The Passover celebration was to be the last meal that Christ would share with the disciples before His death (John 16:28). It was also the setting in which He chose to bring New Covenant thought to an Old Covenant act. Now receiving the bread and the cup is a participation in the body and blood of Christ. While we do not believe that the bread and cup become Christ’s actual physical body, we do believe that in partaking by faith we receive the pardon these elements symbolize.
The mystery involved in the covenant meal extends beyond our relationship with Christ and to our relationship with one another. Partakers of the covenant meal also participate in the celebration of the unity of the body in Christ because the breaking of bread points to the fact that each of us is a part of the whole which was broken for us (1 Cor. 10:17).
Let us reach upward to the Father and outward to one another as we partake of the “communion of the body of Christ.”
