29. Mat_26:26-27, the Lord�s Supper
Matthew 26:26-27, the Lord’s Supper
Matthew 26:26-27. Having finished the Passover, our Lord “took bread,” unleavened, unfermented bread, and blessed it. This was done always at the Passover, and was by Christ transferred to the Supper. He gave it to his disciples as the symbol of His body. Then He took the cup, and gave thanks. This also was done on giving the third cup at the Passover. This he also transferred, and gave it to his disciples as the symbol of his blood, “shed for the remission of sins.” The bread and the cup were used with no discrimination as to their character. To be in harmony with the bread, the cup should also have been unfermented. It was the Passover bread and wine that Christ used. In Exodus 12:8; Exodus 12:15; Exodus 12:17-20; Exodus 12:34; Exodus 12:39, and other places, all leaven is forbidden at that feast and for seven days. The Prohibition against the presence and use of all fermented articles was under the penalty of being “cut off from Israel.” “The law forbade seor—yeast, ferment, whatever could excite fermentation—and khahmatz, whatever had undergone fermentation, or been subject to the action of seor”—Bible Commentary, p. 280.
Professor Moses Stuart, p. 16, says: “The Hebrew word khahmatz means anything fermented.” P. 20: “All leaven, i.e. fermentation, was excluded from offerings to God—Leviticus 2:3-14.”
“The great mass of the Jews have ever understood this prohibition as extending to fermented wine, or strong drink, as well as to bread. The word is essentially the same which designates the fermentation of bread and that of liquors.”
Gesenius, the eminent Hebraist, says that “leaven applied to the wine as really as to the bread”—Thayer, p. 71. The Rev. A.P. Peabody, D.D., in his essay on the Lord’s Supper, says: “The writer has satisfied himself, by careful research, that in our Savior’s time the Jews, at least the high ritualists among them, extended the prohibition of leaven to the principle of fermentation in every form; and that it was customary, at the Passover festival, for the master of the household to press the contents of ‘the cup’ from clusters of grapes preserved for this special purpose”—Monthly Review, Jan., 1870, p. 41.
“Fermentation is nothing else but the putrefaction of a substance containing no nitrogen. Ferment, or yeast, is a substance in a state of putrefaction, the atoms of which are in continual motion (Turner’s Chemistry, by Liebig)”—Kitto, ii. 236.
Leaven, because it was corruption, was forbidden as an offering to God. Exodus 34:25 : “Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven.” But salt, because it prevents corruption and preserves, is required. Leviticus 2:13 : “With all thine offerings thou shalt offer salt.” If leaven was not allowed with the sacrifices, which were the types of the atoning blood of Christ, how much more would it be a violation of the commandment to allow leaven, or that which was fermented, to be the symbol of the blood of atonement? We cannot imagine that our Lord, in disregard of so positive a command, would admit leaven into the element which was to perpetuate the memory of the sacrifice of himself, of which all the other sacrifices were but types. Our Lord blessed the bread, and for the cup he gave thanks. Each element alike was the occasion of devout blessing and thanksgiving. This cup contained that which the Savior, just about to suffer, could bless, and which he, for all time, designated as the symbol of his own atoning blood.
Having finished the Supper, in parting with His disciples He said, “I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in My Father’s kingdom.” The Savior does not use oinos, the usual word for wine, but adopts the phrase “genneematos tees ampelou,” “this fruit of the vine.” Was it because oinos was a generic word, including the juice of the grape in all its stages, that He chose a more specific phrase? Was it because He had previously selected the vine as the illustration of Himself as the true vine, and His disciples as the fruit-bearing branches, and the juice as “the pure blood of the grape”? (Deuteronomy 32:14.) By “this fruit of the vine,” did He intimate that “in His Father’s Kingdom” there was something to be looked for there answering to intoxicating wine? This cannot be tolerated for a moment. By “this fruit of the vine,” did He mean inebriating wine? Dr. Laurie, Bibliotheca Sacra, June, 1869, says, “The Bible never requires the use of wine (intoxicating) except at the communion-table, or as a medicine prescribed by another than the party who is to use it.” This is emphatic, and promptly answers the question in the affirmative. It is strange, very strange, that our Lord should require his disciples perpetually to use, as a religious duty, at his table, the article which Dr. Laurie says “all good men agree is dangerous, and not to be used except as a medicine prescribed by another.” Does Christ, who has taught us to pray “lead us not into temptation,” thus require his disciples to use habitually, in remembrance of him, an article too dangerous to be used anywhere else? The fact that the Passover was six months later than the vintage is not an invincible objection, since, as we have seen in the preceding pages, on the authority of Josephus, of travelers Niebuhr and Swinburne, and of Peppini, the wine-merchant of Florence, and others, that grapes are preserved fresh through the year, and that wine may be made from them at any period. Is it probable that Christ took an intoxicating liquor, which in all the ages past had been the cause of misery and ruin, and which in all the ages to come would destroy myriads in temporal and eternal destruction; that he took the wine which his own inspired Word declared was “the poison of asps,” “the poison of serpents,” “the poison of dragons,” whose deadly bite is like a serpent, and whose fatal sting is like an adder, and made that the symbol of His atonement, saying, “This is the New Testament in My blood”? But, in “the fruit of the vine,” pure, unfermented, healthful, and life-sustaining, and which the Scriptures called “the blood of the grape” and “the pure blood of the grape,” there was harmony and force in making it the symbol of atoning blood by which we have spiritual life and eternal blessedness. The Apostle Paul, 1 Corinthians 10:15, not only avoids the word oinos (wine), but calls the liquor used “the cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ?” And in 1 Corinthians 11:25 he quotes the exact words of Christ, “This cup is the New Testament in my blood.”
Clement, of Alexandria, a.d. 180, designates the liquid used by Christ as “the blood of the vine”—Kitto, ii. 801.
Thomas Aquinas says, “Grape-juice has the specific quality of wine, and, therefore, this sacrament may be celebrated with grape-juice”—Nott, London Ed. p. 94, note.