What Is Communion? A Biblical Guide to the Lord’s Supper
Jesus gave the Lord’s Supper to disciples who would soon see Him arrested and crucified. He told them to remember Him through the bread and cup, and Paul later instructed the church to proclaim His death until He comes. I want to receive Communion with that purpose in mind. Taking the elements should direct us to Christ and make us consider whether the way we treat His people agrees with what we claim to believe.
Bread, Wine, and the New Covenant
Communion, also called the Lord’s Supper, is an ordinance, a practice Jesus commanded His church to observe. We share bread and a cup to remember His body given for us and His blood shed for us. The meal also expresses our fellowship as people who belong to the same Savior.
I don’t believe receiving the elements can save us or supply forgiveness. But dismissing the Lord’s Supper as an insignificant ritual disregards a command Jesus gave His church. We need to understand what He intended us to remember and how He wants His people to receive it.
Bread and wine appear together much earlier in Scripture, when Abram returned from rescuing Lot and defeating the kings who had carried him away. The king of Sodom came out to meet him, along with Melchizedek, king of Salem and priest of God Most High.
Then Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine; he was the priest of God Most High. And he blessed him and said: “Blessed be Abram of God Most High, Possessor of heaven and earth; And blessed be God Most High, Who has delivered your enemies into your hand.”
Melchizedek blessed Abram and credited God with the victory. Abram then refused Sodom’s offer because he would not let its king claim to have made him rich. The bread and wine accompanied a priestly blessing, but Genesis does not describe the institution of Communion. The encounter introduces Melchizedek serving as both king and priest before the Law was given, combining offices that would later be separated in Israel. Hebrews returns to his priesthood when explaining Christ’s.
For this Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of the Most High God… first being translated “king of righteousness,” and then also king of Salem, meaning “king of peace,” without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like the Son of God, remains a priest continually.
I believe Melchizedek is the preincarnate Son of God. His encounter with Abram was a Christophany, meaning Christ appeared before He became man. The description of a priest without beginning or end, who remains continually, leads me to that conclusion. Some read it as a description of how a human priest is presented in Genesis, without a recorded genealogy. The study on Melchizedek explains why I believe Hebrews points beyond an ordinary human priest.
The more immediate background to the Lord’s Supper is Passover, which God instituted when He delivered Israel from slavery in Egypt. The Israelites killed unblemished lambs and marked their doorposts and lintels, the beams above their doorways, with blood. When judgment struck Egypt’s firstborn, the LORD passed over the homes marked by blood. Israel’s protection depended on receiving God’s provision in trust and obedience, rather than on being better people than the Egyptians.
God commanded Israel to remember that deliverance through an annual meal. When Jesus shared Passover with His disciples, He explained the bread and cup in relation to the death He was about to suffer.
And He took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” Likewise He also took the cup after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood, which is shed for you.”
The earlier Passover lamb pointed forward to Him. The bread now directed the disciples to His body given for them, and the cup to His blood shed for them.
Jesus also identified the cup with the new covenant in His blood. A covenant is a binding commitment. Jeremiah had announced God’s promise to forgive sin and write His law on His people’s hearts. Jesus identified His blood as the basis of that covenant, and the church remembers the death by which He established it. We aren’t establishing a new covenant each time we receive Communion.
Calling these elements symbols doesn’t make the suffering they represent symbolic. Jesus is the eternal Son, fully God, who became fully man and lived without sin. Wicked men tortured and crucified Him, but He willingly gave Himself to be slain as the perfect sacrifice for our sins. His sinlessness and His sacrificial death are the basis of our forgiveness. His innocent blood was physically shed, and He died.
The Father and Son were united in providing our redemption. The Father did not punish, curse, abandon, strike, bruise, or pour wrath on Jesus. Christ completed His saving sacrifice through His shed blood and death before He was buried and rose bodily from the grave. He died for the whole world, and salvation is received through repentance and faith. The bread and cup add nothing to what He accomplished. The study on life being in the blood explains the significance of His shed blood further.
Remember the Lord’s Death Until He Comes
The Greek word translated remembrance is anamnesis. Jesus calls us to remember Him deliberately, giving attention to what He did rather than allowing the familiar act of eating and drinking to pass without thought. Paul handed on the instruction he had received about the Supper, then explained what the church announces by observing it.
For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death till He comes.
By receiving the meal together, we confess that Christ died for sinners and established the new covenant through His blood. We also confess our expectation that He will return. The Supper keeps His death before the church while we wait for the risen Savior. Because we share it as His people, examining ourselves includes considering how we treat one another.
That confession belongs to believers. Eating bread or drinking from a cup cannot create saving faith, forgive sin, or bring about regeneration. By regeneration, I mean genuine new birth, through which God makes the believer a new creation. The Holy Spirit indwells and seals that person for the day of redemption, and genuine salvation is eternally secure. A Christian label or a long record of taking Communion cannot demonstrate that new life on its own. Nor can I appeal to eternal security to excuse lawlessness.
We need to explain the meal from Scripture because the elements don’t explain themselves. People can leave an elaborate service admiring the ceremony without understanding why Christ died. A simple gathering can honor Him when His words are explained and the church receives the bread and cup in faith. If we have neglected that explanation, making the service more impressive won’t correct the problem.
His command, “in remembrance of Me,” should also correct anyone who wants to make himself the center of the service. A pastor, priest, or worship leader is there to direct attention to Christ. Personal performance, inherited traditions, and the emotional atmosphere cannot be allowed to obscure the One we are remembering.
When Paul says “as often as” we eat and drink, he assumes the church will continue observing the Supper. His wording doesn’t require every church to adopt the same weekly or monthly schedule. We should receive Communion regularly as part of obedient worship, taking care to explain what we are doing. Increasing its frequency won’t correct irreverence if we continue taking it without understanding.
One Sacrifice and the Meaning of John 6
What we believe about Christ’s sacrifice determines what we should expect from the Supper. Hebrews describes old covenant priests standing at their work day after day because their offerings could not finally remove sin. Christ offered Himself once.
By that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
But this Man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God.
Christ sat down because His offering was complete. A church ceremony cannot continue His sacrificial work or provide another propitiatory offering, meaning an offering to atone for sin. His blood has already been shed, and the Father accepted His sacrifice. The church remembers and proclaims what He accomplished; Communion doesn’t make the cross effective again whenever we gather.
I reject transubstantiation, the teaching that the substance of the bread and wine becomes Christ’s body and blood while their outward appearances remain. The Catholic Catechism also describes the Mass as making Christ’s one sacrifice present and offering it sacramentally. It does not teach that He undergoes another bloody death at every Mass. I still disagree with giving Communion that sacrificial role. I understand Christ’s command as remembrance and proclamation of His completed offering, not a sacramental offering of His body and blood.
John 6 is often used to support receiving His body and blood through the elements. Jesus gave that public teaching after feeding the five thousand, before the institution of the Supper in the upper room. He was confronting people who wanted bread but would not truly believe in Him. His own explanation helps us understand the language He used.
And Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst.”
Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me has everlasting life.
In verse 47, Jesus promises everlasting life to the person who believes in Him. Together with His explanation about coming and believing in verse 35, that promise guides how I read His words about eating His flesh and drinking His blood. He calls sinners to receive Him by faith as their only source of life. He isn’t commanding cannibalism or instituting Communion in this discourse. Later He says:
It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life.
Jesus isn’t denying the value of the body He would give for the world. He is explaining that life comes through the Spirit and that His words communicate spiritual truth. John had already recorded His conversation with Nicodemus about new birth and His offer of living water to the Samaritan woman. Later Jesus would describe Himself as the door for the sheep, their Shepherd, and the true Vine. His language about eating and drinking likewise directs us to faith in Him. That reading agrees with the finished sacrifice in Hebrews and the remembrance commanded in Luke and 1 Corinthians.
Other Christians believe Christ’s body and blood are present with the elements without accepting transubstantiation. The Lutheran confession teaches that His true body and blood are received with the bread and wine while the bread remains bread. The word consubstantiation is sometimes used in discussions of this view, but the confession calls it a sacramental union. I disagree with that bodily reception as well. The bread remains bread and the cup remains the fruit of the vine; we receive the benefits of Christ’s sacrifice by faith.
Calling the elements symbols doesn’t give us permission to discard the meal or replace it with an illustration of our own choosing. Jesus chose the bread and cup and commanded this remembrance, so we honor Him by continuing it as He instructed. Those symbols direct us to Christ and the sacrifice He completed.
One Body and a Serious Warning
Paul also connects the bread and cup with our fellowship in Christ. The Greek word koinonia means sharing, fellowship, or participation and explains why we call the meal Communion.
The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? For we, though many, are one bread and one body; for we all partake of that one bread.
I understand this as believers sharing by faith in the benefits of Christ’s sacrifice and expressing that fellowship through the meal. Paul does not say that the elements change into His physical body and blood. He does say that we belong to one body. If Christ purchased these people with His blood, I cannot honor Him by treating some of them as beneath me.
The church in Corinth observed the Supper as part of a larger meal. Some went ahead with their own food while others remained hungry, and some even became drunk. People with plenty were willing to let poorer members go without at the gathering that proclaimed their fellowship in the same Savior. Paul rebuked them for humiliating those who had nothing.
Therefore whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup.
Paul warns against an unworthy manner of partaking. He isn’t requiring a sinless record before anyone may come. He tells them to examine themselves and then eat and drink as they should. The selfishness and irreverence in Corinth contradicted what the meal proclaimed, and calling it the Lord’s Supper didn’t excuse what they were doing.
The Lord’s discipline was severe. Some were weak or sick, and some died. Paul distinguished that chastening of believers from the condemnation of the world.
But when we are judged, we are chastened by the Lord, that we may not be condemned with the world.
God keeps the people His Spirit has sealed, but eternal security doesn’t give us permission to treat holy things carelessly. Corinth demonstrates how serious the repercussions can be. We need to confess known sin and seek peace where possible, including putting right how we treat other believers.
It would be reckless, though, to tell a sick believer he is being punished for mishandling Communion simply because he is sick. Paul identified a particular judgment in Corinth. He did not give us an explanation for every illness or death. This passage calls each of us to examine our own conduct, rather than presume to know the reason for someone else’s suffering.
How Believers Should Come
We come as people who have trusted the crucified and risen Christ. Someone who has not believed needs repentance and faith, and taking Communion cannot substitute for that conversion. The study on baptism considers another ordinance through which we publicly express faith without creating salvation.
As we receive the bread and cup, we remember that the Son of God suffered in His body, shed His blood, and died for our sins before rising bodily. Familiarity should not make us indifferent to what He endured. We are thanking Him for salvation we could not provide for ourselves.
When examination exposes sin, we can confess it honestly to the God who already knows. We aren’t bargaining for a place at His table or promising enough improvement to earn forgiveness. Our confidence rests in Christ’s blood and God’s promise to cleanse us.
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
A believer with a tender conscience may hear Paul’s warning and conclude that he ought to stay away whenever he feels unworthy. But Paul tells us to examine ourselves so that we can partake properly. If I have sinned against someone, sitting out Communion won’t settle the offense. I need to confess and repent, seeking reconciliation where it is needed, then come trusting the Savior whose blood cleanses me. I cannot make myself worthy by waiting until I feel better about my record.
That examination also has to reach beyond a private moment of reflection. If I receive the cup while continuing to humiliate another believer or cultivate bitterness against him, I am ignoring the fellowship the meal declares. Sharing the table calls us to love the people Christ has made members of His body.
We also receive it with hope. Paul tells the church to proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes, so we remember a Savior who lives and will return. His sacrifice remains sufficient while we wait. Continuing to share the bread and cup expresses our confidence in that completed work and His promise to come again.
My Final Thoughts
I want to receive Communion with gratitude for what Christ accomplished and a willingness to face honestly what His Word exposes in me. The bread and cup point to His body and blood; they neither save us nor become His physical body and blood. We remember His one completed sacrifice as people who belong to Him together. If I claim that fellowship at His table, I need to show it in how I treat His people while we wait for His return.