The Supper of the King: A New Covenant Meal
Introduction: The World in a Meal
Every worldview can be distilled down to a meal. The pagan worldview is a cannibalistic feast, where the strong devour the weak in a chaotic grab for power. The secular materialist worldview is a sterile, joyless affair, like eating nutrient paste out of a tube; it provides sustenance but no meaning, no fellowship, no celebration. The Buddhist worldview is to eventually stop wanting to eat at all. But the Christian worldview, the biblical worldview, is a wedding feast. It begins with a meal in a garden, it is corrupted by a forbidden meal, it is redeemed through a sacrificial meal, and it culminates in the marriage supper of the Lamb.
The Lord's Supper is not a quaint religious ritual tacked on to the end of a service. It is the point. It is the place where heaven and earth meet, where the past sacrifice of Christ is brought into the present, and where the future glory of the kingdom is tasted now. It is, as we practice it weekly, the very heart of our covenant renewal worship. We confess our sins, we hear the word of absolution in the sermon, we are consecrated by that Word, and we come to this Table for communion with the living God. Preaching is the cooking, and the Supper is the eating. A church that preaches without the Supper is like a cooking show; you learn a lot, but you go home hungry.
Here in Mark s gospel, in the upper room, on the night He was betrayed, Jesus takes the most significant meal in Israel's history, the Passover, and He fundamentally transforms it. He does not merely tweak it; He fulfills it and explodes it into something far greater. The Passover looked backward to a temporary deliverance from bondage in Egypt. This new meal looks backward to the ultimate deliverance from sin and death on the cross, and it looks forward to the final victory of the kingdom of God. This is not a funeral dirge for a departing teacher. This is the inauguration of a new world, ratified in blood, and celebrated with bread and wine.
What Jesus does here establishes the pattern for the life of the Church. He takes, He blesses, He breaks, and He gives. This is the pattern of His own life, and it is the pattern for ours. We are taken by God in election, blessed in our union with Christ, broken in repentance and sanctification, and given to the world as salt and light. To understand this meal is to understand the gospel, the church, and the future of the world.
The Text
And while they were eating, He took some bread, and after a blessing, He broke it, and gave it to them, and said, “Take it; this is My body.”
And when He had taken a cup and given thanks, He gave it to them, and they all drank from it.
And He said to them, “This is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.”
Truly I say to you, I will never again drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.
(Mark 14:22-25 LSB)
The Bread of Heaven (v. 22)
We begin with the first element of this new meal.
"And while they were eating, He took some bread, and after a blessing, He broke it, and gave it to them, and said, 'Take it; this is My body.'" (Mark 14:22)
Jesus is presiding over a Passover Seder. The bread before Him would have been unleavened bread, the "bread of affliction," a memorial of Israel's hasty departure from Egypt. But Jesus is doing something new. He is not merely continuing the Passover. He is instituting a meal that fulfills not just the Passover, but all the feasts of Israel. This is why, when the disciples first celebrate this meal after the resurrection, they do so on Pentecost, a feast which required an offering of leavened bread. The kingdom of God is not like flat, lifeless crackers. It is like leaven, potent and active, that works its way through the entire loaf of the world. So we eat the bread of heaven, not the bread of affliction.
Then He says the words that have launched a thousand theological debates: "This is My body." What does He mean? We must reject two opposite errors. The first is the error of Rome, which says that the bread, through a magical incantation by a priest, ceases to be bread and becomes the physical, material flesh of Christ. This is a crass, carnal misunderstanding. The second is the error of many modern evangelicals, who reduce this to a "mere memorial," an empty symbol that does nothing but remind us of an absent Christ. This is a sad and anemic view that robs the sacrament of its power.
The biblical position is that Christ is truly present at this meal, but He is present in a spiritual, covenantal sense. We affirm a real presence. When Jesus says "this is My body," He is using a metaphor, just as He did when He said "I am the door." But it is a metaphor that accomplishes something. His physical body is in heaven, at the right hand of the Father. But His Spirit is here. And by faith, as we eat this bread, the Holy Spirit nourishes us with the benefits of Christ's broken body. We eat Him with our faith, not with our teeth. God is present with His people here, in His covenant glory. It is not an absence, nor is it a raw material presence. It is a glorious, spiritual communion with the living Christ.
The Blood of a New Covenant (v. 23-24)
Next, Jesus takes the cup and gives it a startling new meaning.
"And when He had taken a cup and given thanks, He gave it to them, and they all drank from it. And He said to them, 'This is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.'" (Mark 14:23-24 LSB)
In the Passover meal, there were four cups of wine. This was likely the third cup, the "cup of blessing." But Jesus redefines it completely. This is no longer about the blood of a lamb painted on doorposts in Egypt. This is His own blood, the blood that will inaugurate a new and better covenant. All covenants in the Bible are ratified with a blood sacrifice. The old covenant was sealed with the blood of bulls and goats, a temporary covering for sin. But this is the blood of the Son of God Himself, which does not merely cover sin, but takes it away entirely.
He calls it "My blood of the covenant." The new covenant, promised by Jeremiah, is one where God's law would be written on the hearts of His people, and their sins would be remembered no more (Jer. 31:31-34). That covenant is cut and sealed right here, in this cup. The wine is not literally His blood, any more than the bread was literally His flesh. But it is the sign and seal of that blood, which was poured out for many. By drinking this cup, we are identifying ourselves with His death. We are saying that His sacrifice is our only hope, and that we are members of this new covenant people.
But we must not treat this lightly. To be in a covenant means you are liable to its terms, both the blessings and the curses. The blessings of this new covenant are infinitely greater than the old, the fulfillment of every promise. But this means the curses are correspondingly more severe. The writer to the Hebrews warns of the "sorer punishment" for the one who treats the blood of the covenant as an unholy thing (Heb. 10:29). This meal is a place of great assurance and comfort for the believer, but it is a place of great danger for the trifler and the hypocrite. To drink this cup in unbelief is to trample underfoot the Son of God. Therefore, we do not shrink back from the Table; we shrink back from our sins.
The Vow of the King (v. 25)
Jesus concludes the institution of this meal with a solemn vow and a glorious promise.
"Truly I say to you, I will never again drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God." (Mark 14:25 LSB)
This is a staggering statement. Jesus, on the eve of His crucifixion, takes a vow of abstinence. He is like a Nazirite, setting Himself apart for the great work of redemption. He will not taste the wine of gladness again until His work is complete. His joy will be deferred until He has secured the salvation of His people and established His kingdom. This is the measure of His love and determination. He is headed for the cross, and He will not be diverted.
But this vow is also a promise. He speaks of a day when He will drink it new in the kingdom of God. He is looking past the cross, past the tomb, past His ascension, to the great consummation of all things. He is looking forward to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb, the ultimate feast where He, the Bridegroom, will celebrate with His bride, the Church, in the fully realized kingdom. This is the "not yet" that gives meaning to our "already."
This tells us something crucial about our weekly observance of this Supper. Every time we come to this Table, we are participating in a foretaste of that final banquet. This meal is an appetizer for the great feast to come. It proclaims His death "until He comes." It connects our present reality with our future hope. We drink this wine now, in this fallen world, as a down payment on the new wine of the kingdom. We are rehearsing for the wedding. This promise fuels our eschatological optimism. The kingdom of God is not a retreat; it is an advance. And this meal is the fuel for that advance, nourishing us and strengthening us until that day when we see the King face to face, and share that new wine with Him.
Conclusion: Eat and Drink the Gospel
So what does this meal mean for us, right now? It means everything. This is not just a symbol; it is a participation in the gospel itself. In this bread and wine, Christ offers Himself to us. He offers us forgiveness, nourishment, strength, and fellowship.
Are you weary? Are you burdened by your sin? Have you had a hard week, fighting the world, the flesh, and the devil? Then you are precisely the kind of person this meal is for. It is not a reward for the spiritually strong; it is food for the spiritually hungry. You do not have the authority to excommunicate yourself because you had a bad week. If you are a baptized disciple of Jesus Christ, trusting in Him alone for your salvation, then He commands you to come. You must come.
When you take this bread, you are taking hold of Christ's body, broken for you. All your brokenness, your sin, your failure, was laid on Him. When you drink this cup, you are receiving the cleansing power of His blood, the seal of a covenant that cannot be broken because He kept it perfectly on your behalf. This meal is all gospel. It declares that you are saved not by your own efforts, but by His finished work.
And as we eat and drink together, we are not just having a vertical experience with God. We are also having a horizontal experience with one another. We are one body, sharing one loaf and one cup. This meal builds us together, knitting us into a true community, a family. It fences us in together and fences the world out. It declares our unity in Christ.
So come. Come not because you are worthy, but because He is worthy. Come and receive the grace He so freely offers. Come and be strengthened for the week ahead. Come and taste the future. Come, and welcome, to Jesus Christ.