Perhaps one of the keenest reminders of our Christian fallibility is that the Lord’s Supper, instituted as a simple act promoting fellowship, has become the subject of complicated debate and blatant division. Yet through all the controversy, certain indisputable biblical realities about the Supper still stand as a basis for unity and a starting point for profitable use.
1. The Supper was instituted by our Lord. This means it is not an option or luxury. Even if only out of obedience—not the worst of reasons—Christians are to be present at it. But another meaning is that the Supper is not a useless ceremony, like many of the things men institute. The Lord was not demanding obedience merely for its own sake; he was demanding it for our good. He had a purpose. A last implication is that no matter what we think about the “real presence,” the Lord is surely host at his own table, and we come as his guests. The Supper is a privilege as well as a duty and benefit. It is the Lord’s.
2. The Lord’s Supper was instituted in a Passover setting. This yields many valuable insights. It establishes a relation with God’s congregation or people in the Old Testament. It suggests the interrelation of type and antitype, or of prophecy and fulfillment. It brings into focus the continuity of God’s plan and its execution. Above all, it directs attention to the fact that God’s people in both Old Testament and New became his people by his own act of deliverance. As the Passover reenacts the meal on the eve of the redemption out of Egypt, so the Lord’s Supper reenacts the meal on the eve of liberation from sin and death. On the one hand is the Passover lamb, on the other hand the Lamb of God.
3. This leads on to the next consideration, that the Lord’s Supper commemorates the vicarious act of Christ, the breaking of his body and shedding of his blood, that effected our salvation. The Supper is a declaration of the Gospel; that is why Augustine could call it a “visible word.” The sign corresponds visibly to what is signified: the broken bread to the broken body, the outpoured wine to the shed blood. Yet it is also the Lord who breaks and pours out. He gave himself. He did so willingly, in love. He did so as the Lord. We are not dealing, then, merely with a crucified Lord, remembered like any other great figure of the past. The Lord who gave himself in sovereignty is risen in sovereignty. He is host at his own commemoration.
The solemnity of proclaiming his substitutionary work should not subdue the note of joy and triumph. The early Church liked to call the Supper the Eucharist, and Zwingli too was fond of this title. The word simply means thanksgiving. Like the Passover, the Lord’s Supper is a feast. It is a feast of liberation. The cost was great—broken bread and poured out wine do not let us forget that. But the sacrifice was not in vain. And so we rejoice at the victory won, and give praise and thanks to the victor—but not as to a hero who perished in the moment of victory. Giving thanks for his precious death, we are aware also of his mighty resurrection and glorious ascension. The solemnity of the Supper is not gloom or sadness. It is the solemnity of overwhelming, abiding joy. If we miss the joy, we miss the ultimate meaning.
4. Taking food is the very essence of a supper. Hence the bread and wine are not just broken and outpoured: they are given to Christ’s people to eat and drink. In this vivid way, the Supper shows us that it is of the essence of the Christian life to receive Christ crucified and risen, and to partake of him: “This is my body; take, eat.”
Now obviously this is not cannibalism (though in a gross and perhaps malicious misunderstanding the early Christians were accused of holding cannibal feasts). Yet efforts to define precisely what is meant here have led to much mystification and confusion, often hindering a proper or profitable use of the Supper. If exact formulation is difficult, perhaps we may content ourselves with two very simple, basic truths about the eating.
The first is that Christ himself is the believer’s necessary food. The Christian life cannot begin without him, nor can it go on without him. Christ is our life. He is the bread of life. These biblical truths are vividly and concretely expressed in the taking of bread and wine. The Lord who gave himself and rose again for us gives us the new life. But he does not then leave us to our own resources; he also provides our continuing nourishment and strength, without which we could no more go on than we could live our daily lives without meals. The Supper directs us to Christ that we may feed on him.
The second basic truth is that receiving is a necessary part of nourishment. An essential part of the rite as the Lord instituted it is that we take and eat. Now there is a very real sense in which our receiving or appropriating Christ as our nourishment is God’s work. But this does not mean it is not also our own act. The visible word of the Lord’s Supper sets before us the one and all-sufficient sacrifice on which our salvation rests. It also sets before us our responsibility of entering into this salvation by receiving Christ, and of nourishing ourselves in it by continual receiving.
This is a reminder that if the Supper is marked by joy and thanksgiving for the finished work, it is also marked by the penitence and faith that are the means of receiving. Inner receiving is not an automatic result of the outer partaking of bread and wine. Just as Christ can be received at the first only as we repent of sin and trust in him, so he can be received for sustenance only as we repent and place in him our whole faith and confidence. As Augustine so aptly put it in a sentence that the reformers often quoted: “Believe, and thou hast eaten.”
This is the reason for what is often called the “fencing” of the table. Paul commanded this when he asked that we examine ourselves before presuming to eat and drink. To neglect this, to treat the Supper lightly, to view it as a mechanical device, is to make it hurtful instead of helpful. On the other hand, “fencing” the table does not mean that we have to make ourselves worthy before we dare receive. This would mean perpetual banishment; no one is ever worthy to receive Christ. But the Christ who came to justify the unjust makes no such condition for receiving him. What he does require is that we recognize our intrinsic unworthiness, come with penitence and faith, and stretch out our empty hands to receive for ourselves what he so bountifully provides.
5. The Lord’s Supper is also an expression, pledge, and means of fellowship. This is why “Holy Communion” is a common title. A meal is by nature an opportunity for fellowship, as we can see from the meals our Lord shared with the disciples. Fellowship with the Lord is holy fellowship, and it is to this also that Christ invites us when he asks us to gather at his table. He invites us to the holy fellowship that is grounded in his atoning work, to the restored fellowship of those who are reconciled to God and one another by Christ, to the family fellowship of God’s adopted children in and through their brother, the only-begotten Son of God.
This fellowship is with God himself in Christ. It is to God that we are first reconciled, and we are adopted into his family. Naturally, the Lord’s Supper is not the only means of fellowship with God. Yet it forms a focus of this fellowship and is a means of expressing and strengthening it. The whole Christian life is a life of constant fellowship with God, a communion fellowship that is especially shown and promoted in prayer, worship, reading the Scriptures, and hearing God’s word. The Lord’s Supper is one of these special occasions when the Lord specifically gathers his people to himself, when other thoughts and things should be left behind, when we know the Lord is with us in a particular way, when both the fellowship itself and our awareness of it are heightened.
Yet our fellowship, being with him, is also with one another. The Lord’s Supper is the family meal of God’s people. Being reconciled to God, we are also reconciled to our fellow men, and we can thus gather with them in a new fellowship, a fraternal meeting in which all are sinners but all are forgiven sinners. This fellowship is gathered out of every conceivable race and class and age and occupation; yet despite the great diversity, all are one in Jesus Christ. Here again the fellowship of believers is not restricted to the Supper. It is an abiding fellowship. But it too finds special focus in Christian work and Christian meetings that both express it and enrich it. The Lord’s Supper is a special season of fellowship when Christians are summoned by their Lord to their own special meal at their own special table as members of the Lord’s own special family.
An implication of this, of course, is that love, as well as joy and faith, is a distinctive mark of the Supper. This is the forgiving love of those who know they are forgiven. It is the reconciling love of those whose reconciliation Christ has achieved. It is a unifying love transcending all distinctions. Love is one of the things we must ask about before coming to the table. No hostilities or grudges or dissension should be brought here. There must be penitence for lack of love. Yet we do not have to love as a prerequisite for coming. We come expressing love and seeking love and growing in love: love for God because he first loved us: love for one another because we are brethren in the Son of his love.
6. A final element to note is that the Lord’s Supper points not only to the past, Christ’s finished work; and not only to the present, the developing life of faith and fellowship; but also to the future, the glorious consummation when Christ comes again. Our Lord made this plain at the institution of the Supper when he looked ahead to the final banquet in the Kingdom of God. Paul, too, speaks of observing the Lord’s Supper until He comes. The Supper is to be celebrated during this time between the comings, but it is not an end in itself. It points beyond itself to the greater meal when all God’s ways and works will be fulfilled and God’s people will gather in the perfected fellowship of redemption.
This means we should gather at the table, not only with a backward look at the first coming, but also with a forward look to the second. Part of the Gospel set forth by this visible word is that the Lord will come. The Lord who, having died, is alive for evermore, the Lord who is host at his table to feed and strengthen his people, is also the Lord who will come again as king and judge in the fullness of his kingdom. The Supper is a pledge, a foretaste, an anticipation of that best of God which is yet to be.
This means finally that we are also to receive the Supper with expectancy and hope. This hope is not the hoping-against-hope of the world, but the sure and certain hope of one who has already seen the decisive victory won. It is not a whistling in the dark but a singing in anticipation. On the basis of promises fulfilled, we rely on promises yet to be fulfilled. At the Supper we look away from the illusory hopes and transitory realities of the world. We widen and renew our perspectives. We lift up our heads, knowing that our redemption cannot be long delayed. We learn afresh that as all things are from him and by him, so they are also to him.
He who is the world’s hope is already before us and with us. He has given us this table, insignificant and even pointless in the eyes of secular man, but eloquent to believers as a sign of things past and things present and things to come. We therefore partake in joyful hope as well as faith and love. As we are confirmed in faith and enriched in love in this holy fellowship, so we are renewed in confident hope.
Geoffrey W. Bromiley is professor of church history and historical theology at Fuller Theological Seminary. He holds the M.A. from Cambridge University and the Ph.D. and D.Litt. from the University of Edinburgh. He is the translator of Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics.
