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The Lord's Supper
C. H. Mackintosh
The institution of the Lord's Supper must be regarded, by every
spiritual mind, as a peculiarly touching proof of the Lord's
gracious care and considerate love for His Church. From the
time of its appointment until the present hour, it has been a
steady, though silent, witness to a truth which the enemy, by
every means in his power, has sought to corrupt and set aside,
namely, that redemption is an accomplished fact to be enjoyed by
the weakest believer in Jesus. Many centuries have rolled away
since the Lord Jesus appointed "the bread and the cup" in the
eucharist as the significant symbols of His broken body and His
blood shed for us; and notwithstanding all the heresy, all the
schism, all the controversy and strife, the war of principles
and prejudices which the blotted page of ecclesiastical history
records, this most expressive institution has been observed by
the saints of God in every age.
True, the enemy has succeeded, throughout a vast section of the
professing Church, in wrapping it up in a shroud of dark
superstition: in presenting it in such a way as actually to
hide from the view of the communicant the grand and eternal
reality of which it is the memorial; in displacing Christ and
His accomplished sacrifice by a powerless ordinance — an
ordinance, moreover, which by the very mode of its
administration proves its utter worthlessness and opposition to
the truth.* Yet, notwithstanding Rome's deadly error in
reference to the ordinance of the Lord's Supper, it still speaks
to every circumcised ear and every spiritual mind the same deep
and precious truth — it "shows the Lord's death till He come".
The body has been broken, the blood has been shed once no more
to be repeated; and the breaking of bread is but the memorial of
this emancipating truth.
With what profound interest and thankfulness, therefore, should
the believer contemplate "the bread and the cup"! Without a
word spoken, there is the setting forth of truths at once the
most precious and glorious: grace reigning — redemption
finished — sin put away — everlasting righteousness brought in —
the sting of death gone — eternal glory secured — "grace and
glory" revealed as the free gift of God and the Lamb — the unity
of the "one body", as baptized by "one Spirit". What a feast!
It carries the soul back, in the twinkling of an eye, over a
lapse of hundreds of years, and shows us the Master Himself, "in
the same night in which He was betrayed", sitting at the supper
table, and there instituting a feast which, from that solemn
moment, that memorable night, until the dawn of the morning,
should lead every believing heart at once backward to the cross
and forward to the glory.
This feast has ever since, by the very simplicity of its
character, and yet the deep significance of its elements,
rebuked the superstition that would deify and worship it, the
profanity that would desecrate it, and the infidelity that would
set it aside altogether: furthermore, while it has rebuked all
these, it has strengthened, comforted, and refreshed the hearts
of millions of God's beloved saints. It is sweet to think of
this — sweet to bear in mind, as we assemble on the first day of
the week round the supper of the Lord, that apostles, martyrs,
and saints have gathered round that feast, and found therein,
according to their measure, refreshment and blessing.
Schools of theology have arisen, flourished, and disappeared;
doctors and fathers have accumulated ponderous tomes of
divinity; deadly heresies have darkened the atmosphere, and rent
the professing church from one end to the other; superstition
and fanaticism have put forth their baseless theories and
extravagant notions; professing Christians have split into sects
innumerable — all these things have taken place; but the Lord's
Supper has continued, amid the darkness and confusion, to tell
out its simple yet comprehensive tale. "For as often as ye
shall eat this bread, and drink the cup, ye announce the death
of the Lord, until He come" (1 Corinthians 11:26).
Precious feast! Thank God for the great privilege of
celebrating it! And yet is it but a sign, the elements of which
must, in nature's view, be mean and contemptible. Bread broken,
wine poured out — how simple! Faith alone can read, in the
sign, the thing signified; therefore it needs not the
adventitious circumstances which false religion has introduced
in order to add dignity, solemnity, and awe to that which
derives all its value, its power, and its impressiveness from
its being a memorial of an eternal fact which false religion
denies. May you and I enter with more freshness and
intelligence into the meaning of the Lord's Supper, and with
deeper experience into the blessedness of breaking that bread
which is "the communion of the body of Christ", and drinking of
that cup which is "the communion of the blood of Christ".
* The church of Rome has so entirely departed from the truth set
forth in the Lord's Supper, that she professes to offer, in the
mass, "an unbloody sacrifice for the sins of the living and the
dead". Now we are taught, in Hebrews 9:22, that "without
shedding of blood is no remission"; consequently, the church of
Rome has no remission of sins for her members. She robs them of
this precious reality, and instead gives them an anomalous and
utterly unscriptural thing, called "an unbloody sacrifice, or
mass". This which according to her own practice and the
testimony of Hebrews 9:22, can never take away sin, she offers
day by day, week by week, and year by year. A sacrifice without
blood must, if Scripture be true, be a sacrifice without
remission. Therefore, the sacrifice of the mass is a positive
blind raised by the devil, through the agency of Rome, to hide
from the sinner's view the glorious sacrifice of Christ, "once
offered", and never to be repeated. "Christ, being raised from
the dead, dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over Him"
(Romans 6:9). Every fresh sacrifice of the mass only declares
the inefficiency of all the previous sacrifices, so that Rome is
only mocking the sinner with an empty shadow. But she is
consistent in her wickedness, for she withholds the cup from the
laity, and teaches her members that they have body and blood and
all in the wafer. But, if the blood be still in the body, it is
manifestly not shed, and then we get back to the same gloomy
point: "no remission". "Without shedding of blood is no
remission".
How totally different is the precious and most refreshing
institution of the Lord's Supper, as set before us in the New
Testament. There we find the bread broken and the wine poured
out — the significant symbols of a body broken and of blood
shed. The wine is not in the bread, because the blood is not in
the body, for, if it were, there would be "no remission". In a
word, the Lord's Supper is the distinct memorial of an eternally
accomplished sacrifice: none can communicate thereat, with
intelligence or blessing, save those who know the full remission
of sins. It is not that we would, by any means, make knowledge
a term of communion, for very many of the children of God,
through bad teaching, and various other causes, do not know the
perfect remission of sins, and were they to be excluded on that
ground, it would be making knowledge a term of communion,
instead of life and obedience. Still, if I do not know,
experimentally, that redemption is an accomplished fact, I shall
see but little meaning in the symbols of bread and wine;
moreover, I shall be in great danger of attaching a species of
efficacy to the memorials, which belongs only to the great
reality to which they point.
Extract from "Things New and Old", by C. H. Mackintosh.
The Lord's Supper
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