The Bible says more than you've been told.

Week 10 | Issue #10 | Worship Series (6 of 8)

On the night He was betrayed, Jesus took bread and a cup and gave them new meaning. The accounts in Matthew 26:26-29, Mark 14:22-25, Luke 22:19-20, and 1 Corinthians 11:23-26 agree on the essentials: 

The bread: "This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me" (Luke 22:19). The bread represents Christ's body, broken, given, sacrificed for you. When you eat it, you are remembering what He did with His body on the cross. 

The cup: "This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you" (Luke 22:20). The cup represents Christ's blood, the blood of the new covenant, shed for the forgiveness of sins. When you drink it, you are remembering the cost of your redemption. 

The command: "Do this in remembrance of me" (1 Corinthians 11:24-25). Touto poieite eis ten emen anamnesin. This is not a suggestion. Poieite is a present active imperative — keep doing this. Continually. Repeatedly. As an ongoing practice. And the purpose is anamnesis, remembrance, active recall, not passive nostalgia. 

katangello (καταγγέλλω) — To proclaim, to announce, to declare publicly. This is not a quiet, internal meditation. Katangello is the same word used for preaching the gospel (Acts 4:2, Acts 13:38, Acts 17:3, Philippians 1:16). When Paul says you "proclaim the Lord's death" through communion, he is using the same verb he uses for evangelistic proclamation. The Lord's Supper is preaching. You are preaching the death of Christ not with a sermon, but with bread and wine. 

achri hou elthe — "until he comes." The Lord's Supper is not just backward-looking (remembering the cross). It is forward-looking (anticipating the return). Every time you take communion, you are making two declarations: He died, and He is coming back. It is the only act of worship in the New Testament that explicitly points in both directions — past and future simultaneously. 

Acts 20:7 — "On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul talked with them." 

Notice the purpose clause. They did not gather to hear Paul preach and then break bread as an add-on. They gathered in order to break bread. The breaking of bread was the stated purpose of the assembly. Paul's teaching happened within that gathering, but the reason they came together was the Lord's Supper. 

Acts 2:42 — lists "the breaking of bread" as one of the four things to which the church devoted themselves; alongside teaching, fellowship, and prayers. Acts 2:46 says they were "breaking bread" daily in the earliest days. By the time of Acts 20, the pattern had settled into every first day of the week. 

1 Corinthians 11:17-34 — addresses problems with how the Corinthians were observing the Lord's Supper, which only makes sense if they were doing it every time they assembled. You do not write a lengthy correction about something that happens once a quarter. Paul's correction assumes weekly practice. 

The historical record confirms this. Justin Martyr (c. 150 AD) describes the Sunday assembly: "On the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read. Then bread and wine are brought, and the presider offers prayers and thanksgivings, and the people assent, saying Amen. And there is a distribution to each, and a participation of that over which thanks have been given." Every Sunday. Without exception. 

It is not transubstantiation. The Catholic doctrine that the bread and wine become the literal body and blood of Christ has no basis in the Greek. When Jesus said "this is my body" (touto estin to soma mou), He was using the same kind of language He used when He said "I am the door" (John 10:9) or "I am the vine" (John 15:5). Nobody thinks Jesus is a literal door. The bread represents His body. It does not become His body. 

It is not a sacrament that confers grace. Nowhere does the New Testament say that communion imparts saving grace or that it is necessary for salvation. It is an act of remembrance, proclamation, and worship; not a mechanism of grace delivery. 

It is not optional or occasional. The command is "do this," present imperative, keep doing it. The pattern in Acts is weekly. Reducing communion to a monthly or quarterly event has no precedent in the New Testament or in the early church for the first several centuries. 

John Gill on Acts 20:7: "On the first day of the week, this was the Lord's day, the day on which Christ rose from the dead. When the disciples came together to break bread this was the chief purpose of their meeting, to celebrate the Lord's Supper, which was the principal part of the worship of the day." 

Albert Barnes on 1 Corinthians 11:26: "You proclaim the Lord's death; you set forth, declare, and exhibit the fact that the Lord Jesus died for sinners. This is done by the very act of eating the bread and drinking the wine, which are symbols of His broken body and shed blood. It is a visible, tangible proclamation of the gospel." 

Matthew Henry on 1 Corinthians 11:24-25: "Do this in remembrance of me, the Lord's Supper is a memorial of Christ's death. It is not merely a lesson or a ceremony, but an act of remembrance in which the believer actively calls to mind the sacrifice of the Savior. This remembrance is not passive reflection but active proclamation." 

Acts 2:42 — "They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers." The breaking of bread is one of the four pillars of the assembly, equal in weight to teaching, fellowship, and prayer. 

1 Corinthians 10:16-17 — "The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?" The word is koinonia communion, sharing, participation. You are not observing the Lord's death from a distance. You are participating in it. 

Matthew 26:29 — "I tell you I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom." Jesus points forward. Communion is a meal that looks back to the cross and forward to the kingdom, you take it in the tension between what He did and what He will do. 

The Lord's Supper is not a cracker and grape juice. It is not a solemn pause. It is not a ritual. It is a proclamation, katangello, the same word used for preaching the gospel. Every time you eat the bread and drink the cup, you are preaching a wordless sermon: Christ died. Christ is coming back. And you remember. 

The early church did this every first day of the week. It was the reason they gathered. It was so central that Paul spent more time correcting its abuse than any other element of worship in his letters. If your church treats communion as an occasional add-on, it has inverted the priority the New Testament establishes. 

Next week: the word in worship, preaching and teaching as an act of corporate worship, not just information transfer.

The Lord's Supper has been one of the most debated topics in Christian history. Wars have been fought over what happens to the bread and wine. Churches have split over how often to observe it. Here is where the major traditions stand and what the text actually says: 

The bread and wine become the literal body and blood of Christ. The "substance" changes while the "accidents" (appearance, taste, texture) remain. The Eucharist is a re-presentation of Christ's sacrifice. 

The problem: Jesus was physically present when He said "this is my body." He was holding bread in His hands while His body was standing in front of them. The disciples would not have understood Him to mean the bread literally became His body. He was right there. The language is representative, not ontological. 

Christ is "in, with, and under" the bread and wine. The elements do not change substance, but Christ is truly present in them during the Supper. 

The problem: The New Testament nowhere describes Christ as present "in" the elements. Paul says the bread is a koinonia, a participation, a sharing, a communion, in the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 10:16). Participation is not the same as presence inside the bread. 

The bread and cup are symbols that represent Christ's body and blood. The Lord's Supper is an act of remembrance (anamnesis) and proclamation (katangello). Christ is not in the bread. The bread points to Christ. 

This is what the text says: "Do this in remembrance of me" the purpose is remembrance. "You proclaim the Lord's death" the function is proclamation. "This is my body" representative language, the same as "I am the door." The New Testament gives us two clear purposes for communion: remember and proclaim. Nothing more, nothing less. 

Monthly or quarterly: Many churches argue that taking communion too frequently makes it routine and less meaningful. "If we do it every week, it becomes mechanical." 

The problem with that argument: No one makes this argument about any other act of worship. No one says "if we sing every week, it becomes mechanical." No one says "if we pray every week, it loses meaning." No one says "if we give every week, it becomes routine." The argument for infrequent communion applies uniquely to communion and never to anything else, which reveals that it is not a principled argument but a post-hoc justification for a practice that departed from the New Testament pattern. 

Acts 20:7 says they gathered on the first day of the week to break bread. Acts 2:42 lists the breaking of bread as one of four things the church devoted themselves to every time they met. 1 Corinthians 11 corrects abuses that only make sense with weekly practice. Justin Martyr confirms weekly communion in 150 AD. The evidence is clear: the early church took communion every Sunday because that is what the apostles taught.

The lesson: Always check the original language. A single English word choice can build or demolish an entire theological framework. That is why tools like BibleWord.ai exist.

anamnesis (ἀνάμνησις) 

Pronunciation: ah-NAHM-nay-sis

Part of Speech: Noun, feminine

Strong's Number: G364

Appears: 4 times in the New Testament 

Anamnesis means remembrance but not the way modern English uses the word. We think of remembrance as passive: a memory that floats into your mind. Anamnesis is active. It comes from ana (again) + mimnesko (to remind, to call to mind). It means to actively, deliberately, intentionally bring something back into the present; to re-present it, to make it real again in your experience. 

In the Jewish Passover tradition (which is the direct background for the Lord's Supper), anamnesis did not mean "think about something that happened long ago." It meant "re-live it, re-enter it, make it present." When Jewish families ate the Passover meal, they were not just remembering the Exodus. They were, in a very real sense, participating in it again. The past event became present through the act of remembrance. 

When Jesus says "do this in remembrance (anamnesis) of me," He is not asking you to have a quiet thought about the cross. He is asking you to re-enter the cross, to make His death present in your experience through the physical act of eating bread and drinking the cup. The bread in your hand is not a symbol you glance at. It is a doorway back to Calvary. 

This is why communion cannot be passive. This is why it cannot be occasional. This is why it cannot be rushed through in two minutes between songs. Anamnesis demands engagement. It demands that you stop, that you hold the bread, that you think about what it represents, that you actively call the cross back into the room. That act of active remembrance is worship it is acknowledging what God did, at infinite cost, for you. 

Look up anamnesis in the Greek Lexicon at bibleword.ai/lexicon/greek/364. See its use in Luke 22:19, 1 Corinthians 11:24-25, and Hebrews 10:3. Notice that it always describes an active, deliberate act of calling something to mind, never passive recollection.

Until next time,