At the Last Supper, Jesus identified the bread with His body given for His disciples and the cup with the New Covenant established through His blood (Luke 22:19–20). His coming sacrifice would fulfill God’s promise of forgiveness in Jeremiah 31:31–34. The bread and cup point us to Christ’s death for sinners and His call to remember Him.
Communion helps believers look back to Christ’s work on the cross, examine our hearts, and look forward to His return. Whether you have taken communion for years or are learning about it for the first time, I hope these truths help you remember and rejoice in His love for you.
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A man asked his wife why she always cut off the ends of her roast. She replied that she had learned this from her mother but didn’t know why her mother did it. So, she asked her grandmother, who said she didn’t know either; that’s just what her mother taught her to do. Then, she went to her great-grandmother, who didn’t know, saying it was also what her mother had taught her. Finally, she visited her great-great-grandmother, who explained that the ends of the roast were cut off so the meat would fit in the pan she had used seventy years ago.
All these women followed a tradition passed down to them. They had always done it without understanding why they were doing it. This illustrates what happened with Passover. The Jews followed a tradition passed down to them. They went through the motions, doing everything they were supposed to do, without understanding it looked forward to Christ. When Jesus celebrated Passover with His disciples, He spelled it out for them.
The Old and New Covenants Were Inaugurated with Blood
Some important verses in Exodus 24 help us understand Jesus’s words at the Last Supper. This chapter contains the institution of the Old Covenant. The people agreed to the terms of the Old Covenant, and Moses instituted them. Let’s start with verse three for context:
Exodus 24:3 Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord and all the rules. And all the people answered with one voice and said, “All the words that the Lord has spoken we will do.” 4 And Moses wrote down all the words of the Lord. He rose early in the morning and built an altar at the foot of the mountain, and twelve pillars, according to the twelve tribes of Israel. 5 And he sent young men of the people of Israel, who offered burnt offerings and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen to the Lord.
Moses told the people everything the covenant entailed, and they agreed to it, so it looked like it was ratified. But there’s still one more important step. Notice the emphasis on blood:
Exodus 24:6 And Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins, and half of the blood he threw against the altar. 7 Then he took the Book of the Covenant and read it in the hearing of the people. And they said, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient.” 8 And Moses took the blood and threw it on the people and said, “Behold the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.”
The word blood occurs four times in three verses. Now the covenant is ratified. Hebrews connects this blood-sprinkling ceremony with the inauguration of the first covenant:
Hebrews 9:18 Not even the first covenant was inaugurated without blood.
The Old Covenant was inaugurated with animal blood; the New Covenant rests on Christ’s own sacrifice. God instituted a New Covenant because we couldn’t keep the old one. God could have condemned us to hell for eternity for failing to keep His law perfectly, but instead, He graciously created the New Covenant that doesn’t rely on us but, instead, is about what He would do. Hence, all the “I will statements”:
- Jeremiah 31:31a I will make a new covenant…
- Jeremiah 31:33a This is the covenant that I will make…
- Jeremiah 31:33b I will put my law within them…
- Jeremiah 31:33c I will write it on their hearts…
- Jeremiah 31:33d I will be their God…
- Jeremiah 31:34a I will forgive their iniquity…
- Jeremiah 31:34b I will remember their sin no more.
What would be your main question if you lived in the Old Testament? “When do we get to live under this wonderful New Covenant?” Here’s the answer:
Luke 22:19 And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” 20 And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.”
Do you see the parallelism between Jesus’s words when He instituted the New Covenant and Moses’s words when he instituted the Old Covenant? Jesus said, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.” Exodus 24:8 says, “Moses took the blood and threw it on the people and said, ‘Behold the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.’” The Old Covenant was instituted with the blood of animals, but the New Covenant was instituted with the blood of Christ Himself.
Jesus Explained the Redemptive Purpose of His Death
Exodus 24:8 says Moses “took the blood and threw it on the people.” Sounds a little gross. I don’t think anyone wants blood thrown on them. But the people understood the reason behind this occurrence. Under the Old Covenant, they recognized that they needed to be covered by this blood to have the animal’s death atone for or cover their sins. It also anticipated that the blood of Christ would cover believers under the New Covenant:
- 1 John 1:7—But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.
- 1 Peter 1:18—knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.
Passover looked forward to Christ being our Passover lamb, and Moses’s actions instituting the Old Covenant looked forward to Jesus instituting the New Covenant with His blood. But the problem is that the disciples didn’t know there was this connection, or, let me say it like this, the disciples didn’t know Jesus would die for us as our Passover Lamb like the Passover lamb in the Old Testament.
Jesus spelled out the connection between Himself and the Passover lamb. He didn’t give the normal explanation of each food’s meaning. Instead, He reinterpreted them in Himself: He associated the bread with His body and the wine with His blood. The focus was no longer on Israel’s suffering in Egypt but on Jesus’s sin-bearing suffering on their behalf. It’s like Jesus said, “You have been celebrating Passover every year consuming the lamb’s body, but I am the true and greater Passover Lamb that you must consume spiritually.”
D. A Carson wrote, “The words ‘this is my body’ had no place in the Passover ritual; and as an innovation, they must have had a stunning effect [on the disciples], an effect that would grow with the increased understanding gained after [the resurrection].” In other words, this would have been a shocking moment for the disciples and one that wouldn’t make sense until after the Resurrection.
What did the disciples expect at the Last Supper? They expected a Passover like the previous Passovers they celebrated with Christ and their families before Him. They expected to go through the motions like they always had. What did they not expect? They didn’t expect Jesus to compare the bread with His body and the wine with His blood.
We are so familiar with Jesus’s words that we casually read them and assume the disciples understood them. We picture them nodding spiritually in agreement. But I don’t think that was the case. I’m sure they were very confused. They didn’t think Jesus would die. Just using Luke’s gospel, Jesus predicted His death three times, and there’s no indication why Jesus would die:
Luke 9:22 [Jesus said], “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”
Luke 9:43b Jesus said, 44 “Let these words sink into your ears: The Son of Man is about to be delivered into the hands of men.”
Luke 18:31 [Jesus] said, “We are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished. 32 For he will be delivered over to the Gentiles and will be mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon. 33 And after flogging him, they will kill him, and on the third day he will rise.”
These predictions announced Jesus’s coming death and resurrection. At the Last Supper, He connected the bread and cup with His sacrifice for others. He had already taught that He came to give His life as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45); now this meal vividly expressed the redemptive purpose of His death.
At this meal, Jesus helps the disciples understand that His death is redemptive rather than simply a political disaster. In doing so, He makes the Gospel clear to them. Take your mind back to the Garden of Eden. God told Adam and Eve that if they sinned, they would die. They sinned, died spiritually, started dying physically, and would have died eternally separated from God if He didn’t intervene. God saved them from sin and death by killing an animal, probably a lamb, in their place as their substitute. Then He covered them with the sacrificed animal’s skin. It established, once and for all that our sin requires the death of an innocent substitute to cover us so that we can have fellowship with God.
And God did something else in the Garden: He promised our first parents that He would send someone into the human race to be our one final sacrifice and substitute who would crush the head of the serpent. When John the Baptist introduced Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the world’s sin, it fulfilled God’s promise in the Garden. When Jesus died on the Cross, it was as the promised substitute. Every lamb from Adam to Moses for about twenty-five hundred years and every Passover lamb from Moses to John the Baptist for about fifteen hundred years pointed to Jesus as the final sacrifice for sin.
Communion Encourages Us to Look Back to Christ’s Work on the Cross
Consider how beautifully the Passover celebration transitions into the communion celebration. Passover celebrated the sacrificed lamb delivering the Israelites from their enemies, the Egyptians, like communion celebrates Christ, our Passover Lamb, delivering us from our enemies: sin and death. Passover is how the Israelites remembered what God did for them, like communion is how we remember what Jesus did for us: “Do this in remembrance of Me.” As we eat the bread, we remember Jesus’s body was broken, pierced, and beaten with stripes for our redemption, and as we drink the cup, we remember Jesus’s blood was poured out for us.
There are two themes: the death of the Passover Lamb, and the deliverance of the Hebrew people. And these two themes are mutually exclusive: if you die, you weren’t delivered, and if you were delivered, you didn’t die. If there is a fire in a building and firemen rescued you, you were delivered from the fire. If you have a disease that takes your life, you weren’t delivered from the disease. Passover combines these seemingly contradictory elements, but in doing so, Passover powerfully looks forward to Christ: He died, but His death delivered us. At the Transfiguration:
Luke 9:30 And behold, two men were talking with him (referring to Jesus), Moses and Elijah, 31 who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.
Most Bibles have a footnote that the word departure or the NKJV and KJV say decease, means exodus. The Greek word for departure in verse 31 is exodus. We know the word Exodus refers to an exit. The second book of our Bible is called Exodus because the Hebrews exited or departed from Egypt. At the Transfiguration, Moses and Elijah talked to Jesus about His departure, or Exodus, from this world when He died.
Passover looked back on Israel’s exodus or departure from Egypt, and Jesus’s death, or departure from this world, looks forward to our exodus from this world to heaven. And shouldn’t going to heaven be the true and greater Exodus for us? When the Hebrews left Egypt, they died later. That’s not much deliverance. But Jesus provides us with the true and greater exodus from this world to heaven, where we experience deliverance from sin and death.
Communion Encourages Us to Look Inwardly at Ourselves
1 Corinthians 11:27 Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. 28 Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. 29 For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. 30 That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died.
Some believers were partaking in an unworthy manner and were disciplined with sickness or even death. Partaking in an unworthy manner is a serious offense, so let’s discuss what it means to do so. It could mean not thinking highly enough of Christ’s sacrifice, partaking with unconfessed or unrepentant sin, allowing the celebration to become a dead and formal ritual, or any combination of all three.
Paul says the solution is for believers to “examine themselves” before partaking. Partaking worthily means thinking highly of Christ’s sacrifice, confessing any unrepentant sin, ensuring we aren’t just going through the motions.
When Should Children Partake in Communion?
Because communion and baptism are the church’s ordinances, some churches hold that only church elders should administer them. In these churches, only elders perform baptisms and administer communion. At WCC, we place more responsibility on fathers as the heads of their households. Fathers decide when their children should be baptized and receive communion, and there seem to be two approaches. The Bible doesn’t present baptism as a requirement for communion, so some parents let their children take communion when they believe their children are Christians, even if they aren’t baptized yet. Other parents require their children to be baptized before receiving communion because baptism is the public identifying mark of believers, and if you want to take communion, you should have publicly professed Christ.
My thoughts: The requirements for communion are higher than baptism, so if children can take communion, they should have already been baptized. There is only one requirement for baptism: salvation. There are three requirements for communion: salvation, examining yourself, and partaking worthily. We have records of people getting sick and dying when they partook of communion wrongly, but there are no accounts of people getting sick or dying when being baptized wrongly. If children are not yet ready to be baptized, which has lower requirements, it seems they shouldn’t take communion. Regardless of how you decide when your children should partake, if children partake in an unworthy manner, God could hold the parents, particularly the fathers, more responsible.
Communion Encourages Us to Look Forward to Christ’s Second Coming
Communion should encourage us to reflect on Christ’s first and second comings:
1 Corinthians 11:26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
Communion encourages us to look forward to Christ’s return! Consider these two things Jesus said right before He instituted communion. Look at Luke 22:16:
Luke 22:16 For I tell you I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.”
Luke 22:18 For I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.”
Twice Christ encourages us to look forward to His return. It’s important to be reminded of this because we tend to only look back to the cross.
Communion Encourages Us to Remember Christ Died “For You”
Do you ever feel insignificant to God because we are just another number? So many people have existed and been saved throughout history that it’s easy to believe we aren’t special. Fortunately, many wonderful places in Scripture discourage us from feeling this way. For example, the psalmist wrote…
Psalm 139:13 You formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb…15 My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. 16 Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.
This describes God knowing us intimately as He carefully created us inside our mother’s womb. This should make us feel special. God knows us personally. He has numbered our days, showing His sovereignty and care over our lives.
Another place that should help us feel special is Luke 15, which contains the parable of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son. Consider the verses that occur after the lost sheep and the lost coin are found:
Luke 15:7 Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance…10 Just so, I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
There’s joy in heaven, not just over the salvation of hundreds or thousands of people, but over one sinner who repents! If you ever start to feel like you’re one of millions of Christians, and – therefore – you’re not important to the Lord, turn to Luke 15 and see the joy He experienced when one sinner was saved…and consider that’s how He felt when you were saved!
But if I had to choose just one place that would make us feel special, I think it would be found in two beautiful words repeated twice: “for you.”
Luke 22:19b “This is my body, which is given for you…” 20 “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.”
The phrase “for you” is incredible. Christ repeats it both times to ensure we don’t miss it. His body and his blood were sacrificed “for you.” Yes, Jesus died for many, but it’s also true to think very personally that He died: “for you” and me. We are not just numbers to Christ. We are not one of millions lost in the large crowd of all redeemed humanity. Instead, Christ loved you and me enough that He was willing to have His body broken and His blood shed for each of us.
