By Angus Harley

NCT Christians are looking for a more Scriptural approach to the two divine ordinances (baptism and the Lord’s Supper) than given by the Reformed model or Evangelicalism in general. One approach is to point out what’s wrong with various models of the Lord’s Supper, and replace those inaccurate bits with proper teaching. This is fine and necessary, and I recently wrote an article that heavily critiqued the Romish terminology that has poisoned the Lord’s Supper.[1] However, this method alone is not sufficient. It needs to be accompanied by a full model of the Lord’s Supper taken from the NT evidence itself.  There are plenty of such models within wider Evangelicalism. What is rare for the NCT community, however, is an NCT approach to the Lord’s Supper. Stephen Atkerson’s little book New Testament Church Dynamics has a chapter on the Lord’s Supper that looks on it from a NCT point of view. It is thought provoking as to the practice of the Lord’s Supper. I wrote an article a few years ago describing the NC theology found in Luke 22:14-23.[2] This time, I will focus on the same text from the perspective of the NCT hermeneutic that focuses on Christ and the New Covenant as an interpretive model. With this goal in mind, Luke 22:14-23 is a more suitable text to choose, and not so much Matthew 26:17-30 or Mark 14:12-26, simply because Luke gives to us the reference to the NC (v20), thereby validating reading the Supper in an exclusively NC manner.

Wood from the trees

We use the phrase ‘He can’t see the wood from the trees’ indicating that a person is caught up in details and doesn’t see the bigger picture. The wood in this article represents the bigger picture afforded by the NCT hermeneutic, and the trees the theological details that arise from this hermeneutic. Any Christian can get NC theological aspects from the various Supper accounts; yet, not everyone will get the NC interpretive model that lies underneath, so to speak, and gives rise to the NC theology. If the reader is not sure of what this implies, the article expands upon, and clarifies, my position.

The Gospels are transitional documents

The standard reading of the Gospels and of its relation to the NC is that the NC started with Jesus’ death on the cross. Up unto that point, Jesus was acting like a good Jew, keeping the Law of Moses. Indeed, Luke 22:14-23 is proof of this, we are told, for Jesus was keeping the Passover festival.

            The elephant in the ‘Gospel’ room, however, is that Jesus everywhere in the NT flouted the cast iron and rigid rules of Moses’ Law, to the point he cancels Moses’ teaching on the clean-unclean food rules (Mark 7:19), and removes Moses’ ruling on divorce (Matt.5:31-32). This is just the tip, of the tip, of the iceberg.[3]

            Specifically, the Lord’s Supper exposes the fallacious nature of the traditional approach to Jesus’ ministry. If Jesus was a true son of Moses, a faithful adherent to his Law, upholding it and promoting it, why, during a crucial Old Covenant feast (Exo.34:25; Lev.23:5),[4] did he make himself the center of attention, and place a NC as the focus? There is not an instance in Moses’ Law, or anywhere in the OT, where this type of thing happens. If Jesus did ‘uphold Moses’ Law’ in regard to the Passover, he did so in a manner that no one had ever seen before. Shockingly, within the general Evangelical community this fact receives, at best, passing recognition! Is the introduction of a NC so matter-of-fact to Evangelicals that they can, in effect, ignore its force, and what it represented, in respect of the OC?

            Until we start reading the Gospels as transitional documents, we will continue to make the mistake of thinking that Jesus was a Law-abiding Jew who had nothing to say and do with the NC until his death on the cross. If the NC started with Jesus’ death, why is he then laying down blatantly NC teaching before his death here in the Supper? And why piggyback on a central OC festival to do this? Evangelical scholarship is content to recognize that Jesus ‘fulfilled’ the OT Scriptures, and did so in such a way that he oftentimes clearly went beyond the mere letter of the OT writings. In recognizing this, scholars use as an example Matthew 2:15 and its citation of Hosea 11:1, which does not read the OT text in a literal fashion. This is because Jesus filled out, or fulfilled, that OT event or text. But what Evangelical scholarship typically does not do, is take the next step to say that this fulfillment of the OT was Jesus enacting a NC expression of ministry. I would like to ask, is there any other salvation or Gospel than the NC Gospel and salvation? Was Jesus, perhaps, teaching the Mosaic Law in the Sermon on the Mount? God forbid! Was his ministry of love, which is the pattern for NCTers, merely love within an OC setting, and therefore OC love? Surely he was laying down his kingdom teaching, of the heavenly kingdom, that is. Or, should we say that his kingdom teaching was merely an extension of God’s OC kingdom in Israel? Evangelicalism has painted itself into a corner, and prevented itself from seeing the NC nature of Jesus’ entire ministry from his very first moment on earth. The NC was formalized and its victory accomplished for our sake by Jesus’ death on the cross. Yet, the NC head, Jesus, was acting as a NC leader from the get-go. Why do we doubt this and reject what is as plain as the nose on our face? Don’t we go to the whole of his teaching as reflective of the NC? Why do we do this if it were not NC teaching from the NC leader? Or ask yourself another question, whose disciples were the apostles: Jesus’ or Moses’? Jesus is the center, life, and heartbeat of the NC. Always was, and always will be. This did not begin on the cross, but from the moment he was set apart in heaven to this task. It started formally in his incarnation, and was established in his death. Thus, his ministry was NC-shaped.

Let it be settled, then, that the Gospels are transitional narratives, wherein Jesus, according to the Father’s new revelations to him, fulfills the OT and its record how the Father sees fit, and by doing so, from the first moment of his ministry, Jesus brings in the NC and eventually establishes it for us in his blood. Two immediate applications jump out from this interpretive model.

The Lord’s Supper does not modify the Passover

Jesus was not drawing a straight line of continuity between the Passover and his death or the Lord’s Supper, any more than Jesus’ death was a modification of the sacrifice of a bull on the altar. There is no modifying going on in the Supper. Jesus isn’t remodeling the kitchen, so to speak. He’s using the OT as a model, and then taking us beyond it, and away from it, to his own, new, heavenly sacrifice, and to the NC in his blood. How can we compare the blood of a mere lamb to the actual propitiatory blood of Jesus?

It was this method that characterized the entirety of Jesus’ ministry. Think, for example, of Jesus’ entrances into the temple. He ostensibly goes to the temple as any other Jew, but uses those traditional occasions to promote his relationship to the Father and his NC Gospel of salvation. Fireworks ensue! He reverses the polarity of the clean-unclean rules of Moses’ Law and heals a man by spitting on his face (Mark 8:23)- a repulsive act by OC standards of uncleanness (see Num.12:14). Yet, these facts disappear into the Evangelical ether! He patently was not tied to the Mosaic Law, nor was he modifying it and its content.

Jesus is the true passover (1 Cor.5:7), the true Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world (John 1:29, 36), for the OT Scriptures and events pointed to him, but its religion and Law is not continued by him. Isn’t the center of NCT that we have a completely ‘new’ Covenant? We reject the position of Reformed Theology and Progressive Covenantalism that argues that the New renews the Old. It does not. The Old models the New and is then cast off. Isn’t this what Hebrews teaches (Heb.8:5-6; 10:1; 9:23; 13:10)?

There is no Last Supper

The second implication is that, there is no Last Supper. The assumption behind this view gives priority to an OC hermeneutic, for Jesus is having his ‘last’ Passover meal with his disciples, we are told. Yet, this reading flies-in-the-face of the text:

“18 “for I say to you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine from now on until the kingdom of God comes.” ”

Why would Jesus say that he would not drink of the fruit of the vine “until the kingdom of God comes”? Why not say simply, “from now on”? We are to recognize that Jesus is implying that he will drink the wine of the Supper once again: after the arrival of the kingdom and its fully revealed victory. He obviously was not saying that he would drink of the vine once again at a Passover meal. His comments recall the final festivities of Isaiah 25:6 and the coming together of nations on Mount Zion. We interpret this in a NC sense of the various nations of the faith coming to bow before the Lord in his kingdom. Another aspect is found in the wedding celebrations of the Lamb and his bride, the assembly (Rev.19:7-9). Similar thoughts again are found in Luke 14:16 and Matthew 22:4, where the kingdom of God is compared to a marriage and to a great feast. Both these texts indicate that the Jews as a whole were cast off, and those despised Jews, the ‘unclean’, were brought in to the feast. The Gospel rejoices in the salvation of the most undesirable of men, of people from all the ‘unclean’ nations. Even the impoverished and battered Lazarus found himself feasting at the heavenly table of his father, Abraham (Luke 16:19ff.). Rather than drawing attention to a phantasmal ‘Last Supper’, we ought to be heralding the Victorious Supper that Christ and his NC disciples will participate in.  

Christologically shaped Supper

As to the Supper, the Christological vein runs deep. Most baptist interpretations of the Supper focus on the assembly and its participation in an ordinance that remembers the Lord’s death. But the beauty of Luke 22 is that remembrance is not yet a factor. It is the person, Jesus, who is the center of attention. It is not the ordinance, the commemoration, the assembly, or any other constituent or particle, that is the focus: it is Christ alone. Yes, I’m being Captain Obvious. Yet, there is good reason for it. Look at the Roman Catholic teaching: Jesus is a pawn in their system of magic. Some denominations are so caught up with fencing the table, defending its purity and the like, that sometimes the ‘star of the show’, Jesus, is hidden underneath all this activity. Or, as is more the case in modern Evangelicalism, the Lord’s Supper becomes about what we get from it in our moment of devotion. The truth is, the ‘ordinance’ of the Lord’s Supper is merely a window on Jesus’ death and what his blood purchased for us. He is the center. It is not about ‘me’!

            This gets us in the Christological ‘door’ as to the Supper, but we need to proceed on. The Reformed group criticizes the baptist model as being too cold and dry. Now, even though I repudiate the RC model and much of Lutheranism’s, and I do not go all the way with Calvinism’s account, I think the Reformed have a bit of a point. The Supper is not an end in itself; it is, as the old phrase goes, ‘a means of grace’. In the baptist model, the ‘live’ element of the Lord’s Supper can get swallowed up in the memorial and in the doing of the ordinance. Yet, we are meeting with the person of Christ in the Supper, fellowshipping ‘live’ with him, just like the apostles, for where God’s people are gathered in accordance with his word to worship him, Christ meets with them by faith. Recalling his death and its blood are essential in this fellowship. We are not whipped off to Calvary in a kind of mystical time machine. We are remembering his death, but at the same time fellowshipping with the One who died for us.

We can go further yet, Christologically speaking. Properly, Christ is the true feast: we eat him. The physical ordinance is but an outward depiction of a spiritual act that centers on Jesus, for he says we are to eat his body and drink his blood. This is, of course, done by faith in his once-for-all death (see John 6:51-56); there is no innate magic in the ‘elements’ or the process. Jesus is not re-dying, or being re-sacrificed. It is right to say, therefore, that although we fellowship with him at the feast, he himself is the true feast that we eat by faith.

            There is one more aspect of the Christological angle to consider. The NC was identified with Jesus’ blood. This is an astonishing teaching, for Jeremiah 31:31-34 does not specifically detail that the sacrifice of a person was at the heart of the NC. From a certain perspective, we can say that Jesus and his blood ‘are’ the NC. Isaiah does refer to the Servant of the LORD as a covenant (Isa.42:6; 49:8). The NT explains all of this as meaning that what Christ has accomplished in his death is the fulfillment of the NC promises in the OT. His blood and death are, ironically, the life of the NC. Now, in heaven, Jesus is for us the Great High Priest who embodies the NC and its blessings. He is our redemption, our sanctification, our righteousness, our propitiation, and so on. These are not blessings abstracted from his person, for he is their embodiment in his resurrected, glorified status, having procured the full victory over sin.

New Covenant apostolic witnesses

The NT and its NC is an apostolic record to the Christ. Thus, the significance of Jesus’ “apostles” (v14) being present, and not merely the ‘disciples’, should not be underestimated. They were the foundation of the NC assembly. They were present at his baptism (the beginning) and now at his Supper (nearing the end). They were the witnesses to the Christ and his NC death, and would later be asked to implement both baptism and the Lord’s Supper for the assembly’s sake. Two apostolically witnessed and confirmed ordinances. These commands were not the figment of the general assembly’s theological imagination, nor dictated by confessions or popes. Nor do these institutions, organizations, and persons get to impose on the assembly what constitutes the Lord’s Supper and its ‘true’ interpretation. It is the apostles’ witness that confirms to us the NC, not OC, nature of the Lord’s Supper, and the apostles’ teaching alone that is our tradition, and from which we get our ‘model’ of practice. This seems such a simplistic thing to say, obvious to the extreme. Yet, I challenge the NCT reader to go and read accounts from what is called ‘Christendom’ generally speaking, including Evangelicalism, and see what ‘tradition’ they are truly holding to concerning the Lord’s Supper. Is the apostles’ authority and witness truly being upheld regarding the Supper? A more technical question is this, is the NT and its apostolic hermeneutic being faithfully adhered to?

            It is true that the Lord’s apostles did not quite comprehend the goals of Jesus’ ministry before Pentecost, nor did they properly understand what was going on in the Supper. They were clueless, indeed, about the corrupt nature of Judas. But, once more, a NC mindset explains this vast difference. What made them aware? It was the gift of the Spirit at Pentecost, whereby the Spirit brought Jesus’ teaching to their remembrance in a thoroughly NC fashion (John 14:16-31). Put another way, the before and after pictures of the apostles and their understanding of the Supper is a stark testimony to the NC nature of the Supper and to the victory of its accomplishment and realization.

Foundation of the true Israel

Due to the assembly focusing too much on the idea of continuity between Passover and the Lord’s Supper, they don’t see that the apostles are acting as a new Israel, as its new patriarch-like founders. Christ is the cornerstone and the NC apostles and prophets the foundation (Eph.2:20). Jesus is the One greater than Moses, with a new law, and a new passover. The apostles of the Gospel were the leaders, humanly speaking, of the new Israel. The twelve tribes are replaced by the assembly, with the focus on the blood of the NC, Christ’s blood. The NC, its Gospel, and its Supper are not measured by OC standards, as if to say that Israel of the flesh and its Law are our touchstone. The new Israel of God are a people of faith, who are ‘measured’ by their fidelity to the new-passover Lamb, the new law, and the new Covenant. Israel of the flesh and Gentiles of the flesh are nothing in this new Israel. The true Israel of God reposes on the breast of Jesus by faith, it wears the burden of his light yoke, and follows him into green pastures.

Communal, body fellowship

As the assembly is the new Israel, its participation in the Lord’s Supper is akin to the Israelite families who as one participated in the Passover lamb. Christians as one body eat the Lamb of God, metaphorically, by faith, and not literally, of course. The Supper takes place in the context of a fellowship meal of participation by a body of believers. The emphasis today in assemblies is that of individual believers doing their independent ‘devotions’ as the ‘elements’ are passed around. The elder merely organizes and leads this group of individuals. Yet, here are Jesus and his disciples clearly having fellowship and participating as one. They are even having a discussion as to who is going to betray Jesus. Jesus leads the Supper, and the others participate with him at the center (figuratively). It is a body that participates, the assembly. Individualism as such is not there. With this in mind, we see the relevance of one meal and all sharing it together as one body. Fellowship, community, oneness, all expressed in a meal of the NC.

Interaction with Judas reassessed

Most accounts of the Lord’s Supper think that the story of Judas, or the disobedient ‘Christians’ of Corinth, is not tied in, properly speaking, with the Lord’s Supper’s nature. I have wondered for a while now, why Jesus did not fully expose Judas. Of course, we know that Judas had his role to play in the drama of redemption, for he was chosen by God to be the traitor of Jesus, thus fulfilling the Scripture (Acts 1:16-20). This is usually where Judas’ contribution is said to end. I think, however, that the examples of both Judas and the disobedient Corinthians are teaching the NC community something very important about the NC itself. If you cast your mind back to the Passover, the blood of the lamb divided between faithful Jews and pagan Egyptian. If the blood of the lamb was put on the lintel of the Jewish home, the Spirit spared that home. The Egyptians did not observe this commandment, and so the Egyptian firstborn died. The blood of the lamb of the Passover was divisive and destructive, in other words, and not only life-giving. It meant life for some, and death for others. Certainly, Judas was the main actor in redemption’s drama as to Jesus’ betrayal, but his presence at the NC Supper teaches us that the blood of Christ, the new-passover Lamb will always separate the wheat from the chaff, the fake from the real. The assembly can expect that there will be those who are exposed as faithless and rebellious by the Gospel and its ordinances.

            Another aspect we learn from Judas is that, although the NC cannot be broken, there are NC/Gospel blessings that come to faux believers. Read John’s Gospel (e.g., John 2:23-25). The true community of the NC comprises those who follow the Lord’s commandments and who know him. Thus, they do not break the NC (Jer.31:31-34). It is a heavenly community (Eph.1:20; 2:6; 3:10). It is not merely derived from heaven, but dwells in it as princes, reigning currently with the risen Christ who is at the right hand of the Father. Judas was of the flesh, of this world, and never reigned in heaven. His participation was therefore ‘with’ the true NC assembly, but not ‘of’ the NC assembly. For, in this world, people of the flesh, the ungodly, can have a form of ‘faith’, even know and experience some deep New Covenant blessings, taste of the Spirit, adjoin with NC assembly, and yet they are not members of Christ’s NC body, for they do not sit with him in heaven, and they do not truly put their faith in the blood. Indeed, it is the blood that separates them from the body of Christ.

Closing words

I’ve not given to the reader a model for doing the Lord’s Supper, nor presented more favorable terminology. I will do some of this in the next article. I would encourage the reader to read the whole of the NT with NCT hermeneutical glasses on, to go deeper, so as not merely to draw out NC elements or bits of theology. Christ is our focus, his NC revelation and its priority our interpretive schema. May God bless your coming explorations!

[1] Angus Harley, “ “Sacrament”, “Eucharist”, “Real Presence”, “Sign”- not cool!”, All Things New Covenant, June 10, 2023, https://allthingsnewcovenant.com/2023/06/10/sacrament-eucharist-real-presence-sign-not-cool/.

[2] Angus Harley, “New is New! (Luke 22:20)”, All Things New Covenant, December 26, 2018, https://allthingsnewcovenant.com/2018/12/26/new-is-new-luke-2220/.

[3] My book Jesus, Son of Liberty: A New Covenant Theology Reply to the Doctrine of the Active Obedience of Christ develops this argument in detail.

[4] The Passover predated the giving of the Mosaic Law, but it was incorporated as a feast into the Old Covenant Law.