LUKE 22 AND 1 COR 11 (NOTES OF A READING)
LUKE 22 AND 1 COR [p. 221] 11 (NOTES OF A READING)
Luke 22: 19, 20; 1 Corinthians 11: 23 - 34
We had before us what the Lord did in taking bread and blessing it and in giving thanks for the cup. We have seen how He would have us to enter into the spiritual import of the symbols to which He has given such wondrous meaning. The consideration of this must come first. We must think first of what the Lord did and of the significance with which He clothed the bread and the cup, so that we might apprehend and appropriate what He has made available for us spiritually in His body and His blood.
Now we pass to the consideration of what He would have us to do, and we would seek His gracious help in doing so. His intention was that we should do something, for He said, “This do in remembrance of me” and “This do, as often as ye shall drink it, in remembrance of me” (1 Corinthians 11: 24, 25). It appeals to our hearts as to what place the Lord has with us, for it is either an affectionate remembrance or nothing. The Lord has been pleased to call us to remember Him in this way. It indicates His deep personal affection and the desire of His heart to have a very definite place with us. It is in doing the act which He has appointed that we call Him to mind.
In the sacrifice of the day of atonement there was “a calling to mind of sins yearly” (Hebrews 10: 3). This is the only passage where the word is used, save in relation to the Lord’s supper in Luke 22 and 1 Corinthians 11. It serves to illustrate how an act can call to mind that with which it stands in relation. The act of bringing the sacrifices called to mind the sins of the whole year that had passed. Now what we do in breaking the bread and eating the Lord’s supper calls the Lord to mind in a collective way. It is a remembrance assemblywise, for the saints do it as having come together. The Lord desired to be called to mind in this way, and He provided a divinely simple way for us to do it, a way that was suggested [p. 222] by love and that appeals to love. In His wisdom He took up material things so that there might be a tangible act which we can do in which He is called to mind. It is not merely a mental or spiritual act, but there are material elements, which remain simply what they are, bread and wine. They suggest the Lord, and concentrate our thoughts upon Him at a time and in a character when His love found full expression. The doing of this act is the one thing which normally brings the assembly together. I am sure that there is special grace from the Lord which may be confidently looked for, so that the act of eating the Supper does become what He intended it to be. Any heart coming to the Supper with affectionate desire may count on His grace for this.
In coming together we have definitely before us that the Lord would have us to call Him to mind. We do what He has told us to do in the affectionate sense that He is not here, and we call Him to mind in doing it. Love delights to respond to love in the way that love has suggested. Sometimes, perhaps, we lose the sweetness of the remembrance by having other things before us, such as the presence of the Lord in the midst, or assembly privilege of association with Him before His Father and God. But the Supper is for remembrance: it is for the calling Him to mind in the place from which He is absent. I believe the more we give our hearts to that, the more we shall realise His presence and spiritual leading.
What an appeal it is to the hearts of His own! He has asked us to do a certain act. In eating the Supper every heart and mind is concentrated on the Lord Jesus; this brings our hearts into unison. We are blessed, enriched and filled, but thinking of that is not the remembrance. What we do calls Him to mind, as having given expression to all the thoughts of His heart, and His devotion to the will of God and to us in love; it calls Him to mind as the Testator of the love of God. We know it all as for us but we know it in its full blessedness as manifested in Him. This is not exactly apprehension or appropriation but the heart appreciation of the blessedness [p. 223] disclosed in Him when He went into death. Eating the Supper thus we affectionately call Him to mind in His own appointed way. The emblems before us speak of Him, not as living here or as risen and in heaven but as One whose body has been in death for us and whose blood has been poured out having the new covenant in it.
We do not, surely, forget His wondrous pathway here; it was, indeed, a ‘path of worth’. Nor do we forget that He is risen and ascended. But He has said, “This do in remembrance of me”; and what we do does not speak of Christ after the flesh, but of Christ in death, His body given, His blood poured out. He is a risen, living and heavenly One now, but what we do for the remembrance of Him speaks of Him as in death. I believe it is peculiarly sweet to the Lord to be called to mind in a way that brings so definitely before us the supreme act of His love. Nothing can ever express His deep personal affection to His saints and His assembly as the giving of Himself did. It brought out the measureless character of His love. There has been a spot where all that was in the heart of Christ, and all that was in the heart of God, could be told out, and that spot was reached when He went into death. That was an act in which adequate expression could be given to it all; everything blessed was concentrated there. The death of Christ will be to all eternity the greatest fact in the moral universe.
Luke 22 brings out in a most affecting way the contrast between what was in the heart of the Lord in instituting the Supper, and what was found in His disciples. “Behold, the hand of him that delivers me up is with me on the table”. “And there was also a strife among them which of them should be held to be the greatest”. Simon, too, declared his readiness to go both to prison and to death with the Lord just when he was about to be sifted as wheat by Satan. The Lord would not have us to forget the actual conditions which are known of Him to be present. The consideration of them leads to deep self-judgment. And 1 Corinthians 11 corresponds [p. 224] with Luke 22 in regard to this, for it exposes conditions on the side of the saints sadly out of accord with the Lord and with His supper, and which, if not repented of, can only come under His judgment. It is deeply humbling and exercising to think how much there is with us that is a matter of judgment. The Supper is not only the sweet and holy privilege vouchsafed by love to love, but it is a divine call to self-judgment. We have to judge ourselves in the light of the body and blood of the Lord. The public bearing of our act in eating the Supper is to announce the death of the Lord until He come. Privately there is “distinguishing the body” and proving oneself in self-judgment.
We come together as knowing that the Lord has been delivered up by one of His chosen companions, and as knowing, too, what we are in ourselves. We are as ready to want to be great as the disciples; we are as untrustworthy as Simon; as ready to think first of ourselves as the Corinthians. But in presence of that which speaks of the body and blood of the Lord all this is deeply and truly judged and the Lord gets His place with us as known in the supremacy of His love. We realise, too, that the Lord is not here, and that He is not wanted here, but we love Him and we do the act which He instituted in remembrance of Him.
But then while we do so, we cannot forget how the Lord spoke of the joy which He had in being with His own as the fruit of the vine to Him. He had spoken of that joy being resumed under entirely new conditions. His companionship with His disciples here had been cheering to His heart and He had made known to them the delight He had in being with them. They had known in His company how true was that ancient utterance of His Spirit, “My delights were with the sons of men” (Proverbs 8: 31). He had said it to them according to Psalm 16: 3, “To the saints that are on the earth, and to the excellent thou hast said, In them is all my delight”. It is sweet to think that He said it not merely of them, but to them, that they might know it. He had called [p. 225] them to be with Him, to follow Him, and they had proved His tender interest and care in a thousand ways. Particularly in those closing hours He had made known to them what they were to His heart: “With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer”. It was the last act in a companionship that had been sweet to His heart; He had made them conscious of His love to them. He could say, “As I have loved you, that ye also love one another” (John 13: 34). Indeed John 13 to 17 is an intense expression of how He loved His own who were in the world. John 14: 3 shows that He would have them Himself in His Father’s house. It was love’s desire, for love must have the company of its objects.
Now in the light of all this can we not understand Him saying, “I will not leave you orphans, I am coming to you”? The Lord sums up, as it were, all He was saying in, “Ye have heard that I have said unto you, I go away and I am coming to you” (John 14: 28). Do you not think this must have been exceedingly precious to the disciples when it got its place in their hearts by the Holy Spirit, the Comforter? It was to be characteristic of the period during which the world would see Him no longer. He would come to His loved ones because of the joy which it would be to Him to do so. It is the wine of His soul, drunk in an entirely new and spiritual way. He comes to His own that He may find His joy in their company.
The Lord would have us to look for His coming to us; He would have us to cultivate the spiritual conditions which would make it possible for Him to come to us. These conditions would be found where His commandments are kept, and where that act is done which He has appointed for the affectionate calling of Him to mind. For as we have seen, this would involve self-judgment and the purifying ourselves from everything unworthy of Christ.
We see in Mark 3: 32 - 35 that there were those sitting around Him at whom He could look round in a circuit and recognise them as His moral kindred doing the will of God.
[p. 226] But now that He is no longer here, the circle is reconstituted as He is called to mind in His own appointed way. The will of God is that every saint should find his and her place in that circle. We should thus stand in obedience and affectionate relation to the Lord, and to the brethren who love Him. The Lord loves to come to such because of the pleasure He has in being with them. Every lover of Christ should be found in the circle which is constituted by the doing of that act which is for the calling of Him to mind.
The Lord came and stood in the midst on two successive first days of the week, suggesting to them His pleasure in their being together on that day; we know that the disciples assembled to break bread on that day (Acts 20: 7). It is in coming together to eat the Lord’s supper that the assembly comes into evidence as a concrete company; it was never intended that it should be a mystical or invisible company.
The Lord comes to His own because He delights in them, and loves to be with them. He comes to His saints in the joy which He finds in being with them, a joy which expresses itself in singing. We have no instance given of the Lord singing in resurrection, but it was made known prophetically that he would do so. “In the midst of the assembly will I sing thy praises” (Hebrews 2: 12). It was revealed that after all the infinite sorrows of atonement He would be answered “from the horns of the buffaloes” (Psalm 22: 21), and that He would have brethren and a congregation in the midst of whom He would praise God. That Gentiles should have a part in this was assured by the word, “For this cause I will confess to thee among the nations, and will sing to thy name” (Romans 15: 9), quoted from Psalm 18: 49. 1 understand there is a suggestion in the word translated “sing” in the latter scripture that it is to a musical accompaniment. Think of the gentile saints in their varied local assemblies being brought into accord with the singing of Christ so as to be the tuned instrument to vibrate in harmony with His singing! Truly He is “the chief Musician”, and there are “stringed instruments”
[p. 227] tuned by divine grace into accord with Him (Habakkuk 3: 19). How much of profound spiritual value should we lose if we had not the Old Testament.
We may learn from the Lord through Mark and Matthew the spiritual import of the symbols which He has been pleased to clothe with such wondrous meaning. We learn too, how He has spoken of being with His own in joy, and how this leads to singing. I believe that when we come together for the affectionate remembrance of Him, He would have us to look for His coming to us. He would have us look for Him to come in the joy of that new kind of association which He has brought to pass that we might follow His lead in singing to God. I would not say that He always comes thus, for the assembly in its actual condition might need instruction or even rebuke. But the desire in what we do is that the Lord may have His place with us, and every uncomely element may be subdued and brought under judgment in presence of what speaks of the body and blood of the Lord, so that there may be a congregation or assembly where there is a place for Him, and where hearts look for Him, and where all are divinely and spiritually free to praise God in accord with Him.
The bread and the cup are for us. Then the Lord has His personal joy in coming to those whom He loves, and who love Him. Then God is praised in song. Where those things are realised there is liberty to move as led by Christ our Head into that region of spiritual and heavenly relationships which are suggested by the mount of Olives. “I ascend to my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God” (John 20: 17).