1 Corinthians 11.23-32
Maundy Thursday
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
There comes a time in everyone’s life when they realize the need to have a will. Often, it’s when they begin having children. For others, that realization comes when they receive news that they have a terminal condition. Regardless of what sparks the realization, it is nearly always motivated by love. We want to make sure that after our death our children, our families, and our church, receive the good things that we have earned in our lifetime. And so, we record our final wishes in clear and plain language. The notary attaches his seal to them. Then, the will sits in a safe place until the day the Testator—the one who made the will—dies. Then it goes into effect.
St. Paul records the last will and testament of our Lord in tonight’s epistle. He was not in the upper room with the twelve apostles on the night in which He was betrayed. Paul was taught this directly by Christ. “For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you: The Lord Jesus on the same night in which He was betrayed took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, ‘Take, eat; this is My body which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of Me.’ In the same manner He also took the cup after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in My blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.’”
Our translation renders the word covenant, but testament is better. Covenant implies two parties, each making promises to the other; “I will do this for you. You will do this for me.” It only takes one to make a testament, in which that one says, “I bequeath this to you.” A testament is unilateral. A testament is a promise. And it is confirmed by a death. This is how God ‘made a covenant’ with Abraham in Genesis 15. God promised Abraham that He would give the land of Canaan to Abraham’s descendants. The covenant was confirmed by the death of a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old female goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon (Gn 15:9). These animals were cut in two—with the exception of the birds—and the Lord passed through the separated animals without Abraham, signifying that He was making a unilateral covenant—a testament.
This is how He dealt with Israel, the descendants of Abraham. He made them the promise, through Moses, in Exodus 3:8, “I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Amorites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites.” Israel believed God’s promise and received it in faith. Then the testament was confirmed by a death—the death of the Passover lamb. And as the Passover lamb was a temporal and transitory thing, so was the Old Testament, and so was Israel’s possession of the land of Canaan. He had promised the land to Abraham’s descendants so that they might be separated from the other peoples of the earth, a people from whom the Messiah of all peoples might be born. The lamb, therefore, along with all the ceremonies Moses gave Israel, prefigured the true Paschal Lamb: Christ.
He came as a man, conceived without sin, and lived without blemish. His flesh was roasted in the fire of God’s wrath while on the cross. Like the lambs that prefigured Him, He was not allowed to remain on the cross until morning but was taken down and buried. Christ is the true paschal lamb, who died to ratify the New Testament which God had promised to make in Jeremiah 31[:33-34]. He said this covenant would not be like the one He made with Israel when He brought them out of Egypt. Israel had despised their separation from the nations and turned the laws and ceremonies God had given into a way of earning God’s righteousness. God foretells the New Testament when He tells Jeremiah, “I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”
As the Paschal Lamb which died to confirm the covenant was the eternal Son of God, so the New Testament He makes promised eternal benefits. The New Testament is the promise of the forgiveness of sins for Christ’s sake. The New Testament is the promise of the Holy Spirit, who writes God’s law—His eternal will—on men’s hearts so that they begin to live as God’s people from the heart. This is what Christ bequeaths to all believers.
But before He died, on the night in which He was betrayed, He gave His apostles a sign and seal of the New Testament. The Lord Jesus on the same night in which He was betrayed took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, ‘Take, eat; this is My body which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of Me.’ In the same manner He also took the cup after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in My blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.’” He had promised them the forgiveness of all their sins, new life, and eternal salvation. So that they might be certain in this promise, He tells them He will die for it. He will give His body and shed His blood to earn the forgiveness of all of their sins. And He leaves both—His very body and His very blood—to them as a sign, a seal, a notary, if you, that His testament is true and that it is truly theirs by faith.
It would have been enough to give them the New Testament—the promise. Their faith could have clung to His promise. But God knows their frame, that they are dust. He knows their weakness, so He gives them bread which is simultaneously His body and wine which is simultaneously His very blood which was shed for them, so that they might have even greater assurance and the strengthening of their faith. God has always put visible signs and seals to His promises, by which men might be stirred up all the more to faith. To Noah He gave the rainbow. To Gideon He gave the fleece. For the New Testament, though, He gives the very means by which He confirmed the New Testament: His body and blood for us Christians to eat and drink.
For although He gives it to the apostles, He does not give it only to them. It is for the Christian’s forgiveness and the strengthening of their faith. This is why He tells them, “This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.” As often as you do this, remember His suffering and death. Not in a mere historical remembrance but remember it by receiving the blessings He gives as often as you do this. That Christ wanted more than just the apostles—but all Christians—eat His body and drink His blood for the forgiveness of their sins, new life, and eternal salvation, is evident from Acts 2:42 that the church after Pentecost continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread—which was the sacrament—and in prayers. That Christ meant this to be done by all Christians is evident from the fact that the apostle Paul gave it to the Corinthian congregation and taught them the necessity of self-examination before partaking, lest they eat and drink in an unworthy manner and be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. That He gave His body and blood for Christians to eat and drink in the sacrament is evident from the fact that He gave His body and blood as a sign and seal of the New Testament which is for all people.
Our Lord Jesus Christ, on the night in which He was betrayed, left His last will and testament for those who are children of God by baptism and faith. He gave it to the apostles to give to the church because out of His infinite love and great compassion, He wants God’s baptized children to enjoy the blessings He earned by righteous life and His innocent, bitter sufferings and death. Knowing the enemies with which His baptized faithful must do battle, He wanted them to be strengthened in their faith, so that they trust His testament all the more. That they might take all the more conform in His testament—the promise of forgiveness, the promise of new life by the power of the Holy Spirit, and the promise of eternal salvation—He gives them His body and blood as a notary. For He instituted the sacrament of His body and blood to give you His testament and reconfirm it to you as often as you do this, remembering Him and receiving His benefits. For this cup is not a symbol of the New Testament, nor it is an empty sign of it. It is the New Testament—the Gospel itself—in His blood. Amen.
May the peace of God which surpasses all understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
