The Lord’s Supper

The Lord’s Supper (also called Holy Communion or the Eucharist) is a sacrament of the new covenant instituted by the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus instituted the supper on the night that He partook of the Passover for the last time during His earthly ministry, thereby signifying that the supper had fulfilled and replaced the Passover. The supper is a sensible sign and seal of union with Christ and the redemptive blessings that Jesus purchased for His people. Though the Lord’s Supper is distinct from the sacrament of baptism, both signify and seal the promised blessings of the new covenant in Christ. In the broken bread and the outpoured wine, the sacrificial nature of Christ’s death is signified. The supper is a means of grace for believers, as they partake of Christ spiritually by faith while they eat and drink. The Lord’s Supper must be accompanied by the ministry of the Word. The Lord’s Supper became a central point of contention in the Reformation on account of the Roman Catholic Church’s perversion of it in the Mass. However, among the Reformers, significant debate occurred over the nature of Christ’s presence in the supper. Seventeenth-century Reformed confessions articulate and defend the view that Christ is spiritually present in the supper.

The Lord’s Supper is the new covenant counterpart of the Passover, having replaced it as a sign and seal of the new covenant administration of the covenant of grace. Christ symbolized the substitutionary and sacrificial nature of His death in the Passover in the old covenant and in the Lord’s Supper in the new covenant. Jesus represented His crucified body with broken bread and His atoning blood with wine. As the Old Testament sacrifices were placed on the altar and the blood was drained from the sacrificial animal, so Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament sacrifices when He shed His blood as the Lamb of God on the cross.

The supper is a sacramental sign and a seal of union with Christ. The Westminster Shorter Catechism explains, “A sacrament is an holy ordinance instituted by Christ; wherein, by sensible signs, Christ, and the benefits of the new covenant, are represented, sealed, and applied to believers” (Q&A 92). As is true of baptism, the supper points to the benefits of redemption that have been purchased by Christ in His sufferings. Westminster Confession of Faith 29.1 explains that the benefits of the Lord’s Supper include

the perpetual remembrance of the sacrifice of [Christ] in His death, the sealing all benefits thereof unto true believers, their spiritual nourishment and growth in Him, their further engagement in and to all duties which they owe unto Him; and to be a bond and pledge of their communion with Him, and with each other, as members of His mystical body.

The Lord’s Supper functions as a means of grace because in it Christ and the benefits of the new covenant are really and truly applied to the believer as he or she partakes of the bread and wine by faith. Robert Bruce captured the blessing of the Lord’s Supper when he wrote, “The Sacrament is appointed that we may get a better hold of Christ than we got in the simple Word, that we may possess Christ in our hearts and minds more fully and largely than we did before, by the simple Word.”

Believers are strengthened in faith and grow in grace when they partake of the supper by faith in Christ. The members of the Westminster Assembly expressed the essence of the blessing received by believers in the supper when they partake worthily:

Worthy receivers, outwardly partaking of the visible elements in this sacrament, do then also inwardly by faith, really and indeed, yet not carnally and corporally, but spiritually, receive and feed upon Christ crucified, and all benefits of His death: the body and blood of Christ being then not corporally or carnally in, with, or under the bread and wine; yet as really, but spiritually, present to the faith of believers in that ordinance, as the elements themselves are to their outward senses. (WCF 29.7)

The notion of being a “worthy receiver” is drawn from the Apostle Paul’s instructions regarding the Lord’s Supper in 1 Corinthians 11:28–34. As the church in Corinth was not observing the supper properly (i.e., its members were not waiting for one another or discerning the Lord’s body by faith), Paul charged believers to practice self-examination in preparing to partake of the supper. The biblical imperative regarding the need for a believer to examine himself prior to partaking of the supper is one of the primary arguments against paedocommunion (giving the supper to children before they make a profession of faith in Christ).

The Westminster divines rejected the Roman Catholic Church’s view of the real corporal presence of Christ in the supper. Developed by Paschasius Radbertus in AD 831, the doctrine of transubstantiation became official dogma of the Roman Catholic Church at the Fourth Lateran Council (1215). The doctrine of transubstantiation was a necessary corollary to Rome’s belief that the Mass (the Eucharist) is a propitiatory sacrifice of Christ. In the Reformation, the Lord’s Supper became a central point of contention between Rome and Protestantism. The Reformers rejected the Roman Catholic idea that the supper was a sacrificing of Christ on account of the biblical teaching about the once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus on the cross.

Different views of Christ’s presence in the Lord’s Supper existed among the Reformers. Martin Luther taught that Christ is bodily present “in, with, and under” the elements in the supper, a view commonly labeled consubstantiation (a term Lutherans themselves have generally rejected). Luther’s position emerged from a view of Christology in which the divine nature of Christ—with its omnipresence—communicated to the humanity of Christ something that is not native to human nature. In contrast, the Reformed maintained that the human nature of Christ is spatially located in heaven while He is omnipresent as God according to the divine nature. Accordingly, the Reformed maintain a real spiritual presence of Christ. John Calvin held a mystical view of the supper. He taught that when a believer (since he is united to Christ by faith) partakes of the supper worthily, the Holy Spirit lifts his heart up into heaven to feed on Christ where Christ is locally present.