Why do Christians take communion?

Receiving communion is a common practice in most churches. But why do we do it?

It goes back to one evening. On the night He was arrested, Jesus ate a last meal with His disciples and left them something to keep doing after He was gone. Paul later wrote it down for a church that had started handling it badly.

1 Corinthians 11:23–25 (NKJV)

For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you: that the Lord Jesus on the same night in which He was betrayed took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, “Take, eat; this is My body which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” In the same manner He also took the cup after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.”

Christians give this meal several names — communion, the Lord's Supper, the Lord's Table, the breaking of bread. They all mean the same thing. It is an ordinance, which is simply a practice Christ Himself commanded His church to keep. There are two, and this is one; baptism is the other.

Begin with the plainest reason we do it. Jesus told us to. “Do this in remembrance of Me” is a command, not a suggestion for those who happen to find rituals helpful, and Paul is careful to say he passed on what he had received rather than something he thought up. The church does not eat this meal because it has proved popular. It eats it because the Lord of the church instituted it.

But obedience only pushes the question back a step. Why did He command a meal?

Because we forget. Not the facts — most Christians could recite them — but the weight of them. And God has always answered that forgetfulness the same way, by tying memory to something you can hold. The meal Jesus was eating that night was the Passover, the annual supper at which Israel remembered God rescuing them out of slavery in Egypt; for centuries families had eaten it and retold the story to their children. From that table Jesus took bread and a cup, ordinary things already in front of Him, and told His disciples that from now on these spoke of Him.

He was sitting in His body when He said “this is My body,” holding bread in His hand. The bread stands for His body, given for sinners. The cup stands for His blood, poured out. The cup also carries a promise: a covenant is a binding agreement, and Jesus calls this one new, sealed by His own death.

That raises a fair question. If the bread and cup stand for something, is the meal only a reminder? Paul answers it in an earlier chapter of the same letter.

1 Corinthians 10:16 (NKJV)

The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?

That word — communion — is where the name comes from, and it means a sharing, a taking part in something together. Paul is not describing a room full of people privately picturing the crucifixion. He is saying that in eating this bread and drinking this cup, believers share in Christ. He is not absent from His own table. Christians who eat in faith are fed by Him, and that is why the meal does a Christian good beyond what remembering could do on its own.

Nor is any of it private. The meal preaches.

1 Corinthians 11:26 (NKJV)

For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death till He comes.

Bread is broken in front of everyone. A cup is poured out where the room can see. A visitor who has never opened a Bible can watch a congregation eat and take in the shape of the message: a body given, blood shed, for people who needed it. Then notice the last three words, because they change what kind of meal this is. Till He comes. The church has been eating this in the gap between two events — the cross behind us and the return of Christ ahead of us. It is not a memorial for someone who is gone. It is a meal eaten by people waiting for someone who is coming back.

That is why Paul is so severe with the Corinthians. He is not correcting their theology of the elements. He is correcting how they were coming to the table.

1 Corinthians 11:20–22 (NKJV)

Therefore when you come together in one place, it is not to eat the Lord's Supper. For in eating, each one takes his own supper ahead of others; and one is hungry and another is drunk. What! Do you not have houses to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and shame those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you in this? I do not praise you.

The wealthy members were arriving early and eating their fill while the poor, who could not leave work as easily, came in to nothing. At the one table where the ground is level, they had built a hierarchy. That is the abuse Paul has in view when he writes the words that trouble so many Christians:

1 Corinthians 11:27–32 (NKJV)

Therefore whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord's body. For this reason many are weak and sick among you, and many sleep. For if we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened by the Lord, that we may not be condemned with the world.

Read what Paul actually says. He does not warn against unworthy people; he warns against an unworthy manner. It describes how you come, not how good you are. This matters enormously, because if worthiness in the person were the requirement, the table would stand empty for ever. Nobody has ever come to it worthy. It is a meal for sinners, and the sinner who knows it is the one who belongs there.

So what is a man to examine? Whether he is trusting Christ rather than himself. Whether he understands what he is doing rather than swallowing bread absent-mindedly. And whether he is at peace with the brothers and sisters eating beside him, since that was the very thing going wrong in Corinth. Self-examination sends you to Christ. It was never meant to keep you from Him.

Paul's warning had come true in that church in a way they could see: some were ill and some, in his word, had fallen asleep — they had died. But look at where he lands. Being chastened by the Lord is set against being condemned with the world. Those are two different things entirely. Condemnation is a sentence passed on the guilty; chastening is a father correcting a child he intends to keep. Paul's point is not that God was destroying them. It is that He was disciplining them, and He disciplines the people He owns.

Which leaves the question a visitor is most likely to be asking as the plate comes past. Should I take it? If you have not yet come to Christ, let it pass — not because you are too far gone, but because the meal says something about you that is not true yet. It says you belong to Him. That is not a door closed to you. It is an invitation to come in through the door He opened, and then to eat.

For those who do belong to Him, there is one more thing worth knowing about that night. Having given them the cup, Jesus said this:

Matthew 26:29 (NKJV)

But I say to you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in My Father's kingdom.