the Third Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
Grace for Today
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
The Lord’s Supper
Read Matthew 26:1-29
These verses of inspiration tell us several things about the Lord’s Supper. It is a symbolic remembrance of Christ. Just as the Jewish Passover symbolically portrayed the deliverance of Israel from Egypt, the Lord’s Supper symbolically reminds the children of God of our salvation and redemption by the righteous life and sacrificial death of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The elements to be used in observing the Lord’s Supper are wine and unleavened bread. It is not proper to use grape juice or fizzy drinks. To use those things is to make a mockery of the ordinance. We use wine, because wine was used by our Lord when he instituted the Supper. Being fermented, all impurities are removed from the wine. Therefore it is a suitable representative of our Lord’s precious blood, by which we are redeemed. As the wine was crushed from the grape in the winepress, so the blood of Christ poured out of his body when he was crushed in death as our Substitute in the winepress of divine justice. The unleavened bread represents the spotless humanity of Christ, his sinless body, which was sacrificed for us. The unleavened bread has no impurities in it, even as our Lord was without sin. As a man he lived in perfect righteousness for us. Only wine and unleavened bread can be used in the observance of the Lord’s Supper, because this is the way it was done in the New Testament, and only wine and unleavened bread can truly represent the body and blood of Christ.
And the Lord’s Supper is to be observed often by all true believers. No unbeliever is permitted to receive the Lord’s Supper, because the unbeliever does not discern the Lord’s body. But no believer is to be refused admittance to the Lord’s Table. This is not an ordinance to be guarded by the local church. It is the Lord’s Table, open to all the Lord’s children, just as it was in the New Testament (Acts 20:1-7). We who believe are worthy to come to the Lord’s Supper, because we are in Christ. In him we are worthy. And we are commanded to come often. Not to come would be disobedience to our Savior.
