A Complete Bible Study on Communion

Genesis 14 is not a communion service, and we should not force it to be one. It records a real historical moment after Abram rescues Lot and defeats a coalition of kings. As he returns, the king of Sodom and Melchizedek king of Salem come out to meet him. Their contrast is important, because Sodom tries to make a bargain while Melchizedek brings a blessing.

The bread and wine are not the center of the passage. Melchizedek’s blessing directs attention to God Himself as the true center. He blesses Abram and then blesses God Most High, giving the LORD credit for Abram’s victory. Abram receives this priestly blessing before refusing the corrupt offer of Sodom. The flow is not accidental. Abram is strengthened to honor God rather than be enriched by a wicked king.

Melchizedek is called king of Salem and priest of God Most High. Later in Israel’s law, kings and priests are separated by tribe and office. Before Moses this figure appears with royal as well as priestly authority. Hebrews later uses Melchizedek to display the superiority and permanence of Christ’s priesthood.

Unforsaken understands Melchizedek as a Christophany. Hebrews says that he is made like the Son of God, and the whole argument points beyond ordinary human priesthood to Christ’s eternal priesthood. Still, Genesis 14 should be handled with restraint. The scene presents bread and wine in a priestly setting of blessing and worship. Jesus Himself institutes the Lord’s Supper much later during Passover on the night before the cross.

The Lord’s Supper comes from Jesus, not from later church tradition. He gave it in a Passover setting, so the Exodus story is essential background. On the night of Israel’s deliverance from Egyptian slavery, each household killed an unblemished lamb and placed its blood on the doorposts and lintel. When judgment struck Egypt’s firstborn, the LORD passed over the homes marked by the blood. Israel did not escape because its families were naturally better than the Egyptians. They trusted the provision God gave and sheltered under the blood.

God commanded Israel to remember that deliverance in an annual Passover meal. The meal looked back to a real rescue and taught later generations what the LORD had done. When Jesus gave the bread and cup during Passover, He did not choose a random setting. He was about to fulfill the pattern through His own innocent body and blood. The earlier lamb could point forward, but only Christ can provide final salvation from sin.

Jesus ties the bread to His given body and the cup to His shed blood. Communion is therefore centered upon the cross rather than vaguely religious. His death provides the blood of the new covenant. His body was truly given, and His blood was truly shed. We must never handle communion in a way that softens the reality behind the symbols. The bread and cup point to real suffering and real blood. They proclaim a real death through which Christ provides real salvation.

A covenant is a binding relationship established by God’s promise, not a casual agreement between equals. Jeremiah had promised a new covenant in which God would forgive sin and write His law upon His people’s hearts. Jesus identifies His shed blood as the basis of that promised covenant. Communion does not create the covenant each time the church gathers. It remembers the death by which Christ established it.

At the same time, Jesus gives the action as remembrance. He does not command His disciples to create His body or repeat His death. Neither are they told to offer Him again. He commands them to remember Him. The elements direct believers to the once-for-all sacrifice that was about to be accomplished on the cross.

The Greek word translated remembrance is anamnesis. In this setting it is more than a passing mental recollection. It deliberately brings Christ’s death back to the center so that the church’s worship is shaped by what He has done. When believers receive the bread and cup, they are not trying to make Christ present by ritual power. They are obeying His command and placing His finished work before the congregation again.

Paul says he received instruction concerning the Lord’s Supper and delivered it to the church. He repeats the words of institution and then explains what the church is doing when it partakes.

Communion is proclamation. Without a long speech, the church declares that Christ died for sinners. His blood is the blood of the new covenant, and His sacrifice is sufficient. The meal also announces that He is coming again. The Lord’s Supper looks backward to the cross and forward to His return. It also looks around at the gathered church and declares that believers share one Savior and one hope.

That is why communion belongs to believers. It is not a tool to create saving faith in an unbeliever. It is an ordinance for those who have already repented and come to Christ by faith. A person does not become forgiven or born again by eating bread or drinking from a cup. God forgives the believer through Christ’s blood, makes him a new creation, and gives the indwelling Holy Spirit, who seals him for the day of redemption. That salvation is eternally secure and never permission for lawlessness. A shallow profession is not proof of new birth, and participating in communion cannot turn one into proof.

This also means that the Supper should never be detached from preaching and teaching. The elements do not explain themselves to a careless heart. Scripture gives them their meaning. Bread and cup can be handled with great ceremony and still be misunderstood if the cross is not plainly proclaimed. A simple church gathering can honor Christ with ordinary bread and an ordinary cup. What matters is that the Word of God defines the act and the people receive it with faith.

Remembrance also guards the church from drifting into personality worship. No pastor or priest belongs at the center of the table. A worship leader and an inherited tradition must also remain secondary, as must the emotional atmosphere of the service. The Lord said, “in remembrance of Me.” Communion turns the eye of faith away from human performance and back to Jesus Christ. He was crucified and raised from the dead, and He is coming again.

Scripture does not command one universal schedule. Paul says, “as often as” the church eats the bread and drinks the cup, which assumes repetition without specifying weekly, monthly, or another interval. A local church should practice communion regularly enough that it remains part of its obedient worship, but frequency alone cannot create reverence. Whether observed often or less often, the Word must keep defining what the church is doing.

Hebrews is decisive. Christ’s sacrifice is not repeated or continued through a church ritual. No ceremony can complete what He has already finished. Under the old covenant, priests stood daily because their sacrifices could not finally remove sin. Jesus offered Himself once, and His work is complete.

The posture matters. Old covenant priests stood because their work continued, while Christ sat down because His offering was finished. Communion must be interpreted under that truth. It cannot repeat a propitiatory sacrifice, meaning a sacrifice offered to answer for sin, or continue Christ’s offering. Neither can it make the cross effective again. The cross is already effective because Christ’s blood was actually shed and His offering was accepted by the Father.

This is why transubstantiation and any repeated-sacrifice view must be rejected. Transubstantiation teaches that the underlying substance of the bread and wine changes into Christ’s body and blood even though the outward appearance remains. If communion is then treated as a fresh offering of Christ’s body and blood, the table is being made to say what Hebrews denies. The Lord’s Supper is holy and powerful as remembrance and proclamation, but its power is not that it re-sacrifices Jesus. Its power is that it points God’s people to the one sacrifice that is forever sufficient.

John 6 is often brought into discussions about communion because Jesus speaks strongly about eating His flesh and drinking His blood. But the setting is not the upper room. John 6 is a public teaching after the feeding of the five thousand, where Jesus confronts people who want bread but do not truly believe in Him.

The chapter itself explains the image by coming and believing. Jesus is not teaching cannibalism, and He is not instituting the Lord’s Supper in John 6. He is calling sinners to receive Him by faith as the only source of life. Later He says plainly that His words are spirit and life.

John often records Jesus using physical pictures for spiritual realities. He speaks of the new birth and living water before describing Himself as the bread of life. Elsewhere He is the light and the door. He also calls Himself the Shepherd and the true Vine. The images are vivid because the truths are weighty. Communion is connected to Christ’s body and blood, but John 6 should not be pulled out of context to overturn the plain once-for-all teaching of Hebrews or the remembrance language of Luke and 1 Corinthians.

Communion is corporate remembrance rather than a private remembrance alone. It is shared within the gathered body. When Paul speaks about the cup and bread, he uses the Greek word koinonia. It means fellowship, sharing, or participation. The English name communion comes from this shared dimension of the meal.

The word communion carries the idea of fellowship or participation. This does not mean that the elements become Christ’s physical body and blood. It means that the church shares together in the meaning and benefits of Christ’s sacrifice by faith. The table visibly confesses that believers are not saved as isolated religious consumers. We belong to the same Lord and receive the same gospel as members of one body.

That is why division is so ugly at the Lord’s table. Pride and contempt are equally out of place. The bread and cup proclaim a crucified Savior who purchased His people by His blood. To handle that meal while despising Christ’s people is to contradict the message of the meal.

The Corinthian church was taking the Lord’s Supper in a way that denied what it proclaimed. Their gathering included a larger shared meal. Some who had food ate ahead without waiting for others, while poorer believers remained hungry; some participants even became drunk. Social advantage was being displayed at the very table that proclaimed one body purchased by one Savior. Their selfishness shamed believers who had less and drew Paul’s sharp warning.

Paul does not say that only sinless people may partake. If sinlessness were required, the table would be empty. He warns against approaching in an unworthy manner. Irreverence and hypocrisy contradict the meal, as do selfishness and division. The participant must take seriously what the Supper proclaims. Self-examination is not meant to trap a believer in endless fear. It is meant to bring honesty before God.

The warnings are serious. Some people in Corinth had become weak or sick, and some had died. Paul also explains the difference between the Lord’s discipline and the world’s condemnation.

This does not deny eternal security. It shows that the Father disciplines His children. A true believer is secure in Christ because the Spirit has sealed that believer and God keeps His own. That security is not permission to treat holy things casually. The same grace that saves us trains us to confess sin and make peace where possible. It also teaches us to approach the Lord’s table with reverence.

Nor should a person assume that every illness or death is direct punishment for mishandling communion. Paul identifies a specific act of discipline in Corinth; he does not give Christians permission to explain every sufferer’s condition. The passage calls each participant to examine himself, not to diagnose another person’s suffering from a distance.

It is possible to reject transubstantiation and still speak too lightly about communion. The Lord’s Supper is not a bare object lesson that could be replaced by any illustration we prefer. Jesus chose the bread and cup and attached them to His body and blood. He also commanded His people to continue this remembrance. His command gives the ordinance weight, even though the elements remain bread and the fruit of the vine.

It is also possible to react against empty symbolism by giving the elements a power Scripture does not give them. The bread does not become the physical body of Christ, and the cup does not become His physical blood. Christ is bodily risen and seated at the right hand of the Father. The believer feeds upon Christ by faith rather than through a physical change in the elements. The table is meaningful because His sacrifice is real and finished, and its saving benefit is received by faith.

Views often called consubstantiation or sacramental presence try to avoid some problems while still locating Christ’s body and blood within the elements. Others speak of His body as being with or under them. The safer biblical language is the language Scripture gives. It calls the meal remembrance and proclamation while describing communion among believers. It also commands self-examination and directs the church to hope until He comes. We should not be wiser than the Lord’s own words.