The Gospel Made Visible

The good news of Christ in the bread and the cup.

Photo by Rey Proenza on Unsplash

Whether you call it Communion, the Lord’s Table, Holy Communion, or the Eucharist, the Lord’s Supper (as I prefer to call it) remains one of the most significant elements in the worship and life of Christ’s church. If the apostle Paul time-traveled to 2025, there would be much that goes on in churches that he would deem unrecognizable, unfamiliar, and even unthinkable. But even if we visited some past age of the church, we would feel out of place, too, except when it comes to three aspects that make a church “a church” — namely, preaching, baptism, and communion. Despite all the ministries or programs with which churches get enamored, many of them profitable in their own right, what tethers the church of today to the church of the past is nothing more or less than:

• Proclaiming the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth as the only hope of salvation in the assembly of God’s people through preaching;

• Participating in the power of Jesus’s death and resurrection as those who believe are immersed in the waters of baptism;

• And portraying the unending relevance of Jesus’s death and resurrection by partaking in the elements of communion.

No matter what you call your church or what its polity looks like, as long as there is the preaching of the Word, the baptism of the saints, and the regular observance of communion, the church of Christ is there. When those components are present, you can be sure you have found the church. I point this out primarily because while the Lord’s Supper is a traditional “ordinance” or “ceremony” in the liturgical life of a church, it isn’t observed for the mere sake of “historical convention” or keeping traditions alive. Communion isn’t an agreed-upon holdover of “traditionalism.” Rather, it is an unending and ongoing source of faith for the people of God. It is a moment when God’s promise and presence are made palpable, tangible, and visible. “There is no time,” H. A. Ironside says, “when Christ’s presence is so definitely realized and so distinctly felt as when remembering Him in the breaking of bread.”¹

1. The Divine Command Behind Communion

According to the apostle Paul, it was Jesus himself who commanded his followers to “do this” repeatedly (1 Cor. 11:24–25). Although his words are reminiscent of Luke 22, Paul didn’t plagiarize the Gospels when he wrote his epistle. Actually, he maintains that the Lord revealed every detail of that first communion service to him so that he might “deliver” the good news preserved for all in the meal he shared on the eve of his crucifixion. Christ put him into possession of the true understanding of the gospel (Gal. 1:11–12), which, of course, included the particulars of Christ’s table, too. The way in which Paul discerns and digests the Lord’s Supper, therefore, is not only divinely revealed but also authoritative. Accordingly, the apostle’s explanation gives us the best way to make sense of what Jesus meant when he broke the bread and passed the cup with his apostles on “the night when he was betrayed” (1 Cor. 11:23).

The Lord’s Table has long been the locus of much ecclesiastical dissension, with arguments ranging from how frequently we ought to observe it to whether we should use wine or juice, to whether the bread and the cup actually become the body and blood of Jesus Christ. As a lifelong Baptist, however, that means I believe the Lord used Welch’s, not wine. Of course, I jest. Wherever you land in the debates between Luther and Zwingli or transubstantiation versus consubstantiation, the only thing these debates ultimately accomplish is helping those in the church miss the point. In many ways, this is what was happening at Corinth, which is what prompted Paul to write his epistle and clear the air concerning the Lord’s Table, what it means, and how it should be observed.

2. When Communion Gets Corrupted

Out of all the churches that Paul ministered to or wrote letters to, we know the most about Corinth, seeing as we have two of the four epistles he sent to them, both of which contain some of the most personal and powerful statements regarding the church in the entire New Testament. In many ways, 1 and 2 Corinthians show us Paul both at his most loving and most frustrated. He refers to the Corinthians as his “brothers” and “those sanctified in Christ Jesus” (1 Cor. 1:2), which is more than a little ironic since this was the same congregation that was riddled with so many scandals, not even the Kardashians could keep up. From disunity to lawsuits to theological and philosophical divisions to arguments about food to allowing a man to carry on living with his father’s wife, this whole congregation was one big soap opera. But if the sinners in Corinth could still be called saints, then, to be sure, no sinner was bereft of hope.

Interestingly enough, of all the problems Paul addresses, he’s at his most agitated when he confronts what they had done with the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor. 11:17–22). With behavior that Paul calls eating or drinking “in an unworthy manner” (1 Cor. 11:27), the Corinthians showed how carelessly and thoughtlessly the liturgy of the table had become for them. They took what Christ instituted and perverted it, turning the whole ceremony into a tragic show full of segregation and self-indulgence. Some were using this meal for their own gluttonous and drunken pleasure, while others weren’t eating at all. Things had devolved so egregiously that Paul says it was actually worse for them when they came together for worship, not better (1 Cor. 11:17). This was a far cry from the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor. 11:20). Indeed, this was not at all what they had “received” from Paul, who pauses to remind them what he had told them previously.

3. Bread, Cup, and Covenant

For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. (1 Cor. 11:23–26)

This constitutes the first account of the first Lord’s Supper in print, as he transports his parishioners to the evening prior to the Lord’s passion when he broke bread and passed the cup with his apostles. There was so much about that night that was so ordinary. Most of the Twelve had celebrated the Passover before, as had Jesus. But something different was percolating that particular night. After a busy week with a flurrying schedule of interactions and preparations, the Lord took the loaf and spoke a new word of blessing over it, applying that bread to his own body (1 Cor. 11:24; cf. Matt. 26:26; Mark 14:22; Luke 22:19). He is, of course, the true and better Bread of Life.

• Just as God sent bread from heaven to feed the Israelites in the wilderness, so, too, had he been sent from heaven to nourish and save the world.

• And just as the bread is “broken into pieces” (klaō, 1 Cor. 11:24) so that all may partake, so, too, is the body of the Lord broken in death for us.

Similarly, he takes the cup and applies a new word of promise to it, suffusing it with the certain hope of remission of sins. While cups of wine in the Passover were meant to correspond to God’s promises of redemption and deliverance yet to be fulfilled, Jesus’s words suggest that these promises are complete in him (1 Cor. 11:25; cf. Matt. 26:27–28; Mark 14:23–24; Luke 22:20). What was graphically depicted when Moses threw the blood of the covenant on the people was, at that moment, being recapitulated in him (Exod. 24:6–8). What was long foretold by the prophet Jeremiah was being realized in Christ on that very night (Jer. 31:31–34). There was no more waiting for this “new covenant” to come true. It was already true in him, just as it is still true today. Christ’s body and blood ratify the “new covenant” God makes with us, one that is made on the basis of faith alone, forgiving sinners and setting them free.

4. Unity at the Table

Consequently, when the Lord Jesus established the first communion with his disciples in the upper room, not only was he fulfilling the prophecy of the Passover event itself, but he was also laying the foundation by which his church might persist as “one body” (1 Cor. 10:16–17). At the heart of the perversion of the Lord’s Supper by the Corinthians was the rampant disunity it stoked among the ranks. The very meal that was meant to bring the church together was driving them apart. “The supper,” Craig R. Koester asserts, “presents the promise of belonging to God and to God’s people through Christ.”² H. A. Ironside puts it like this:

The Lord’s Supper was meant to appeal to the hearts of His people and so to remind them that in that very night when our blessed Saviour was to know to the fullest the untrustworthiness, the wickedness, the treachery, the perfidy of the human heart, He gave this feast in order that His people might have before them the continual expression of His loving heart in giving Himself for them . . . [It] is a continual reminder of the vicarious character of His death, and that is one reason why our blessed Lord is so desirous that it should be celebrated frequently.³

Communion, you see, is a time of “collective remembrance” of the means of our salvation. This, of course, isn’t the nostalgic remembrance of dead things long since gone. Rather, this is a “lively remembrance,” that is, a moment of active remembering of that which was accomplished on our behalf. “The Christian life,” notes Alexander Maclaren, “is not merely the remembrance of a historical Christ in the past, but it is the present participation in a living Christ, with us now.”⁴ Like the stones that were set up to commemorate the crossing of the Jordan (Josh. 4:6–7), the bread and cup are set up for us as a “memorial forever” of the body and blood, which are for us. “Christians,” James Moffatt attests, “are to repeat the feast in memory of the Lord, recalling him to mind as he spoke and acted at this sacred, momentous hour, and, as often as they did so, to celebrate it with vivid memories that passed into hope.”⁵

5. Proclaiming Christ Through the Meal

As we chew the bread and sip on the drink, we are made to remember what has been done. To use the apostle’s words, we are preaching to the world and ourselves the saving efficacy of the cross and the empty tomb (1 Cor. 11:26). “Every proper celebration of the Lord’s Supper,” R. C. H. Lenski comments, “is a proclamation of the Lord’s death.”⁶ The bread and the cup “proclaim” (katangellō) the crucifixion and resurrection of the Christ of God for us, for the forgiveness of sins. “In the Lord’s Supper,” Chad Bird says, “the church eats the body of the Lamb sacrificed on the cross for us, whose blood covers us to make us right in God’s eyes.”⁷ We are not invited to the table because we are worthy, but because he is. And through his person and work, we are welcome to stand in the infinite worth of the Incarnate Word.

Accordingly, when we “come together” (1 Cor. 11:17–18, 20) as the church of Christ, we are invited to remember that we gather only because of the body and blood of Christ alone. The church is not a social club or some activist group, nor do we assemble because we all have the same opinions, preferences, or standards. Rather, we “come together” because we have been redeemed by the same body and blood of the Lamb. Through the ordinary elements of bread and wine, we are shown that our salvation is a gift to be received, not a reward to be earned. “The Lord’s Supper,” James A. Nestingen and Gerhard O. Forde write, “is to be received [as] a sheer, absolute gift in which Christ lays himself open to us, filling us with his gifts.”⁸ “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good!” the psalmist declares (Ps. 34:8). At the Lord’s Table, you’re invited to taste and see for yourself.

1. H. A. Ironside, Addresses on the First Epistle to the Corinthians (Neptune, NJ: Loizeaux Bros., 1973), 349.

2. Craig R. Koester, “Promise and Warning: The Lord’s Supper in 1 Corinthians,” Word & World 17.1 (1997): 52.

3. Ironside, 346–47, 349.

4. Alexander Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture, Vols. 1–17 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1944), 13:2.174.

5. James Moffatt, The First Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians (New York: Harper & Bros., 1890), 169.

6. R. C. H. Lenski, The Interpretation of St. Paul’s First and Second Epistles to the Corinthians (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg, 1963), 474.

7. Chad Bird, Hitchhiking with Prophets: A Ride Through the Salvation Story of the Old Testament (Irvine, CA: 1517 Publishing, 2023), 52.

8. James A. Nestingen and Gerhard O. Forde, Free to Be: A Handbook to Luther’s Small Catechism (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing, 1975), 193.