|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Elements of
the Lord’s Supper
What Kind of Bread and Fruit of the Vine Are We
to Use?part 2
Peter DitzelThe Bread
The
Bible clearly tells us that Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper when He
and His disciples were gathered to eat the Passover. Matthew 26:17 and 26
tell us, “Now the first day of the feast of unleavened bread the
disciples came to Jesus, saying unto him, Where wilt thou that we prepare for
thee to eat the passover?... And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and
blessed it, and broke it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat;
this is my body.” At this time in history, the terms Passover and Feast
of Unleavened Bread were often used interchangeably. As Baptist scholar A. T.
Robertson wrote, "The Passover was expanded to mean the entire feast
that followed, and vice versa." So,
as Matthew says, this was the “first day of the feast of unleavened
bread.” Mark 14:12 agrees: "And the first day of unleavened bread,
when they killed the passover, his disciples said unto him, Where wilt thou
that we go and prepare that thou mayest eat the passover?" Luke 22:7-8
gives this account: "Then came the day of unleavened bread, when the
passover must be killed. And he sent Peter and John, saying, Go and prepare
us the passover, that we may eat."
In
Exodus 12:18-20, God gives this command concerning the Feast of Unleavened
Bread: “In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at even,
ye shall eat unleavened bread, until the one and twentieth day of the month
at even. Seven days shall there be no leaven found in your houses: for whosoever
eateth that which is leavened, even that soul shall be cut off from the
congregation of No
leavened bread would have been found in the house in which Jesus and His
disciples ate the Passover. Obviously, then, the bread Jesus used had to have
been unleavened. But is this just a matter of circumstance, or is the fact
that Jesus used unleavened bread to represent His body a detail of
importance?
The
Symbolism of Unleavened Bread
In
the Old Testament festival, the Passover lamb was killed, roasted, and eaten.
This was symbolic of the substitutionary atonement made by Jesus Christ, the Lamb
of God, for the sins of His people. As part of this Old Testament type of the
reality that came with the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the Israelites were to
not eat leavened bread for the remainder of the week of this festival. This
was a symbol or type of the feast that Christians now live each day in
Christ. Paul explains the symbolism when writing to the Corinthian church,
which had been allowing a member to live openly in sin: “Your glorying
is not good. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump? Purge
out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are
unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us: Therefore let
us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and
wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” (1
Corinthians 5:6-8). Paul
uses the Old Testament symbolism of putting out leaven to tell the
Corinthians to put the sinner out of their midst. He likens leavening with
malice and wickedness, and unleavened bread with sincerity and truth. He
tells them that they are unleavened because “Christ our Passover is
sacrificed for us.” Christ has taken away our sins. Therefore, we are
sinless in God’s eyes. From
this, we see that leavening in the Bible represents sin. In Matthew 16:6 and
12, we see that Jesus used leavening to represent the wrong and sinful
teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees. In Leviticus 2:11, we find that
leaven was almost entirely forbidden in the offerings: “No meat
offering, which ye shall bring unto the LORD, shall be made with leaven: for
ye shall burn no leaven, nor any honey, in any offering of the LORD made by
fire.” These sacrifices represented the sinless Jesus Christ, and it
would have been improper to use leavening, which was a type of sin: “So
Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for
him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation”
(Hebrews An
exception is found in Leviticus 23, in the offering made on Pentecost:
“Even unto the morrow after the seventh sabbath shall ye number fifty
days; and ye shall offer a new meat offering unto the LORD. Ye shall bring
out of your habitations two wave loaves of two tenth deals: they shall be of
fine flour; they shall be baked with leaven; they are the firstfruits unto
the LORD” (verses 16-17). God orders these loaves to be made with
leaven because they represent God’s people. These loaves are offered
with animals that represent the sinless, perfect Christ. Offered with and
compared to Him, these loaves must be leavened, representing the blemish of
sin we still bear in our flesh. Similarly, beginning with Leviticus 7:11, we
read of the peace offering in which loaves of leavened bread, representing
the spiritual sacrifices of the saints, are offered with unleavened cakes and
wafers. Our spiritual sacrifices can be offered to God only when accompanied
by the sweet savor of Christ’s perfect sacrifice.
The Significance of the Unleavened Bread in the
Lord’s Supper
The
elements of the Lord’s Supper are symbols. Paul says of Jesus’
introduction of the bread in the Lord’s Supper, “And when he had
given thanks, he broke it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is
broken for you: this do in remembrance of me” (1 Corinthians I
think that no Christian would say that Jesus was sinful. To be a sacrifice
acceptable to God, to be our substitutionary atonement, Jesus had to be
sinless. He could not pay for our sins if He had His own sins. Speaking of
Jesus Christ, our High Priest, Hebrews 4:15 says, “For we have not a
high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but
was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” We
have learned that, in the Bible, leavening typifies sin. Unleavened bread,
then, typifies sinlessness. Leavened bread was never used in the Old
Testament offerings that typified Christ. And Jesus Himself used unleavened
bread when introducing the Lord’s Supper. What,
then, must we conclude? Only unleavened bread, picturing the sinless body of
our Lord Jesus Christ can properly be used as an element in the Lord’s
Supper. Although this may sound distastefully strong to some, to use leavened
bread in the Lord’s Supper is to not discern the sinlessness of the
Lord’s body, and, since that is inherent of the Lord’s body, it
is to not discern the Lord’s body. Of course, many do this in complete
ignorance, and I am certainly not setting myself up as anyone’s judge.
But once someone has this knowledge, I believe he or she should act on it. Copyright © 2006 wordofhisgrace.org |
|
|
|
||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|