Commentary - Matthew 26:26-35

Bird's-eye view

In this dense and pivotal passage, we witness the formal institution of the New Covenant hard on the heels of the final Old Covenant meal. As Jesus and His disciples are concluding the Passover Seder, He takes the bread and wine and fundamentally redefines them. This is no longer a meal that looks back to a temporary deliverance from Egypt; it is now a meal that looks to the ultimate deliverance from sin and death through His impending sacrifice. Jesus establishes the central sacrament of the Christian church, the Lord's Supper, as the sign and seal of this New Covenant in His blood. Immediately following this high point of covenantal institution, Jesus predicts the total failure of His chosen men. The Shepherd will be struck, and the sheep will scatter. This juxtaposition is crucial: the covenant is not established on the foundation of the disciples' faithfulness, which is about to evaporate, but solely on the faithfulness of Christ. Peter's loud protestations of loyalty, followed by Jesus' specific prediction of his denial, serve to underscore this point with painful clarity. The strength of the covenant is in Christ alone, not in the men who receive it.

This section, therefore, presents us with two towering realities: the objective glory and efficacy of the New Covenant meal, and the subjective, staggering weakness of the men who were the first to receive it. It is a profound comfort to all believers. The Supper is for the weak, for the scattered, for those who are about to fail. It is a meal of grace from start to finish, established by a sovereign Savior who knows our frailty perfectly and yet binds us to Himself anyway with covenant oaths, sealed in His own body and blood.

Outline

Context In Matthew

This passage occurs in the Upper Room on the night Jesus was betrayed. It is the very center of the Passion narrative. Jesus has just celebrated the Passover with His disciples, a meal freighted with centuries of redemptive-historical meaning. During that meal, He identified His betrayer, Judas Iscariot, who has likely already departed to fetch the authorities (John 13:30). What Jesus does here is not an afterthought; it is the interpretive key to the entire week. He is taking the central elements of the Passover, the bread of affliction and the cup of redemption, and declaring that they now point to Him. He is the true Passover Lamb. This act transitions the people of God from the old covenant sign to the new. Immediately after this, they will go to Gethsemane, where the agony of His coming sacrifice will begin in earnest. The institution of the Supper provides the theological framework for understanding the cross, which is just hours away.

Key Issues

The Covenant in His Blood

When Jesus says, "this is My blood of the covenant," He is using language that would have shocked any first-century Jew. He is echoing the very words of Moses at the ratification of the Old Covenant at Mount Sinai. After reading the book of the covenant, Moses took the blood of the sacrifice and threw it on the people, saying, "Behold the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you" (Ex. 24:8). That blood bound the people to God in a formal, legal relationship. For Jesus to now take a cup of wine and declare it to be the blood of the new covenant is a staggering claim. He is claiming the authority to inaugurate a new relationship between God and man, one that supersedes the Mosaic economy.

And this covenant is established through a better sacrifice. The blood at Sinai was the blood of bulls and goats. This is the blood of the Son of God Himself, "poured out for many for forgiveness of sins." The old covenant could only deal with sin ceremonially and temporarily. This new covenant, sealed with Christ's blood, accomplishes the actual, effectual, and eternal forgiveness of sins. The Lord's Supper, therefore, is not a funeral service. It is a coronation feast. It is the regular, repeated ceremony where the citizens of the new covenant come together to renew their allegiance to the King and to receive from His hand the signs and seals of His unbreakable promises.

Verse by Verse Commentary

26 Now while they were eating, Jesus took some bread, and after a blessing, He broke it. And giving it to the disciples, He said, “Take, eat; this is My body.”

This is happening during the Passover meal. Jesus takes the unleavened bread, the "bread of affliction," and transforms its meaning. He blesses it, which is to say He sets it apart for a holy purpose. He breaks it, a clear picture of what is about to happen to His own body on the cross. Then comes the monumental statement: "this is My body." This is covenant language, not the language of chemical analysis. When God said "circumcision is my covenant" (Gen 17:10), He did not mean the physical act was the covenant itself, but that it was the sign and seal of that covenant. In the same way, Jesus is saying, "This bread now represents, signifies, and seals to you the reality of My body, broken for you." To eat it is to receive and appropriate the benefits of His sacrifice by faith.

27-28 And when He had taken a cup and given thanks, He gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you; for this is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for forgiveness of sins.

Next, He takes the cup, likely the third cup of the Passover meal, the "cup of redemption." He gives thanks (eucharisteo, from which we get the word Eucharist), modeling for us that this meal is a joyful thanksgiving. He commands them all to drink, signifying that the benefits of His blood are for the whole community of faith. Then He defines the cup: it is the sign of His "blood of the covenant." As we noted, this directly alludes to Exodus 24 and Jeremiah 31, establishing the New Covenant. This blood is "poured out," the language of sacrifice. It is poured out "for many," which in this Semitic context means a vast, definite multitude, not a vague, potential everyone. And the purpose is explicit: "for forgiveness of sins." This is the heart of the gospel. The central blessing of the New Covenant is the complete and final remission of our sins, purchased by the blood of Christ.

29 But I say to you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in My Father’s kingdom.”

Having established the meal for the present church age, Jesus now points to its ultimate fulfillment. He is taking a vow of abstinence that will only be fulfilled at the great eschatological feast. This does two things. First, it underscores the finality of what He is about to do. The old way of fellowship is over. Second, it gives a glorious promise. There is a future, consummate celebration coming. Every time we take the Lord's Supper, we are not only looking back to the cross, but we are also looking forward to that day, getting a foretaste of the "new wine" of the fully realized kingdom. It is a meal of hope, a trailer for the great wedding feast of the Lamb.

30 And after singing a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.

The Passover meal traditionally concluded with the singing of the Hallel Psalms (Psalms 113-118). It is highly likely they sang Psalm 118, which contains the lines, "The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone," and "Bind the festival sacrifice with cords to the horns of the altar." Imagine the Lord Jesus, the cornerstone about to be rejected, the festival sacrifice about to be bound, singing these words with full knowledge of what they meant. This is not a somber, defeated dirge. It is a song of triumph sung on the way to the battle. It is an act of profound and courageous faith, and it sets the tone for His approach to the cross.

31-32 Then Jesus said to them, “You will all fall away because of Me this night, for it is written, ‘I WILL STRIKE DOWN THE SHEPHERD, AND THE SHEEP OF THE FLOCK SHALL BE SCATTERED.’ But after I have been raised, I will go ahead of you to Galilee.”

The mood shifts abruptly. Jesus brings them back to the stark reality of their own weakness. He tells them they will all be scandalized by Him, they will all desert Him. And He roots this prediction not in His observation of their character, but in the eternal plan of God recorded in Scripture. He quotes Zechariah 13:7, and notice who does the striking: "I will strike down the shepherd." The Father Himself is the one ordaining this. The cross is not a tragic accident; it is a divine plan. But even in this grim prediction, there is a word of immense grace. He immediately follows the prophecy of their scattering with the promise of His resurrection and their reunion: "I will go ahead of you to Galilee." He is already planning their restoration before they have even committed the sin of desertion. Grace gets there first.

33 But Peter answered and said to Him, “Even though all may fall away because of You, I will never fall away.”

Here is Peter in all his glory and folly. His love for Jesus is genuine, but his confidence is entirely misplaced. He trusts in himself. He even sets himself apart from the others: "though all..." He sees their weakness, but is blind to his own. This is the classic blunder of the self-reliant. He thinks his loyalty is a product of his own grit and resolve. He has no idea of the satanic pressure that is about to be brought to bear, and he has no idea of the deep-seated weakness in his own heart. His boast is sincere, but it is sincerely wrong.

34 Jesus said to him, “Truly I say to you that this very night, before a rooster crows, you will deny Me three times.”

Jesus' reply is swift, specific, and devastating. He counters Peter's vague boast ("never") with a precise prophecy. Not just sometime, but "this very night." Not just a moment of weakness, but a threefold denial. Not just in the heat of the moment, but before the rooster, a common marker of time for the end of the third watch of the night, crows. Jesus knows Peter better than Peter knows himself. This is both a severe warning and a strange kind of mercy. When it happens exactly as Jesus said, it will be the very thing that breaks Peter's pride and drives him back to the grace of the one who knew his failure in advance and loved him anyway.

35 Peter said to Him, “Even if I have to die with You, I will not deny You.” All the disciples said the same thing too.

Peter is not humbled; he doubles down. He escalates his promise to the point of martyrdom. And lest we single Peter out, Matthew is careful to add that "All the disciples said the same thing too." This is not just Peter's problem; it is the human problem. We are all prone to overestimate our own strength and to believe that our good intentions are sufficient. Their corporate failure was preceded by their corporate boasting. They were all about to learn the hard lesson that the New Covenant is not sustained by our promises to God, but by His promises to us, sealed in the blood of the Shepherd who allows Himself to be struck so that His scattered sheep might be forgiven and gathered again.

Application

This passage presents us with a stark contrast that we must apply to our own lives. On the one hand, we have the glorious, objective reality of the Lord's Supper. It is a gift from Christ, a true means of grace, a seal of the forgiveness of our sins. When we come to the Table, we are not just remembering something; we are participating in a covenant renewal ceremony. Christ is spiritually present, nourishing our souls. We should approach the Table with awe, thanksgiving, and great confidence in what Christ has done and what He promises to us in the meal.

On the other hand, we have the pathetic reality of our own hearts. Like Peter and the disciples, we are full of sincere but foolish boasts. We promise God that we will never fall away, and then we deny him in some small or large way before the rooster crows. The lesson here is not to try harder in our own strength. The lesson is to stop trusting in our own strength altogether. The Lord's Supper is not a meal for spiritual giants who have their act together. It is a hospital for sinners. It is food for the faint. It is a reminder that our standing with God depends entirely on the broken body and shed blood of Jesus, and not at all on the strength of our own resolve. So we should come to the Table the way Peter should have come: not boasting, but confessing our weakness, and clinging to the Savior who knew we would fail and still said, "This is my body, given for you."