Is this what Jesus meant when He said, “…this IS My body” and “this IS My blood”? Well, if it is actually literal, we should depict Jesus actually slicing off some of His flesh and not using any bread, or plucking a vein or an artery and putting that in the cup and say, “Drink it,” rather than offering them some other beverage besides His literal blood. But obviously, He did not do that. It plainly says He took bread and said of it, “…this is My body.” And He took the cup of the fruit of the vine and said, “…this is My blood.”

Here we have the employment of a common metaphor, a figure of speech, in the Bible, and one that we use every day and don’t even think about it, because our minds just automatically think that way. But a metaphor is a figure of speech in which one says that this thing IS another, when it actually STANDS FOR another, or, REPRESENTS another.

In John, chapter 10 and verse 9, Jesus said, “I am the door….” I’ve never heard of anyone trying to place a literal construction upon that and make Jesus something that swings back and forth on hinges. No, there are ways in which He represents a door—of entrance or of keeping people out.

Two verses later [John 10:11], He said, “I am the Good Shepherd of the sheep….” Did Jesus ever actually have a flock of four-legged sheep? Why, of course not! But He was as to men as a Shepherd is to sheep, and so it’s just said in the metaphor, “I am the Good Shepherd of the sheep….”

And so, that figure [of speech] is employed as He instituted the Lord’s supper, “this IS My body….” That is, “This bread represents, symbolizes, signifies, My body,” and likewise, of the cup. So, when a brother stands at the table and says, “Father, we thank Thee for this bread, which REPRESENTS the body of Thy Son,” he is stating exactly what the Scriptures are indicating that Jesus meant.

But again, the purpose of the supper—what is it? Well, Jesus said, “As often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup,” 1 Corinthians, chapter 11, verse 26, “ye proclaim the Lord’s death until He come.” The King James says, “ye do shew [show, or show forth] the Lord’s death till He come.”

Here, we see that the Lord’s supper centers upon the death of Christ, and we don’t mean to harp on the prayers at the table, but surely we want our prayers to be in harmony with what the Word of God teaches. A phrase I’ve heard in the prayers at the table over the last several years all over the country as I travel about preaching is, “Father, we thank Thee for this supper, which memorializes the death, burial and resurrection of our Lord.” I haven’t been able to find the “burial and the resurrection” in the New Testament in connection with the Lord’s supper, brethren. But, here, Paul very definitely states, the purpose of the Lord’s supper is to proclaim the DEATH, and memorialize the DEATH, of our Lord.

Well, do we not see that in the way that the Lord talked about His body and His blood, as He instituted the supper? And then He said, “…this do in remembrance of Me,” Luke 22:19-20 and 1 Corinthians 11:24-25. But not of His birth, as important as that was; not of His mighty miracles, as important as those were; not of His resurrection, as absolutely essential as that was to His deity. All of those, and every other thing about our Lord’s life, are absolutely important, but HE said, “This is a memorial to My death.” And that’s where we ought to leave it, brethren—right where HE left it. HE knew the purpose for which He established it.

There are cemeteries scattered all over our nation that have stones erected “In Memoriam” to those who have been laid to rest. There are monuments in your capitol; there are monuments in the Texas State capitol in Austin; there are monuments in our Washington, D.C., capitol to great men who’ve gone before. We memorialize those men and what they accomplished and what they stood for.

Jesus didn’t erect an obelisk. He didn’t build a huge building of some kind. He simply established the Lord’s supper and said, This is how you’re to constantly remember the price that I paid for your redemption. As you eat the bread and as you drink the cup, do so “in REMBMBRANCE OF ME.”

So, the Lord’s supper is not a sin-forgiving sacrifice, as the Roman Catholic mass makes of it. Our Lord was sacrificed; He sacrificed Himself once for ALL, Hebrews 9:26 [ASV “He then would have had to suffer often since the foundation of the world; but now, once at the end of the ages, He has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.”] and Hebrews 10:10 [ASV “By which will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”]. This is simply a memorial for the “ONCE FOR ALL” sacrifice. Another never need be made for the sins of mankind. It is not just for the sins of the “elect,” as the Calvinists define them. But He gave Himself “a ransom for ALL,” 1 Timothy 2:6.

The Lord’s supper is not something to be celebrated in connection with a wedding or a funeral, as men have desecrated it, but it is a simple memorial to the DEATH of the Son of God for the sins of the world.