By Editor Bob Terry
On Thursday night, the disciples did not understand all that Jesus was saying. Yes, they heard His words but it would take the events of the following days for them to grasp the true significance of those words.
It was only in retrospect that the disciples, and Christians of all times, could see that Jesus gave His followers one last explanation of what was about to happen when He picked up the bread and the cup and shared them.
Matthew, Mark and Luke all record the event. The apostle Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 11 what he was told about the experience we call the Lord’s Supper. Each telling recounts that Jesus picked up a loaf of bread and tore it apart. “This is my body, given for you,” He said, according to Luke’s description.
It would only be at the end of the next day, what is called Good Friday on the Christian calendar, that the disciples would understand. It would be after an arrest, after a trial and a retrial. It would be after Jesus was declared innocent of any wrong by the Roman governor, after a merciless flogging, after an enraged crowd called for His blood.
It would be after law gave way to a lynching-like hysteria, after Jesus was marched through town to His public execution. It would be after He was mocked, ridiculed, spat upon and beaten; after He was crucified with nails through His hands and thorns thrust into His scalp.
The movie “The Passion of the Christ” interpreted the episodes of that event in torturing detail. It was gruesome and sickening as the movie depicts.
But unlike the movie, the suffering of Jesus was real — real to the point that He died. Like the loaf of bread the night before, Jesus’ body was torn and broken. It was torn and broken for us. That is what Jesus had said.
Given. In the upper room, Jesus said His body was given for us, not taken by some motley force. Earlier He had hinted at this. When the disciples were elbowing one another for leadership (Matt. 20:24ff), Jesus told them that the “Son of Man … came to give His life a ransom for many”
(v. 28).
After saying that He was going to “give” His life, Jesus did just that. When the disciples tried to defend Jesus from arrest, Jesus told them to stop. He said He could call “12 legions of angels” to defend Him if He chose (Matt. 26:53). But He did not. Instead He gave Himself to be beaten, battered, broken and, finally, to die.
All of that in a piece of bread, but that understanding would come later.
Jesus also shared a cup. He said the rose-colored liquid inside the cup was His blood. The words must have stunned the disciples. Jesus said His blood was poured out for them. Each understood the pouring out of blood represented the giving of life.
That was the basis of the sacrificial system, which God established (Lev. 17:11). The sacrifice was a substitute for the sinner and bore the transgressor’s guilt.
Jesus said His blood would be “poured out for many for the forgiveness of sin” (Matt. 26:28). Jesus was telling them He was to be a sacrifice for the forgiveness of sin. The disciples could not comprehend that their Messiah would die a physical death. How could they begin to understand the true meaning of the events swirling around them?
They could not. That is why the disciples fled after Jesus’ arrest, why the disciples hid in fear for their lives while Jesus died. That is why Saturday of Easter weekend is one of the most depressing days of the year. The Thursday night promise of Jesus awaits the explanation of Easter morning, when God raised Jesus from the dead.
Christ gave Himself for us as a sacrifice to God (Eph. 5:2). He became our Passover Lamb (1 Cor. 5:7). We have “redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins” (Eph. 1:7). We cannot be redeemed with perishable things “but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect” (1 Pet. 1:19).
Christ is the “mediator of a new covenant” (Heb. 9:15). He gave His blood, His life, for the forgiveness of sin.
To grieving sisters Jesus had said, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies and whoever lives and believes in me will never die” (John 11:25).
On Easter morning, the power of those words took on new meaning. Jesus was alive. He had conquered death itself, the final enemy. Because He lives, all who believe in His sacrifice for the forgiveness of sin shall live forever with Him. That is the promise of the cup.
Jesus spoke of another event while in the upper room — a heavenly banquet in the kingdom of God (Mark 14:25). All the meaning of those words awaits the return of our Lord just like His earlier statements awaited the crucifixion and resurrection. And Jesus is coming again. In Acts 1:11, the angels promised that Jesus would return “in the same way you have seen Him go into heaven.” The writer of Hebrews promises that Jesus “will appear a second time, not to bear sin but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for Him” (Heb. 9:28).
Every time a Christian partakes of the Lord’s Supper, one declares faith in the events of Easter — the death of our Lord Jesus, forgiveness through His sacrifice for sin and the promise of an eternal, heavenly banquet because of the resurrection.
The bread, the cup — a foretaste of Easter. What powerful symbols of such a wonderful reality.
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