He took bread . . . and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body given for you.” . . . He took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.” (Luke 22:19,20)
That Thursday evening as Jesus ate the Passover meal with his disciples, he had plenty on his mind.
Ahead of him lay a night and a day packed with the worst men could ever invent. Who could have blamed him if he had told those disciples to leave him alone? But he didn’t. His love for sinners wouldn’t let him. That love even moved him to leave a parting gift for them, a blessed inheritance that would help them through the ages. Looking at his disciples, then and now, he saw how they would need assurance of sin forgiven, how often their wounded hearts would need special healing.
And in love he gave them a miracle. He left them the treasure of his Holy Supper, in which he gives his true body with the bread and his true blood with the wine so that penitent sinners might be assured of forgiveness. “Go in peace,” he tells the penitent, “your sins are forgiven as surely as my body and blood prepared that forgiveness which you now have just received.”
Thank God he remembers me!
Now pray God helps me never forget what he offers me in his Holy Supper. Someone once said that this sacrament takes the first Good Friday and moves it down to us today. In his Holy Supper, Jesus comes to me, the sinner, and says, “Take eat, my body given for you. My blood poured out for you. You go home in peace.”
Prayer: God, help me remember what a Savior I have and what he offers me in his meal. Amen.
From Together With Jesus: Daily Devotions for a Year. All rights reserved.
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