These Scriptures are often quoted before administration of the “Lord’s Supper,” otherwise known as the “Eucharist” or “Communion”:
1 Corinthians 11:23-26 MKJV
(23) For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus in the night in which He was betrayed took bread;
(24) And giving thanks, He broke it and said, “Take, eat; this is My body, which is broken for you; this do in remembrance of Me.”
(25) In the same way He took the cup also, after supping, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood; as often as you drink it, do this in remembrance of Me.”
(26) For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you show the Lord’s death until He shall come.
Jesus was betrayed the day before the Passover was sacrificed. To understand what the apostle Paul was talking about and what the quoted words from the Lord mean, we first need to say more about this holy Feast day ordained by God and what it means today for those who believe.
As the Israelites were about to be led out of Egypt by Moses, the man sent by God 3,500 years ago to deliver the nation from their slavery, they were commanded to slay a lamb, and to daub the doorposts and lintels of their houses with its blood. In their believing and obeying, the Death Angel would pass over their dwelling, sparing all the firstborn therein. Not having this instruction, the Egyptians lost all their firstborn of man and beast.
This event sealed the deliverance by the Lord of His people from their Egyptian oppressors. Thereafter, each year at the appointed time, the Israelites would keep the Passover.
Not only would the Passover be a commemoration of what happened at that time; it would also be a solemn Feast signifying that which was to come. In the fullness of time, about fifteen centuries later, Jesus Christ, born a Jew of the tribe of Judah, without sin, the Son and Lamb of God, laid down His life as a sacrifice for the sins of all mankind. His death on the Roman cross at the insistence of the Jews would be the antitype or fulfillment of the Passover Feast.
So what was Paul instructing the believers to observe? Was it a ritual, or was it something else? The full context tells us:
1 Corinthians 11:18-34 MKJV
(18) For first of all, when you come together in the Church, I hear that there are divisions among you, and I partly believe it.
(19) For there must also be heresies among you, that the approved ones may be revealed among you.
(20) Therefore when you come together into one place, this is not to eat the Lord’s supper.
(21) For in eating each one takes his own supper first; and one is hungry, and another drunken.
(22) For do you not have houses in which to eat and drink? Or do you despise the Church of God, and shame those who do not have? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you for this? I do not praise you!
(23) For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus in the night in which he was betrayed took bread;
(24) And giving thanks, He broke it and said, “Take, eat; this is My body, which is broken for you; this do in remembrance of Me.”
(25) In the same way He took the cup also, after supping, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood; as often as you drink it, do this in remembrance of Me.”
(26) For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you show the Lord’s death until He shall come.
(27) So that whoever shall eat this bread and drink this cup of the Lord unworthily, he will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.
(28) But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread and drink of that cup.
(29) For he who eats and drinks unworthily eats and drinks condemnation to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body.
(30) For this cause many among you are weak and sickly, and many sleep.
(31) For if we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged.
(32) But when we are judged, we are chastened by the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world.
(33) So that, my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for one another.
(34) But if anyone hungers, let him eat at home, so that you do not come together to condemnation. And the rest I will set in order when I come.
Obviously Paul wasn’t writing about the annual keeping of the Passover as commanded in the Law of Moses, because he was speaking of whenever the believers came together to meet, a regular occurrence. He was saying the Corinthians weren’t gathering in the Spirit of Christ, but were behaving selfishly instead. In doing so, they weren’t eating the Lord’s flesh and blood, His body broken for them.
What or who is His body? Do not the Scriptures teach that those who are His, those who are born again from above, those who are saints, the true Jews, the true Christians, are His body, and members in particular (1 Corinthians 12; Romans 12)?
Paul warned the Corinthians that if they were not discerning the Lord’s body, partaking of it unworthily, that is, variously abusing brother and sister in Christ, disrespecting Christ in those in whom He dwells, they were eating and drinking judgment to themselves. Because of that judgment, he said, many were sick, and even dead.
Even when gathering together, they were forsaking the assembling of themselves together in Christ by despising Him in His brethren (Hebrews 10:25; 1 Corinthians 11:27-30). If we thus cut ourselves off, we cannot live, being disconnected from the Source of Life.
There is no life outside the commandment and will of God. And what did the Lord Jesus teach as God’s commandment and will, which He demonstrated at Passover by word and example?
“This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. You are My friends if you do whatever I command you” (John 15:12-14 MKJV).
The Corinthians were doing the opposite of what the Lord commanded and did for us by laying down His life, and Paul warned them and us about how we ought to conduct ourselves 24/7 as believers. It’s that simple, though the Lord must open our understanding and reveal these things to us. How complicated men have made things by their carnal minds and religious spirits!
Consider the great confusion concerning the Passover and what is commonly called “the Lord’s Supper.” Today, there are so many versions and ways of commemorating this event. Men have religiously endeavored to observe it partially according to their interpretation of the Lord’s words: “This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me” (Luke 22:19; for full accounts of this event, read Luke 22:1-20; Matthew 26:17-29; Mark 14:12-25; and John 13:1-30).
They have layered confusion on confusion. The ways of darkness are ever with confusion. Only with the truth can there be understanding, harmony, peace, and joy.
In the accounts of the Passover meal that Jesus shared with His disciples, there is no mention of a lamb, only bread and fruit of the vine. That’s because the lamb was scheduled, according the instructions in the Law of Moses, to be sacrificed the following afternoon, which is exactly what happened. Christ, the Lamb of God Himself, was slain at the time of the killing of the lamb, signifying that our sustenance was to be His body broken and blood shed for our sakes. This is the spiritual food that we must partake of to have life, which we do by taking up our cross by His Spirit and power.
When the Lord was crucified on the day of Passover, He fulfilled the Feast, becoming that precious event for believers ever after. Jesus Christ is our Passover! As it is written, “Therefore purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. For indeed Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us. Therefore let us keep the Feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” (1 Corinthians 5:7-8).
And when are children of faith not keeping the Feast, if keeping it means walking in sincerity and truth?
Today, the Catholic Church celebrates “Mass,” in which the priest gives bread and wine to the congregants, this being called the “Sacrament of Holy Communion.” The Anglican, Episcopalian, Lutheran, and other denominations do likewise. The Catholic Church also teaches the occultish doctrine of transubstantiation, claiming that the “elements,” that is, the bread and wine, are miraculously changed into the literal body and blood of Jesus Christ at the blessing and pronunciation of the priest. This is one of man’s versions of the “Lord’s Supper.”
But in Luke 22:19, Jesus was speaking figuratively, not literally. “I am the Bread of Life,” He was saying. He once told the disciples:
John 6:51-58 MKJV
(51) “I am the Living Bread which came down from Heaven. If anyone eats of this Bread, he shall live forever. And truly the bread that I will give is My flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”
(52) Then the Jews argued with one another, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”
(53) Then Jesus says to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His blood, you do not have life in yourselves.
(54) Whoever partakes of My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.
(55) For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed.
(56) He who partakes of My flesh and drinks My blood dwells in Me, and I in him.
(57) As the living Father has sent Me, and I live through the Father, so he who partakes of Me, even he shall live by Me.
(58) This is the Bread which came down from Heaven, not as your fathers ate the manna, and died; he who partakes of this Bread shall live forever.”
Just as water baptism in and of itself doesn’t wash away man’s sins, neither do we receive the Resurrection Life of the Lord Jesus simply by consuming bread and wine, no matter how many times and ways blessed by a priest or pastor, no matter what faith they put in miraculous intervention, no matter how much they think they please God in their error, while perishing for lack of knowledge.
Jesus was speaking of our partaking of Him, worshipping in spirit and in truth, believing on Him. He wasn’t teaching His disciples, or us, to be partaking in literal ceremony or ritual. He said furthermore, after the words above, “Does this offend you? What then if you should see the Son of Man ascend where He was before? It is the Spirit Who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life” (John 6:61-63).
If we interpret the partaking of the Lord’s body and, thus, the “Lord’s Supper” literally, we begin to wade into a quagmire of foolishness and contradictions to which there is neither bottom nor end. Indeed, we could conceivably descend into the very pit of cannibalism. The early church was accused of cannibalism, when the heathen heard the figurative language used and interpreted it literally, as only the carnal mind does.
The Catholic Church holds their version of the “Lord’s Supper” as often as they celebrate Mass – everyday and even more than once a day, if possible, or every week on Sundays, or any other day, if necessary.
Are we compelled to keep these pagan-styled, superstitious ordinances, as the Catholic Church interprets the Lord’s words, lest we perish? The Catholic Church declares so.
But what of the “Protestants”? They aren’t such great protesters as one might think. They follow the injunction of the Catholic Church to keep Sunday, which Constantine decreed, rather than the Sabbath (the seventh day which God ordained). They also often baptize infants, celebrate Mass, wear clerical vestments and collars, build elaborate religious buildings called “churches,” hire ministers called “Reverends,” have a clerical hierarchy, propagate several doctrines of devils, and honor many of the abominations of the heathen.
Most nominal Christian denominations (Protestant and otherwise) believe in literally keeping the “Lord’s Supper.” Some keep it once a week, some once a month, some once a year, some as often as they feel like it.
Some believe it should be kept only with unleavened bread, others not. Some believe it should be kept only with unfermented grape juice, along with bread, while others use, and even insist upon, wine.
Some believe the bread should certainly be swallowed whole, without chewing, as do the Catholics, while others believe it can be chewed. Some believe it should be in convenient wafer style, while others believe that the participants should be sharing a whole loaf and “breaking bread.”
Some, like Southern Baptists, believe that only committed members, water baptized into the local congregation, should be allowed to participate, disallowing even those who belong to other member churches of their denomination.
Others, like the Alliance Church, go on the honor system, allowing anyone who professes faith in Jesus Christ to participate, no matter what denomination or proof of fruits.
It is “mass” confusion, pun intended. God is not author of this mass of mess.
The Protestant tradition of literally partaking of the bread and fruit of the vine, called the “Lord’s Supper,” in whatever form, is a carryover from the Church of Rome, an interpretation of the carnal mind seeking to glorify the flesh in the name of worshipping the Lord Jesus Christ. And the Roman Church got their ideas from the Mithraists, the sun worshipers. This isn’t at all what Jesus intended.
According to one writer, Lew White, in Fossilized Customs, the error of this ritual was present before Jesus’ day. The pagan Mithraists, worshipers of the sun, held wafers of bread up to the sun to receive its “life-giving” rays. The bread was believed to be transformed and, using the Catholic term, was “transubstantiated” into the actual presence of the sun. By eating that bread, the partakers would possess the powers of the sun deity. This pagan ritual was far more similar to the Catholic Mass than to the event described in the Gospels wherein Jesus had His last supper with the disciples and broke bread with them indoors.
The last time I kept the physical ordinance of the “Lord’s Supper” was in 1977. I was told by evangelicals, as well as Catholics, that I would perish spiritually if I didn’t observe this ordinance or sacrament. This is nothing other than superstition, a dependence on carnal ordinances and fleshly virtue, so contrary to the Lord’s words:
“It is the Spirit that makes alive, the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit and are life” (John 6:63 MKJV).
Here I am now, alive and well, loving the Lord with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength. I haven’t perished after nearly 40 years. Why not? Because I’ve been eating His flesh and drinking His blood:
“For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. He who partakes of My flesh and drinks My blood dwells in Me, and I in him. As the living Father has sent Me, and I live through the Father, so he who partakes of Me, even he shall live by Me” (John 6:55-57 MKJV).
The Lord has been with me, and has blessed my house and all those who believe with me, though, I confess, they are few. But then, the walk with God isn’t about numbers; it never was. There were always few who believed and took up the cross. There were few in Noah’s day, and the Lord said this day would be similar:
“But as the days of Noah were, so shall be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in the days before the Flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered into the Ark. And they did not know until the Flood came and took them all away. So also will be the coming of the Son of Man” (Matthew 24:37-39 MKJV).
Noah and his family may not have been regularly eating bread and drinking wine in the Name of the Lord, but they had saving faith by partaking in His flesh and blood. They believed! So it was with Abraham, the father of our faith, who saw His day and was glad. So it was with all the fathers of faith, saints, and prophets.
We rejoice that, as we’ve been partaking of the body and the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, we’ve been delivered from the feasts of the heathen, such as Christmas, Easter, Valentine’s, Halloween, May Day, New Year’s, Thanksgiving, birthday celebrations, and anniversaries.
We’ve been given to know that the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ have been so efficacious as to ultimately save all mankind.
We’ve been granted wisdom in carnal matters, such as to deliver us from the delusions of those who think they can eat anything since the cross, contrary to Scripture, even ham at the supposed commemoration of His death. How gross and evil can man be?!
We’ve been delivered from the unscrupulous machinations of murderous merchandisers, the servants of the enemy, who pollute our food, air, soil, water, and society in every respect. Satan attacks man in spirit, soul, and body, unbeknownst to many who claim faith in Christ.
We’ve been delivered from the confusion, delusions, and religious and philosophical works of men, which destroy all who participate.
We’ve been blessed with the Rest of God, the Sabbath both without (the weekly day), and most importantly, within (in spirit).
We’ve been taught of God, Whom we have been, graciously and mercifully, given to worship in spirit and in truth.
Praise the Lord, Who does all things well! Bless His Holy Name! Yes, His Name is Yahweh, Yeshua HaMashiach, Elohim, and Jesus Christ. He is the God of the Hebrews, the God of the Bible, the Creator of all things, the One and Only Lord and Savior of all mankind. This is the One of Whom we speak.
In spirit and truth, we love the Lord Jesus Christ because He first loved us. For His sake, we’ve forsaken all things so that we might walk with Him, as one. We walk with Him, and are so thankful that we do. Our desire is that He be greatly pleased with us. Let it be His pleasure before ours, always.
Consider the alternative: What profit is there in the flesh? Don’t the Scriptures declare that flesh and blood can’t enter the Kingdom of Heaven? If you’re in Christ, walking in obedience by faith, you are indeed partaking of His flesh and blood. There is no further need of types and shadows, and never a call for fleshly pagan indulgences, which bind, confound, and corrupt.