The Last Supper

If Wednesday is Passion Week’s intermission, then Thursday begins its second act.  The calm of Wednesday gives way to the flurry of Thursday, a day which runs into Friday.  And here the stage is set for the final scene between Jesus and His disciples.

It opens with Jesus and the disciples planning The Last Supper, the final Passover they would celebrate together.  The disciples would hardly begin to grasp the significance of this evening, demonstrating dullness, pride and even arrogance.  Jesus, however, would demonstrate the consummate faithfulness, giving them the final words they would need as His hour drew near.  And nowhere is His testimony of love more evident.

A great deal of attention is given to The Last Supper especially in John’s gospel.  John devotes no fewer than five chapters to this event which opens in John 13.  The key verse in these chapters is verse 1, “Now before the Feast of the Passover, Jesus knowing that His hour had come that He should depart out of this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.”  The Greek word for “end” is the word telos which not only means “the completion” but also “to the fullest.”

What does this tell us?  It tells us that Jesus loved His own not just to the very end of His life but also to the absolute limit, the fullest of His capacity.  His love towards them lacked nothing whatsoever; neither did it fail in the least, unlike the love of man.  Will His disciples, then or now, ever be able to comprehend love to that degree in this life?  Will they ever be able to comprehend the depth and fullness of God’s love towards them even in eternity?  Until the finite can plumb the infinite, the answer is “no.”  May this help all who belong to Him to understand more fully what a glory it is to be chosen as a vessel of mercy.

This fullness of love is first demonstrated as Jesus washes the disciples’ feet.  What a lesson in servanthood and humility!  Yet it was a lesson whose application would only be realized later.  As Jesus fulfilled His love to the disciples, Judas fulfilled his treachery by going out and betraying Him.  And immediately following that, “there arose also a dispute among them as to which one of them was regarded to be greatest” (Luke 22:24).  How dull we so often are to the lessons God wishes to teach, even when He is the Teacher Himself.  Peter, perhaps, is the dullest of the moment as he takes human greatness a step further.  He boasts of his faithfulness unto death, a boast that is met with the haunting words, “You will deny Me.”

Jesus continues as He celebrates the Passover with His disciples.  Consider this fact—the focus of this meal was the slain lamb; imagine participating in the Passover with the Lamb of God Himself.  That’s what it was for the eleven.  It was not the blood of an animal spread upon a doorpost that would be precious that evening; it would be the blood of the One who will bear His scars for all eternity.

Can we comprehend this moment?  Did the disciples?  Over 1400 years of Passovers pointed to this hour.  Over 1400 years of slain animals pointed to the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, the Lamb who “from the foundation of the world…has been slain” (Revelation 13:8).  And now they are beholding Him in their midst.  Meditate upon that, now and always, not just at this time of year.  The disciples would for the rest of their lives.

Because the centuries of Passovers looked forward to this moment, Jesus does something unprecedented in the ceremony.  “And while they were eating, Jesus took some bread, and after a blessing, He broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, ‘Take, eat; this is My body’" (Matthew 26:26).

We have heard these words so often and so often they go right past us.  Do we contemplate their magnitude?  If not, then consider this—where are these words in the Passover ceremony?  Nowhere.  Instead, these are words that are typically uttered at the communion table (1 Corinthians 11:24).  How is it that Jesus would speak them at Passover?

He can do so because in the midst of this last Passover we also have the first Communion.  Both ceremonies point to Christ from different directions.  The first would look ahead to the cross; the latter would look back to it.  Jesus would fulfill one ceremony and initiate another at the same time because He is the focal point of each.

Jesus then gives His great Upper Room Discourse in John 14-16 as He speaks to the disciples prior to His death and as He speaks to them, He also speaks to those who believe upon Him afterwards.  He promises the Holy Spirit in 14:26, "But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.”

He would exhort them to abide in Him that they might bear much fruit in 15:4-5:

4Abide in Me, and I in you.  As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me.  5I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.

He promises the fullness of God’s revelation, the New Testament, in 16:12-15:

12I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.  13But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come.  14He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you.  15All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said that He takes of Mine and will disclose it to you.

He then gives His great High Priestly prayer in John 17 and here as He prays for the disciples, He also prays for those who would later believe, “I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word” (verse 20).  Thus we see that as Jesus began His time in the upper room by serving to the fullest those He loved, so He ends the same by praying to the fullest for those He loved.

Do we seek to contemplate that same love towards us, if we know Him?  Is God’s love towards His children something that is little more than an academic fact or do we seek to comprehend the fullness of it, even if we can never do so?  Do we seek to grasp the depth of 1 John 3:1, “See how great a love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God; and such we are.  For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.”  Do we let the fullness of that thought grasp us?  Remember, the love spoken of in John 13-17 is directed towards Jesus’ followers, not the world in general.

Behold this precious fact—God did not have to love us!  He could have sentenced us to damnation as He did the demons when they fell.  He could have passed us over for salvation if He chose.  Therefore let us seek to comprehend even more fully what it means for God to love us in this manner especially when He did not have to.  This is what our great Savior taught, demonstrated, and prayed for during His last moments with those whom “He loved…to the end” (John 13:1).

Does this love apply to you because you have trusted in Him as Lord and Savior?  If not, then cast yourself upon His mercy—and receive this love—today.