THE Lord's supper was instituted by the Lord Himself to keep Him in His death before the hearts of His own; and to be, in its public celebration, a publication of His death.
The members of Christ's body are on earth. The world rejected Him: they have owned him by faith God-ward for their personal forgiveness, redemption, and salvation, and have individually repudiated the counsel and deed of them who rejected and crucified Him by identifying themselves with the assembly of God, gathered out of the world by the action of the word carried home to the soul by the Spirit of God; but when the whole assembly comes together in a general meeting on the Lord's day, and eats the Lord's supper, they own Him publicly in the world, for by their assembling to His name, and common participation in the celebration of that Christian ordinance which sets forth His death, they there and then, and in that celebration, become a public monument before a Christ-rejecting world, by keeping alive the remembrance of the Lord Jesus Christ, whom they, in their enmity and lawlessness, rejected and crucified.
The world would willingly forget its guile in refusing and slaying Him, but this perpetuation of the memory of the Lord's death, and this public symbolic proclamation of it, by the church's continued celebration of the Lord's supper, when as a united body they publicly announce His death, the world is compelled to have their sin brought vividly before their very eyes in the silent act of the Lord's followers in symbolically representing it in their solemn periodical exhibition of the fact in their joint-participation of the Lord's supper.
What the saints feel, think, have, and do in the supper is peculiar to themselves; but the public celebration of the Lord's supper has the aspect of a public proclamation of the Lord's death in the world. The love of Christ's own draws them around Himself, to think of Him in His person, love and death; and they get such views of Christ their Savior there, as they get nowhere else; and they lift up their hearts in praise and thanksgiving, their eye affecting their heart and inflaming their love as they think of such a word as this: " Christ also hath loved us and given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice unto God for a sweet-smelling savor; " but as the world looks on, the fact and act of celebration become a standing publication of the Lord's death—a death which tells its twofold tale of forgiveness through Christ's blood to every penitent believer, and of certain perdition to all unbelievers " who count it as a common thing."
The very word " show forth" signifies, literally, to bring word down upon any one, that is, to bring it home to him. The celebration of the Lord's supper is what the Lord has left as the public announcement of his death, as at once brought home for richest blessing and joy to the hearts of his friends, and the greatest terror and condemnation to His enemies; for if His blood be not on us for forgiveness, it lies against us for condemnation.
Let us look a little more closely at the words of the Lord Jesus, that we may see how fully they go to establish what we have advanced as to one chief object in the Lord's supper being the public announcing of the Lord's death as well as the keeping the memory of the Lord Jesus alive and fresh in the saints' hearts by the continued institutional and symbolical representation of His death in the Lord's supper.
The Lord Jesus' words are these: —" This is my body which is for you: this do in remembrance of me. This cup is the new covenant in my blood: this do, as often as ye drink, in remembrance of me" 1 Cor. 11:24, 2524And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me. 25After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me. (1 Corinthians 11:24‑25)).
The apostle explains the meaning of the Lord's repeated injunction—" this do in remembrance of me"— by referring the Corinthian assembly to their own actual practice, which confirmed it: —
" For as often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup ye proclaim the Lord's death till He come" (verse 26).
The Lord's death was a public event, His coming again to the earth will be a public event, and the Lord's supper which fills up the period between these two extremes is a public celebration. The church, which is not known by the world but rejected by it, as was her Lord, comes forth periodically and gives a proclamation of His death in its celebration of the supper, and thus it is a remembrance of Him. Whatever blessing, or joy, or effect on the spirit, soul, and heart the saints may have, and do have, in their eating together the Lord's supper, yet the supper, in its nature, material representation, object, and end is not only for the believer's private enjoyment, but also for the public proclamation of the Lord's death as being a perpetual monument or keeping of that which partakes of the nature of an anniversary feast commemorative of the death of Him whom they slew and hanged on a tree. The words “to my remembrance" show that this is so? And, when we ask how we are to understand this, we have it explained to us by the apostle, “Ye announce the Lord's death." To whom? To one another? To principalities and powers in the heavenlies? Or is it a public announcement on the earth where he was slain? We, of course, observe the Lord's supper without any such thought, for our renewed minds are in full contemplation of the Lord Himself, the purged conscience is witness to the efficacy of His blood to atone for our sins and cleanse from every sin, and the renewed and satisfied affections witness to the perfect adequacy of Christ Himself to win our love by giving us to know in that which the bread and wine in the Lord's supper represent—the depth, fullness, and perfection of His own; but eating the Lord's supper on the ground of resurrection knowing the new place and relationship into which we are brought by Christ's death and the power of the Holy Ghost, giving us the consciousness of the cutting of every cord that bound us to self or Satan's world by this death of the Lord, we having the Lord's supper that tells of His finished work and accomplished redemption as our rallying ground and common center: when we gather to His name and eat it together we give a public witness, or, we should rather say, one result of our being gathered for such a purpose is that the Christ who was slain is publicly kept in remembrance; and our having withdrawn from the world in realization of our new relations to Christ, risen and seated in heaven as members of His body, and our new relation to the Father as His children—and our being the flock of God—all on the ground of Christ's death by proclaiming the Lord's death in partaking together of the Lord's supper—we announce that every link with this world is broken for Him, as for us, by this death, and that Christ is alive and glorified at God's right hand. When He comes again it will be to take vengeance on them that know not God, and on them that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The object of the public celebration of the Lord's supper is the remembrance of the Lord in His death. But our Lord is not dead, but is " alive for evermore," and all our relationships, privileges, and prospects are connected with Him where He is, in the Father's presence, though we own that we owe all to His death, and participate with all believers in that supper that tells so impressively and solemnly of His death, and of this alone.