THE FUNDAMENTAL SIGNIFICANCE OF
THE LORD'S SUPPER
Benjamin B. Warfield
The
most salient fact connected with the institution of the Lord's Supper is, of
course, that this took place at, or, to be more specific, in the midst of, the
Passover Meal. It was 'while they were eating" the Passover meal, that
Jesus, having taken up a loaf and blessed it, broke it and gave it to his
disciples (Matt. xxvi. 26; Mark xiv. 22). This was, assuredly, no accident. As
the time of his offering up drew near, the indications thicken of the most
extreme care on the part of our Lord in the ordering of every event: and these
indications are least of all lacking with respect to this Passover (Matt. xxvi.
2; Luke xxii. 8; Mark xiv. 13 if.; Luke xxii f.), which he himself tells us he
had earnestly desired to eat with his disciples before he suffered (Luke xxii.
15). We must certainly presume that all that our Lord did at this meal was in
execution of a thoroughly detailed plan of action, formed in the clear light of
the whole future (Luke xxii. 16,18, 30; John xiii. 1, 3, 11, 18, 19, 21, 27;
Matt. xxvi. 31; Luke xxii. 31, 37, etc.). Nothing can be more certain than that
he deliberately chose the Passover Meal for the institution of the sacrament of
his body and blood.
The
appropriateness of this selection becomes apparent the moment we consider the
similarities between the two ordinances. These lie in part upon the surface.
Both, for example. are feasts, religious feasts, religious feasts in which the
devotional life of Jews and Christians respectively to a large extent center.
They penetrate, however, also in part very much below the surface. The central
feature of both, for example, is eating a symbol of Jesus Christ himself. The
typical character of the Paschal lamb certainly cannot be doubted by any reader
of the New Testament (John i. 20, 19, 36; 1 Cor. V. 7; 1 Peter 1. 19; Rev. v.6,
12; vii. 14; xii. 11; xiii. 8 et passim):
the lamb that was slain and lay on the table at this feast was just the typical
representative of the Lamb that had been slain from the foundation of the world
and in whose hands is the Book of Life. The bread and wine of which we partake
at the Lord's table are in like manner, according to our Lord's precise
declarafion, the representations of his body and blood -- his body given, his
blood poured out for us What is done in the two feasts is therefore precisely
the same thing: Jesus Christ is symbolically fed upon in both. This close
similarity between the two feasts again certainly cannot be looked upon as
accidental. We must assuredly judge that our Lord, in instituting the Supper,
meant to make it to the full extent to which these similarities point, a
replica of the Passover. In this sense at least the Lord's Supper is the
Christian Passover Meal. It takes, and was intended to take, in the Christian
Church, the place which the Passover occupied in the Jewish Church. It is the
Christian substitute for the Passover.
Even
this, however, does not do full justice to the relation between the two. If in
the light of the broad facts suggested rather than recited in what has been
said, we seek to go back in imagination to that upper chamber, and to realize
exactly what Jesus did when he took the bread and wine and gave them to his
disciples to eat and drink in remembrance of him, we shall not fail to perceive
that it is almost as inadequate to say merely that the Lord's Supper was
instituted as the substitute for the Passover as to say merely that it was
instituted at the Passover. It is not something entirely different from the
Passover -- or even wholly separate from it -- now put into its place, to be
celebrated by Christians instead of it. It is much rather only a new form given
to the Passover, for the continuance of its essential substance through all
time. Precisely what our Lord appears to have done was so to change the symbols
which represented his sacrificed Person in the feast, as to adapt it to the new
conditions of the Kingdom as now introduced by him, and thus to perpetuate it
throughout the new dispensation. The lamb had hitherto been the symbol of the
great coming Sacrifice; but as they sat about the table and ate, Jesus solemnly
took up a loaf and breaking it gave it to his disciples and said: "Take,
eat: this is my body that is
given for you." Many thoughts, many feelings may have crowded in on his
disciples' minds as he spoke. There was much they may not have understood; much
which, half understanding, they may have half revolted from. But there was one
thing that, however dimly, they can scarcely have failed to catch a glimmering
of: their Master was identifying himself with the Paschal Lamb, and he was
appointing to them a new symbol in its stead. For was not that lamb what had
been given for them, the symbol and seal of their redemption? And was he not
speaking of himself as given for them, and appointing the bread and wine as the
symbols of himself? We may be sure there were searchings of heart that night as
to what these things might mean: gropings no doubt in the darkness: but not
gropings altogether without a clue or in a darkness unillumined by a single
beam.
The
reason why Christ made a change in the symbols representative of his sacrificed
self is obvious enough. He to whom all the Pasehal lambs from the beginning had
been pointing, was about to be offered up. The old things were passing away:
behold, all things were to become new. As he was in no doubt as to his
approaching death or rather as he was in the act of preparing for the death he
was himself to accomplish for sinners: so he was in no doubt as to the
approaching dissolution of the Jewish state, and the cessation of the ritual
law, and with it of the sacrifices which that law prescribed. But not only was
it appropriate that the new epoch in the
The
really palmary fact for the understanding of the Lord's Supper thus clearly
emerges. The Lord's Supper in its fundamental significance is just what the
Passover Meal was: the symbols are changed, the substance remains the same. It
is not necessary for our present purpose to determine the precise nature of the
Passover offering -- whether, for example, it was a special, or rather the culminating
instance of a sin-offering, differing from other sin-offerings only in the
adjunction to it of a sacrificial feast; or whether, just because of the
inclusion of this feast, it was, not technically a sin-offering at all, but
rather what is generally called a peace-offering. After all, the distinction is
merely a matter of distribution of emphasis. Every bloody offering was
piacular: and the peace-offering differed from the sin-offering only by the
adjunction of an additional conception. Whether we call it a peculiar and more
complete form of the sin-offering, or rather a peace-offering, therefore, the
two ideas of expiation and communion are alike inexpugnably imbedded in the
very substance of the Passover sacrifice. The meal which succeeded the sacrifice
in any case owed its significance to its relation to the sacrifice. The victim
offered was the material of the meal, and the idea of expiation was therefore
fundamental to it -- it was a feast of death. But, on the other hand, just
because it was a festive meal, it in any case also celebrated rather the
effects than the fact of this death -- it was a feast of life.
Further
than is obviously implied in this, it seems also unnecessary for us just now to
inquire into the precise meaning of a sacrificial feast. Its general law is
laid down by the Apostle Paul in the tenth chapter of First Corinthians: and
despite some difficulties that hang over the exact exposition of some of his
phrases, certain broad outlines are plain enough. Assuredly, for example, the
sacrificial feast is not a repetition of the sacrifice; and equally certainly
it is something more than a mere commemoration of the sacrifice: it is
specifically a part of the sadrifice, and more particularly this part -- the
application of it. Every one who partook of the sacrificial feast, had
"communion with the altar." All that may be implied in this we do not
stop now to discuss: this much it is allowed on all hands to imply -- those who
ate of the sacrificed victim became thereby participants in the benefits
attained by the sacrifice. Only one or two of the household, perchance, bore
the Paschal lamb to the Temple and were engaged in its sacrificial slaying: all
those who partook of the feast, however, were alike the offerers of the sacrifice
and its beneficiaries. This is the fundamental law of the sacrificial feast
perfectly understood by our Lord's first disciples, who had been bred under a
sacrificial dispensation and instinctively felt its implications, but needing
to be kept with some effort carefully in mind by us to whom these things are
strange and without natural significance.
Precisely
what our Lord did therefore, when at the last Passover he changed the symbols
by which he was represented -- he, the true Passover, the Lamb of God, that
takes away the sin of the world -- was to establish a perpetual sacrificial
feast, under universal forms, capable of observation everywhere and at all
times, and to command it to be celebrated as a proclamation of his death
"till he came." All who partake of this bread and wine, the appointed
symbols of his body and blood, therefore, are symbolically partaking of the
victim offered on the altar of the cross, and are by this act professing
themselves offerers of the sacrifice and seeking to become beneficiaries of it.
That is the fundamental significance of the Lord's Supper. Whenever the Lord's
Supper is spread before us we are invited to take our place at the sacrificial
feast, the substance of which is the flesh and blood of the victim which has been
sacrificed once for all at Calvary; and as we eat these in their symbols, we
are - certainly not repeating his sacrifice, nor yet prolonging it -- but
continuing that solemn festival upon it instituted by Christ, by which we
testify our "participation in the altar" and claim our part in the
benefits bought by the offering immolated on it. The sacrificial feast is not
the sacrifice, in the sense of the act of offering: it is, however, the
sacrifice, in the sense of the thing offered, that is eaten in it: and
therefore it is presuppositive of the sacrifice in the sense of the act of
offering and implies that this offering has already been performed. The Lord's
Supper as a sacrificial feast is accordingly not the sacrifice, that is, the
act of offering up Christ's body and blood: it is, however, the sacrifice, that
is the body and blood of Christ that were offered, which is eaten in it: and
therefore it is presuppositive of the sacrifice as an act of offering and
implies that this act has already been performed once for all.
We
shall not, however, attempt to develop the conception in its details. Even at a
glance it can scarcely escape us that this historical method of conceiving the
Lord's Supper approves itself in manifold ways by the light it throws on the
problems which have perplexed men in their efforts to understand the Supper.
Three of the services it thus renders are worthy of special mention. It throws
a bright illumination upon our Lord's words of institution, and makes all the
dark places in them light. It offers a ready explanation of the corruptions
which have crept into the idea and practice of the Supper in the course of
Christian history: as the memory of a sacrificial system died out in the course
of generations of men born Christian, the significance of a sacrificial feast
was lost and the attempts that were made to find some other meaning for phrases
growing out of it necessarily have led to error. And it supplies an adequate
interpretation of the Supper itself as it is commended to us by the apostolic
writers, and gives it its due place in the body of Christian institutions. A
simple historical suggestion which performs such services to thought thereby
powerfully commends itself as fundamental to a right conception of the
institution.
from Selected
Shorter Writings of Benjamin B. Warfield, vol. 1, Edited by John E. Meeter,
published by Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1970. originally
from The Bible Student, III,
1991, pp77-83.