Unit One: A Few Covenant Essentials 

Lesson Seven: Communion

It’s very simple. Just a little bread and grape juice. But it must be important, because the early church began to practice it as soon as they came together. And after all these years, we’re still serving the same meal.

It has several names. We call it communion or the Lord’s Supper. There are other names, but we like those two the best. Some churches serve the bread and juice differently, but who cares. That’s not important.  

We don’t actually know how the first last supper was served. We can find the story in some of the gospels, but we don’t get many details. We know that Jesus was sharing a Passover meal. It was a special celebration from the Old Testament.

First they ate lamb and vegetables and stuff. Then at the end, Jesus took a clump of bread and broke pieces off. He passed the pieces of bread around, along with a cup of wine, and he talked about what they meant.

It was an old celebration, but when Jesus shared the bread and the juice, the whole thing took on a new meaning. Check out this verse from Corinthians:

For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, "This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me." In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me."

First Corinthians 11:23-25   (NIV)

Notice what it means. The bread was a picture of his body, which was about to be broken on the cross. This was just a day or so before he was crucified. All the pain that he suffered on the cross was for us—on our behalf—so we might live.

When he passed the wine around, he used another word. He said the wine was a symbol of a new covenant. That’s important. As you may have heard earlier in this class, a covenant is a contract or an agreement.

The contract, in this case, states that God will forgive sins because of the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. He paid for our sins, so we can be forgiven.

You can say that the wine was a new promise that he made to us. The promise is his half of the covenant. The other half belongs to us. God promises something, and we promise something in return. Every contract works that way.

Let’s take some Bible promises for example. God promises to hear us when we pray, which is amazingly cool. But we have to pray.

He will forgive, but he wants us to confess our sins. Let’s look at that one:  

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

First John 1:9

To confess is merely to be honest about ourselves, or to admit what we’ve done wrong. If we’re honest about ourselves, God is faithful to his promise to forgive us. That’s the covenant.

So the verse could sound like:

If we are honest about our sins and admit them to God, he will forgive us and make us clean, every time, without fail, because he promised.

First John 1:9  (paraphrased)

The wine at the last supper was a reminder of that promise. So when we take the bread and the cup of juice, we remember that his body was broken on the cross and his blood was poured out, all to make it possible for us to live new lives.

But it’s more than a reminder. This is a contract, and every contract needs signatures at the bottom of the page. For example, if you buy a house, you sign a contract. If you take out a loan, you sign the contract for the loan. 

First you argue over the price and you try to get the best deal possible, and then if you agree to the conditions and the interest rate and the collateral named in the contract, you sign your name, and that’s it.

Taking the juice can be like signing our name on the contract. When we celebrate communion with a little bread and some grape juice, we can tell God that we accept what he’s done for us.

Let’s take a look at some FAQs, which are frequently asked questions, like you might find on a lot of web sites. These will be CFAQs, which are communion-related frequently asked questions.

Here they are:

Q: Where did we get the familiar words that people repeat during communion?

A: One such really cool place is First Corinthians 11, where a pastor named Paul was trying to explain communion to his church that was meeting in the town of Corinth. These verses were included earlier in the lesson, but here they are again.

For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, "This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me." In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me." For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

First Corinthians 11:23-26   (NIV)

Look in the passage for words that you’ve heard during a communion celebration in church. Write a few examples below, if you can find any.

Here’s another example.

Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup.

First Corinthians 11:27-28   (NIV)

Communion is obviously an important thing. God takes it very seriously. So take a minute and do some thinking. What kinds of things might make a person unworthy to take communion? 

Pastor Paul tells his church that every person (man or woman, boy or girl) should do something before they share in communion. It’s right there in the last sentence. What is it?

Q: Why do some churches use one cup for communion, while other churches offer everyone their own individual cup?

A: At the first communion, they probably passed around one cup. So everyone would have been drinking from the same cup. Many churches now use individual cups, and some people claim that the reason has to do with germs.

How might individual cups be healthier than using one cup for everyone? 

If you had to vote for one way of passing the juice at communion, would you prefer one cup for everyone or individual cups?

Q: Why is some communion bread flat and tasteless?

A: The bread served at Passover would have been unleavened, or baked without yeast. That bread would come out flat, but it would probably still taste pretty good. Sometimes churches will prepare unleavened bread, and sometimes they just break whatever bread they would normally use at a meal.

What kind of bread do we use at our church?

Which do you think sounds better: a super-authentic bread that is baked from a really old recipe or a modern, five-grain bread that a normal modern family might serve at their normal modern mealtime?

Q: Why do some churches serve wine at communion while others use grape juice?

A: It has been suggested that the wine served at dinners in Jesus’ time would have been quite weak, as far as alcohol goes. So grape juice might be closer to the original than our modern wine. Maybe it’s true, maybe not. Don’t know.

It doesn’t seem to matter. The Bible gives us no recipe for communion wine, so nobody cares. The important thing is to remember Jesus, and after that, you can apparently use juice or wine. In fact, you might be able to use coffee or Dr. Pepper or café mocha with an extra spritz of espresso.

But there is another reason why some churches stay away from wine. The answer is printed below, backwards, but not really backwards. Translate the answer, or just figure it out. Maybe it’s obvious.

?eciuj eparg evres ot ediced sehcruhc emos did yhW :Q

a dah ohw enoyna rof suoregnad eb dluow eniw taht diarfa erew yehT :A
diova tsuj dluoc yeht thguoht yeht dna ,msilohocla drawot ycnednet
.lla retfa ,ffuts emaS .eciuj eparg detnemref-non a gnisu yb melborp eht

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