The reason why the Lord’s Supper held such a significant place in the early church is because it embodies the major features of the Christian life. The emblems we see, the bread and the wine, at the Lord’s Supper are broken and drunk as a shared experience (Matthew 26:26; 1 Cor. 10:16). The broken bread points us to the humanity of Jesus. The Son of Glory took upon Himself the form of a servant. The Almighty hovered Himself by becoming a man. The bread, being the most basic and lowly of all foods, points to the humanity and availability of our Lord. By taking on our humanity Jesus Christ because accessible to us all, just is the most readily available food for everyone, both rich and poor.
The Breaking of Bread also reminds us of the cross upon which our Lord’s body was broken. Bread is made from crushed wheat and wine is made from the pressed grape; both elements represent suffering and death. Yet, the Breaking of Bread does not only depict the suffering and death of Christ. It also shows forth His resurrection. The grain of wheat has gone into the ground, but it now lives to produce many grains like unto itself (John 12:24). While we eat the representation of His flesh and drink the representation of His blood through the Supper, we obtain His life (John 6:53). This is the principle of resurrection—Life coming out of death.
The revelation of the resurrected Christ is also bound up with the broken bread. When the risen Lord ate with His disciples it was bread that He broke with them (John 21:13). In like manner the resurrected Christ appeared to people on the Emmaus road but their eyes were not opened to recognize Him until He broke the bread (Luke 24:30-32). The Lord’s Supper reveals Christ to us.
The testimony of the oneness of Christ’s Body is also embodied in the Breaking of Bread. Recall that there was only one loaf that the early Christians broke. Paul writes, “Because there is one loaf, we, who are many are one body, for all partake of the one loaf” (1 Cor. 10:17). “There is one Body” …such company thus owns no other membership than that of the one Church, the Body of Christ, to which Christians belong by the operation of the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 1:22-23; 1 Cor. 12:12-13). It is the Lord’s Supper that is the symbol of this unity and the Scriptural observance of this memorial feast is really the expression of Christian unity (John Reid, 1987).
Thus the Lord’s people gather together and bear witness of their oneness of life in Christ and in the Body of which He is the Head. It is in this way that every evidenced believer is welcome to enjoy Christian privilege and fellowship according to Scriptural simplicity and order. When Jesus celebrated the Passover, which was the first Lord’s Supper, He offered the wine cup to His disciples with the word, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20). By this action, the Lord was pointing out this one fact; the Supper was a covenant meal wherein His disciples revisited the common memories they shared and celebrated their new identity in the Messiah.
Today when we celebrate the Lord’s Supper as a meal we are remembering the covenant we have with God in Christ. We are participating in the shared memory of what Jesus has done for us and we are proclaiming our new identity in Him. Water baptism is the Scriptural mode of our initiation into the Christian faith and the Lord’s Supper is a reaffirmation of our initial commitment to Christ. Through it, we reaffirm our faith in Jesus and our identity in Him as part of the new creation. It possesses past, present, and future implications. It is a re-proclamation of the Lord’s sacrificial death for us in the past. It’s a re-declaration of His ever-abiding nearness with us in the present, and it’s a re-pronouncement of the Hope of glory—His coming in the future.
In other words, the Lord’s Supper is a living testimony to the three chief virtues—faith, hope and love. Through the Supper we re-ground ourselves in that glorious salvation that is ours by faith. We express our love for the brethren as we reflect on the one Body, and we rejoice in the hope of our Lord’s soon return. By observing the Supper, we “proclaim (present) the Lord’s death (past) until He returns (future)” (1 Cor. 11:26). Through the Supper, the Holy Spirit reveals the living Christ to our hearts anew and afresh. By it, we reaffirm our faith in Jesus and membership in His Body. Through the Supper we sup with Christ and His people. For these reasons the early Christians made it an important part of their gatherings. Suffice it to say that the Lord Himself instituted the Supper (Matthew 26:26), and His apostles handed it down to us (1 Cor. 11:2). It is a spiritual reality.
For the first followers, the Lord’s Supper was not an end in itself, but means of communing with the triune God. The ties that bind are relationships, nor rules. The “light of the world” is not the message of Jesus. Jesus Himself is the light of the world. In the observance of the Lord’s Supper, the redeemed of the Lord, as His local Body, corporately express Christ. For He is the Message on earth.
Our faith is not a commitment to a course, it is the acceptance of an invitation to join Jesus on His journey and to live life in the mystery of God made flesh. To the believer the contact is the content. When we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, we are indeed celebrating the life of Jesus who is the Good News.
T Cyprian Kia
