LUKE 22 (NOTES OF A READING)
[p. 228] LUKE 22 (NOTES OF A READING)
CAC Attention is particularly called to the fact that the Lord gave thanks. He gave thanks for the loaf, and I suppose saying “In like manner also the cup” would imply that He gave thanks likewise for the cup. Evidently the thought of thanksgiving enters very much into the character of the Supper. So that people are right so far in speaking of what they regard as the Lord’s supper as the holy Eucharist — that is, the holy thanksgiving. It is important that the thanksgiving side should be prominent with us.
Rem It is very remarkable that the Lord is really giving thanks to God for His own body; “A body hast thou prepared me”.
CAC Yes, there was that brought into presence that was a cause and spring of unmixed thanksgiving to God. How far we are removed in this from many thought of imperfection! We are moved quite away from the region where there is imperfection, and where there is a shadow upon anything, into a region where the only activity and service that is called for is thanksgiving. It was a wonderful moment for the Lord. A moment when He could give thanks in the contemplation of His own body about to be given, and of all that was bound up in the giving of His body for His loved ones. The more we consider in spirit the Lord’s thanksgiving, the more we shall understand what the Supper means. In giving thanks the Lord is clearly taking a place on our side; that is, He is seen as Head when He gives thanks, it is on our side Godward.
Ques Why do you think the Lord gave thanks for the whole loaf and not for the broken loaf?
CAC I think the breaking of the loaf has in view our participation. Whereas the loaf in its unbroken state speaks of the Lord’s body, and of everything being secured on the principle of obedience, I think the completeness of it is suggested in the unbroken loaf — that His body is given for us. We know that it necessitated His death; it was really in death that His body was given, the full devotion of His life coming out in that marvellous and never-to-be-forgotten way.
Rem It is very remarkable too, that He does not say “This is my body which is given for you” of the whole loaf but of the broken loaf.
CAC Yes, He has in view their participation. We could not participate in an unbroken loaf; the breaking comes in in view of participation. But we entertain the thought of the completeness, the whole character of what was there in His body.
Ques I was wondering if there were more in it than participation?
CAC Well, it is in connection with His giving it to them. The breaking is in view of the distribution. He gave it to them, so that all might become partakers. We all partake of one loaf, according to 1 Corinthians 10. But then we partake of it as broken, as made available for our participation. The Lord has made all secure in His Person, and through His death it is made available for us. The breaking of bread really implies that all that has come in in His blessed Person and through His death has now become available for our participation, so that He broke the bread and gave it to them. You see the same thing when the Lord blessed the loaves in Luke 9. The breaking seems to be connected with the distribution. It is the same in chapter 24: “Having taken the bread, he blessed it, and having broken it, gave it to them”. It seems to be connected with the distribution.
Ques Does it not produce an effect in those who participate in it?
CAC I have no doubt there is that. “The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of the Christ?
[p. 230] Because we, being many, are one loaf, one body; for we all partake of that one loaf” (1 Corinthians 10: 16, 17). There is a moral idea connected with it there, no doubt, that we all partake of Christ, so that we become one body as all partaking of one loaf. It enters into the very nature of the institution that we all participate. Indeed the saints generally are all looked at there as having part in the act of breaking bread — we break the bread, we bless the cup; there is the collective idea in it, for the disciples came together to break bread.
Rem It is not so much the eating of it by which we remember Him, it is “This do in remembrance of me”. It is the breaking of it that brings in remembrance.
CAC There would be no remembrance according to His thought if we did not eat and drink. It is expressly said of the cup, “This do, as often as ye shall drink it, in remembrance of me” (1 Corinthians 11: 25). It is that way the Lord is called to mind collectively; it is not an individual thing. It is most blessed that the Lord has in view that all are to participate in the precious fruit and value of His having taken a body and having devoted that body in death, so that His thought in breaking the loaf is that all are to participate in it, and that is how we remember the Lord. We remember that He has taken a body and that He has devoted that body in the most absolute way, and in doing it, the great thought before Him was that the whole company of His saints should participate in it. If we limit the breaking of bread to a figure of His death, and make the remembrance lie in that alone apart from the partaking of it, I think we might lose the exceedingly precious thought that in the breaking of bread the Lord has before Him the thought of all participating, and we remember the Lord in that regard. He has taken a precious holy body; He has come into a condition marked by obedience, so that He might take up, in the obedience of love, all that is in the will of God in regard to us. He has taken it all up and carried it into effect through death, and now His thought is that we all have a common participation in it. It is only [p. 231] through His death that it is possible for there to be participation, so that in that sense the breaking of bread can be regarded as a figure of His death, as that which has made possible participation in Himself and in all that has come to pass on the line of obedience. I think the Lord would have us to recognise that everything that is delightful to God and that is for our eternal blessing and joy has come in on the principle of obedience. What we have before us is the perfect obedience of one blessed Man, an obedience that is of such a character that it has not left a single element lacking in regard to the pleasure of God; and now the divine thought is that we should participate in it. It is very precious! We really participate in it, so that we can join the Lord in His thanksgiving. He could foresee and estimate it all, according to its full value, and He could give thanks before a single disciple, even Peter or John, understood it. Now we participate in it and we give thanks, so that the assembly of God is marked by this wondrous thanksgiving which continues.
Ques Do we participate in the obedience?
CAC In the fruit of the obedience; everything is on that principle, it is all involved in the thought of the Lord taking a body. He has come into a condition that is marked by obedience. “Lo, I come ... to do, O God, thy will” and, “Thou hast prepared me a body” (Hebrews 10: 7, 5). He has come into that place, and it is a great thing for us to recognise that blessing can only come in on the principle of obedience. When God proposed the covenant, the people said, “All that Jehovah has spoken will we do!” (Exodus 19: 8). They had the idea that obedience was right; they could not very well say anything else. Then God brings in the details of the burnt-offerings and the peace-offerings and the altar, all speaking of Christ. In Exodus 20, when God gives the law, the moment He has completed the law He turns to speak of the altar and then brings in Christ at once. Then the Hebrew bondman has his ear bored and continues in obedience through love. That is Christ. Now we have found the principle [p. 232] of obedience and the practical working out of it in Christ, and all is in view of our blessing; that is what we delight in and what we give thanks for. Perfect obedience has come in, and everything pleasurable to God has come in on the line of obedience rendered by the One who loved; it is because He loved that He obeyed. He has secured through death the whole pleasure of God in regard to us; that is the spring in our souls of unmixed thanksgiving, and the very thought of the breaking of bread suggests the participation of all. We all participate in Christ and in all that has been secured through His perfect obedience. The whole pleasure of God was entrusted to Him to carry out in obedience, and He has done it. Now we can sit down together to participate in it. What a spring of thanksgiving in every heart!
Ques Is there the thought of that extending to the universe, because obedience will characterise the universe?
CAC I think that is really what we come to. We see in Christ the way that divine love has operated, so that everything originates in love. It is love on God’s part and on the part of Christ, divine love, but love moving on the line of obedience. As we think of all that, nothing remains in our hearts but thanksgiving. Not now thanksgiving for mercies and for God’s goodness and loving-kindness to us in the pathway, or for the personal relief and blessing that we have, but thanksgiving for all that has been secured through the death of Christ, and that is going to spread out until it embraces the universe. Before it goes any further than the assembly we all participate in it, and the participation is involved in the breaking of bread. The more we have a sense of that the more the Lord would rise up before us as the Object of remembrance. He would rise up before us as the One who commands reverence and affection and fully occupies the mind; it is a question of the mind, ‘This do for a calling of me to mind’ (see note i, 1 Corinthians 11: 24). He absorbs the mind of everyone, so that we do not think of any other, but we think of Him in the blessed assurance that we participate [p. 233] in all that He has brought in and all that is secured through death.
Rem The Lord does not say, ‘Do this for a remembrance of My death’, but it is “of me”.
CAC Quite so; I think that is most important, because you have the completeness of it there. You remember the Person, not just the act. The Person includes everything; He is so great. And He says, “This do in remembrance of me”.
That Person has been devoted in love to us even to death, and it moves our hearts to their very depths that a divine Person should become Man and be devoted in love to us to the fullest possible extent.
Ques Would His body given and His blood shed be the act?
CAC Well, it brings out how He has dedicated Himself; everything is looked at as coming from the divine side, so that it is all perfect. The very fact that He had a body at all is from the divine side. A body was prepared by God, and the Lord, on His part, came into it; He became flesh; He came into that condition by His own act as a divine Person; then the giving of His body was all His own act, and the pouring out of His blood was on the divine side; therefore there is not a flaw, not a jarring note, in the thanksgiving. The quality of what is before us is perfect, it is divine in quality; you see the wonderful character of it.
We come together as having judged ourselves, we have had all out before we come. We have all been before God before coming. It is not supposed that we shall come to break bread without the process of self-review. “Let a man prove himself” supposes that you come from a process of self review and as having come to the conclusion that everything connected with you as in the flesh is absolutely worthless for God and needed to be blotted out in the death of Christ.
Apart from that you could not look at divine things at all.
Then, when you have, so to speak, bathed your flesh in water, you find that there is that before you which is a spring [p. 234] of unmixed thanksgiving. Every feature of it touches the spring of thanksgiving in the heart, and whether you apprehend little or much — a babe in Christ apprehends but little, and a father in Christ apprehends much — what we apprehend is absolutely perfect and is a spring of thanksgiving. So that we come together in that spirit of thanksgiving which the Lord inaugurated when He gave thanks.
Ques Would it be right if every believer came together with the sentiment that imbued Paul when he said, “The Son of God, who has loved me and given himself for me” (Galatians 2: 20)?
CAC Surely that is right. If we are moving on the line which the apostle Paul indicates when he says that, it would be all right when we came together. He says, “In that I now live in flesh, I live by faith, the faith of the Son of God, who has loved me and given himself for me”. Now that is a daily matter, is it not? If we go through the week in that spirit we should come together in the same affectionate mind. We come to think of the Lord collectively, because that is the idea in the breaking of bread; it is a collective thing. We come to call the Lord to mind in a certain way which He Himself has appointed, collectively and unitedly. We do it in a most significant act — we break bread so that everyone present is to participate.
Ques Do you think it would be possible, if all the saints were together in the way which you have been suggesting, that we should reach the point in which His love would be predominant?
CAC Yes, I think the whole point of the institution is that divine love dominates — the love of Christ, a divine Person; He has become Man that He might give His body for us, and then He says, “This cup is the new covenant”. I believe the Lord in this takes up the position of One who could Himself consummate the covenant; only God could do that. The pouring out of the blood was a divine act. That it was done by the Roman soldier is a very material way of [p. 235] looking at it. The whole point is that the pouring out of His blood was His own act, and it is beautiful that even in the Old Testament, Jehovah says, “I have given it [the blood] to you upon the altar” (Leviticus 17: 11). Even of old, God would have the blood to be regarded as His own gift, in the type. When we come to the precious antitype He says, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you”. It is God consummating the covenant from His own side in all the infinite value of the precious blood of Christ. There is not a flaw there, is there? You see how beautifully it would give a thanksgiving character to it all. We need to pray that we may have more apprehension of what the loaf and cup really speak of. We should ask the Lord before we come together. I have said sometimes that we pray for realisation, but it would be more intelligent if we prayed for apprehension. Realisation rather turns the mind to some process within, but apprehension is that you take account of what is presented to you objectively. Now we need to pray for that; everything that is set forth in the body of Christ and in His blood is a subsisting reality, and we need to pray that we may apprehend the reality, and as we apprehend it we shall be abundantly furnished with material for thanksgiving. The brothers will be all ready to voice it because the sisters’ hearts are all filled with it; what the brothers say depends on what the sisters think.
All this leads to the remembrance having its true character. There would not be any remembrance if we were not common participators. That is something more than our thanking the Lord at home. We have all remembered the Lord a good many times today; it has been a bad day for us if we have not, but then that is not breaking bread. Breaking bread is a company thing, it is the Lord’s own institution so that we should call Him to mind collectively, as all having come into participation in all that exists in Himself and which has been made effective in regard to us in His death. That is the true idea of the breaking of bread, and it gives true [p. 236] assembly remembrance of the Lord. We remember Him assemblywise, and quite differently from what you can do in your own room.
You do not know what sort of meeting you are going to have next Lord’s Day. We should cultivate the idea that next Lord’s Day it is going to be something different from what it has ever been before. We are going to have a deeper and sweeter apprehension of the Lord’s body given for us and His blood poured out for us than we have ever had before, and therefore we want, and expect, a more powerful spring of thanksgiving than we ever had before.
Ques How far did the woman in Simon’s house enter into this?
CAC Well, she had apprehended the grace of the Creditor, she had apprehended that the Creditor was there, which poor Simon had no idea of. The Creditor was there, but He was there in the unbounded grace of forgiveness, and therefore she could express the apprehension that she had of Him; it would make a very good start towards all this that we have had before us.
Ques I would like to ask what the Lord meant by “This do in remembrance of me”.
CAC I think it was the whole, you could not leave any part of the institution out. The Lord’s taking the loaf, giving thanks and breaking it all enter into the thing; if you left one of these elements out it would not be right. We know that we should not feel at all comfortable to get up and break the bread without giving thanks. The youngest child would feel it was not right, and it would not be right to give thanks and then pass the loaf round without first breaking it; you would have left something out. If the bread were broken and thanks were given for the cup without the saints partaking in both it would not really be the Lord’s supper. Every detail has to come into it, and as it does, the Lord rises before us. It has often been said that the brother who gives thanks really suggests the Lord, if he is spiritual. That is, the very way the [p. 237] brother gives thanks suggests to the affections of the saints how the Lord gave thanks. Very often the brother actually refers to the Lord’s own actions.
Rem The Lord was made known to them in the breaking of bread.
CAC Quite so. Nobody could do it as He did, and so we love to think of Him breaking the bread. He is absent and we come together to do it, but we remember how the Lord did it, and therefore profound reverence marks the occasion; every lover of the Lord regards the breaking of bread with profound reverence. There is nothing like it. There is nothing else that the Lord has so connected with His own Person. He says, “This do in remembrance of me”. He has connected it with His own Person so that we feel when we come together that it is most holy. We feel, as we come into the room and see the loaf and cup on the table, that morally we should take our shoes off. That is, we put ourselves into a worshipping attitude as we come in, so that the Supper becomes more holy, and commands more the spirit of adoration every time we do it.
Ques What is the setting in Corinthians?
CAC In 1 Corinthians the thought of the communion is emphasised to correct the local state. The occasion is not only one of communion but it involves a public witness. There is the public witness that the Lord has died; we “announce the death of the Lord, until he come” (1 Corinthians 11: 26). The saints coming together to eat and to drink have the character of public witness; that is, it is a memorial to the Lord. The Supper has that character as it stands here as a memorial to the fact that the Lord has died in this world, and that memorial is going to stand until He comes again.
Rem It is maintained in all its freshness, on account of the Person who has instituted it.
CAC It is wonderful the interest that the Lord maintains in the hearts of His saints. We have had hundreds of readings on the Lord’s supper, and the saints never tire of it.
[p. 238] If the Lord could have found a better means to speak to our hearts than He did, He would have done so. The very fact that He took a loaf and a cup shows that in the wisdom of divine love there is no better means of our being collectively enabled to call Him to mind.