indifferent towards them. The mother of Professor Louis Agassiz lived in Switzerland. In her beautiful old age Professor Silliman and wife called upon her and were charmed with her character. The morning they were leaving Switzerland she met them, and giving them a bunch of pansies said, with a beautiful play upon words, speaking of course in the French language: Tell my son that my thoughts (mes pensees) are all for him, they are all for him. Now this is the way we should feel towards Christ. If we give Him all our heart, all our thoughts, we are communing with Him, we are receiving Him to ourselves, as He desires. As the elements of the Supper are taken into our system, so do we receive Christ into our souls. (Addison P. Foster.)
Sacrament of the Lords Supper
Because the sacraments of the gospel are only two in number, it has sometimes been thought that they must be ordinances of minor importance. No mistake can be greater, or more calculated to depreciate the value of these divinely-appointed ordinances, which, from their very fewness, as well as from having received Christs explicit command, should receive the Christians strictest gard. The passage before us leads to inquiries respecting the meaning and design of this great sacrament.
I. The relations in which Christ here presents Himself to His disciples.
1. Propitiation. The object of the Lords Supper is not to commemorate Jesus as a Teacher, though in this He was unlike any other; nor to perpetuate the memory of His example, although His was the only perfect one ever afforded. It is, to keep constantly in mind that He who was the one illustrious Teacher, and the only perfect Exemplar, employing these together with His incarnate Deity, to add efficacy to the offering, yielded up His life a sacrifice for sinners.
2. The whole benefit of His death is available to those for whom He died. All He did is placed to our credit.
II. The relations which Christians by receiving this sacrament assume towards Christ.
1. They confess their need of Christ. At the Holy Table supply and demand meet. Christ proffering and the disciple needing forgiveness, and all the attendant blessings purchased by His blood.
2. They confess their personal faith in Christ. At the Lords Table disciples individually appropriate Christs work to themselves. By receiving Christ they gain inward strengthening.
3. They consecrate themselves to Christ. Eating at His Table, they proclaim themselves His friends, and consent to His claims as their Saviour and Lord. Christ there enters into covenant with them, and they with Him.
III. The relations into which by this sacrament Christians are brought toward each other.
1. Brotherhood. The bond which unites disciples to the Master links them to each other.
2. Love. Ill-will is banished by the very desire to sit with Christ at this feast, and in its warm and sacred atmosphere animosities can no more exist than an iceberg in the gulf stream. (P. B. Davis.)
Holy Communion
Picture the scene: our Lords last night on earth-He fully aware of it-the Paschal supper, commemorative (through fifteen centuries) of the deliverance of Israel from Egypt-our Lord surrounded by twelve persons, one of whom He knew to be His betrayer, and who went out from this meal to execute his purpose-our Lord full of thoughts, not for Himself, but for them, and in this instance leaving them something to do for Him when He was gone. Holy Communion is-
I. The commemoration of the death of Christ and of all contained and implied in that death (1Co 11:26). In that act of worship we express our faith in
(1) the fact,
(2) the intention,
(3) the efficacy of the death (as the completion of the earthly life, and as the prelude to the resurrection life) of Christ, very God and very man.
II. A token of the manner in which alone our spiritual life is maintained. The bread and wine are not merely gazed upon, but eaten and drunk; and that in church, as a religious act. This would be, not merely unprofitable, but irreverent also, if there were not a deep meaning in it. The key is Joh 6:1-71, which expresses in words the same truth the sacrament expresses in act. If we are to have life through Christ, it must be, not merely by hearing of Him, or contemplating Him as an external object, but by receiving Him into heart and soul as by a process of spiritual digestion.
III. The chief opportunity of so exercising and maintaining the spiritual life (1Co 10:16; Mat 26:26-28). Application
1. Form a high estimate of this ordinance, It is what we make it; great or small, according as we seek and expect much or little from it.
2. But let your high estimate be a spiritual estimate. Reverence, not superstition. Feed on Him, in thy heart, by faith.
3. Realize Christs presence.
4. Make due preparation.
5. Beware of delay in becoming a communicant.
6. Beware of coming once or twice and then ceasing.
7. Beware of becoming familiar with the sign and not with the thing signified. (Dean Vaughan.)
Importance of the Holy Communion
When we consider the acts of Christ on this eventful night, we are led to see how vast is the importance given to the Holy Communion. He puts it in juxtaposition with the Paschal supper. As an Israelite ceased to be of Israel-became an alien and outcast from the House of God, forfeited the grace of God and his inheritance in God-if he did not keep the Passover and partake of the Lamb; so He would have us learn that, in like manner, unless Christians partake of the Lamb of God in His New Institution, they are not members of Him, they cut themselves off as dead branches from a vine, they lose His grace, they are no more members of His Kingdom. (S. Baring Gould, M. A.)
The Holy Communion a support to the weak
It is just because you are a sinner that you need the help which God gives through the Eucharist. You know your own weakness; you tell me you are afraid of the sin of yielding to temptation after having communicated. Yes; but is it not almost certain that if you do not communicate you will yield? while, if you will only come in simple faith and trust, looking for Gods blessing, it is through the Holy Sacrament that God will give the grace and strength which will enable you to resist the temptation and come off victor in the fight. There was a labouring man some time since in one of our northern towns, who, owing to some mistake, had been misinformed as to the hour of service. He came when the Celebration of the Holy Communion was just over, and when they came out of Church they found him waiting sadly outside. The clergyman explained how the mistake had arisen, and expressed his sorrow for it. Never mind, master, said the man; but the poor fellow could not help adding, only I did so build upon it. He knew his own weakness, and his need of Divine grace and supernatural assistance; and so he was coming, not as if there was any virtue in the bare act of coming, not as if the Sacrament itself could save him, but because he had grasped the great truth that it is through the Sacrament that God imparts grace, and strength, and life to us His children, unworthy as we are of the least of His benefits. (Prebendary Gibson, M. A.)
Value of the Holy Communion
In times of persecution men would risk their lives to get their Communions. A hundred years ago, during the French Revolution, when religion was abolished by the French Parliament, when Sunday was done away with, the clergy were hunted into the thickets like beasts of prey, and none might conduct or attend a service on pain of death, did people go without this means of grace? No! From time to time a messenger hurried with a mysterious watchword from house to house; the black swamp, he would mutter, and pass on without greeting or farewell. But the persons addressed understood him. Shortly after midnight, men and women, dressed in dark clothes, would meet silently by the black swamp below the village, and there, by the light of a carefully-guarded lantern, one of the homeless priests would give the Body and Blood of the Lord to the faithful of the neighbourhood. They all knew that at any moment, before the alarm could be given, the soldiers might be upon them, and a volley of grape-shot might stretch them bleeding and dying on the ground. What matter? man might kill their body, but Jesus had said that He would raise them up at the last day. (M. A. Lewis.)
The new testament.
Testament or Covenant
The word is thirteen times translated testament in the A.V., and twenty times covenant. Its Hebrew equivalent properly means covenant. But its classical import is latter will or testament. Neither of the translations does full justice to the unique transaction referred to. Indeed no human word could. And to have used a Divine word would simply have been to speak an unintelligibility. The reference is to that arrangement or disposition of things, in virtue of which mercy, and the possibility of true and everlasting bliss, are extended to the sinful human race. It was a glorious device, culminating in the atoning sacrifice of the Lamb of God.
1. It was a covenant, inasmuch as there is, inherent in it, an element of reciprocity. God, on His part, does something. He does much, But the blessing involved in what He does is suspended, so far as mens enjoyment of it is concerned, on acquiescence on their part, or cordial acceptance, or faith.
2. It is also of the nature of a testamentary deed. For there is involved in it a disposition or disposal of the effects or goods which constitute the property of God; in virtue of which disposition it is that men, who acquiesce or believe, become His heirs. The deed is a real testament, for it is duly and solemnly attested and testified.
3. And it is also really a last will, for it is a final expression of the will and wish of God. (J. Morison, D. D.)
The sacraments as symbols
The Magna Charta of British history is not a more forcible witness to our national love of liberty, and our need of it as a condition of progress, than are these institutions to the universal needs of redeemed men. Ordinances that have persisted through innumerable and violent changes, and reasserted themselves in the face of gigantic efforts to suppress them, offer the strongest presumption that they are founded on true reason and spiritual necessity: and though they may have only a secondary and never a primary place, yet they are likely to be requisite still for the expression and nourishment of this life of the soul. Man is not all reason and will. He is still ensphered with sense, and dowered with imagination, and the whole of him cannot be fed, developed, and perfected without the beneficent ministry of symbol. Carlyle, no fanatic ritualist, says, with as much truth as beauty, Wouldst thou plant for eternity, then plant into the deep, infinite faculties of man, his fantasy and heart; wouldst thou plant for year and day, then plant into his shallow, superficial faculties, his self-love and arithmetical understanding; and again, speaking in Sortor Resartus of Symbols, he writes: Of kin to the so incalculable influences of concealment, and connected with still greater things, is the wondrous agency of symbols. In a symbol there is concealment and yet revelation; here, therefore, by silence and by speech acting together, comes a double significance. And if both the speech be itself high, and the silence fit and noble, how expressive will their union be! Thus in many a painted device, or simple seal-emblem, the commonest truth stands out to us proclaimed with quite new emphasis. (Dr. John Clifford.)
The communion service saved
A poor widow sent me a dollar and thirty-three cents, in silver change, saying that it was all she found in her dead husbands pocket book, and she wanted to give it to God. I told this to the children and their parents in the Church of the Ascension, in Chicago, and they soon found a way to use this widows mite for God. They said: We will make a communion service of it. So they added to it their gold rings and pieces of jewelry, and pocket pieces of silver, and a lady gave her dead boys silver cup, and so they kept on adding pieces of silver and gold till we had enough; and then the artist made us a very beautiful chalice and paten all of silver and gold. Now I must tell you what came of it, and that shall be my second story. When that dreadful fire which destroyed our churches and homes in Chicago was seen approaching our little church, a little girl, seven years old, came with her father to see what they could save. It was four oclock in the morning, and there was no light except what came from the fire. But little Louisa Enderli found the Communion Service and saved it. She was soon lost from her father, and for four weary miles she made her way among the crowd of people who were hurrying away from the burning district. The wind blew the burning sand and cinders in her eyes, and almost blinded them; but she defended them as best she could with one hand, and clung to her precious treasure with the other, refusing to give it up till she had it in a place of safety. For three days she was lost from her father, she having been sheltered and cared for by a kind German family. When her father at last found her, she threw her arms about his neck, saying, O, papa, I saved the Communion! I saved the Communion! But even then she could not give it up till she had placed it safely in the rectors hand. I think that was an act of Christian heroism worthy of the martyrs who died for their Lords sake in the older days. (Rev. Charles P. Dorset, rector of the Church of the Ascension, Chicago, Illinois.)
The blood of Christ
The only thing I want, said a dying bishop of our church, Bishop Hamilton, is to place my whole confidence more and more perfectly in the precious blood! (The Fireside Parish Almanack.)
Bloodshedding as an expression of love
A certain Asiatic queen, departing this life, left behind her three accomplished sons, all arrived to years of maturity. The young princes were at strife as to who should pay the highest respect to their royal mothers memory. To give scope for their generous contentions they agreed to meet at the place of interment, and there present the most honourable gift they knew how to devise, or were able to procure. The eldest came, and exhibited a sumptuous monument, consisting of the richest materials, and ornamented with the most exquisite workmanship. The second ransacked all the beauties of the blooming creation, and offered a garland of such admirable colours and delightful odours as had never been seen before. The youngest appeared, without any pompous preparations, having only a crystal basin in one hand, and a silver bodkin in the other. As soon as he approached he threw open his breast, pierced a vein which lay opposite to his heart, received the blood in the transparent vase, and, with an air of affectionate reverence, placed it on the tomb. The spectators, struck with the sight, gave a shout of general applause, and immediately gave preference to this oblation. If it was reckoned such a singular expression of love to expend a few of those precious drops for the honour of a parent, O how matchless I how ineffable was the love of Jesus in pouring out all his vital blood for the salvation of his enemies! (Students Handbook of Scripture Doctrines.)
The heavenly Passover
I. The reality and character of the life beyond death. Christ speaks of it as the kingdom of God. This is not the idea of mere existence, but of being in the highest form of organization. The Father-King will pervade all life with His own spirit. The law will be the Fathers rule, which is love.
II. The special form of life in the Fathers kingdom here anticipated. I will drink it with you new. This implies-
1. Close and intimate association between the Redeemer and the redeemed.
2. The mutual presence and intercourse of the redeemed.
3. Their sacred employment. The Saviour says He will drink, and they shall drink, the wine of the Pascal feast new in the Fathers kingdom. He had just said: This cup is the new covenant in My blood. The heavenly festival is a memorial celebration of redeeming love. To the redeemed it will be a cup of grateful love, and of grateful retrospection. (The Preachers Monthly.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 22. Eat] This is omitted by many MSS. and versions, but I think without reason. It is found in the parallel places, Mt 26:26; 1Co 11:24. See the subject of the Lord’s Supper largely explained on Mt 26:26, &c.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
See Poole on “Mat 26:26“, and following verses to Mat 26:30, where the very small differences between our evangelist and Matthew and Luke are also considered.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
And as they did eat,…. The paschal lamb, and the unleavened bread, just at the conclusion of that feast:
Jesus took bread, and blessed, and brake it; beginning and instituting a new feast, to be kept in aftertimes, in commemoration of his sufferings and death, now near at hand;
and gave to them, the disciples,
and said, take, eat: the word eat is not in the Vulgate Latin, Syriac, Arabic, Persic, and Ethiopic versions, and is wanting in some copies:
this is body; a figure and representation of it;
[See comments on Mt 26:26].
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
OUR LORD INSTITUTES THE LORD’S SUPPER, V. 22-25
1) “And as they did eat,” (kai esthionton auton) “And as they were eating,” following, or as the Passover supper was concluding, Mat 26:26; 1Co 11:23-25.
2) “Jesus took bread, and blessed, and brake it,” (labon arton eulogesas eklasen) “He (Jesus) taking a loaf, blessing it, He broke it,” Luk 22:19, as also described by Paul 1Co 10:16; 1Co 11:24-25.
3) “And gave to them, and said,” (kai edoken autois kai eipen) “He gave to them (each of them), the disciples, and said,” after Judas had apparently gone out to lead the gang to whom he had pledged or contracted to deliver Jesus to them for thirty pieces of silver, Joh 13:18-19; Joh 13:26 -30.
4) “Take, eat: this is my body.” (labete touto estin to soma mou) “You all take, this is (exists as, represents) my body,” my physical body. This He said to His church disciples, apparently after Judas had gone out, Mat 26:26; He charged also “You all do this in remembrance (as a memorial) of me,” Luk 22:19; Mat 26:26.
The term “this” is not the same Greek gender as -body;” and the “this” thing (bread) represented His body that was broken, wounded, bruised, striped, penetrated for us,
THIS IS MY BODY
“The word for “is” denotes only “likeness” in all metaphors, and in the explanation of all symbols. ‘The seven good kine are seven years;’ ‘These bones are the house of Israel;’ ‘The seed is the Word of God;’ ‘This is he who hears the Word;’ ‘The field is the world;’ ‘The rock was Christ;’ ‘The women are two covenants;’ ‘The seven lamps are seven churches.’ Resemblance and representation are certainly implied in these and similar statements, but nothing more,”
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
(22-25) As they did eat.See Notes on Mat. 26:26-29.
Take, eat.The latter word is wanting in many of the best MSS.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
126, 128. INSTITUTION OF THE LORD’S SUPPER Mar 14:22-25 .
(See notes on Mat 26:26-29.)
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
‘And as they were eating he took bread, and when he had blessed he broke it and gave to them and said, “You take of it. This is my body.” ’
Jesus now took over the Passover meal and gave it a new significance, in line with His teaching in Joh 6:52-58 where He had indicated that finally men could only benefit from Him through putting Him to death, that is, by ‘eating His flesh’. As He said in Joh 6:51 (expecting to be understood), ‘I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If any man eat of this bread he will live for ever. Yes, and the bread which I will give is my flesh which I will give for the life of the world.’ He was the living (life-giving) bread because He had come to have His ‘flesh eaten’ by men by dying for them and responding to their faith.
Eating bread or flesh, and drinking blood, was a regular Old Testament way of speaking of killing people. In the Old Testament the Psalmist spoke of those who ‘eat up my people like they eat bread’ (Psa 14:4; Psa 53:4), and Micah describes the unjust rulers of Israel as ‘those who hate the good and love the evil — who eat the flesh of my people’ (Mic 3:3). Thus ‘eating flesh’ or ‘eating people’ signified killing them or doing them great harm.
But Jesus had added a new meaning, the idea of participating in the benefits of His death. Here Jesus was signifying, not that they themselves would kill Him, others would do that, but that they would be able to benefit through His death (see Joh 6:54) because others would kill Him. Compare also Joh 6:35 where Jesus said He was the ‘bread of life’ which they could partake of by ‘coming to Him and believing on Him’. That was how they would benefit through His death, by coming and believing. Thus it is not meant in any quasi-magical sense. It is a spiritual act.
The bread could not be His body, even by a miracle, for He was there in His body (so those who try to make it more have to call it a ‘mystery’, that is something which defies common sense and logic, and in this case is totally self-contradictory. Even the greatest of miracles could not make a piece of bread eaten at a table the same as a human body reclining there at the same table. By this means anything can be made into anything). In sensible interpretation it had to mean ‘this closely represents my body’ just as the bread at the Passover symbolised the bread of affliction. When eating it the Jews saw themselves as partaking in the sufferings of their ancestors. In a sense they actually saw themselves as one with them in corporate unity. So when Christians eat of this bread they see themselves as partaking in the death of Christ, as having been with Him on the cross (Gal 2:20). So by recognising and acknowledging their close participation with Him in His death by faith they recognise that they have received eternal life. But no further lamb is slain. The Lamb was offered once for all. They thus recognise that His offering of Himself is once for all (Heb 9:28) and is something that they continually participate in.
‘As they were eating.’ Compare Mar 14:18. It was ‘as they were eating’ that He had tried to appeal to Judas’ conscience. Now ‘as they were eating’ He took the bread and offered a blessing to His Father, and broke it and gave it to them. They would certainly cast their minds back to that day when He had done this at the miraculous feeding of the crowds (Mar 6:41). From now on through His death and rising again He was to be their spiritual food. It was also symbolic of the bread that they would eat at Messiah’s table, both in their future ministry and in the eternal Kingly Rule.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
The Lord’s Supper (14:22-26).
The preliminaries having been completed (Mar 14:20) the meal proper begins with the eating of the bread, at which point He gives the bread a new meaning. This is then followed by the third cup from which all drink, which He informs them represents the new covenant in His blood, which is then followed by a promise of the imminence of the Kingly Rule of God as a result of that new covenant. All is then completed by the singing of the Hallel, and they then depart for the Mount of Olives.
The point being made here is that Jesus has hijacked the symbols of the Passover and provided them with a new significance connected with Himself. We are left to recognise that He is the new Passover lamb. All this is a claim as immense as any that He has previously made. It is to declare that Israel’s hopes of deliverance now rest in Him, and that in the future they are to look to Him and His death for them as the guarantee of their salvation.
Analysis.
And as they were eating He took bread, and when He had blessed He broke it and gave to them and said, “You take of it. This is My body” (Mar 14:22).
And He took a cup and when He had given thanks He gave to them and they all drank of it (Mar 14:23).
And He said to them, “This is My blood of the covenant which is shed for many” (Mar 14:24).
“Truly I tell you I will no more drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new under the Kingly Rule of God” (Mar 14:25).
And when they had sung a hymn they went out to the Mount of Olives (Mar 14:26).
Note that in ‘a’ they commence the meal proper (the preliminaries have already been dealt with) with the eating of bread, and in the parallel they close it with a hymn. In ‘b’ they all drink of the cup, and in the parallel He will not again drink of it until the Kingly Rule of God has come. Central in ‘c’ is the significance of the cup.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
The institution of the Lord’s Supper:
v. 22. And as they did eat, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and brake it, and gave to them, and said, Take, eat; this is My body.
v. 23. And He took the cup, and when He had given thanks, He gave it to them; and they all drank of it.
v. 24. And He said unto them, This is My blood of the new testament, which is shed for many.
v. 25. Verily I say unto you, I will drink no more of the fruit of the vine until that day that I drink it new in the kingdom of God. The meal had practically come to a conclusion, with Christ and the disciples still reclining about the table, when the Lord did a remarkable thing. He took bread, either one of the two paschal loaves or a piece that had remained after the meal. Having spoken a blessing over it, He broke it and passed it around to them, probably by going from one to the other, each one receiving a piece. To the several disciples He may have changed the address a trifle, but the substance was always the same: Take and eat; this is My body. This was not a mere symbolical act, for there was not the remotest resemblance between the fragments of bread and the body of a full-grown man. And here it makes no difference whether Jesus spoke Greek or Aramaic on that evening: He stated that the bread which He gave to them is His body. Then He took the cup which I they had used during the meal, the third cup being known as the cup of blessing. Having given thanks to God over it, He gave it to them, passing from one to the other. And again He made a very clear statement regarding the contents of that cup: This is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. It is the New Testament which was herewith ushered in; the covenant which God makes with the world in and with Christ and His blood and through its shedding has brought salvation to all men, even though only a part of mankind will accept the offering of their redemption through the blood of Jesus. If we believe the words of Christ just as they were here spoken, taking our reason captive under the obedience of Scriptures, we shall always receive the full benefit of this Sacrament. We shall always take from it the assurance of the forgiveness of all our sins. We shall always be strengthened anew in our faith. As the celebration of the first Passover strengthened the Israelites for their long journey through the wilderness, so the Lord’s Supper is for the believers of the New Testament food on the way during their earthly pilgrimage. And incidentally, like the paschal meal, it points forward to the end of the journey, to the heavenly banquet, where the Lord will drink with us of the cup of salvation in all eternity. To this the Lord refers when He says that He will henceforth not drink with them of the fruit of the vine. For this expression was the term by which the paschal wine was designated among the Jews, the term which they used in the blessing of, and in the thanksgiving over, the wine. To argue that the Lord had used anything but true, fermented wine in the institution of the Eucharist, is to overthrow all historical and exegetical reasoning. See Mat 26:29. The Lord here instituted the second Sacrament of the New Testament. “As in Baptism He loosed from the Old Testament circumcision the sacred washing which accompanied it, and made it the New Testament Sacrament of the covenant entered into, so also now He severed the breaking of the bread and the cup of thanksgiving from the Old Testament Passover, and made it a sacrament of the New Testament redemption.”
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
Mar 14:22. And as they did eat, &c. And having eaten. See the note on Mat 26:26.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
XXIII
THE LORD’S SUPPER
Harmony, pages 178-179 and Mat 26:26-29
The Passover furnishes the Old Testament analogue of this ordinance. As the Passover commemorated the temporal redemption of the Old Covenant, so this ordinance commemorates the spiritual redemption of the New Covenant. The proof is as follows:
Christ the antitype of the paschal lamb (1Co 5:7 ).
Christ crucified at the Passover feast (Mat 26:2 ; Joh 18:28 ).
This supper instituted at the Passover supper and of its materials.
The analogy discussed by Paul (1Co 5:6-13 ; 1Co 10:1-22 ;.
The preliminary study essential to a full understanding of this institution is the Old Testament teaching concerning the Passover. The principal classes of New Testament scripture to be studied are:
Those which tell of its institution.
Those which tell of its later observance.
Those which discuss its import, correct errors in its observance, and apply its moral and spiritual lessons.
The historians of its institution and observance are: (1) Paul, who derived his knowledge by direct revelation from the risen Lord (1Co 11:23 ); (2) Luke, who derived his knowledge from inspiration, from Paul, and others who were eyewitnesses (Luk 1:2 ); (3) Mark, who derived his knowledge from inspiration, from Peter, an eyewitness; (4) Matthew, an inspired eyewitness and participator (Mat 26:20 f).
The record of its institution is found in (1) Mat 26:26-29 ; (2) Mar 14:22-25 ; (3) Luk 22:19-20 ; (4) 1Co 11:23-26 . The three historic observances are recorded in Act 2:42 ; Act 20:7 ; and the case at Corinth, 1Co 11:20-22 . We find the discussions of its import and the application of its teachings in 1Co 5:7-8 ; 1Co 10:14-22 ; 1Co 11:17-34 .
Jesus instituted the ordinance on the night before his death, at the last Passover, in an upper room in Jerusalem. All the apostles, except Judas, were present and participating. Judas was not present because he was sent out by our Lord before its institution (see Mat 26:25 ; Joh 13:23-26 ). The apostles receive it as representing the church. The elements used were unleavened bread and unfermented wine, or grape juice, (1) “bread” meaning one loaf not yet broken; (2) “cup” meaning one vessel of wine not yet poured out. The proof of this rendering is found in 1Co 10:16-17 , the exposition of which is as follows:
The one loaf of unleavened bread represents the one mortal but sinless body of Christ yet living, but appointed and prepared as a propitiatory sacrifice for sin (Heb 10:4-9 ). It also represents the mystical (body of Christ, the church) (1Co 10:17 ).
So the one vessel of wine represents the body of Christ yet living, the blood of which is the life and yet in the body. The first scene of the drama displayed in this ordinance then, is what we behold first of all, in each of two succeeding symbols, the loaf and the cup, the appointed and accepted Lamb of sacrifice. Whether we look at the loaf or the cup, we see the same thing, as in the doubling of Pharaoh’s dream (Gen 41:23 ; Gen 41:32 ).
In the second scene we behold the appointed sacrifice “blessed,” or eulogized, and thus consecrated by the benediction, or set apart for the sacrifice (Mat 26:26 ; Mar 14:22 ), with thanksgiving (Luk 22:19 ; 1Co 11:24 ), that an acceptable sacrifice has been found. This second scene is repeated in both “blessing” and “thanksgiving” in the case of the “cup” (Mat 26:27 ; Mar 14:23 ; Luk 20:22 ; 1Co 11:25 ). The import is one, but the scene is double, to show that “God hath established it.”
In the third scene: (1) The consecrated loaf is broken to show the vicarious death, i.e., for them, of the substitutionary Lamb (Mat 26:26 ; Mar 14:22 ; Luk 22:19 ; 1Co 11:24 ). (2) The wine is poured out from the cup into the distributing vessels (Luk 22:20 ) to show the vicarious death of the sacrificial Lamb by the shedding of his blood for the remission of sins. The scene is one, but doubled.
In the fourth scene: (1) The distribution of the broken loaf to all the communicants present and their participation, each by eating a fragment, signifying their appropriation by faith, of the vicarious body given for them. (2) The distribution of the outpoured wine to all the communicants present and their participation, each by drinking a sip, signifying their appropriation by faith, of the expiating, sin-remitting blood. The scene is one, but doubled.
This ordinance is pictorial) showing forth by pictures, or scenes, earth’s greatest tragedy. To make the “showing forth” complete, four double scenes must be exhibited, or made visible to the eye: (1) The appointed spotless Lamb; (2) The consecration to sacrifice with thanksgiving; (3) The sacrifice itself of vicarious death “broken” “poured out”; (4) Participation of the beneficiaries, by faith, in the benefits of the sacrifice. The order of the scenes must be observed. The visible consecration and thanksgiving must follow a view of the appointed and suitable substitutionary victim; the visible sacrifice must follow the view of consecration with thanksgiving; the visible participation must follow a view of the sacrifice.
The modern provision of many tiny glasses for sanitary reasons does not violate scriptural order or symbolism: (1) Certainly not in the number of distributing cups. Those cups, like the plates, are for distribution. Whether one plate, two, or a dozen; whether one cup, two, or a hundred are used for distribution is immaterial, a matter of convenience, provided only that there has been one vessel of wine “blessed,” or eulogized, before the outpouring into the distributing vessel or cups. (2) It is against the symbolism if the outpouring into the distributing vessels is private and not visible to the congregation, since the outpouring does not come in its order, the blessing and the thanksgiving coming after the outpouring and not before.
Perhaps this construction of the symbolism is too rigid, yet it is true that the order in the record of the institution best shows forth the successive scenes of the tragedy.
The name of the institution is “The Lord’s Supper”; proof is found in 1Co 11:20 . This title is further shown by the expression, “The cup of the Lord . . . The table of the Lord” (1Co 10:21 ). It follows from this title that if it be The Lord’s Supper, the Table of the Lord, the Cup of the Lord, then he alone has the right to put the table where he will, to prescribe its elements, to impose the order of its observance, to define its import, and to prescribe who shall be invited to its participation, and indeed to fix authoritatively all its rules and conditions.
The import of the word “communion,” in 1Co 10:16 , is as follows: (1) It means participation rather than communion; (2) it is a partaking of the body and blood of Christ, and not communion of the partakers with each other. They do not partake of each other, but of Christ. The design is: (1) To show forth pictorially or to proclaim the Lord’s death for the remission of the sins of his people; (2) to show forth our participation by faith, in the benefits of that death; (3) to show that our spiritual nutrition is in him alone, since he is the meat and the drink of his people; (4) to show our hope of spiritual feasting with him in the heavenly world; (5) to show our faith in his return to take us to that heavenly home; (6) to show that the communicants constitute one mystical body of Christ.
The nature of the ordinance: (1) It represents a new covenant between Jehovah and a new spiritual Israel (Mat 26:28 ; Mar 14:24 ; Luk 22:20 ; 1Co 11:25 ). (2) It is a memorial ordinance: “This do in remembrance of me. . . . This do, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me” (1Co 11:24-25 ). (3) It is an emblematic ordinance, representing both spiritual nutrition here, and a heavenly feast with Christ (Mat 26:29 ; Mar 14:25 ). (4) It is a mystical ordinance showing that communicants, though many, constitute one body. (5) It is a church ordinance to be observed by a church assembled and not by an individual (1Co 10:17 ; 1Co 11:17-22 ; Act 20:17 ). (6) It is an exclusive ordinance: “Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. Ye cannot partake of the table of the Lord and of the table of demons.”
The faculties employed in the observance of this ordinance are memory, faith, hope. We remember (1) Jesus only; (2) Jesus dying on the cross; (3) Jesus dying on the cross for the remission of our sins; (4) Samuel Rogers, an English poet, wrote a poem on “The Pleasures of Memory.” Faith apprehends and appropriates Christ in the purposes of his expiatory and vicarious death, and finds in his sacrifice the meat and drink which constitute the nutrition of our spiritual life. Hope anticipates his return for his people, and the spiritual feasting with him in the heavenly world; the poet, Thomas Campbell, an Englishman, wrote a poem on “The Pleasures of Hope.”
The appointed duration of the ordinance is “Till he come” (1Co 11:26 ). But will we not eat the bread and drink the wine anew in the kingdom of heaven? If not, what is the meaning of Mat 26:29 ; Mar 14:25 ? Is it not, “I will not henceforth drink of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it anew with you in my Father’s kingdom,” but “when I drink it new.” Here we drink the material wine; there it will be a new thing spiritual wine. The feasting on earth, in its meat and drink, represents the everlasting joy, love, and peace of our heavenly participation of our Lord, as he himself foretold: “Many shall come from the east and the west and the north and the south and recline at the table with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.” See the account of angels carrying the earth-starved Lazarus to Abraham’s bosom (Luk 16 ) and the marriage supper of the Lamb (Rev 19:9 ).
How often must we observe this ordinance the record does not say. Its analogue, the Passover was once every year, but that was strictly prescribed in the law. There is no such prescription in the New Testament law of this ordinance. “But,” says one, “does not the New Testament require its observance every Lord’s Day?” There is no such requirement. At Troas, indeed, the disciples came together on the first day of the week to break bread (Act 20:7 ), but even in that case the ordinance was not observed until the next day (Act 20:7-11 ). The other record of observance (Act 2:42 ) seems to imply that in this great Pentecostal meeting it was observed every day. Some things are not prescribed, but left to sound judgment and common sense. In a great meeting like that following Pentecost, when thousands of new converts were added every day, and all of every day was devoted to religious service, there was a propriety in and sufficient time for a daily observance of this ordinance. Under ordinary conditions the observance every Sunday, if administered with due solemnity, would shut off much needed instruction on other important matters, at the only hour at which older Christians can attend public worship, and the only hour at which many others do attend.
The main points of the Romanist teaching and practice on this ordinance are: (1) They call it the sacrifice of the mass. (2) That when the priest pronounces the words, “This is my body . . . this cup is the New Testament in my blood,” the bread and the wine (though not to sight, taste, or touch) do really become the actual body and blood of Jesus, yea, Jesus in body, soul, and deity; this miraculous and creative change, not only of one material substance into another; not only of inert into living matter, but of matter into both spirit and deity, they call transubstantiation. (3) Being now God, the priest kneels to it in adoration. (4) It is then lifted up that the congregation may adore it as God; this is called “The Elevation of the Host.” (5) That so changed to God it may be carried in procession, and so carried, the people must prostrate themselves before it as God; this is called the “Procession of the Host.” (6) That the communicant does literally eat the flesh and drink the blood of Jesus. (7) That the efficacy of the sacrifice is complete in each kind, and so in the exercise of its heaven-granted authority the church may and does withhold the cup from the laity. (8) That eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Jesus is essential to eternal life. (9) That the words “eat ye” and “drink ye” are a divine appointment of the priesthood, widely distinguishing them from the laity, and making their ministration of the ordinance exclusive and essential to the ordinance itself. (10) That this is, whensoever, wheresoever, and how oftensoever performed, a real sacrifice of our Lord, who as a High Priest forever must offer continual sacrifice. (11) That it is a sacrifice for both the living and the dead, available at least for the dead who are in purgatory, hence in application, their “masses for the dead.” (12) That in another sacrament called “Extreme Unction,” this consecrated “wafer” is put on the tongue of the dying as a means to remission of sin. (13) That the church has authority to prescribe all the accompaniments of order, dress, language, or other circumstances prescribed in their ritual of observance. (14) That the belief of this teaching in whole and in every part is essential to salvation, and whoever does not so believe let him be accursed.
This Romanist teaching is the most sweeping, blasphemous, heretical perversion of New Testament teaching known to history. As a whole, and in all its parts, it subverts the faith of the New Testament and substitutes therefore the traditions of men.
1. The Lord’s Supper is not a real, but a pictorial sacrifice: (a) The sacrifice of our Lord was once for all, because real, and not often repeated, as the typical sacrifices were. (b) This error gives the officiating priest creative power to transubstantiate inert matter into living matter, both soul and deity, though not even God in creation formed man’s soul from matter, (c) The alleged transubstantiation is contrary to the senses, for the bread and wine are still bread and wine to sight, touch, and taste, unlike when Christ transmitted water into wine, for it then looked like wine, tasted like wine, and had the effect of wine. (d) Christ said, “I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If any man eat of this bread he shall live forever, and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world,” and “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in yourself,” and is careful thus to explain, “It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life. But there are some of you that believe not,” and thus he shows that to believe on him is what is meant by the figurative language “eating his flesh” and “drinking his blood.” (e) This error controverts philosophy, in that the body of Jesus cannot be in more places than one at the same time. (f) It controverts many scriptures that explicitly teach that the body of Jesus ascended to heaven, and must there remain until the final advent and the times of the restoration of all things. (g) It is idolatry, in that mere matter is worshiped and adored as God.
2. It violates the New Testament teaching of the eternal priesthood of Jesus Christ, who does not continually repeat his sacrifice, but continually pleads the efficacy of the sacrifice offered once for all, and continually intercedes on the ground of the one offering. As a high priest he does indeed continue to present the spiritual sacrifices of his people, such as prayer, praise, and contribution.
3. It subverts the New Testament teaching of the mission and office of the Holy Spirit, who was sent as Christ’s vicar because he was absent, and whose office continues until Christ returns.
4. It re-establishes the Old Testament typical order of priests, abrogated by the cross, and separates by a greater distance than in the Old Covenant the priest from the laity, and thereby nullifies the New Testament teaching that all believers are priests unto God. It thus sews together again the veil of the old Temple which at Christ’s death God rent in twain from top to bottom.
5. It makes the Pope at Rome Christ’s vicar instead of the Holy Spirit.
6. It makes the church a savior instead of the Lord himself, and confers on it legislative powers instead of limiting it to judicial and executive powers. Yea, it may change or set aside Christ’s own legislation.
7. It substitutes a sacerdotal salvation, and a salvation by ordinances for the New Testament salvation.
8. It destroys the church character of the ordinance by the administration of it to individuals.
9. It withholds the cup from the people, though Christ said, “All ye drink of it.”
10. It destroys the unity of the ordinance by affirming that the bread alone is sufficient, though Christ used both symbols to express his meaning.
11. It makes the ordinance for the dead as well as the giving, thus not only extending probation after death, but giving its supposed benefits to those who did neither eat nor drink, thus contradicting their own previous teaching, as well as the words of our Lord which they misapply and pervert.
12. It bases its defense more on ecclesiastical history and tradition, than on the Word of God, and limits that Word to a Latin translation, and to the church interpretation of that translation, rather than its text.
13. It makes belief in the whole and in all parts of this complex, self-contradictory, crude mass of human teaching essential to salvation instead of simple faith in Christ.
While Luther rejected the Romanist doctrine of transubstantiation, he advocated a doctrine which he called consubstantiation, by which he meant that while the bread and wine were not the real body and blood of Christ, yet there was a real presence of Christ in these elements. His illustration was this: Put a bar Of iron into the fire until it is red hot, then there is heat with that iron, though the iron itself is not heat. The trouble about Luther’s consubstantiation is, that according to his illustration, there must be some change of the elements that could be discerned by the senses. A man can see with his eye the difference between a cold iron and a red hot iron. And he can tell the difference by touching it, none of which phenomena appeared in the elements of the bread and wine.
The Genevan doctrine was that the Lord’s Supper was a memorial ordinance, this being the principal idea in it; that it exhibited or showed pictorally, not really, certain great doctrines; that the bread and wine remained bread and wine, so that they neither were the real body and blood of Jesus, nor held the presence of Jesus, as iron put into the fire contained heat.
There is a thrilling story of the vain effort by Philip of Hesse to bring Luther and the advocates of the Genevan doctrine into harmony on the Lord’s Supper. When the question came up in the Reformation as to whether Christ’s presence was really in the bread and wine, Philip of Hesse, who loved Luther, and who also loved the Genevan reformers, invited two of the strongest of each to meet at his castle and have a friendly debate. Luther contended for consubstantiation, or the presence of Christ in the bread and wine, and the Genevan reformers insisted that it was simply a memorial ordinance. So for the debate were chosen Luther and Melanchthon on one side and Zwingli and Cecolampadius, on the other side. Luther was the fire on the one side and Zwingli was the fire on the other side. Philip placed Luther against Cecolampadius, and Zwingli against Melanchthon. But after they had debated a while, Cecolampadius and Melanchthon dropped out, and the two fiery men came face to face. In the course of the discussion Luther wrote on the wall a verse from his Latin Bible: “Hoc meum est corpus,” “This is my body,” and Zwingli said, “I oppose it by this statement,” and he wrote under it, “Ascendit in coelum,” “ He ascended into heaven.” “The heavens must retain him; therefore,” said he, “Christ cannot be in his body in heaven and on earth at the same time.”
A theological seminary, a district association, a state, national, or international convention, cannot set out the Lord’s Table and observe this ordinance, because it is strictly a church ordinance. The spiritual qualifications of the participants are: (1) On the divine side, regeneration. (2) On the human side, repentance toward God, and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. The legal qualifications are justification, redemption and adoption, while the ceremonial qualifications are: A public, formal profession of faith in Christ, or, in other words, the relating of one’s Christian experience before a competent official authority; baptism by that authority in the name of the Trinity; formal reception into a particular church, which is the authority to pass upon the credibility of the profession of faith, to administer the baptism, to judge of the Christian life, and the only body that may lawfully set the Lord’s Table. Certain passages show that though one has all the qualifications enumerated above, whether spiritual, legal, or ceremonial, and yet is living an unworthy Christian life, the church of which he is a member may judge him and bar him from participation in this Supper, viz.: 1Co 5:11-13 ; 1Co 10:21 . These qualifications may all be condensed into one brief statement, thus: A baptized child of God, holding membership in a particular church and walking orderly in Christian life.
The officers of the church cannot carry the elements of this Supper to a member who, for any cause, was absent at the assembly observance, and administer them to him privately. Here are two well-known historic cases:
First case. A member of a church, who had been living far from God, attending church seldom and never remaining when the Supper was observed, was now penitent, and in his last illness, knowing death to be at hand, dictates a penitential letter to the church, avowing the faith originally professed, but confessing all the irregularities of his life, claiming to have received the divine forgiveness, and asks forgiveness of the church. The letter expressed deep regret that the writer had never once obeyed his Lord in observing this ordinance and an intense desire to obey him one time in this matter before death, carefully assuring the church that he attributed no magical value to the ordinance, being himself already at peace with God, but longing to have God’s people with him one more time, to hear them sing and pray and to partake of this Supper, so that when he passed to the heavenly feast, he could say, “Lord, though unworthy, I did obey your solemn commandment one time on earth.” Whereupon the church voted forgiveness to the penitent brother, adjourned the conference to meet in the sick man’s house that night, and there convened pursuant to adjournment, and did there observe the Lord’s Supper as the assembled church, and allowed -the sick man to participate. The members had come for miles in buggies, wagons, and on horse-back. The conference was unusually large. The house seemed to be filled with the glory of God. Others confessed their sins; alienated members were reconciled. A marvelous revival prevailed, and the dying brother passed from the earthly feast to drink the wine at the heavenly feast. I was present and officiated as pastor.
Second case. A wife, professing to be a Christian, though not a church member, appealed to a Baptist preacher to come and administer the Lord’s Supper to her dying husband, himself not a member of any church, but who desired to partake of the Lord’s Supper before death. This preacher, of his own motion and alone, carried bread and wine to the house and there administered to the dying man the elements of the Lord’s Supper. I knew this pastor and wag instrumental in his confession and recantation of his error.
If the church, according to Christ’s law, must judge as to a participant’s qualification, what then the apostle’s meaning of “Let a man examine himself and so let him eat?” The man who is commanded to examine himself is not an outsider, but a member of the church, already qualified according to church judgment, yet on whom rests the personal responsibility to determine whether by faith he now discerns the Lord’s body.
What is the meaning of 1Co 11:27 ? This passage does not say, “Whosoever is unworthy,” but who partakes “unworthily,” i.e., whose manner of partaking, like these Corinthians, was disorderly. They ate and drank to satisfy physical hunger and thirst. They feasted separately without waiting for the assembly.
What is the meaning of 1Co 11:30 : “For this cause many are weak and sickly, and not a few sleep”? This has no reference to physical weakness, sickness and sleep, as if a judgment in this form had come on them for a disorderly manner in partaking of the Supper. The meaning must be sought in the purpose of the ordinance. We have houses in which to eat ordinary’ food when we seek physical nutrition and from that, bodily strength and health. The taste of bread and the sip of wine in this ordinance cannot serve such a purpose. These represent a different kind of nutriment for the saved soul, which we appropriate and assimilate by faith. If we do not by faith discern the Lord’s body, then missing the spiritual nutrition, the soul becomes weak, or sick, or sleepy: “Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall shine upon thee.”
I here expound the Old Testament analogue in Exo 24:9-11 . This is the passage: “Then went up Moses, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel: and they saw the God of Israel; and there was under his feet as it were a paved work of sapphire stone, and as it were the very heaven for clearness. And upon the nobles of the children of Israel he laid not his hand: and they beheld God and did eat and drink.” This is the ratifying feast of the Old Covenant, as the Lord’s Supper is the feast of the New Covenant. In Exo 19 God proposes a covenant which they agree to accept and prepare themselves for it. God himself then states the three great stipulations of the covenant binding upon Israel: (1) The Decalogue, or God and the normal man (Exo 20:1-17 ); (2) the law of the Altar, or the way of a sinner’s approach to God; in other words, God and the sinner (Exo 20:24-26 ), with all its developments in Exodus 25-31; 35-40, and almost the whole of Leviticus; (3) the judgments, or God, the state and the citizen (Exodus. 21-23), with all developments therefrom in the Pentateuch.
These three make the covenant with national Israel. Then in Exo 24:3-8 , this covenant, so far only uttered, is reduced to writing, read to the people and solemnly ratified. Following the ratification, comes this passage, which is the Feast of the Covenant (Exo 24:9-11 ). Here Moses records the institution of this feast of the ratified Old Covenant as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Paul record the institution of the feast of the New Covenant, in which Jesus says, “This cup is the New Covenant in my blood.” It is noteworthy that in the institution of both feasts (not in subsequent observances) the partakers are few, acting in a representative capacity. Moses, Joshua, Aaron, Aaron’s two sons, seventy elders, seventy-five in all, in the first case; Jesus and the eleven apostles in the other case. In both cases the communion, or participation, is with God, who is present: “They saw God and did eat and drink.” But they saw no similitude. They saw symbols. They saw him by faith. They saw the symbols of God’s presence with a natural eye, and tasted of the symbol, i.e., the Lamb of sacrifice, with the natural tongue. The symbol was not God; it represented him; nor was it changed into God. God was neither the symbol, nor in the symbol, nor with, by or under the symbol. He was there himself and with his covenant people. They saw him as propitiated through the sacrifice. Hence they saw him in the holy of holies, the paved work like sapphire stones under his feet (Exo 24:10 ), which is the sign that they saw him on his throne of grace and mercy, as appears from a comparison of kindred passages (see Eze 1:26 ; Rev 4 ). Hence it is said (Exo 24:11 ), “And on the elders of the children of Israel he laid not his hands,” i.e., to smite them. Seeing God out of the covenant the men would have died. But in the covenant they were safe, because he was propitiated.
The Lord’s Supper is not the holy of holies, but in faithful observance of the Covenant feast, we by faith approach and commune with him in the holy of holies. That is, the blood of the everlasting Covenant propitiates God, so that we may approach him and commune with him, and by faith see him and yet not die, for the blood turns away his wrath.
To further illustrate this thought, the tabernacle was God’s house, or dwelling place, whose innermost chamber was the holy of holies. There, over the mercy seat between the Cherubim, the symbol of the Divine presence appeared as a Shechinah, the sword flame (Gen 3:24 ), or pillar of cloud, or fire, and was the oracle to reveal and to answer questions; hence the most holy place is many times called the oracle, i.e., the house of the oracle. So in the Temple. But the tabernacle and the Temple fulfilled their temporary mission, and the veil was rent when Christ died. So a new house or Temple succeeded, namely, the church, a spiritual building (1Co 3:9 ; 1Co 3:17 ; Eph 2:21 , American Standard Version, 1Pe 2:5 ), and this new temple was anointed with the Holy Spirit (Dan 9:24 ; Act 2:1-4 ), as the first was (Exo 30:25-26 ), with the holy oil which symbolized the Spirit. Now, in this new temple, the church, is a most holy place, the place of the real Divine presence, in the person of the Holy Spirit, and in the Supper as a covenant feast, when faith is exercised, we approach and commune with a propitiated God. We see him and eat and drink in his presence. The hiding veil in this case was Christ’s flesh. When he died, whose death is commemorated in the Supper, the veil was removed, and the way into the most holy place is wide open to the believing communicant. But in the church in glory, which is an eternal temple, hieron , there is no naos or symbolic shrine, most holy place, or isolated, inner chamber (Rev 21:22 ), for God and the Lamb constitute the naos, and the tabernacle (Rev 21:3 ) with all the inhabitants of the Holy City, who see God directly, face to face not by faith. The days of propitiation are ended then, and the glorified ones need no intercession of the High Priest. Their salvation in body, soul, and spirit is consummated forever. But they feast with God forever. They sing indeed, but they do not “sing a hymn and go out.”
QUESTIONS 1. What is the Old Testament analogue of the Lord’s Supper?
2. What is the proof?
3. What preliminary study essential to an understanding of its institution?
4. What are the principal classes of New Testament scriptures to be studied?
5. Who were the historians of its institution and observance?
6. Where and what record of its institution?
7. What are the three historic observances?
8. Where do we find the discussion of its import and the application of its teachings?
9. Who instituted the ordinance and when and where?
10. Who were present and participating?
11. Why was Judas not present?
12. In what capacity did the apostles receive it?
13. What elements used?
14. What is the meaning of “bread” and “cup”?
15. What is the proof of this rendering and what the exposition?
16. What then was the first scene of the drama of this ordinance?
17. What was the second scene?
18. What was the third scene?
19. What was the fourth scene?
20. What kind of an ordinance then is this, and what is necessary to convey its full meaning?
21. Is the order of the scenes important?
22. What of the modern provision of many tiny glasses?
23. What is the name of this ordinance and what the proof?
24. How is this title further shown?
25. What follows from this title?
26. What is the import of the word “communion” in 1Co 10:16 ?
27. What is the design of this ordinance?
28. What is the nature of the ordinance?
29. What faculties do we employ in the observance of this ordinance?
30. Whom do we remember, where and why, and who wrote a poem on “The Pleasures of Memory”?
31. Faith does what?
32. Hope does what, and who wrote a poem on “The Pleasures of Hope”?
33. What was the appointed duration of the ordinance?
34. What was the meaning of Mat 26:29 and Mar 14:25 ?
35. How often must we observe this ordinance?
36. Does not the New Testament require its observance every Lord’s Day?
37, What were the main points of the Romanist teaching and practice on this ordinance?
38. What was the reply to this Romanist teaching?
39. What is Luther’s doctrine of consubstantiation?
40. What is the Genevan doctrine?
41. Recite the story of Philip of Hesse?
42. May any religious organization except a church celebrate the Supper?
43. What are the spiritual qualification of the participants?
44. What are the legal qualifications?
45. What are the ceremonial qualifications?
46. What scriptures show that a man with all these qualifications may be barred from the Supper by the church?
47. Condense these qualifications into one brief statement.
48. May the officers of the church administer this ordinance to an individual in private?
49. State the two cases cited and show which was right and why?
50. What is the meaning of “Let a man examine himself, etc.”?
51. What is the meaning of 1Co 11:27 ?
52. What is the meaning of 1Co 11:30 ?
53. Expound the Old Testament analogue in Exo 24:9-11 .
54. Is the Lord’s Supper the holy of holies?
55. How further illustrate the thought?
Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible
22 And as they did eat, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and brake it , and gave to them, and said, Take, eat: this is my body.
Ver. 22. See Trapp on “ Mat 26:26 “ The Lord’s supper is (as Justin Martyr saith) , food made up all of thanksgiving.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
22 25. ] INSTITUTION OF THE LORD’S SUPPER. Mat 26:26-29 . Luk 22:19-20 . 1Co 11:23-25 . See notes on Matt.
Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament
Mar 14:22-25 . The Lord’s Supper (Mat 26:26-29 , Luk 22:19-20 ), vide notes on Mt.’s account, to which Mk.’s closely corresponds.
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson
Mar 14:22 . ., while they were eating, as in Mar 14:18 ; a very general indication of time. This and the announcement of the betrayal are for Mt. and Mk. the two memorabilia of the paschal feast of Jesus with His disciples, and all they know is that they happened during feast-time. , take, without , as in Mt.; the more laconic expression likely to be the original. “Take” implies “eat”.
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson
NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Mar 14:22-25
22While they were eating, He took some bread, and after a blessing He broke it, and gave it to them, and said, “Takeit; this is My body.” 23And when He had taken a cup and given thanks, He gave it to them, and they all drank from it. 24And He said to them, “This is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. 25Truly I say to you, I will never again drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.”
Mar 14:22 “took some bread” Notice it was not the Passover Lamb (nor bitter herbs), but the unleavened bread (azumos, cf. Mar 14:1). The Greek term here is artos, which is usually used to denote regular bread (cf. Mar 3:20; Mar 6:8; Mar 6:16; Mar 6:36-37; Mar 7:2; Mar 7:5; Mar 7:27; Mar 8:4; Mar 8:14; Mar 8:16-17). But it also is used of unleavened bread in the parallel of Mat 26:26; Luk 22:19. Probably the lamb had too much of a nationalistic connotation. For all the historical connections between the Passover and the Last Supper, there is a purposeful theological distinction.
If there is a sustained typology between the Exodus and Jesus, which seems to be true, then the bread takes on a special relationship to “manna” (cf. Exodus 16), given by YHWH during the wilderness wandering period. This provided a stable life-giving diet to God’s people. Now YHWH gives the “true” bread of heaven, provides the “real” life-giving provision, sends the “perfect” leader, and inaugurates the new Passover from sin and death. The NT authors often used Christological typology in their presentations of Jesus as prefigured in the OT.
Wine in the OT was known as the blood of the grape and was often used in a judicial sense (i.e., the grapes of wrath). Now it is the sacrifice which brings eternal life. The imagery is clearly seen in John 6.
“after a blessing” There was a set procedure for the Passover meal. In all probability the symbolism of the broken bread and wine occurred at the point in the ritual called “the third cup of blessing” (cf. 1Co 10:16).
SPECIAL TOPIC: PASSOVER (ORDER OF SERVICE)
“Take it; this is My body” Joh 6:22 ff and 1Co 10:16 show the strong theological imagery of this ritual. Jesus’ words about His body and blood would have shocked these Jews. Cannibalism and the consumption of blood would be violations of Leviticus 11. These statements are obviously symbolic, but still startling.
Jesus was symbolizing the crucifixion by breaking the bread. As the color of the wine was similar to blood, the color of the bread was similar to human flesh. Jesus was the true Bread of Life (i.e., manna, cf. Joh 6:31-33; Joh 6:51), the true Passover, the new Exodus!
SPECIAL TOPIC: THE LORD’S SUPPER IN John 6
Mar 14:23 “given thanks” The Greek term for “thanks” is eucharist, from which we get the English name for the Lord’s Supper, the Eucharist.
Mar 14:24 “This is My blood of the covenant” The color of the wine resembled the color of human blood. This phrase has three possible OT origins.
1. Exo 24:6-8, the inauguration of the Book of the Covenant by covenant blood
2. Jer 31:31-34, the only text in the OT which mentions “new covenant”
3. Zec 9:11, which is in the literary unit 9-14, the source of many prophecies (i.e., Christological typology) of Jesus’ life
There are two variants in the Greek manuscript traditions.
1. “the covenant” following Mat 26:28, which is found in the Greek manuscripts , B, C, D2, and L (and also D* and W with slight change). The UBS4 gives this shorter reading an “A” rating (certain).
2. “the new covenant” following Luk 22:20 and 1Co 11:25, which is found in MSS A and E and the Vulgate, Syriac, Coptic, and Armenian translations (cf. NKJV). This probably was an addition to relate Jesus’ words to the “new” covenant of Jer 31:31-34.
In all of this discussion one thing is obvious. Jesus’ death was crucial to the restoration of fallen mankind to fellowship with the Father (cf. Mar 10:45). Jesus came to (1) reveal the Father; (2) give us an example to follow; and (3) die in our place for our sin. There is no other way for redemption (cf. John 10, 14). This was the central aspect of God’s eternal plan (cf. Act 2:23; Act 3:18; Act 4:28; Act 13:29).
SPECIAL TOPIC: COVENANT
“‘which is poured out for many'” Jesus’ death, symbolized by His poured out blood, was a sacrifice for sin (cf. Mar 10:45; Mat 26:28; 1Co 15:3; 2Co 5:21; Heb 9:11-15). The term “many” does not refer to a limited group, but is a Hebraic (or Semitic) metaphor for “all who would respond.” This can be seen in the parallelism of Rom 5:18-19 as well as Isa 53:6 “all” compared with Isa 53:11-12, “many.” See note at Mar 10:45.
SPECIAL TOPIC: POURED OUT
Mar 14:25 “‘I will never again drink'” The Passover liturgy involved four cups of blessing. The rabbis established this procedure based on Exo 6:6-7. The third cup symbolized redemption. This is the one that forms the basis of the Lord’s Supper. Jesus refused to drink the fourth cup of blessing because it symbolized the consummation. Jesus related this to the end-time Messianic banquet (cf. Isa 25:6; Isaiah 55; Mat 8:11; Luk 13:29; Luk 14:15; Luk 14:24; Luk 22:30; Rev 19:9; Rev 19:17).
“‘until that day'” This obviously refers to a future coming of Jesus in glory and power so different from His current situation in which He faced shame, pain, rejection, and death! The two comings of Jesus differentiate His tasks as redeemer (i.e., vicarious, substitutionary atonement) and victor/judge. This two-fold coming surprised the Jews. It was probably Jesus Himself, perhaps on the road to Emmaus, who showed the full significance of the key OT passages (i.e., Gen 3:15; Psalms 22; Isaiah 53 and Zechariah 9-14).
“‘the kingdom of God'” See Special Topic at Mar 1:15 c.
Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley
did eat = were eating. All that happened before and at this third supper is not given in Mark.
eat. All the texts omit this word.
is = represents. Figure of speech Metaphor. See App-6.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
22-25.] INSTITUTION OF THE LORDS SUPPER. Mat 26:26-29. Luk 22:19-20. 1Co 11:23-25. See notes on Matt.
Fuente: The Greek Testament
Mar 14:22. And as they did eat, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and brake it, and gave to them, and said, Take, eat: this is my body.
It was part of a meal. It was no celebration. It was no sacrifice, bloody or unbloody. It was simply a commemorative ceremony, of which he would now give them a specimen even before it became commemorative. As they did eat, Jesus took bread. No seeking for consecrated wafers or some special food, but such bread as they had been eating. Blessed thanking God for it. And break it and gave it to them, and said, Take, eat: this is my body.
Mar 14:23-24. And he took the cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them: and they all drank of it. And he said unto them, This is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many.
There was no fear of their making the mistake, which had been made by Humanists, of taking these words literally, because Jesus Christ was sitting there. They could not imagine that, as he took bread, he would say literally, This bread is my body. Why, there was his body sitting there before them. Had he two bodies? When he gave them the cup and said, This is my blood in the new covenant, they never dreamt of such a thing as that the wine in the cup was really and literally his blood. His blood was in his veins. They saw him living there, not bleeding. No, it is an extraordinary thing that men who have the life of God in them, and have some spiritual discernment, have, nevertheless, in some instances, been found driving their faith into the belief of the absurd fable of transubstantiation. Jesus Christ means This represents my body. This represents my blood the usual way of uttering such a sense both in the Old and New Testament, even as Christ said, I am the door. Yet nobody thought that he was a door. I am the way. Nobody thought he was a roadway. I am the shepherd, and yet nobody supposed that he carried a crook, and that he literally kept sheep. So says he, This is my body, this is my blood and they who sat there were in their senses, and they were not superstitious. They knew what he meant.
Mar 14:25-26. Verily I say unto you, I will drink no more of the fruit of the vine, until that day that I drink it new in the kingdom of God. And when they had sung an hymn, they went out into the mount of Olives.
I cannot resist repeating the remark I have often made about that singing of a hymn. It seems to me such a grand, brave thing for the Saviour to sing a hymn after the last meal that he would eat with his disciples before his death when he knew that he was going forth to all the torture of Pilates hall, and to death at Calvary. Yet he says, Let us sing a hymn. He chose a Psalm of David, and, I dare say, himself pitched a tune. And when they had sung a hymn, they went out unto the Mount of Olives.
Mar 14:27. And Jesus saith unto them,
As they walked along.
Mar 14:27-28. All ye shall be offended because of me this night: for it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered. But after that I am risen, I will go before you into Galilee.
What sweet comfort was there as much as to say, Though you are scattered, I will gather you. Though you forsake me, I will not forsake you. I will go before you into our old haunts, into that Galilee of the Gentiles where I was wont to preach aforetime. I will go before you into Galilee.
Mar 14:29-30. But Peter said unto him, Although all shall be offended, yet will not I. And Jesus saith unto him, Verily I say unto thee, that this day, even in this night,
The day begins at sunset.
Mar 14:30-31. Before the cock crow twice, thou shalt deny me thrice, But he spake the more vehemently, if I should die with thee, I will not deny thee in any wise. Likewise also said they all.
So Peter was not alone in his intense, though rash expression of attachment. They did mean, all of them, to stand to their Master, and to die with him, as you and I mean to. But shall we carry it out better than they, think you? Not if our resolve, like theirs, is made in our own strength.
Mar 14:32. And they came to a place which was named Gethsemane:
The garden on the side of the hill of Olivet.
Mar 14:32. And he saith to his disciples, Sit ye here, while I shall pray.
Eight of you keep watching at the garden gate to let me know when my betrayer comes.
Mar 14:33. And he taketh with him Peter and James and John, and began to be sore amazed, and to be very heavy;
They had not seen him in that state before. He seemed like one distracted, so amazed like one astonished out of all composure unable to collect himself or to contain himself, and to be very heavy, as if an awful weight pressed on his soul.
Mar 14:34. And saith unto them, my soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death: tarry ye here, and watch.
These three were to make his closest bodyguard, to intimate to him if any came.
Mar 14:35. And he went forward a little,
A stones cast, so as to be retired from them.
Mar 14:35-36. And fell on the ground, and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. And he said, Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me: nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt.
That was the point of the prayer, the very pith and marrow of it not what I will, but what thou wilt.
Mar 14:37. And he cometh, and findeth them sleeping.
Three choice guards his bosom companions.
Mar 14:37. And saith unto Peter, Simon, sleepest thou? couldest not thou watch one hour?
Matthew and Luke tell us that he said Could ye not watch with me one hour? and Mark tells us here that he especially said that to Peter. Now remember that Mark is the gospel of Peter. No doubt Mark was the great friend of Peter, and writes his gospel from Peters point, so Peter in the Gospel of Mark records the worst things about himself, and he just puts it here that the Master said, Simon, sleepest thou? Bad enough for the others to be asleep, but Simon, sleepest thou? Couldest not thou watch one hour?
Mar 14:38. Watch ye and pray, lest ye enter into temptation. The spirit truly is ready, but the flesh is weak.
Oh! that was a kind excuse to make for them to say something good about them, even though they slept when they ought to have comforted him. He did see that their spirit was ready, but the flesh was weak.
Mar 14:39-40. And again he went away, and prayed, and spake the same words. And when he returned, he found them asleep again, (for their eyes were heavy), neither wist they what to answer him.
How could they excuse their conduct? A second time asleep! They were in a muddled state.
Mar 14:41. And he cometh the third time, and saith unto them, Sleep on now, and take your rest: it is enough, the hour is come; behold, the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.
This exposition consisted of readings from 2Sa 15:13-23; Isaiah 61.; Mar 14:22-41.
Fuente: Spurgeon’s Verse Expositions of the Bible
Mar 14:22. , bread) Mark does not add the article.-, my) Understand, which is given for you, to be supplied by implication from Mar 14:24 [My blood, which is shed for many].
Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament
Mar 14:22-26
6. THE LORD’S SUPPER INSTITUTED
Mar 14:22-26
(Mat 26:26-29; Luk 22:19-20; 1Co 11:23-25)
22 And as they were eating, he took bread,–Or “a loaf” (footnote), one of the thin flat loaves of the country–made without leaven of any kind. “A loaf” does not mean two or more loaves, but one. The loaf, which was one, points to the body of Christ. Jesus had one body he offered for the sins of the world and the one loaf represents that one body. Two loaves on the Lord’s table are out of place and have no divine sanction. One loaf is safe, two are doubtful, to say the least. It is always safe to be on the safe side.
and when he had blessed,–The word “blessed” is used interchangeably with “gave thanks.” That is, the same act is sometimes expressed by the one form and sometimes by the other. Here and in Matthew (Mat 26:26) what is expressed by “blessed” in Luk 22:17; Luk 22:19; 1Co 11:24 is expressed by saying “had given thanks.” And in the account given by Matthew and Mark, the one expression is used in reference to the bread, and the other in reference to the cup. They therefore mean the same thing, or rather express the same act, for that act was both a benediction and thanksgiving; that is, it is addressed to God, and therefore may be expressed either by the words “had blessed” or “given thanks.”
he brake it,–After he had expressed thanks. The Passover bread, as used by the Israelites now, is very thin and easily broken. This represented his body broken on the cross. Breaking of the bread is essential to the true idea. Cutting it is a perversion. The ordinance is even called “the breaking of bread.” (Act 2:42.)
and gave to them,–To the eleven disciples, probably, not certainly, first partaking of it himself. They were all baptized believers. No one is authorized to eat at the Lord’s table who has not been immersed into Christ. The Lord’s Supper is for those who are members of the body of Christ (1Co 11:20; 1Co 11:33), and those who are not members of the church ought not to partake of the bread and wine. [I do not think Judas ate the Lord’s Supper with Jesus and his disciples. John (Joh 13:21-30) shows plainly that Judas went out before the supper was observed. He went out to get his band to take Jesus and betray him to the chief priests; after he had gone, the Lord’s Supper was instituted. There is a distinction between the Passover feast and the Lord’s Supper appointed at the feast.]
and said, Take ye: this is my body.– [When his own living body was present before them, they could not otherwise than understand that this bread that was broken was the representative of his body–the symbol of it to them. This was another of the parables he had so constantly presented to them within these last days. They could not have understood it otherwise than as a representation, or symbol, of his body to them. This bread was given in view of his coming death for their sins. His body would he broken as this loaf was broken, and he gives this as the representative, or memorial, of it. To establish a memorial of a deed before it is performed is not like man, but God frequently did it. Man never knows what will happen; God does. Jesus was before him as “the Lamb that bath been slain” from the foundation of the world. The bread used in this supper was the unleaven bread of the Passover week. As the bread and the wine constitute the staff of life–that on which our bodies are sustained–even so this body broken and this blood shed for the remission of sins constitute the food upon which our spirits must feed, that they may grow into the likeness of Christ.]
23 And he took a cup,–“A cup” is one, not two nor a dozen. Luke says: “The cup,” so also Paul (1Co 11:25), and both insert “after supper.” Paul also calls it (1Co 10:16) “the cup of blessing.” “Cup” here is used figuratively for what it contains. The cup contained wine, the juice of the crushed grape–a striking emblem of his own blood, which would be shed for the sins of the whole world.
and when he had given thanks,–This is what made it “the cup of blessing.” He did not give thanks for the bread and cup at the same time, as some do now. To do so is a perversion of the truth–it is unscriptural. All mentions of it show thanks for the bread first, then the cup.
he gave to them: and they all drank of it.–[The cup contained the fruit of the vine. It was the cup, or wine, used in the Passover feast. For this he gave thanks. Blessing and giving thanks seem to be used interchangeably, and therefore refer to the same thing. Luke reports him as saying: “This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me.” The truth, when they as yet understood so little of his death and resurrection, was not apparent to the disciples; but like so many other things which they did not understand, after he died and was raised from the dead they remembered it, and they understood it; so they believed. In Act 2:42 we find: “And they continued stedfastly in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and the prayers.” This refers to the breaking of bread in memory of the Lord. Many think the breaking of bread daily in verse 46 also refers to the supper; but it seems to refer to the daily meals, inasmuch as it is said: “And breaking bread at home, they took their food with gladness and singleness of heart.” Eating their food for sustenance. Act 20:7 : “And upon the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul discoursed with them.” Paul says: “For I received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus in the night in which he was betrayed took bread; and when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, This is my body, which is for you: this do in remembrance of me. In like manner also the cup, after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood: this do, as often as ye drink it, in remembrance of me. For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink the cup, ye proclaim the Lord’s death till he come. Wherefore whosoever shall eat the bread or drink the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner, shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord. But let a man prove himself, and so let him eat of the bread, and drink of the cup. For he that eateth and drinketh, eateth and drinketh judgment unto himself, if he discern not the body.” (1Co 11:23-29.) From this we learn that it was a memorial institution to keep in memory the heroic deeds of Jesus in dying to redeem man. It was to be observed by their coming together on the first day of the week to break bread. It was the will of God set forth in the shedding of his blood for the sins of the world. Monuments are designed to commemorate the worthy deeds of those to whose memory they are built, with the hope that future generations, when they learn of the deeds commemorated by the monument, will be inspired with the same spirit, and be led to emulate these worthy deeds. Just so this monumental institution was ordained to perpetuate the memory of the self-denying spirit and heroic deeds of Jesus Christ for the good of man. It is done with the view that those who see these memorials of the deeds and death of Jesus will drink into the same spirit, and be led to emulate his life and deeds of self-sacrifice for the good of others.
Man builds monuments of marble and granite, of iron and brass. He seeks the imperishable. Despite all his precaution, they molder and crumble. God through Jesus selected the perishable loaf and volatile fruit of the vine as the materials out of which he would build a monument that would endure with perennial freshness through time till Jesus should come again. No mortal would ever seek to build an imperishable monument out of material so perishable as the bread and wine. God only could breathe into it a spirit that would render it immortal–that could cause it to continue in its freshness and vigor till he come.]
24 And he said unto them, This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.–He shed his blood “unto remission of sins” and so baptism is “unto the remission of your sins.” (Act 2:38.) Both came from the same Greek word and mean the same in both passages. If baptism is not “unto remission of sins” as some contend, then Jesus did not shed his blood “unto remission of sins.” They both stand or fall together.
[Just as he gave the bread as the representative of the body so he gave the fruit of the vine as the cup–as his blood. A testament is a will. God through Jesus makes a new will, or testament, as that through Moses is called the old will, or testament. This is the memorial of that blood that was shed to seal and confirm this new testament. The old testament was sealed with the blood of animals; this is sealed with the blood of Jesus Christ shed for the remission of sins. He is called “the Lamb of God,” in Joh 1:29, and “the Lamb that hath been slain,” in Rev 13:8. He offered himself for man’s redemption when man sinned. God accepted him as the Redeemer; but “he was manifested to take away sins.” (1Jn 3:5.) “Ye were redeemed, not with corruptible things, with silver or gold, from your vain manner of life handed down from your fathers; but with precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, even the blood of Christ: who was foreknown indeed before the foundation of the world, but was manifested at the end of the times for your sake, who through him are believers in God, that raised him from the dead, and gave him glory; so that your faith and hope might be in God.” (1Pe 1:18-21.) This blood of the New Testament was shed for many. “He is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the whole world.” (1Jn 2:2.) Jesus shed his blood for all, but only for those who appropriate its cleansing efficacy, who enter into the temple of the living God, and walk in its blood-sealed appointments and laws. Matthew (Mat 26:28) says his blood “is poured out for many unto remission of sins”–that their sins might be remitted;that they might be freed from sins; that God “might himself be just, and the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus.” (Rom 3:26.)]
25 Verily I say unto you, I shall no more drink of the fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.–[It has been a question of doubt as to what is meant by the expression: “I shall drink no more of the fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.” The general interpretation is that it referred to the new spiritual communion with him in the eternal kingdom of God that is typified by the partaking of the bread and wine. Others think that it means he would not partake of it again until the church of God was fully set up on Pentecost; and then, in their observance of it and through time, he would be with them in spirit when they met to remember his death in these memorials he gives. Others still think he means when he comes again to earth he will, with his disciples, partake of the bread and wine.]
26 And when they had sung a hymn, they went out unto the mount of Olives.–[Christ and the apostles sang at the first institution and observance of the supper. They sang–not one of them. Paul and Silas, in the Philippian jail, sang at midnight. This might not be called a “public song service,” but it was a part of the worship engaged in by these two disciples in the prison. Act 16:25 reads: “But about midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns unto God, and the prisoners were listening to them.” They both sang, and the prayer and singing are associated as equally acceptable to God, each constituting an act of acceptable worship to God. Paul, in Eph 5:19, says: “Speaking one to another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord.” They were to speak to each other in the singing. It must have been when they were called together. Again, Col 3:16-17 says: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; in all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts unto God. And whatsoever ye do, in word or in deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” This singing must be done when they were together, that each might be admonished by the singing done. This is clear and distinct authority for the song service. That it should be called in question is an indication as to what extremes people will go in trying to justify practices not required by God.] I can see no excuse for brethren, in some instances, omitting the song after the supper, when we have an example of singing set by Jesus and the apostles when the supper was instituted. There is as much authority to omit all the song service when we meet for worship as there is to omit it after the supper. There is none for either. Neither is there any authority for singing while making the contribution or partaking of the supper.
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
as: Mat 26:26-29, Luk 22:19, Luk 22:20, 1Co 10:16, 1Co 10:17, 1Co 11:23-29
and blessed: Mar 6:41, Luk 24:30, Joh 6:23
take: Joh 6:48-58
this: That is, this represents my body; the substantive verb, whether expressed or understood, being often equivalent to signifies or represents. – Exo 12:11, Dan 7:24, Mat 13:38, Mat 13:39, Luk 8:9, Luk 15:26, Luk 18:36, Joh 7:36, Joh 10:6, Act 10:17, Rev 1:20, Rev 5:6, Rev 5:8, Rev 11:4, Rev 17:12, Rev 17:18, Rev 19:8.Mar 14:24, Gen 41:26, Zec 5:7, Luk 22:20, 1Co 10:4, Gal 4:25
Reciprocal: Exo 39:7 – a memorial Mat 14:19 – he blessed Mar 14:23 – when
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
THE HOLY COMMUNION
And as they did eat, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and brake it, and gave to them, and said, Take, eat: this is My body. And He took the cup, and when He had given thanks, He gave it to them: and they all drank of it. And He said unto them, This is My blood of the new testament, which is shed for many.
Mar 14:22-24
A few words on our Holy Communion, before we pass to the reception of it, will not be unfitting. Not that we may enter into controversyGod forbid! for no preparation could be worsebut rather to take our minds away from argument, and clothe them, if we may, with a humble, holy, loving simplicity, such as becomes the guests of Jesus.
I. Is not it strange and sad that this, our Holy of holies, should ever have been wrapped in such clouds of mystery; and that that which ought to shine out the clearest should have been so darkened by the defiling touch of human bickering? Is it because it is the stronghold of faith that Satan, knowing its value, loves to draw the battle there?
II. If you worship, why do you not also communicate?You say, The responsibility is greater, and the qualifications are higher. Is it so? Where is that in the Bible? You answer, He that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself. Well, now, hear the whole passage: He that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation,a loss, a chasteningto himself, not discerning the Lords body. For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleepthat is the damnation. For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged. But when we are judged,chastenedwe are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world.
III. It is a very simple thing to take the Holy Communion. It only wants that you should feel that you are a sinner, and that Christ is your Saviour; that you should so hate the sins that you have determined to give them up, and so love Christ that you wish to love Him better. Then, coming in that dependence upon Christ, which is the wedding garment, you are a welcome guest; and the worse you feel yourself, and the more sensible you are of your need of Christ, the more welcome.
IV. But is not the responsibility very great?The responsibility is great indeed to come to church, it is very great indeed to pray, or to approach God in any way. It is a very responsible thing to have been baptized; it is a very responsible thing to be called a Christian. The responsibility to come to the Lords Table is exactly of the same kind. And you enable yourself for all your other responsibilities by taking upon yourself the responsibility of being a communicant. And do let me ask you, Can you really be a Christian, can you love Christ, if you do not come to the Lords Supper? Do not tell me of the affection, or the reality of the profession, of that man who goes on disregarding what I asked him, with my dying lips, to do for love of me!
V. Come as little children.You come to meet Christ, you come to receive Christ. Do not stop to confuse yourselves with endless questions and metaphysical subletieshow you meet Him, and how you receive him. Be more a child; just feel that you take Christ into your heart of hearts, into your very being, in the way, whatever it be, which He shall please to come and impart Himself to you. As you eat the bread and drink the wine, do not refine upon it, do not go into what you can never fathom, but only think and know this,Now I join Christ to myself, and myself to Christ, as all my life, and all my strength, and all my joy.
VI. A feast of love.That there is mystery in the Holy Communion we cannot for a moment doubt. The service calls itself these holy mysteries. Only, this is the simplest of all simple thingsit is all love. Of the whole circumference of love, this is the centre. There Jesus tells me His love to me, and there I tell Jesus my love to Him. There the departed ones, and we who linger still, the saints in heaven and the saints on earth, angels and archangels, the whole Church in all worldsall that is dear and beautiful and holymeet, and we are one. It is one bread and one body, one sweet brotherhood of souls, one Christ and one hope, one Spirit in every heart, one heaven and one home, one God and Father of all.
Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary
Chapter 7.
The Last Supper-I
“And as they did eat, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and brake it, and gave to them, and said, Take, eat; this is My body. And He took the cup, and when He had given thanks, He gave it to them: and they all drank of it. And He said unto them, This is My blood of the new testament, which is shed for many. Verily I say unto you, I will drink no more of the fruit of the vine, until that day that I drink it new in the kingdom of God.”-Mar 14:22-25.
Two Subjects out of Many.
Before considering these verses, which tell us in Mark’s brief but vivid way of the institution of the Lord’s Supper, I want to call attention to this fact, that, of all that happened in the Upper Room, the announcement of the Betrayal and the institution of the Supper are the only two things which Mark troubles to record. Now these were by no means the only things that happened. Luke devotes twenty-four verses, while John occupies five whole chapters in telling us the story of that memorable evening, which Mark here concentrates into eight brief verses. The incident of the feet-washing, the varied questions the disciples asked, those marvellous talks of our Lord which John has recorded for us-all these Mark passes over in silence. He just fastens our attention on the announcement of the Betrayal, and the institution of the Lord’s Supper; and the former in a way leads up to the latter. Christ knew that His hour was come; He knew that the hand of the traitor was with Him on the table; He knew that soon the ways of earth would know Him no more; it was in view of His approaching death, because treachery was soon to do its deadly work, that He instituted this simple feast to His abiding and perpetual memorial,. So that, taking all the circumstances into account, I am not misrepresenting Mark’s view, when I say, that for him, the great happenings of that night in the Upper Room was the institution of the Supper.
A Theory and the Gospel Narratives.
Now I think it is worth while emphasising this point in view of the fact that many scholars of our day would have us believe that the Lord’s Supper as we know it, is largely the creation of Paul. They tell us that Jesus had no intention of instituting an ordinance which was to be perpetually observed in His church and that all that Jesus did or meant to do was just to break bread and drink wine for the last time with His disciples; that it was Paul who transfigured and exalted this simple act of our Lord’s into a Sacrament which should be the Lord’s abiding memorial. But the whole tenor of the Gospel narrative is absolutely fatal to such a suggestion. It is perfectly true that in Mark’s version the Lord does not say, “This do in remembrance of Me.” But even if we had nothing but Mark’s brief version to go upon, we should still conclude that when Christ broke the bread and drank the cup, He did something which had significance not simply for the eleven who reclined at the table with Him, but for all His disciples of after days. I should gather that from the very words He used, and especially from His word about the “new covenant.” No one can read such a word with open and candid mind, remembering that it was spoken at that feast at which a lamb was slain and eaten in token of God’s covenant of mercy with the Israelites, without feeling that this simple rite of the Lord’s institution was meant to be for His people what the Passover was to the Israelites, a perpetual reminder of a mightier deliverance, and of a better covenant of grace sealed with the blood of Christ Himself. But I should argue my point not simply from the words, but from the fact that this is the one incident picked out for recording. If this rite was meant for none but the eleven men reclining with Him, then there were other things which would have been far better worth recording, as e.g. our Lord’s teaching about greatness, His announcement of the coming of the Comforter, His parable of the Vine and the Branches. These great teachings of our Lord have at any rate universal and abiding validity. But Mark passes all these things over in silence. It was his habit, as I said in the last chapter, to seize only upon the salient points, the outstanding points, and to let many lesser things pass without notice. And as far as the events of the Upper Room were concerned, the salient outstanding vital occurrence was the institution of the Supper.
Mark and the Testimony of Peter.
You will remember that though in speaking of the Gospel we know it, as Mark’s, universal tradition says that Mark was “the interpreter or secretary” of Peter-that what Mark records conveys to us the reminiscences of the Primate of the Twelve. If that be so, we have here Peter’s view. I do not suppose Peter would ever forget the incident of the feet-washing and the quarrel about precedence. I do not suppose Peter any more than John would ever forget that sacred and intimate talk about the Father’s house-the prepared place. Yet looking back he feels that the one supreme want of that never-to-be-forgotten night was that Jesus instituted this simple feast.
The Practice of the Church
In a way, this little paragraph accounts for the practice of the church. Right away from the beginning of things the disciples met to break bread. They met together on the Lord’s Day and did it. They broke bread and drank the cup after their meals in their own homes. And the reason for it was that on the night on which He was betrayed, Jesus said to His disciples, “This is My body. Take ye. This is my blood of the covenant which is shed for many.” This is no rite which the immense influence of St Paul has imposed upon the Church. Paul and Peter on this point (as on all the essential points) are agreed. They observed this feast because on that awful night Christ bade them break the bread and drink the cup in remembrance of Him. So we do well to perpetuate the rite. The fact that by many the simplicity of it has been overlaid, is no reason why we should think lightly of it or neglect it. This is the Lord’s Suffer, i.e. it is Jesus Himself Who instituted the feast, it is Jesus Who still provides it and invites us to it, and presides at it. No! it is not Paul’s Supper! Paul, when He became a Christian, found it already in existence, found it indeed to be the central sacred act of worship and devotion of the Christian Church. It was the way in which the Lord Himself had bidden His disciples keep His memory fresh and green.
The Time of the Institution.
Now, turning to the narrative, let me call your attention to what Mark says, about the point in the proceedings at which Jesus instituted this beautiful and sacred rite. It was “as they were eating.” It was sometime during the course of the Passover meal. Now, as I said in the last chapter, the observance of Passover had come to be attended with a certain amount of ritual. There was a kind of “order of service.” First a hymn was sung, and a cup of wine was drunk. Then the bitter herbs were placed on the table and eaten with thanksgiving. Then the unleavened bread and the flesh of the lamb were presented and a second cup of wine was mixed. Then the bread was broken, the flesh of the lamb was eaten and prayer was again offered and the third cup was drunk. It is difficult of course to say exactly at what part of the Passover Feast Christ broke away from the established order and instituted this new Passover. But most commentators think it was after the flesh of the lamb had been eaten and the third cup had been drunk so the Paschal meal proper was finished. That is indeed the expression that Luke and Paul use-“after supper.” But the precise point at which the supper was instituted matters little or nothing, and I do not know that I should have stayed to refer to it at all-but for one thing, and that is the stress that is laid in some quarters upon the time at which it is fitting to celebrate the Communion.
The Bond of Union Marred.
It is a strange and lamentable thing that there is scarcely an aspect of this feast that is not associated with controversy. This feast that ought to have been the bond of union between Christians has become the occasion of strife. It divides Romanists and Protestants. It divides even Protestants themselves. Luther and Zwinglius in Germany and Switzerland respectively were both engaged in the blessed work of Reformation. They ought to have joined hands. It was on the rock of the Supper they split. That this feast, which Christ meant to be a bond of union, and which seems as if it might so easily become a visible sign of our essential unity (for whatever our name or sign we can all unite in remembering the Lord Who bought us with thanksgiving), that this feast should have become a source of division and strife and bitter controversy is surely one of the ironies of history. Everything connected with it, its meaning, its efficacy, the manner of its observance, who have a right to administer it, who have a right to receive it, all these things have been matters of angry recrimination and debate.
Reversing Christ’s Order.
Amongst other things men have wrangled as to the time of its observance. There is a tendency amongst certain of our fellow-Christians to insist upon fasting communion. Now, I am quite prepared to admit that some may find it helpful to think of their Lord in the early hours of the day. Just as I find it easier to preach in the evening, some people find their souls fresher and more alert in the morning. “In the morning,” said the Psalmist, “will I order my prayer unto Thee and will keep watch.” Very well, let them, if that be so, remember their Lord in the morn’s virgin hours. But when “fasting communion” is imposed on the Church as a rule, I will not yield by way of subjection, no, not for an hour. I do not myself think the time matters; that is one of those things indifferent which may be left to the convenience of those who are meeting together to remember the Lord’s dying. But the one method that has absolutely no warrant for it in the Scripture is this method of “fasting communion.” I am not going to enquire into the origin of the practice. As a matter of fact it originates in a materialistic and superstitious view of the Supper itself. It allies itself to the belief in Transubstantiation. All I care for now is to point out to you that at least this much is true, it is a complete repudiation of Apostolic practice; it is an almost complete reversal of our Lord’s method when He instituted the Supper; for when I turn to the evangelists and read what they have to say, I find that it was “as they were eating,” that it was “after supper,” that the Lord brake the bread and distributed the cup.
The Remembrance of Christ’s Death.
Now I pass to the fact that this feast of our Lord’s institution was not only meant to be a memorial feast, but it was specially meant to be a memorial of His death. The desire to be remembered is a natural and almost universal desire. When men are about to leave for another land, they give little presents to their friends as mementos of their friendship. Our Lord was just about to leave His friends. In bodily form He would no longer walk with them along the streets of Jerusalem, or the lanes of Galilee. And so He gave them this simple feast as a memorial. It was the Lord’s forget-me-not. “Do this,” He said, “in remembrance of Me.” But the significant point about the feast is, that it is not a memorial of Christ’s life in general, shall I say. It is a memorial of a particular act in it. The bread He gave to His disciples was broken bread. The wine He gave was out-poured wine. They were meant to symbolise His broken body, and His shed blood. In other words, the memorial feast which Christ instituted was a memorial of His death. That was the thing Christ wished to be remembered by-His death: that was the thing He wished His disciples to retain in perpetual remembrance-His dying. “As often as ye eat this bread and drink the cup,” said Paul, “ye do shew the Lord’s death till He come.”
Remembrance of Victory through Death.
Now here surely we come across a striking and significant thing-Jesus wished to be remembered by His death. I have noticed that there are certain anniversaries which men delight to observe. But I have never heard of their meeting to celebrate a day of darkness and disaster and overthrow. It is not defeat men celebrate, but victory. And yet here Jesus institutes a feast to commemorate His death. Here is a feast to keep fresh and vivid in the mind of His people that Cross of ignominy and shame on which He died. He will not allow us to forget His torn and mangled body and His pierced side. That is how He wants to be remembered. Not as He spoke on the hill-side with an eager throng all about Him; not as He stood up in the boat bidding wind and wave be still; not as the Mighty Healer curing leprosy with a touch, and blindness and deafness with a word; not as the Master of Death bidding Lazarus in a loud voice come forth: He wants to be remembered as He hung upon the tree, the sport and derision of Jerusalem, the apparently forsaken of God. He wants to be remembered not as the Great Preacher; not as the Master of Nature; not as the Miracle Worker; but as the Sufferer, the Victim, the Dying Lamb. Is not that strange? Is not that an amazing thing? “It is,” as Dr Chadwick says, “as if your nation exulted in Trafalgar, not in spite of the death of our great Admiral, but solely because he died; as if the shot which slew Nelson had itself been the overthrow of hostile navies.” And that is exactly what it does mean. The Cross was not a defeat but a victory. The death constituted the deliverance.
-A Life laid down for us.
People talk of Christ’s death as a martyrdom. They say He was martyred by the priests for His loyalty to the truth of God. Well, the priests and all who took a part in the crime of the crucifixion will bear their punishment and doom. Of Judas, Christ said, it would be good for him if he had never been born. From the standpoint of the priests and
The Purpose of the Incarnation.
Pilate the death of Christ was a crime, the crime of history. But to represent Christ’s death as a martyrdom, a death which He could not escape, to put Him on a level with Socrates, and Paul, and Latimer, and other men who were hounded to death by their foes is entirely to misrepresent the Gospel narrative. It is to fly in the face of all the facts of our Lord’s life. It is to construct an absolutely new account of Him. I believe that Jesus came into the world to die. No! I do not absolve the agents of the crime, but nevertheless Jesus had to die. It was the condition of winning deliverance and redemption for men. Had there been no Judas, no priests, no Pilate, Christ would have died. Death, with the rest of us, is something we cannot help. It is simply the close of life. But Jesus chose to die. Had He not chosen to die, not all the nails in the world could have fastened Him to the tree. No one took His life away from Him, He laid it down of Himself. And He did not look upon His death as defeat and disaster. He looked upon it as the means of His triumph. We may admire the courage of the martyrs. But nevertheless we deplore their death. To that extent it meant the defeat of their cause. But we do not deplore the death of Christ. He did not deplore it Himself. It was not defeat, but triumph. By His death He was to accomplish a deliverance. Death was not something Christ suffered. It was something which He did. It was the mightiest act of His life. And of all things that is what He wishes us to remember. We are to remember His death. For His death was His triumph and His sacrifice was our life.
Christ not a Teacher only, but a Saviour.
On this I have one other word to say. Those who would shift the emphasis from the Cross of Christ to His teaching, from Calvary to the Sermon on the Mount are flying in the face of the teaching of this Sacrament. It is not too much to say that they are flying in the face of the mind and will of Christ Himself. It was not there He Himself placed the emphasis, not on His teaching but on His dying. Not on the sermon on the hill, but on the Cross. For Christ came not simply to teach men, but to redeem them. Not simply to illumine their darkness, but to deliver them from sin. And when it comes to redemption, it was on the Cross that the mighty deliverance was won. I am not now going to discuss it. Let it suffice to say that His blood was shed for many; that He died the just for the unjust, that because He died we are free from the law of sin and death. That is what happened on the Cross. He won release for us. He redeemed men from the power and pain of sin. And when He bids us remember Him that is how He would have us do it-on the Cross with body broken, and blood shed. And that is how for one I delight to remember Him. I listen to Him on the hill and I too am filled with astonishment, for He teaches with authority. But His words are so profound, His ideas so lofty, His demands so vast, that they fill me with despair. “Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord?” Not I, if these be His demands. They are high, and I cannot attain to them. But I go to another Hill and I see Him hanging there for love of me, sealing a new covenant of love and grace with His blood, bearing my pain and shame and reproach, and I hear the old word, “The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin. My burden is lifted as I look, and I go on my way rejoicing. That is how I would remember Christ as this feast bids me remember Him, as the Lamb of God Who taketh away the sin of the world.”
Fuente: The Gospel According to St. Mark: A Devotional Commentary
2
The events of this last night are not all given in any one place, and the ones that are given are not in chronological order. See the note and references on this point with the comments at Mat 26:20. I shall now comment on the verses as they appear in the present chapter. Jesus blessed the bread by giving thanks for it. He broke it as an act of decency because more than one person was to eat of it. Otherwise the breaking of it has no religious significance to us.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Mar 14:22-26. THE INSTITUTION OF THE LORDS SUPPER. See notes on Mat 26:26-30; comp. Luk 22:19-20; 1Co 11:23-25; also Joh 6:51 ff. The peculiarities of Marks account, which resembles closely that of Matthew, are merely the omission of eat (Mar 14:22); the insertion of the clause: And they all drank of it (Mar 14:23); the omission of the words: for the remission of sins, after for many (Mar 14:24), and the slightly briefer form of the thought in ver.On the incidents which occurred before the departure to the Mount of Olives, and the probability that Peters denial was twice foretold, see notes on Mat 26:30-46.
Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament
Immediately after the celebration of the passover, our Lord institutes his holy supper; in which institution, we have observable the author, the time, the elements, and ministerial actions.
Observe here, 1. The author of this new sacrament: Jesus took bread.
Note thence, That to institute a sacrament is the sole prerogative of Jesus Christ. The church has no power to make new sacraments: it is only her duty to celebrate those which our Saviour has made.
Observe, 2. The time of the insitution, the night before his passion; The night in which he was betrayed, Jesus took bread.
Learn thence, That it is very necessary when sufferings are approaching, to have recourse to the table of the Lord, which affords both an antidote against fear, and is a restorative to our faith.
Observe, 3. The sacramental elements, bread and wine; bread representing the body, and wine the blood, of our dear Redeemer.
Observe, 4. The ministerial actions, The breaking of the bread, and the blessing of the cup.
As to the bread, Jesus took it; that is, set it apart from common use, and separated it for holy ends and purposes. He blessed it; that is, prayed for a blessing upon it, and brake it; thereby shadowing forth his body broken upon the cross for the redemption and salvation of a lost world; Do this in remembrance of my death.
As to the cup, Christ having set it apart by prayer and thanksgiving, he commands his disciples to drink all of it; and accordingly they all drank of it, says this evangelist; and our Saviour gives his reason for it, For this is my blood of the New Testament, which is shed for the remission of sins Mar 14:24; that is, the wine in this cup represents the shedding of my blood, by which this new covenant between God and man is ratified and confirmed.
Whence we gather, That every communicant hath as undoubted a right to the cup as to the bread, in the Lord’s supper; Drink ye all of this, says Christ; therefore to deny the cup to the common people, is sacrilege, and directly contrary to our Saviour’s institution. And Christ calling the cup the fruit of the vine, affords a strong argument against the doctrine of transubstantiation; thus: “That which after consecration remains the fruit of the vine, is not substantially changed into the blood of Christ. But Christ called the wine in the cup the fruit of the vine after consecration; therefore that which Christ gave the apostles to drink, was not substantially changed into his blood. Wine is metaphorically called the blood of the grape; why may it not, by a like metaphor, be styled the blood of Christ?
After the celebration was over, our Saviour and his disciples sung an hymn, as the Jews were wont to do at the passover, the six eucharistical psalms, from the 113th to the 119th psalm.
From Christ’s example, we may gather, how suitable it is to sing a psalm after the celebration of the Lord’s, supper; how fit it is that God be glorified in his church, by singing of psalms; and in particular when the Lord’s supper is celebrated: When they had sung an hymn, they went into the Mount of Olives.
Fuente: Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament
CXX.
THE LORD’S SUPPER INSTITUTED.
(Jerusalem. Evening before the crucifixion.)
aMATT. XXVI. 26-29; bMARK XIV. 22-25; cLUKE XXII. 19, 20; fI. COR. XI. 23-26.
a26 And as they were eating, fthe Lord Jesus in the night in which he was betrayed took bread; 24 and when he had given thanks, {bblessed,} fhe brake it, aand he [657] gave to the disciples, and said, bTake ye: aTake, eat; this is my body. fwhich is cgiven ffor you: this do in remembrance of me. [As only unleavened bread was eaten during the paschal supper, that kind of bread must have been used by our Lord, and it is fitting that it should still be used by us in keeping the Lord’s Supper, not only for propriety’s sake, but because that bread which is emblematic of purity is most suitable to represent the body of the sinless Christ. The Catholics and some few others take our Lord’s words literally when he says, “This is my body.” On this they found the doctrine of transubstantiation, i. e., that the bread and the wine become literal body and blood when blessed by the priest. There are many weighty arguments against such a doctrine, but the main one for it is found in the words of our Lord. But Jesus could not have meant them literally, for his body was untouched and his blood unshed on this occasion when he spoke them. Moreover, in the Jer 31:31-34. It was the practice of Eastern [658] peoples to use blood in making any pact or covenant ( Exo 24:6-8). Christ represents himself as the victim from whence the blood was to be taken to ratify or seal the new covenant, and he makes the cup the symbol of that blood. A full discussion of the old and new covenants will be found in the Book of Hebrews. We may, however, sum them up by saying that the old covenant promised the land of Canaan and Christ in the flesh to the Israelites, while the new covenant promises heaven and Christ in glory to the Christian], bwhich is poured out for many. [It is explicitly stated elsewhere that Christ died for all ( Heb 2:9, 2Co 5:14, 2Co 5:15), and the word “many” is used, not to contradict, but to emphasize the fact. When the persons included are contemplated individually, the term many is employed on account of the vast number of them; for no man can number the individuals for whom Christ died. But when they are contemplated under the feebler conception of the whole, the term all is employed.] aunto remission of sins. ceven that which is poured out for you. [The prime object of Christ’s death is here declared. It was to accomplish the forgiveness of sins. All other purposes which it served are subordinate to this, and all other blessings which it secures are consequent upon this– Joh 1:29, Eph 5:2, Heb 7:27, 1Jo 2:2, 1Jo 4:10, Isa 53:10, Rom 8:2, 1Co 15:3.] fthis do, as often as ye drink it, in remembrance of me. [The word “remembrance” comes as a refrain after both the loaf and the cup. The central purpose of the supper is to bring the sacrifice of Christ and all its blessed results vividly to mind.] 26 For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink the cup, ye proclaim the Lord’s death till he come. [This verse is a comment of Paul’s upon the nature of the supper. In keeping the Lord’s Supper we proclaim to our own souls and to the world our trust in the death of Christ, and our hope that he will return and fulfill the expectations begotten in us by it.] a29 But b25 Verily I say unto you, I shall no more drink {ashall not drink henceforth} bof the {athis} fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new in bthe kingdom of [659] God. amy Father’s kingdom. band they all drank of it. [In speaking of this future drinking of the fruit of the vine Jesus does not mean literal wine, for he does not drink literal wine with his disciples in the kingdom as it now is, nor will he do so in the eternal kingdom. The term “drink,” therefore, is used figuratively for that communion which Jesus has with his disciples while they are drinking the wine of the Lord’s Supper. The term new is most naturally understood as modifying wine, but as the wine of the supper is not necessarily new wine, we think it rather indicates the new method of drinking wine just described.]
[FFG 657-660]
Fuente: McGarvey and Pendleton Commentaries (New Testament)
THE LORDS SUPPER
Mar 14:22-25; Luk 22:19-20; 1Co 11:23-25; Mat 26:26-29. And while they were eating, Jesus taking bread and blessing it, broke it, and gave it to His disciples, and said, This is My body; i. e., our Lords body in symbol, there being no argument here either for the Romish transubstantiation or the Lutheran consubstantiation. Joseph said, in the interpretation of the dreams of Pharaohs chief baker and chief butler, The three vines are three days, The three baskets are three days, simply signifying that they represent three days. And taking the cup, and blessing it, He gave to them, saying, Drink you all from this; for this is My blood of the New Covenant, which is poured out for many unto the remission of sins. And I say unto you, that I shall no more drink of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I may drink it new with you in the kingdom of My Father. Here you see that the Eucharist, on this occasion instituted by our Lord, was prospective as well as retrospective, looking forward to our Lords return in His glorious kingdom, when it will actually be celebrated through all the millennial centuries down to the end of time, our glorified Lord being here with us. Hence you see the deep and thrilling interest of this institution, which our Savior established at this memorable epoch, the very night of His betrayal and arrest; not only retrospecting the tragical scene of Calvary, when He gave His body and His blood a vicarious offering to redeem the whole world, and sustain the spiritual life of the saints by faith drinking His blood i. e., appropriating perpetually its cleansing and sanctifying efficacy, and feeding on His body each fleeting moment and by faith apprehending and appropriating the wonderful promises of the resurrection, translation, transfiguration, and assimilation of our mortal bodies to His glorious body; but sweeping on beyond His second advent into the happy centuries of the glorious Millennial Theocracy, when our Lord will again abide with His saints on the earth, enveloping the globe with the glory of His kingdom, Satan having been ejected and imprisoned, and will, as He here says, again celebrate this wonderful Eucharist with His disciples, this memorial institution running on down to the end of time. Now, you must not confound the Passover meal, which they all ate while Judas was with them, with the Eucharist, which our Lord instituted after the supper, Judas having gone away and joined His enemies, the former being the closing out of the memorable Passover, which they had celebrated fifteen hundred years, now normally evanescing, as all the emblematic lambs are verified in the great Antitype the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world; the latter being a new institution, vividly commemorative of bloody Calvary, and equally and lucidly pointing down to our Lords glorious return to this world, when, as He here says, He will again join with His saints in the celebration of this institution, a perpetual and vivid reminder of the stupendous redemption of the whole human race.
Fuente: William Godbey’s Commentary on the New Testament
Mar 14:22-25. The Bread and the Wine.After the eating of the lamb, the householder broke bread and distributed it, and then sent round the cup of blessing. Jesus seems to have invested this part of the meal with special significance. He associates it with His approaching death, He links the thought of His death with an act of communion which binds the disciple-band together. He couples His sacrifice with the new covenant which is to bring men forgiveness and direct knowledge of God (cf. Jer 31:31-34*), and with the hope of that day when He will drink a new kind of wine with His own in Gods kingdom. Newness is characteristic of the kingdom.
Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible
THE ORDINANCE
22 And as they did eat, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and brake it, and gave to them, and said Take, eat: this is my body. 23 And he took the cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them: and they all drank of it. 24 And he said unto them, This is my blood of the new testament which is shed for many. 25 Verily I say unto you, I will drink no more of the fruit of the vine until that day that I drink it new in the kingdom of God. 26 And when they had sung an hymn they went out into the mount of Olives.
Christ ties the Lord’s Supper observance to the Passover quite nicely. The one observance was a celebration of thankfulness for life physical and the other an observance a celebration of thankfulness of life spiritual.
Christ mentions that He will not drink of the fruit of the vine until He will drink it in the Kingdom. This may indicate that the Marriage Feast of the Lamb is that time when the Lord will again partake of the cup. One a celebration looking back at the cross yet looking forward to the future and the other a celebration looking forward to the future with the Lord.
Fuente: Mr. D’s Notes on Selected New Testament Books by Stanley Derickson
The institution of the Lord’s Supper 14:22-26 (cf. Matthew 26:26-30; Luke 22:17-20; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26)
Matthew and Mark’s accounts of this event are similar, but Paul’s is more like Luke’s.
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
The bread Jesus ate would have been the unleavened bread that the Jews used in the Passover meal. The blessing Jesus pronounced was a prayer of thanksgiving to God for the bread, not a consecration of the bread itself. People, not places or things, are always the objects of blessings in the Bible. Jesus’ distribution of the bread to the disciples was more significant than His breaking of it. By passing it to them He symbolically shared Himself with them. When Jesus said, "This is my body," He meant the bread represented His body (cf. Luk 12:1; Joh 6:32-35). The disciples could hardly have eaten the literal flesh of Jesus since He was standing among them. Moreover the Jews abhorred eating human flesh and did not drink even animal blood much less human blood (cf. Lev 3:17; Lev 7:26-27; Lev 17:10-14). [Note: Riddle, p. 194.]
"The bitter herbs served to recall the bitterness of slavery, the stewed fruit, which possessed the consistency and color of clay, evoked the making of bricks as slaves, while the paschal lamb provided a reminder of God’s gracious ’passing over’ of Israel in the plague of death that came to Egypt." [Note: Lane, p. 505.]
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
CHAPTER 14:22-25 (Mar 14:22-25)
BREAD AND WINE
“And as they were eating, He took bread, and when He had blessed, He brake it, and gave to them, and said, Take ye: this is My body. And He took a cup, and when He had given thanks, He gave to them: and they all drank of it. And He said unto them, This is My blood of the covenant, which is shed for many. Verily I say unto you, I will no more drink of the fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.” Mar 14:22-25 (R.V.)
HOW much does the Gospel of St. Mark tell us about the Supper of the Lord? He is writing to Gentiles. He is writing probably before the sixth chapter of St. John was penned, certainly before it reached his readers. Now we must not undervalue the reflected light thrown by one Scripture upon another. Still less may we suppose that each account conveys all the doctrine of the Eucharist. But it is obvious that St. Mark intended his narrative to be complete in itself, even if not exhaustive. No serious expositor will ignore the fullness of any word or action in which later experience can discern meanings, truly involved, although not apparent at the first. That would be to deny the inspiring guidance of Him who sees the end from the beginning. But it is reasonable to omit from the interpretation of St. Mark whatever is not either explicitly there, or else there in germ, waiting underneath the surface for other influences to develop it. For instance, the “remembrance” of Christ in St. Paul’s narrative may (or it may not) mean a sacrificial memorial to God of His Body and His Blood. If it be, this notion was to be conveyed to the readers of this Gospel hereafter, as a quite new fact, resting upon other authority. It has no place whatever here, and need only be mentioned to point out that St. Mark did not feel bound to convey the slightest hint of it. A communion, therefore, could be profitably celebrated by persons who had no glimmering of any such conception. Nor does he rely, for an understanding of his narrative, upon such familiarity with Jewish ritual as would enable his readers to draw subtle analogies as they went along. They were so ignorant of these observances that he had just explained to them on what day the Passover was sacrificed (ver. 12).
But this narrative conveys enough to make the Lord’s Supper, for every believing heart, the supreme help to faith, both intellectual and spiritual, and the mightiest of promises, and the richest gift of grace.
It is hard to imagine that any reader would conceive that the bread in Christ’s hands had become His body, which still lived and breathed; or that His blood, still flowing in His veins, was also in the cup He gave to His disciples. No resort could be made to the glorification of the risen Body as an escape from the perplexities of such a notion, for in whatever sense the words are true, they were spoken of the body of His humiliation, before which still lay the agony and the tomb.
Instinct would revolt yet more against such a gross explanation, because the friends of Jesus are bidden to eat and drink. And all the analogy of Christ’s language would prove that His vivid style refuses to be tied down to so lifeless and mechanical a treatment. Even in this Gospel they could discover that seed was teaching, and fowls were Satan, and that they were themselves His mother and His brethren. Further knowledge of Scripture would not impair this natural freedom of interpretation. For they would discover that if animated language were to be frozen to such literalism, the partakers of the Supper were themselves, though many, one body and one loaf, that Onesimus was St. Paul’s very heart, that leaven is hypocrisy, that Hagar is Mount Sinai, and that the veil of the temple is the flesh of Christ (1Co 10:17; Phm 1:12; Luk 12:1; Gal 4:25; Heb 10:20). And they would also find, in the analogous institution of the paschal feast, a similar use of language (Exo 12:11).
But when they had failed to discern the doctrine of a transubstantiation, how much was left to them. The great words remained, in all their spirit and life, “Take ye, this is My Body . . . this is My Blood of the Covenant, which is shed for many.”
(1) So then, Christ did not look forward to His death as to ruin or overthrow. The Supper is an institution which could never have been devised at any later period. It comes to us by an unbroken line from the Founder’s hand, and attested by the earliest witnesses. None could have interpolated a new ordinance into the simple worship of the early Church, and the last to suggest such a possibility should be those skeptics who are deeply interested in exaggerating the estrangements which existed from the first, and which made the Jewish Church a keen critic of Gentile innovation, and the Gentiles of a Jewish novelty.
Nor could any genius have devised its vivid and pictorial earnestness, its copious meaning, and its pathetic power over the heart, except His, Who spoke of the Good Shepherd and of the Prodigal Son. And so it tells us plainly what Christ thought about His own death. Death is to most of us simply the close of life. To Him it was itself an achievement, and a supreme one. Now it is possible to remember with exultation a victory which cost the Conqueror’s life. But on the Friday which we call Good, nothing happened except the crucifixion. The effect on the Church, which is amazing and beyond dispute, is produced by the death of her Founder, and by nothing else. The Supper has no reference to Christ’s resurrection. It is as if the nation exulted in Trafalgar, not in spite of the death of our great Admiral, but solely because he died; as if the shot which slew Nelson had itself been the overthrow of hostile navies. Now the history of religions offers no parallel to this. The admirers of the Buddha love to celebrate the long spiritual struggle, the final illumination and the career of gentle helpfulness. They do not derive life and energy from the somewhat vulgar manner of his death. But the followers of Jesus find an inspiration (very displeasing to some recent apostles of good taste) in singing of their Redeemer’s blood. Remove from the Creed (which does not even mention His three years of teaching) the proclamation of His death, and there may be left, dimly visible to man, the outline of a sage among the sages, but there will be no longer a Messiah, nor a Church. It is because He was lifted up that He draws all men unto Him. The perpetual nourishment of the Church, her bread and wine, are beyond question the slain body of her Master and His blood poured out for man.
What are we to make of this admitted fact, that from the first she thought less of His miracles, His teaching, and even of His revelation of the Divine character in a perfect life, than of the doctrine that He who thus lived, died for the men who slew Him? And what of this, that Jesus Himself, in the presence of imminent death, when men review their lives and set a value on their achievements, embodied in a solemn ordinance the conviction that all He had taught and done was less to man than what He was about to suffer? The Atonement is here proclaimed as a cardinal fact in our religion, not worked out into doctrinal subtleties, but placed with marvelous simplicity and force, in the forefront of the consciousness of the simplest. What the Incarnation does for our bewildering thoughts of God, the absolute and unconditioned, that does the Eucharist for our subtle reasonings upon the Atonement.
(2) The death of Christ is thus precious, because He Who is sacrificed for us can give Himself away. “Take ye” is a distinct offer. And so the communion feast is not a mere commemoration, such as nations hold for great deliverances. It is this, but it is much more, else the language of Christ would apply worse to that first supper whence all our Eucharistic language is derived, than to any later celebration. When He was absent, the bread would very aptly remind them of His wounded body, and the wine of His blood poured out. It might naturally be said, Henceforward, to your loving remembrance this shall be My Body, as indeed, the words, As oft as ye drink it, are actually linked with the injunction to do this in remembrance. But scarcely could it have been said by Jesus, looking His disciples in the face, that the elements were then His body and blood, if nothing more than commemoration were in His mind. And so long as popular Protestantism fails to look beyond this, so long will it be hard pressed and harassed by the evident weight of the words of institution. These are given in Scripture solely as having been spoken then, and no interpretation is valid which attends chiefly to subsequent celebrations, and only in the second place to the Supper of Jesus and the Eleven.
Now the most strenuous opponent of the doctrine that any change has passed over the material substance of the bread and wine, need not resist the palpable evidence that Christ appointed these to represent Himself. And how? Not only as sacrificed for His people, but as verily bestowed upon them. Unless Christ mocks us, “Take ye” is a word of absolute assurance. Christ’s Body is not only slain, and His Blood shed on our behalf; He gave Himself to us as well as for us; He is ours. And therefore whoever is convinced that he may take part in “the sacrament of so great a mystery” should realize that he there receives, conveyed to him by the Author of that wondrous feast, all that is expressed by the bread and wine.
(3) And yet this very word “Take ye,” demands our cooperation in the sacrament. It requires that we should receive Christ, as it declares that He is ready to impart Himself, utterly, like food which is taken into the system, absorbed, assimilated, wrought into bone, into tissue and into blood. And if any doubt lingered in our minds of the significance of this word, it is removed when we remember how belief is identified with feeding, in St. John’s Gospel. “I am the bread of life: he that cometh to Me shall not hunger, and he that believeth on Me shall never thirst . . . He that believeth hath eternal life. I am the bread of life.” (Joh 6:35; Joh 6:47-48.) If it follows that to feed upon Christ is to believe, it also follows quite as plainly that belief is not genuine unless it really feeds upon Christ.
It is indeed impossible to imagine a more direct and vigorous appeal to man to have faith in Christ than this, that He formally conveys, by the agency of His Church, to the hands and lips of His disciples, the appointed emblem of Himself, and of Himself in the act of blessing them. For the emblem is food in its most nourishing and in its most stimulating form, in a form the best fitted to speak of utter self-sacrifice, by the bruised corn of broken bread, and by the solemn resemblance to His sacred blood. We are taught to see, in the absolute absorption of our food into our bodily system, a type of the completeness wherewith Christ gives Himself to us.
That gift is not to the Church in the gross, it is “divided among” us; it individualizes each believer; and yet the common food expresses the unity of the whole Church in Christ. Being many we are one bread.
Moreover, the institution of a meal reminds us that faith and emotion do not always exist together. Times there are when the hunger and thirst of the soul are like the craving of a sharp appetite for food. But the wise man will not postpone his meal until such a keen desire returns, and the Christian will seek for the Bread of life, however his emotions may flag, and his soul cleave unto the dust. Silently and often unaware, as the substance of the body is renovated and restored by food, shall the inner man be strengthened and built up by that living Bread.
(4) We have yet to ask the great question, what is the specific blessing expressed by the elements, and therefore surely given to the faithful by the sacrament. Too many are content to think vaguely of Divine help, given us for the merit of the death of Christ. But bread and wine do not express an indefinite Divine help, they express the body and blood of Christ, they have to do with His Humanity. We must beware, indeed, of limiting the notion overmuch. At the Supper He said not “My flesh,” but “My body,” which is plainly a more comprehensive term. And in the discourse when He said “My Flesh is meat indeed,” He also said “I am the bread of life . . . He that eateth Me, the same shall live by Me.” And we may not so carnalize the Body as to exclude the Person, who bestows Himself. Yet is all the language so constructed as to force the conviction upon us that His body and blood, His Humanity, is the special gift of the Lord’s Supper. As man He redeemed us, and as man He imparts Himself to man.
Thus we are led up to the sublime conception of a new human force working in humanity. As truly as the life of our parents is in our veins, and the corruption which they inherited from Adam is passed on to us, so truly there is abroad in the world another influence, stronger to elevate than the infection of the fall is to degrade; and the heart of the Church is propelling to its utmost extremities the pure life of the Second Adam, the Second Man, the new Father of the race. As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive; and we who bear now the image of our earthy progenitor shall hereafter bear the image of the heavenly. Meanwhile, even as the waste and dead tissues of our bodily frame are replaced by new material from every meal, so does He, the living Bread, impart not only aid from heaven, but nourishment, strength to our poor human nature, so weary and exhausted, and renovation to what is sinful and decayed. How well does such a doctrine of the sacrament harmonize with the declarations of St. Paul: “I live, and yet no longer I, but Christ liveth in me.” “The Head, from whom all the body being supplied and knit together through the joints and bands, increaseth with the increase of God” (Gal 2:20; Col 2:19).
(5) In the brief narrative of St. Mark, there are a few minor points of interest.
Fasting communions may possibly be an expression of reverence only. The moment they are pressed further, or urged as a duty, they are strangely confronted by the words, “While they were eating, Jesus took bread.”
The assertion that “they all drank,” follows from the express commandment recorded elsewhere. And while we remember that the first communicants were not laymen, yet the emphatic insistence upon this detail, and with reference only to the cup, is entirely at variance with the Roman notion of the completeness of a communion in one kind.
It is most instructive also to observe how the far-reaching expectation of our Lord looks beyond the Eleven, and beyond His infant Church, forward to the great multitude which no man can number, and speaks of the shedding of His blood “for many.” He, who is to see of the travail of His soul and to be satisfied, has already spoken of a great supper when the house of God shall be filled. And now He will no more drink of the fruit of the vine until that great day when the marriage of the Lamb having come and His Bride having made herself ready, He shall drink it new in the consummated kingdom of God.
With the announcement of that kingdom He began His gospel: how could the mention of it be omitted from the great gospel of the Eucharist? or how could the Giver of the earthly feast be silent concerning the banquet yet to come?