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1 Corinthians 10:17
“Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.”
Some of the fiercest debates in Christian history have concerned what takes place in the Lord’s Supper. Having rejected the view that the sacrament serves only as a memorial of Christ’s death, major theological traditions agree that Christ is really present in the supper while disagreeing on how He is present.
Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism both teach that the bread and the wine in the Lord’s Supper actually become the body and blood of Jesus. The East does not really seek to explain how this happens. Roman Catholic theology teaches a view called transubstantiation, which holds that the bread and the wine in their essence become the physical flesh and blood of Jesus while retaining the appearance, taste, feel, and smell of bread and wine. What looks like bread and wine is not actually bread and wine.
Lutheranism holds a view that has been called consubstantiation, though Lutheran theologians tend not to prefer that term. Here Christ’s body is located in, with, and under the bread and wine. Like Roman Catholics, Lutherans say that Christ is bodily, corporeally, or physically present in the supper. Unlike Roman Catholics, Lutherans deny that the bread and wine are changed into Jesus’ physical body and blood.
Perhaps the major problem with these views is that for Christ to be corporeally present in any way in the supper, His human body would have to be omnipresent. The Lord’s Supper is celebrated in different places all over the world, and often many churches are celebrating the sacrament simultaneously; thus, Jesus’ physical body would have to be in more than one place at the same time if He were bodily present in the sacrament. That compromises the true humanity of Jesus because human nature means being present in only one place at a time.
Texts such as 1 Corinthians 10:17 teach that the bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper are just that: bread and wine. But that does not mean that Christ Himself does not come to us when we eat and drink in faith. As John Calvin and the confessional Reformed tradition have noted, Jesus is present when we partake of the supper, but not in a physical sense. Through our union with Christ and the Holy Spirit, we are meeting with the person of Christ and thus with both the humanity and deity of Jesus that are united in that person. According to His human nature, He remains localized in heaven while all that we need from both His humanity and His deity are communicated to us for the sake of our spiritual nourishment and growth in grace.
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
God’s Son had to be both God and man to save us, which means that we need the whole Christ for salvation—His true humanity and His true deity. In the Lord’s Supper, we commune with Jesus in a special way to feed on Him by faith and receive all that we need for life and godliness. John Calvin writes regarding the Lord’s Supper, “The flesh and blood of Christ feed our souls just as bread and wine maintain and support our corporeal life.”
For further study
- Isaiah 40:11
- Matthew 18:20
- 1 John 1:1–3
- Revelation 19:6–10
The bible in a year
- Ezekiel 37–38
- 1 Peter 4