Question: Should leaven or unleaven bread be used at the Lord’s Supper? Is not Scripture abundantly clear as to its being used at the time of unleaven bread in the Old Testament? If we are to be careful about symbols, to illustrate the oneness of all believers, and we should be, should we not be, at least, as careful by symbols, to declare the sinlessness of that blessed body broken for us? Should we not zealously keep out of the bread broken in memory of Him, leaven which certainly speaks of sin, and the workings of evil?
“Let us therefore keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” (1 Cor. 5:8).
Answer: The church began on the day of Pentecost. This is the “Feast of Weeks” of Leviticus 23:15-21. For this it was specifically ordered that they should bring “two waves loaves of two tenth deals: (of fine flour), they shall be baken with leaven; they are the first fruits unto the Lord.”
We understand these two loaves typify believers, such as those in the upper room in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost. Notice the “with leaven.” Leaven is recognized as being in believers, but it is leaven “baken”; it has been through the fire, its activity has been stopped by the fire, but it is there.
The unbroken loaf on the table represents all believers on earth united together to form the Body of Christ.
“For we being many, are one loaf.”
How fitting, then, that leaven should be found there. But in the Word of God, not one word is said as to the kind of bread that was to be used in the remembrance of the Lord in His death. Such distinctions as “leavened” or “unleavened” belong not to Christianity, but to Judaism. Paul in 1 Corinthians 11:26 says nothing about the kind of bread, whether leavened, unleavened, white or brown, but simply, “this bread.” To be occupied with the question as to whether the bread should be leavened or not, is to drop into the snare of putting the new wine into the old bottles.
Let us keep the Lord before us in the memorial, not the nature, or the ingredients, of the symbol.