Systematic Theology (Volume 3 of 3)

by Augustus Hopkins Strong

2. The Mode of administering the Lord's Supper.

(a) The elements are bread and wine.

Although the bread which Jesus broke at the institution of the ordinance was doubtless the unleavened bread of the Passover, there is nothing in the symbolism of the Lord's Supper which necessitates the Romanist use of the wafer. Although the wine which Jesus poured out was doubtless the ordinary fermented juice of the grape, there is nothing in the symbolism of the ordinance which forbids the use of unfermented juice of the grape,—obedience to the command “This do in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19) requires only that we should use the “fruit of the vine” (Mat. 26:29).

Huguenots and Roman Catholics, among Parkman's Pioneers of France in the New World, disputed whether the sacramental bread could be made of the meal of Indian corn. But it is only as food, that the bread is symbolic. Dried fish is used in Greenland. The bread only symbolizes Christ's life and the wine only symbolizes his death. Any food or drink may do the same. It therefore seems a very conscientious but unnecessary literalism, when Adoniram Judson (Life by his Son, 352) writes from Burma: “No wine to be procured in this place, on which account we are unable to meet with the other churches this day in partaking of the Lord's Supper.” For proof that Bible wines, like all other wines, are fermented, see Presb. Rev., 1881:80-114; 1882:78-108, 394-399, 586; Hovey, in Bap. Quar. Rev., April, 1887:152-180. Per contra, see Samson, Bible Wines. On the Scripture Law of Temperance, see Presb. Rev., 1882:287-324.

(b) The communion is of both kinds,—that is, communicants are to partake both of the bread and of the wine.

The Roman Catholic Church withholds the wine from the laity, although it considers the whole Christ to be present under each of the forms. Christ, however, says: “Drink ye all of it” (Mat. 26:27). To withhold the wine from any believer is disobedience to Christ, and is too easily understood as teaching that the laity have only a portion of the benefits of Christ's death. Calvin: “As to the bread, he simply said ‘Take, eat.’ Why does he expressly bid them all drink? And why does Mark explicitly say that ‘they all drank of it’(Mark 14:23)?” Bengel: Does not this suggest that, if communion in “one kind alone were sufficient, it is the cup which should be used? The Scripture thus speaks, foreseeing what Rome would do.” See Expositor's Greek Testament on 1 Cor. 11:27. In the Greek Church the bread and wine are mingled and are administered to communicants, not to infants only but also to adults, with a spoon.

(c) The partaking of these elements is of a festal nature.

The Passover was festal in its nature. Gloom and sadness are foreign to the spirit of the Lord's Supper. The wine is the symbol of the death of Christ, but of that death by which we live. It reminds us that he drank the cup of suffering in order that we might drink the wine of joy. As the bread is broken to sustain our physical life, so Christ's body was broken by thorns and nails and spear to nourish our spiritual life.

1 Cor. 11:29—“For he that eateth and drinketh, eateth and drinketh judgment onto himself, if he discern not the body.” Here the Authorized Version wrongly had “damnation” instead of “judgment.” Not eternal condemnation, but penal judgment in general, is meant. He who partakes “in an unworthy manner” (verse 27), i. e., in hypocrisy, or merely to satisfy bodily appetites, and not discerning the body of Christ of which the bread is the symbol (verse 29), draws down upon him God's judicial sentence. Of this judgment, the frequent sickness and death in the church at Corinth was a token. See verses 30-34, and Meyer's Com.; also [pg 961]Gould, in Am. Com. on 1 Cor. 11:27—“unworthily”—“This is not to be understood as referring to the unworthiness of the person himself to partake, but to the unworthy manner of partaking.... The failure to recognize practically the symbolism of the elements, and hence the treatment of the Supper as a common meal, is just what the apostle has pointed out as the fault of the Corinthians, and it is what he characterizes as an unworthy eating and drinking.” The Christian therefore should not be deterred from participation in the Lord's Supper by any feeling of his personal unworthiness, so long as he trusts Christ and aims to obey him, for “All the fitness he requireth Is to feel our need of him.”