The institution of the Lord’s Supper by our Savior Jesus Christ, on the night in which he was betrayed, is recorded in three of the Gospels – Matthew, Mark, and Luke – and in St. Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians. But in these four inspired accounts, the descriptions of exactly what Jesus said are not the same.
None of these inspired writers contradict each other, but they do supplement each other. They each provide different details of what the Lord’s wording was. We need to read all of them, in order to know all of what Jesus said.
One thing that all of these sacred sources do tell us, is that Jesus declared, in regard to the bread he was offering his disciples, “This is my body.” They all also tell us that he declared the cup of wine that he was inviting them to drink, to be “his blood” of the testament, or the new testament in “his blood.”
This is obviously the chief and foundational truth of the Lord’s Supper, since these words – as Jesus spoke them that night – are not left out by any of the writers. Everything else that they quote Jesus to have said on this occasion, in regard to his body and blood, presupposes this profound miracle: that the blessed bread and wine in this sacred meal are, truly, the body and blood of God’s Son.
All the inspired accounts, despite the variations in what they report on other details of what Jesus said, concur in reporting that Jesus said these words – and that by the power of these words, he made this happen!
St. Matthew’s account of the institution of the Holy Sacrament is the only one of the four that tells us, in so many words, that Jesus said that the blood he was offering to the disciples was the blood that is shed “for the forgiveness of sins.” St. Mark’s account, by comparison, says simply that his blood is “my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.”
But in the Jewish context of the original institution, and of the early church, everyone would have known that the shedding of blood, according to a divine covenant, was always for the forgiveness of sins, even if that was not explicitly spelled out. Yet Jesus did spell it out – as Matthew tells us – perhaps because he knew that gentiles, who needed it to be spelled out, would someday be receiving this Supper.
The men among whom the Lord instituted his Supper – in conjunction with the Passover observance – were indeed religiously-observant Jewish men, who would have been well-grounded in the Hebrew Scriptures.
St. Luke and St. Paul in First Corinthians report that Jesus described the cup of wine he was offering to the disciples as the “new testament” or “new covenant” in his blood. This phrase would have automatically triggered within the disciples a recollection of God’s messianic promise of redemption, restoration, and forgiveness, as recorded in the Prophet Jeremiah:
“Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord.”
“But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”
“And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”
The new testament, which Jesus has now inaugurated for the people of Israel, and for all people, is a testament of a divine regeneration in the heart; and a testament of divine forgiveness in Christ: that is, a divine forgetting of our sins, so that in Christ those sins will not be held against us in time or in eternity.
But, while this new covenant is for everyone, sadly, not everyone will embrace it or be embraced by it. In John’s Gospel, John the Baptist is quoted to say:
“The one who believes in the Son has eternal life; but the one who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.”
In Psalm 130, all humanity, as it were, asks: “If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?”
There is a simple yet profound reason why God’s wrath against sin in general does not still rest on us personally – corrupted though we are by our sins. There is a reason why God has not marked, and kept track of, our iniquities.
There is a reason why we are able to stand in God’s presence without being destroyed by God. There is a reason why we are indeed included within the new covenant of the Lord.
The reason is this, as St. Paul summarizes it in his Second Epistle to the Corinthians: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
God made his Son to be sin for you. His Son died as your substitute on your cross, under the judgment that your sins have earned.
And now, in Christ, and in the body and blood of Christ, you do not get what you earned, but you get what he earned for you. Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. But Jesus’ blood has been shed: for you.
In the Lord’s Supper, Jesus gives this blood to you. Therefore, in the Lord’s Supper, Jesus gives you the forgiveness of your sins, and thereby renews to you your reconciliation with your Father in heaven.
According to the Lord’s will it cannot be any other way, for those who approach in repentance, and whose hearts have been drawn in faith to the Word and promise of their Savior. When Jesus bestows his body and blood on you, it can never be a neutral or indifferent thing.
Hypocrites and unbelievers, if they manage – in Judas-like fashion – to finagle themselves a place at the Lord’s Table, will indeed also have an encounter with the Lord. But it will be an encounter with his wrath. They will eat and drink judgment upon themselves.
They will experience a foretaste of the condemnation that will be pronounced upon them on judgment day, even if they don’t realize it at the time.
The penitent and believing, however – who yearn for the Lord’s forgiveness, and for peace with God – will receive what they yearn for. The Spirit of God has placed this yearning into them. And the Son of God will satisfy that yearning, by the gift of himself, in the blessed bread and wine of his Sacred Supper.
The penitent and believing, at the Lord’s Altar, will receive a foretaste of the vindication in Christ that will be theirs on the Last Day, when they will stand before Jesus clothed in his righteousness; and having borne the fruits of faith in their lives to his glory.
The giving of the body and blood of Christ in the Lord’s Supper is, of course, not the only way in which forgiveness, and the many other blessings of the new covenant, come to us from God. Whenever and wherever the message of Jesus’ love and sacrificial death is present and active, God’s power to forgive is also present and active.
But Jesus did institute this special Supper for a reason. In the Lord’s Supper, the Lord himself touches our weak and trembling humanity at the point of his own now-glorified humanity. In our frailty he sustains us most vividly by his strength.
In a uniquely “incarnational” way, he impresses his gospel of forgiveness upon us in the Supper, by impressing himself upon us, and by uniting himself to us: as he feeds us with the very human body that he sacrificed on the cross; and as he gives us to drink of the very human blood which was shed for our redemption.
Lord Jesus Christ, Thou hast prepared a feast for our salvation,
It is Thy body and Thy blood; and at Thy invitation
As weary souls, with sin oppressed, we come to Thee for needed rest,
For comfort, and for pardon.
Lord, I believe what Thou hast said, help me when doubts assail me;
Remember that I am but dust and let my faith not fail me.
Thy Supper in this vale of tears refreshes me and stills my fears
And is my priceless treasure. Amen.