The Lord’s Supper sets before us four scenes of glory: the crucified Son of God,² our risen Lord seated above at the Father’s right hand,³ Christ with His people on earth,⁴ and the Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven.⁵ The Lord’s Supper calls us to respond to God’s work to give glory to His Son, Jesus Christ.  Let us partake of the Lord’s Supper, then, to the glory of our Saviour, the One who was crucified (so we look back), raised up by God (so we look up), ascended to pour out the Spirit (so we look around), and coming again (so we look forward).

Many Christians view the Lord’s Supper as little more than a ritual. It’s something they do, but not with much understanding. This article is intended to help Christians think more biblically about the Lord’s Supper and to do what they do with greater understanding and joy.

The Lord’s Supper is a visible activity Jesus commanded. Like baptism, it occurs publicly and visibly in the local church. Unlike faith or repentance, you can see the Lord’s Supper happen. But what is visible in the Lord’s Supper is not the main thing. It isn’t that Jesus Christ wants us to look really hard at the bread and cup or that they bear some magic powers. Rather, Christ wants us to see something beyond the bread and cup. They are the symbols of something far greater, far more real—something invisible. The bread and the cup are symbols of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. By issuing the command to eat and drink, Jesus was directing us to gaze into the invisible world, beckoning us to look in four directions to see the Gospel made visible.

Looking Back

The Lord’s Supper recalls the night Jesus was betrayed. The procedure would have been familiar in that first Lord’s Supper in the Upper Room when Jesus and His disciples celebrated the Passover meal.  The Passover looked back to God’s act of delivering Israel from Egypt. The bread and the cup were passed by the head of the household to the family members, and they all ate and drank to remember God’s work of salvation. The Lord’s Supper differs from the Jewish Passover because Jesus changed things a bit. Both the bread and the cup point the mind’s eye back to Jesus, God’s Passover Lamb, symbolizing His body and blood. It is a time to remember Him.

Yet, the Lord’s Supper is not a static display of the bread and the cup. It isn’t like a tombstone that reminds us of the life of the dead in history. The Lord’s Supper reminds us of more than a person. The Lord’s Supper is like a battle re-enactment. It is a memorial that we act out. We break the bread. We pour out the cup. Why would Christ require that we enact the memorial? A statue of a Passover Lamb would not be a sufficient memorial because the Lamb was slain, His body broken, His blood poured out. We re-enact His act of self-sacrifice in the Lord’s Supper. It’s a time to remember His sufferings.

The Lord’s Supper calls us to look back to the historical realities upon which our salvation rests—the life and death of the Son of God for us.

Looking Up

The Lord’s Supper goes beyond breaking the bread and pouring out the cup. Christ told His disciples to eat the broken bread and drink the cup. Christ used ordinary bread and wine to symbolize His body and blood, and the Lord’s Supper is celebrated as a meal. Meals are eaten to sustain physical life. Christ broke the bread, took the cup, and then offered them to His disciples, commanding them to eat and drink. In response, the disciples reached out their hands to partake, and the food and drink nourished their bodies.

So also today, we continue to reach out our hands to partake. That act of partaking—receiving, eating, and drinking—makes visible the invisible movements of our hearts. The hand that reaches out to partake is the hand of faith. The Lord’s Supper calls us to look up once again in faith to the one whose body was broken and His blood shed. It is a visible sign by which we recommit ourselves afresh through faith to Jesus Christ our Lord.

But we aren’t the only ones who make a commitment. At the Last Supper, Christ told His disciples that he was pouring out His blood to bring to them the benefits of God’s New Covenant, including the forgiveness of sins, the Holy Spirit, and a restored relationship with God (1 Corinthians 11:25).

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