by Richard Shin
Editor’s Note: This is part 3 of an ongoing series. Parts 1 and 2 can be found here and here.
The Lord’s Supper as a Proclamation
To understand how the Lord’s Supper is a proclamation of faith, we must first understand its relationship to the Passover and the Passover meal of the Old Testament. The Passover meal was to commemorate an extremely significant event in Israel’s history—God’s “passing over” the Israelites’ households while striking down the firstborns of all of Egypt (Ex. 12:1-28). The meal was instituted as a ritual that reminded the Israelites that Israel was delivered out of Egypt immediately following the tenth plague of passing over the Israel’s firstborns (Ex. 12:43-51). The meaning behind the meal was to be taught to the future generations of Israelites (Ex. 12:27). Therefore, the Passover meal was to serve as a perpetual reminder to Israel that they were a redeemed people of God, who passed over their firstborns and also delivered them from the rule of Egypt.
It is no mere accident that the Lord’s Supper was first demonstrated and instituted by Jesus on the Day of the Unleavened Bread during the Passover because it was on this day when the Passover lamb was to be sacrificed. Upon careful reading of Luke 22:14-23, we can see that the Lord’s Supper is indeed meant to point us backward and forward, indicating the ordinance as a reminder of Jesus’ bodily and bloody sacrifice on the cross (Luke 22:19-20) and as a declaration that He will await the kingdom’s fulfillment until He eats of it again (Luke 22:16). We looked at this last week.
Then, it seems the Lord’s Supper served a similar function in the new covenant, as the Passover meal did in the old covenant. The Lord’s Supper was to serve as a celebration of grace for the new covenant saints to proclaim the redemption of Christ and the promise of the kingdom to come. It is a declaration of faith, in which our belief and trust in Christ’s sufficient work on the cross will redeem us of our sinfulness and eventually bring us to His kingdom where He will finally and completely establish His throne. Even in John 6, we learn that Jesus’ feeding the multitudes does not actually attain the multitudes’ salvation, but it is the belief in Christ as the Bread of Life that will save them (John 6:35-40), which is repentance and belief in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Starting in Eden, man’s continued distrust in God for the provision of food and drink remains a serious flaw in our complete faith in God. Noah gave in to his fleshly desires and lost self-control to become drunk with wine (Gen. 9:21), an act (drunkenness) later explicitly condemned by Paul (Eph. 5:18). Esau throws aside his birthright for stew (Gen. 25:33-34), a pattern from which the Hebrews author tells us to abstain (Heb. 12:16-17). The Israelites in the wilderness did not trust that God would feed them (Num. 11:4-5). Paul warns us against false teachers whose “god is their belly” (Phil. 3:19). In light of this, it’s amazing to see that Jesus demonstrated His full trust in the Father even when He was fasting forty days (Matt. 4:2-4).
Therefore, when we are eating of the bread and wine that Jesus told us to eat during the Lord’s Supper, we are not only proclaiming the gospel that is the power to save and our complete trust in Jesus (Rom. 1:16), but we are also proclaiming that we will indeed trust God for everything including what we eat and drink, rendering Him the glory for all of it (Rom. 11:36; 1 Cor. 10:31).