The Lord's Supper

Authority, meaning, and apostolic practice of the New Testament memorial meal

Jesus established the Lord's Supper as a continuing memorial of His death, which His church must keep when it assembles on the first day of the week, until He returns.

Jesus possesses all authority over His disciples.

The standard this chart reasons from. Each step rests on what the text of Scripture says, or on an inference from it, and the inferences are labeled as inferences. Catholic and Orthodox readers also hold the Church's Tradition to be authoritative alongside Scripture, and on this subject — the change of the bread and wine, and the Mass as a sacrifice — much of their case rests there. Where their reading of a particular text is at stake, it is stated below in their own terms and answered from the text.

Christians are obligated to obey the commands of Christ and His authorized apostles.

On the night He was betrayed, while they were eating, Jesus took bread and a cup, gave thanks, and gave them to His disciples to eat and drink.

This step records only what was done. What Jesus said over the bread and the cup, and what those words mean, are the next steps.

Jesus identified the bread as His body given for His disciples and the cup as His blood of the New Covenant.

When Jesus spoke these words His body stood whole before the disciples and His blood was not yet shed, and the emblems were still called bread and the fruit of the vine.

Jesus handed the bread to men who were looking straight at His unbroken body, and gave the cup while His blood was still in Him — poured out was still ahead of Him, not on the table. Immediately after saying this is my blood, He called what was in the cup this fruit of the vine. Paul, writing to Corinth years later, still calls the emblem this bread and the bread every time he names it.

That is what the text says. What it proves is weighed in the next steps, because readers who believe the bread is changed have a reply to it (see the objections under representation).

Scripture regularly says that a sign is the thing it represents.

I am the door and I am the true vine are not claims about timber and grapevines, and Paul can write that the rock was Christ without meaning a stone in the wilderness turned into Christ. This is my body can be that same ordinary way of speaking, said over an emblem Jesus was holding in His hand.

This shows the figurative reading is a natural one; it does not by itself show the literal reading is impossible. That judgment is the inference drawn in representation.

God forbade the eating of blood, and the apostles reaffirmed that prohibition for Gentile believers.

The Jerusalem letter was addressed unto the brethren who are of the Gentiles in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia, and James later restates its judgment for the Gentiles that have believed generally. Scripture does not say in so many words that those same readers were keeping the Supper, but nothing suggests the churches that received the letter were exceptions to it (an inference).

The point drawn from this is a supporting one, not a proof by itself: if the cup became blood in the plain sense, the apostles would be forbidding blood to people they were also giving it to.

Catholic and Orthodox readers answer that no one at the altar eats blood in the sense the law forbids: what remains to the senses is wine, and what is received is the living, glorified Christ, not the blood of a slain animal poured out on the ground. Jesus Himself said, 'Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, ye have not life in yourselves' (John 6:53).

That reply is fair against a crude version of this argument, and it is why this step is offered only as support. What remains is that Leviticus forbids blood because the life of the flesh is in the blood, and the transubstantiation view holds that what is received is, in substance, Christ's blood. The apostles gave no hint of tension between their letter and the cup — which fits more easily with the cup being a sign of the blood. How John 6 bears on the Supper is taken up under representation.

The bread and the cup represent Christ's body and blood; they do not become His literal flesh and blood.

This step is an inference from the four before it. The two words Scripture gives for what happens at the table are remembrance and proclaim. Both are the language of a sign pointing back to a finished event, not of the event recurring on the table. A memorial represents what it commemorates; it does not reproduce it.

Three main readings exist among Christians. Catholic teaching (and Orthodox teaching, which affirms a real change while generally declining to define its manner) holds that the bread and wine become Christ's body and blood. Lutherans confess that Christ's true body and blood are present with the bread and wine, without the bread ceasing to be bread. Reformed churches, following Calvin, teach that believers truly feed on Christ by the Holy Spirit as they eat the bread, which itself remains a sign. Many others hold a memorial view. This step denies only that the bread and cup turn into flesh and blood — a point Lutheran and Reformed readers also accept.

Jesus said plainly, 'This is my body' — He meant it literally.

He said it holding bread in His hands, with His body whole in front of the disciples and His blood still unshed; read literally, the sentence has Him holding His own body while standing there entire. And just after saying 'this is my blood' He called the contents of the cup 'this fruit of the vine.' The Catholic answer to this is the next objection.

In Catholic teaching the substance changes while the appearances of bread and wine remain, so of course Jesus and Paul go on calling it bread — that is what it still looks and tastes like. The Council of Trent, quoted in the Catechism of the Catholic Church §1376: "by the consecration of the bread and wine there takes place a change of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood. This change the holy Catholic Church has fittingly and properly called transubstantiation."

This is a real answer, and it should be granted that the word bread by itself cannot refute it: a change no one can see would leave the same appearances either way. The question then rests on what the text gives us. Scripture never distinguishes a substance from its appearances in speaking of the Supper; that distinction is drawn from philosophy and from the Church's tradition, not from the passages. So the case turns back on how This is my body is to be read — and the text's own words for the act, remembrance and proclaim, together with Scripture's ordinary habit of saying a sign is what it signifies, make the figurative reading the more natural one. That is a judgment about the most natural reading, not a demonstration.

Lutheran and Reformed Christians object that 'represent' says too little: Christ is truly present at the Supper — bodily (Lutheran) or by the Spirit (Reformed) — not merely remembered.

Scripture does call the cup and the bread a communion of the blood of Christ and a communion of the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 10:16), so the Supper is more than a bare reminder (see fellowship). What the texts do not spell out is the manner of that communion, and on that Christians who share this chart's standard of Scripture alone have long disagreed. This step claims only what all three of those positions outside Rome agree on: the bread does not cease to be bread.

John 6 requires eating Christ's flesh and drinking His blood: 'Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, ye have not life in yourselves' (6:53).

That discourse was spoken in Galilee about a year before the Supper was instituted — the passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand (6:4), a full Passover earlier — to a crowd chasing loaves, and it does not mention bread and cup as a rite. Many Catholic, Orthodox and Lutheran readers take it as pointing ahead to the Supper; others take it as speaking of believing in Christ. Jesus gives a key in the same conversation: 'It is the spirit that giveth life; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I have spoken unto you are spirit, and are life' (6:63).

Then it is 'only a symbol,' and nothing of consequence happens.

Representation is not triviality. Paul calls the cup and the bread a communion of the blood and body of Christ, and warns that eating unworthily makes a man guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord. The emblems carry Christ's own appointment and meaning; denying a change of substance takes nothing from the weight of the memorial.

The Lord's Supper is a covenant memorial grounded in Christ's sacrificial death.

The Supper memorializes a sacrifice already finished; the church does not offer it again.

Hebrews makes repetition the mark of the old sacrifices and finality the mark of Christ's. He offered Himself once, sat down, and by that one offering perfected forever them that are sanctified; where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin. Paul says the church at the table proclaims His death — announcing a completed offering. The sacrifices Hebrews tells the church to offer are praise and doing good.

Note what this does and does not answer. Catholic and Orthodox teaching agrees that Christ's sacrifice is not repeated; the disagreement is over whether it is made present and offered in the Supper (see the objections).

The Mass does not repeat Calvary; it re-presents the one sacrifice. In the words of the Catechism of the Catholic Church: "The Eucharist is thus a sacrifice because it re-presents (makes present) the sacrifice of the cross, because it is its memorial and because it applies its fruit" (§1366), and "The sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice of the Eucharist are one single sacrifice" (§1367).

Stated that way, the objection is not answered merely by 'once for all,' since it agrees Calvary is not repeated. The issue is whether Christ is now offered. Hebrews ties offering and suffering together — 'nor yet that he should offer himself often … else must he often have suffered' (9:25-26) — and contrasts priests who stand daily offering with Christ who, having offered once, sat down (10:11-12). It then says that where there is remission 'there is no more offering for sin' (10:18). The text gives the church a memorial to keep and a death to proclaim; it nowhere describes the church, or its ministers, offering Christ. A sacrifice made present without being offered again is an inference from Tradition rather than something these passages say.

'We have an altar, whereof they have no right to eat that serve the tabernacle' (Hebrews 13:10). An altar from which Christians eat must be the Lord's table.

That is how many Catholic and Orthodox readers, and some others, take it. The surrounding verses point another way: the writer contrasts the heart being 'established by grace; not by meats,' then explains the altar by the sin-offerings burned 'without the camp,' and says 'Jesus also … suffered without the gate' (13:9-12). On that reading the altar is Christ's sacrifice itself, from which believers 'eat' by sharing in it. The verse does not name the Supper, so either identification is an inference; this chart takes the one the context explains.

Paul sets the Lord's table beside Israel's altar and the pagan sacrifices: 'have not they that eat the sacrifices communion with the altar? … ye cannot partake of the table of the Lord, and of the table of demons' (1 Corinthians 10:18-21). The parallel only works if the Supper is itself sacrificial.

The parallel does make the Supper a sharing in a sacrifice: those who eat have communion with what the altar stands for, as believers at the table have communion with Christ's body and blood. What Paul's comparison concerns is the eating and the fellowship it creates, not anyone offering at the table; and the word he uses for the Lord's side is table. The Supper is a communion in Christ's one sacrifice — which this chart affirms — not a further offering of it.

Malachi foretold that among the Gentiles 'in every place incense shall be offered unto my name, and a pure offering' (1:11), and early Christians applied that to the Supper.

Early writers did — the Didache (ch. 14) quotes it of the Sunday breaking of bread (history, not Scripture; see weekly-pattern). Malachi itself does not name the Supper, and when the New Testament speaks of the offerings Christians bring, it names praise, doing good, and their own bodies as 'a living sacrifice' (Hebrews 13:15-16; Romans 12:1).

Jesus commanded His disciples to continue this practice in remembrance of Him.

The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) and The Salvation Army do not keep an outward Supper. Friends hold that the true communion is the inward feeding on Christ — 'the words that I have spoken unto you are spirit, and are life' (John 6:63) — and that outward rites belong to the shadows Christ fulfilled: 'Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink … which are a shadow of the things to come; but the body is Christ’s' (Colossians 2:16-17). The Salvation Army holds that no outward rite is necessary to receive God's grace, and puts its weight on the inward reality the rite points to.

The inward communion they stress is real, and Paul names it: the bread is a communion of the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 10:16). But Paul ties that communion to the bread which we break. He delivered the outward act — bread and cup, eaten when the church came together — to a Gentile church years after the upper room, as something 'received of the Lord,' and said that 'as often as ye eat this bread, and drink the cup, ye proclaim the Lord’s death till he come.' Colossians 2 speaks of the feasts, new moons and sabbaths of the law, not of an act Christ appointed for His own disciples. Whether keeping it is necessary to grace is a separate question from whether it was commanded.

Paul delivered the Lord's Supper to the Corinthian church as something received from the Lord.

The apostolic churches kept the Lord's Supper as an ongoing practice delivered to them, not a single remembrance.

Paul praises the Corinthians for holding fast the traditions, even as I delivered them to you, and among the things he delivered is the Supper. His words as often as ye eat this bread assume they ate it repeatedly.

The Lord's Supper remembers Christ's sacrifice, proclaims His death, and anticipates His return.

The Lord's Supper is to continue until Christ returns.

Some ultra-dispensationalists (following E. W. Bullinger and others) hold that the Supper belonged to the Acts-period ministry centered on Israel and is not for the church revealed in Paul's later prison letters, which never mention it. Some full preterists hold that 'till he come' was fulfilled when Christ came in judgment in A.D. 70, so the Supper ended then.

Paul gave the Supper to a largely Gentile church, as what he had 'received of the Lord,' not as a practice for Israel; and the silence of Ephesians, Philippians and Colossians is an argument from silence — those letters do not mention many things Paul taught elsewhere. In 1 Corinthians the coming the church waits for is the one at which the dead are raised: 'Christ the firstfruits; then they that are Christ’s, at his coming' (15:23; compare 1:7). Reading 'till he come' as that coming is itself an interpretation, but it is the one Paul's letter supplies.

The bread and cup represent participation in Christ and unity within His body.

'A communion of the body of Christ' means the bread has become the body.

Paul's own parallel in the next breath is Israel eating the sacrifices and having communion with the altar — the altar did not become the meat. Communion here is shared participation in what the emblem represents, and Paul still calls it 'the bread which we break.'

Each one is to prove himself and eat in a worthy manner; Paul warns of judgment on whoever eats and drinks 'if he discern not the body.'

Only spiritually perfect Christians may partake.

Paul requires self-examination and reverence, not sinless perfection.

'If he discern not the body' means failing to recognize Christ's literal body in the bread.

Readers differ on what the body means here. Catholic and Orthodox readers take it as Christ's body present in the bread; many Protestant readers take it as the body Paul has just named — 'we, who are many, are one bread, one body' (10:17) — since the failure he is correcting is shaming the poor and making the Lord's supper one's own supper (11:21-22). Either way, Paul goes on calling what is eaten 'the bread' in the same sentence, and the text does not say whether discerning is about a change of substance.

Paul rebukes the Corinthians for making the gathering each one's own supper, and sets the Lord's supper apart from eating to satisfy hunger.

The Supper was first given within a meal — the cup came after supper (11:25) — and the Corinthians seem to have eaten it with one (an inference from 11:21). Paul does not condemn eating together as such. What he condemns is that each one taketh before other his own supper; and one is hungry, and another is drunken, shaming them that have not. His remedy: wait one for another, and if any man is hungry, let him eat at home.

Some churches hold that the Supper should be kept as a full fellowship meal (an agape or love feast), as it was at its institution and apparently at Corinth.

The institution did take place at a meal, and Paul does not forbid one. But he separates the Lord's supper from satisfying hunger — that belongs at home — and makes the bread and the cup, not the meal, the things that proclaim the Lord's death. Whether a shared meal should accompany the Supper is a question the text leaves open; that the bread and cup are not simply part of an ordinary meal it does not.

What the apostles taught and practiced in the churches binds the church, whether given in words or shown by example.

Paul tells the Philippians to do what they heard and saw in him, not only what they heard; he sends Timothy to remind the Corinthians of my ways which are in Christ, even as I teach everywhere in every church; and he tells the Thessalonians to hold the traditions they were taught whether by word, or by epistle. An apostle's practice in the churches is part of what was delivered.

An example is not a command. Many things the apostles did — traveling by ship, meeting in upper rooms, greeting with a kiss — are not binding, so an example alone cannot bind.

Not every circumstance of an apostle's life is a pattern; what binds is what was done as the church's worship and delivered to the churches. Breaking bread is such a practice: Paul delivered it as received of the Lord (1 Corinthians 11:23), and the Troas gathering is described as gathering to break bread. The ship and the upper room were where the church met; the Supper was why it met.

The apostolic churches broke bread as a regular part of their assembling, and the one such gathering Scripture dates was on the first day of the week.

What the text says explicitly: the first church continued stedfastly … in the breaking of bread (Acts 2:42); at Corinth the Supper was eaten when ye assemble yourselves together and when ye come together to eat (1 Corinthians 11:20, 33); and at Troas upon the first day of the week … we were gathered together to break bread (Acts 20:7), after Paul had tarried seven days there (20:6).

What it does not record: no gathering of the church to break bread on any other day.

The first day of the week is the day the apostolic church gathered to break bread, and the church must keep the Supper on that day.

This rests on apostolic example, not a stated command. Luke names breaking bread as the purpose of the Troas gathering, and it fell on the first day even though Paul had been there all week (Acts 20:6-7) — he waited for it. Paul elsewhere fixes the first day of the week as the regular day for the Corinthians' giving (1 Corinthians 16:2) — a passage about the collection, not the Supper, but one that shows the first day was already a recurring day in the churches' life. The first day is the one day Scripture ties to the church gathering to break bread, and an apostolic practice in the church's worship binds (apostolic-example). Other days are not forbidden; the first day is not optional.

Outside Scripture (history, not authority): the earliest Christian writings after the New Testament read the practice the same way. The Didache (ch. 14, usually dated late first or early second century): "But every Lord's day gather yourselves together, and break bread, and give thanksgiving after having confessed your transgressions, that your sacrifice may be pure." Justin Martyr, First Apology 67 (c. 150): "But Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common assembly." These show how early churches understood the apostles; the same writers' use of the word sacrifice is the background to the objections under once-for-all.

Acts 20:7 records one gathering at one city; it does not say 'every first day,' so it cannot set a pattern.

Luke records one gathering and does not say every — but it is the only gathering of the church to break bread that Scripture dates, and an apostle was present. The gathering is described as being to break bread; Paul stayed seven days and the church met for it on the first; the Corinthians assembled to eat the Supper; and 1 Corinthians 16:2 shows the first day as the churches' recurring day. Scripture gives the church no other day to point to. Those who hold the day is left free are reading the same texts, but they have no example to set against this one.

Acts 2:46 says 'day by day … breaking bread at home,' so the first church broke bread daily, not weekly. Catholic and Orthodox churches celebrate daily, and many Protestant churches monthly or quarterly, since Paul's 'as often as' sets no frequency.

Acts 2:46 does say day by day, and that should be granted. Whether breaking bread at home there means the Supper or shared meals is debated — the same verse goes on, they took their food with gladness — while 2:42 lists the breaking of bread alongside the prayers as a devotion of the church. Paul's as often as indeed names no frequency. So the text does not forbid observing it on other days; what it supplies is the first day as the one day tied to the church gathering to break bread, and that day the church may not pass over.

Christians must keep the Lord's Supper in remembrance of Christ's death, eating it together when the church assembles on the first day of the week, until He returns.

More illuminations · Harbinger's Lamp