What Is Communion? A Biblical Guide to the Lord’s Supper
Some believers in the church at Corinth were going hungry while others ate their own food and became drunk at the gathering where they were supposed to remember the Lord. Paul corrected them by taking them back to what Jesus had said about the bread and cup. Communion is the meal Jesus commanded His people to share in remembrance of His body given for us and His blood shed for us, and I think Paul’s correction shows why remembering Him has to reach into the way we treat one another.
The Meal Jesus Gave His Disciples
We also call Communion the Lord’s Supper. When I describe it as an ordinance, I mean that it is a practice the Lord Himself commanded His church to observe. We did not invent the meal as a way of making a worship service more meaningful. Jesus chose the bread and cup, explained what they represented, and told His disciples to continue this remembrance.
To understand what He was telling them, let’s begin with the meal they were already sharing. Jesus was eating Passover with His disciples before His arrest and crucifixion. Passover had been given to Israel when God brought the people out of slavery in Egypt, and it called each generation to remember how He had delivered them.
In Exodus 12, God told the Israelites to take an unblemished lamb and kill it. They were to put some of its blood on the two doorposts and on the lintel, the beam above the doorway, of the house where they ate. God was about to bring judgment upon Egypt’s firstborn, but He promised to pass over the houses marked by the blood. Those inside were trusting the provision He had given them. Their protection was not a reward for being morally better than their Egyptian neighbors.
God then commanded the people to keep Passover as a memorial of that deliverance. The meal Jesus shared with His disciples therefore already directed their attention to a sacrifice and to God’s saving provision. During that meal, He spoke about His own body and blood:
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.”
Jesus was telling them what His approaching death would mean for them. The bread He broke directed them to His body, which He would give for them, and the cup directed them to the blood He would shed. I understand the Passover lamb to have pointed forward to Him. The deliverance remembered at Passover helps us recognize why He spoke about His sacrifice in that setting.
He also called the cup the new covenant in His blood. A covenant is a binding commitment, and God had already promised a new covenant through Jeremiah. In Jeremiah 31:31-34, He promised to forgive His people’s iniquity and write His law on their hearts. When Jesus identified the covenant with His blood, He was directing the disciples to the death through which He would establish it. Each time the church receives Communion, we remember that completed act. We are not establishing the covenant again.
I believe the bread and cup are symbols, but the body and blood they represent were real. Jesus is the eternal Son, fully God, who became fully man and lived without sin. Wicked men tortured Him and crucified Him, and He willingly gave Himself to be slain as the perfect sacrifice for our sins. His blood was physically shed, and He died. The forgiveness we receive rests on His perfection and His sacrificial death, so calling the elements symbols must never become a way of treating His suffering as something merely symbolic.
The Father and the 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 we receive salvation through repentance and faith. Eating the bread and drinking from the cup cannot add anything to the sacrifice He completed for us. The study on life being in the blood explains more about the significance of His shed blood.
Bread and Wine Before the Passover
There is an earlier account involving bread and wine that I also want to include, because the man who brings them appears again when Hebrews explains Christ’s priesthood. In Genesis 14, Abram, whom God later named Abraham, went to rescue his nephew Lot. Lot had been carried away when invading kings defeated the cities in the region where he lived. Abram pursued the captors, defeated them, and brought Lot and the others back. As Abram returned, the king of Sodom came out to meet him, and then Genesis introduces Melchizedek:
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 credited God with delivering Abram’s enemies into his hand. When the king of Sodom offered Abram the goods he had recovered, Abram refused to take them for himself because he would not let that king claim to have made him rich. The blessing and Abram’s response both direct our attention to God as the One who had provided the victory.
Melchizedek was both king of Salem and priest of God Most High. This happened before the Law was given through Moses, and before Israel’s priesthood was entrusted to Aaron and his descendants. Those priests represented the people before God and offered the sacrifices He commanded. The offices of king and priest would later be distinct in Israel, but here we meet someone who holds both. Hebrews returns to that encounter and describes him this way:
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. By that I mean that the Son appeared to Abram before He became man, an appearance we call a Christophany. I came to that conclusion by comparing the priest who meets Abram in Genesis with the description Hebrews gives of him. Hebrews speaks of him as having neither beginning of days nor end of life and remaining a priest continually. I understand those words to point to the eternal Son. The study on Melchizedek develops that reasoning more fully.
The bread and wine belong to this encounter with the King and Priest who blesses Abram, but Genesis does not call the event the institution of Communion. I would not put the later command into Abram’s experience when the passage does not give it there. The connection allows us to consider the One who provides and blesses, while the command to remember His body and blood comes from what Jesus told His disciples at the Supper.
What We Proclaim When We Eat and Drink
Jesus’ instruction to remember Him gives the church a purpose for continuing the meal. The Greek word translated remembrance is anamnesis, which refers to remembering or calling something to mind. We can carry out the motions of eating and drinking while giving very little attention to what they mean, but that is not the remembrance Jesus commanded. His words direct our attention back to Him and to what He did for us.
Paul repeated the instruction he had received concerning the Supper, and then he explained what the church declares by observing it:
For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death till He comes.
We proclaim the Lord’s death because that is the sacrifice through which He provided our redemption. We also proclaim it until He comes, which means we receive the meal as people waiting for a living Savior to return. He has already died and risen, so we are remembering what He accomplished while we wait for Him to come again.
I find that to be a useful way of understanding what belongs at the center of a Communion service. The bread and cup direct attention to Christ. A pastor or worship leader should explain His words so that the people understand what they are doing. If the attention settles on the person leading, the beauty of the ceremony, or the emotion of the moment, we can leave impressed by the gathering while giving little thought to the Savior it was supposed to honor.
A simple service can fulfill His command when Scripture is explained and believers receive the elements with understanding. An elaborate service cannot supply that understanding merely by being elaborate. Traditions may be familiar and meaningful to the people who keep them, but they still need to serve the remembrance Jesus commanded. I would want anyone attending to know why we are speaking about His body and blood, and why His death gives sinners hope.
That hope is received through faith in Christ. Communion does not create saving faith, forgive sin, or cause regeneration. Regeneration means the new birth through which God makes the believer a new creation. The Holy Spirit indwells and seals the person who has genuinely believed, and that salvation is eternally secure. A person may have received Communion for years and still need to repent and believe, because participation in a church practice cannot stand in place of new life in Christ.
At the same time, I cannot appeal to eternal security as an excuse to live in lawlessness. A Christian label and a record of receiving the elements do not establish that someone has been born again. The Supper belongs to those who trust the Savior it proclaims, and receiving it should express that trust through grateful obedience to His command.
Paul’s words about how often we eat and drink assume that the church will continue observing the meal. They do not set out a weekly or monthly schedule that every congregation must follow. I believe we should receive Communion regularly, with an explanation that keeps its meaning before the church. Merely increasing how often we do it will not correct an irreverent attitude, but neglecting it is not the answer either. Jesus gave us something to continue doing in remembrance of Him.
Christ’s Offering Is Complete
Because the Supper directs us to Christ’s death, what we believe about that death will shape what we expect from the bread and cup. Hebrews explains the difference between the repeated sacrifices under the old covenant and the offering Jesus made. The priests continued their service because those sacrifices could not finally take away sins. Christ gave Himself once:
By that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
The chapter then compares the priests who stood at their daily work with what Jesus did after His offering:
But this Man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God.
Jesus sat down because His sacrificial offering was complete. His blood had been shed, His death had taken place, and the Father had accepted His sacrifice. We do not need a church ceremony to continue that work or supply another offering to atone for sin. When I receive Communion, I am remembering a sacrifice that remains sufficient. I am not helping to make it effective again.
This is why I reject transubstantiation, the teaching that the substance of the bread and wine changes into Christ’s body and blood while the outward appearances remain. The Catholic Catechism also gives the Mass a sacrificial role by describing it as making Christ’s one sacrifice present and offering it sacramentally. Its claim concerns an unbloody sacramental offering, rather than another bloody death. My disagreement is with that sacrificial role itself. I understand the church to be commanded to remember and proclaim His finished offering, not to offer His body and blood sacramentally.
The fact that I understand the elements symbolically does not make the Lord’s Supper optional or insignificant. Jesus commanded this particular remembrance. The bread and cup have meaning because He chose them and explained them, so we should not discard the meal or replace it with an illustration of our own choosing. Obeying His command honors the sacrifice without adding to it.
How I Understand Jesus’ Words in John 6
Jesus’ words about eating His flesh and drinking His blood are often brought into discussions about Communion. To show you why I understand those words as a call to faith, let’s consider the conversation in which He spoke them. John 6 takes place after Jesus fed the five thousand, before He instituted the Supper with His disciples. People who had eaten the bread came looking for Him, and He confronted them about seeking food that would satisfy them for a time while failing to believe in the One God had sent.
Jesus then identified Himself as the bread of life and explained how people receive the life He gives:
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.”
Notice the words He uses to explain hunger and thirst. He speaks of coming to Him and believing in Him. That explanation gives us a way to understand the language about bread before we reach the later statements about His flesh and blood. He makes the promise of life to the believer again in verse 47:
Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me has everlasting life.
I understand His words about eating and drinking in agreement with those statements. Just as a person depends on food for physical life, a sinner must receive Christ by faith as the source of everlasting life. Jesus would give His flesh for the life of the world, so the faith He calls for rests on Him and the sacrifice He would make. I do not understand Him to be commanding cannibalism or to be establishing the Lord’s Supper in this public teaching.
Later in the chapter, after some of His hearers objected to what He had said, Jesus explained:
It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life.
He cannot mean that the body He would give for the world has no value, because He has just spoken about giving it for that very purpose. He is directing His hearers to the Spirit who gives life and to the spiritual truth communicated by His words. Their need would not be met by treating His flesh as ordinary food. They needed to believe in Him.
John has already shown Jesus teaching this way. In John 3, Nicodemus, a Jewish teacher, heard about being born again and asked how a grown man could enter his mother’s womb and be born a second time. Jesus was speaking about the new life given by the Spirit, so Nicodemus needed to understand what kind of birth He meant. In John 4, Jesus offered living water to the Samaritan woman, and the conversation moved beyond the water in the well to the life He gives. Later He would call Himself the door for the sheep, their Shepherd, and the true Vine. Each expression has to be understood from what He is explaining. The imagery does not make the life He gives less real.
I came to this understanding of John 6 by reading His statements about eating and drinking alongside His repeated calls to come and believe. It also agrees with the completed offering described in Hebrews and with the remembrance commanded at the Supper. Communion directs believers to the Savior who gives life; physically receiving the elements is not how an unbeliever becomes born again.
I also reject the teaching that Christ’s body and blood are received bodily with the elements even though the bread and wine remain unchanged. The Lutheran confession describes that teaching as a sacramental union. It is sometimes discussed under the term consubstantiation, although sacramental union is the confession’s own language. My understanding is that the bread remains bread and the cup remains the fruit of the vine, while the benefits of Christ’s sacrifice are received by faith. That is why I receive these elements as the symbols He gave us for remembering Him.
Why Paul Warned the Church in Corinth
Receiving the elements together also says something about our relationship to the other people at the table. In 1 Corinthians 10, Paul uses the Greek word koinonia, which carries the sense of fellowship, sharing, or participation. That is the word behind the expression 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 to describe believers sharing by faith in the benefits of Christ’s sacrifice and expressing that fellowship through the meal. Paul goes from the bread we share to the one body to which we belong. The people gathered around the table have the same Savior, so I cannot treat another believer as though he belongs to a lesser class of Christians because he has less money or standing than I do.
That was the kind of conduct Paul confronted in Corinth. The Supper was associated with a larger meal, and some people went ahead with their own food instead of waiting for the others. One person was hungry while another was drunk. Those who had plenty were humiliating people who had nothing, even as they gathered for a meal that should have expressed their fellowship in Christ. Paul told them that the way they were coming together was making things worse.
He answered that conduct by repeating what the Lord had said on the night He was betrayed. Jesus had given the bread and cup in remembrance of Himself, but the Corinthians were treating the gathering as an occasion to satisfy themselves without regard for one another. After explaining that the Supper proclaims the Lord’s death, Paul gave this warning:
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.
Pay attention to what Paul tells the person to do after examining himself. He tells him to eat the bread and drink the cup. The examination is meant to lead to receiving the Supper properly. Paul is warning against an unworthy manner of partaking, and the selfish conduct he has just described helps us understand what that means. He is not telling believers that they must first produce a sinless record.
Their behavior treated the body and blood of the Lord with contempt because it disregarded the meaning of the meal He had given them. Calling the gathering the Lord’s Supper did not excuse that behavior. In verses 33-34, Paul’s practical instruction was to wait for one another and to eat at home if hunger would otherwise turn the gathering into another occasion for judgment. The correction reached what they were actually doing.
Paul also told them that the Lord had already disciplined them severely. Some were weak or sick, and some had died. He described that discipline as chastening, the Lord’s correction of His own people, and he distinguished it 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 those whom His Spirit has sealed, but He still corrects His children when they do wrong. The judgment in Corinth shows how seriously He regarded their treatment of the Supper and of one another. I cannot take eternal security as permission to handle holy things carelessly or refuse the correction His Word brings.
I would also be careful not to claim that Paul’s explanation accounts for every believer’s illness or death. He identified a particular judgment in Corinth. If someone in my church becomes sick, I do not have the authority to decide that the person must have mishandled Communion. The instruction gives me reason to examine my own conduct, not to invent an explanation for someone else’s suffering.
Coming With Faith and an Honest Heart
Because the Supper expresses fellowship in Christ, we should come as people who have trusted Him. Someone who has not believed needs to hear the gospel and respond in repentance and faith. Taking the elements cannot do that for him. The study on baptism examines another ordinance in which a believer publicly expresses faith without the outward act creating salvation.
For the believer, examining the heart should bring us back to the Savior whose death we are remembering. If that examination exposes sin, I can confess it to the God who already knows what I have done. I am not bargaining for a place at His table by promising to improve enough to deserve forgiveness. My confidence rests on Christ’s shed blood and on God’s faithfulness to cleanse those who come honestly to Him.
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
A tender conscience can hear Paul’s warning and begin looking for a reason to stay away every time Communion is offered. But feeling unworthy is not the same thing as choosing to partake in an unworthy manner. None of us can make our past sinless. We come because Christ has provided what we could not provide for ourselves, and His mercy gives us reason to acknowledge our sins rather than conceal them.
If I have wronged someone, simply sitting out the meal will not put that wrong right. I need to confess and repent, and I need to seek reconciliation where it is needed and possible. Then I can receive the bread and cup trusting the One whose blood cleanses me. Waiting until I feel more satisfied with my own record would leave me looking in the wrong place for assurance.
That response also has to continue after the service. If I receive the cup and then go on humiliating another believer or cultivating bitterness toward him, I am disregarding the fellowship I have just professed. The bread and cup remind me that Christ gave Himself for His people. Remembering His sacrifice should make me willing to face how I am treating those people, including the person whose needs I have found easy to overlook.
We receive Communion with gratitude because the Son of God suffered in His body, shed His blood, and died for our sins before rising bodily. Familiarity with the words should not make us indifferent to what they describe. We are thanking a living Savior for salvation that rests on His completed sacrifice, and we continue proclaiming His death because He has promised to return.
My Final Thoughts
I understand Communion to be the remembrance Jesus commanded of His one completed sacrifice. The bread and cup point to His body and blood; they do not become His physical body and blood, and receiving them does not save us. We come as believers who have already placed our trust in the crucified and risen Christ, and we proclaim His death together while we wait for Him to return.
Paul’s correction of Corinth makes that remembrance personal for me. I cannot honor the Savior at His table while refusing to consider how I am treating the people who belong to Him. I want to receive the meal with gratitude, confess what His Word exposes, and put right what I can. His sacrifice gives me the confidence to come honestly, and His command gives me a reason to keep remembering Him with His people.