THE MATERIAL ELEMENTS IN THE LORD'S SUPPER

By Gary Ray Branscome

It should be obvious that Christ wants us to affirm the truth of what He said when He instituted His Supper. And, it should also be obvious that we cannot be honest in our affirmation of what He said, and at the same time contradict what He said whenever the Lord’s Supper is offered. Because we want everyone who partakes of the Lord’s Supper to believe that Christ’s body was given for them (on the cross), and because we want everyone who partakes to believe that Christ’s blood was shed for them (on the cross), we want them to believe every word that Christ spoke as He gave out the bread and wine. And, after they partake we want them to believe that they have received Christ’s body and blood [i.e. His sacrifice] as the atonement for their sin. But, that is not what they are going to believe if they are being told that they did not really receive His body and blood. For that reason, we need to assure them that they have truly received Christ’s body and blood as the atonement for their sin.

However, we do not want to depart from Scripture in the other direction by claiming that the bread and wine change into Christ’s body and blood. As I have said, because Christ instituted His Supper during Passover, the bread and wine that He used would have been the same unleavened bread and Passover wine that all Jews used at that time. And, the words, “Whoever eats the bread, and drinks the cup of the Lord,” tell us that when we partake, what we eat and drink is bread and wine (1Corinthians 11:27). That means that whenever we partake of the Lord’s Supper in the way that Christ intended, we eat and drink bread and wine while truly receiving Christ’s body and blood, not as something physical but as the atonement for our sins.

Let’s Not Confuse The Issue

The following discourse by Christ is sometimes confused with the Lord’s Supper. “Jesus said to them, Truly, truly, I say unto you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh, and drinks my blood, has eternal life; and I will raise him up on the last day” (John 6:53-54). These verses are not describing the Lord’s Supper, because it had not yet been instituted when Christ made those statements. Furthermore, the grammar is different. In these verses, He calls His body “bread” (which is a metaphor), yet in the Lord's Supper He calls bread His “Body” (which is the opposite of a metaphor). In fact, calling bread His “body,” is the equivalent of saying, “that door is me” instead of saying “I am the door”. For that reason, we should never use John 6:51-59 as an explanation of the Lord’s Supper.

However, these verses do describe our faith in Christ as a spiritual eating and drinking. Through faith we partake of His sacrifice. And, that does take place when we partake of the Lord’s Supper.