Last Supper

“And when the hour came, he reclined at table, and the apostles with him. And he said to them, ‘I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.’”

— Luke 22:14-15 (ESV)

The Last Supper is the meal Jesus ate with his twelve disciples on the night of his betrayal, the night before his crucifixion (Matt. 26:20-29; Mark 14:17-25; Luke 22:14-23; John 13:1-17:26). Held in an upper room in Jerusalem in connection with the Passover, it is the occasion on which Jesus washed his disciples’ feet, foretold Judas’s betrayal and Peter’s denial, instituted Communion, and prayed for his disciples and for the church still to come.

Biblical Basis

All four Gospels record the night, though John gives no account of the bread and cup and instead devotes five chapters to what Jesus said and did there (John 13-17).

Institution of the Supper

While they were eating, Jesus took bread, broke it, and identified it with his body; he did the same with the cup, calling it “the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:19-20; compare Matt. 26:26-28; Mark 14:22-24; 1 Cor. 11:23-25). Jesus “instituted his Supper on the occasion of the Passover meal, probably after the Passover lamb had been eaten… in connection with the third cup, the cup of thanksgiving,” taking “the ordinary bread and the ordinary wine used at the Passover” and relating them directly to his own death.¹ Paul’s own account, “received… from the Lord” (1 Cor. 11:23), is the earliest written record of the words of institution.

Washing of feet

Before the meal, Jesus rose from the table, took a towel, and washed his disciples’ feet, telling them, “you also ought to wash one another’s feet” (John 13:1-17). He then gave them “a new commandment, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another” (John 13:34).

Betrayal and denial foretold

Jesus announced that one of the Twelve would betray him, applying Psalm 41:9 to Judas: “He who ate my bread has lifted his heel against me” (John 13:18; compare Matt. 26:21-25; Mark 14:18-21; Luke 22:21-23). He also told Peter that Peter would deny him three times before the rooster crowed, a prediction fulfilled at Peter’s denials and the cock’s crows (Matt. 26:33-35; Mark 14:29-31; Luke 22:31-34; John 13:36-38).

Farewell discourse and prayer

John alone records Jesus’s extended teaching after the meal, promising the Holy Spirit as another Helper who would remain with the disciples (John 14:15-31), and then his prayer for his disciples and for “those who will believe in me through their word,” that they “may all be one” (John 17:20-21).

Doctrinal Significance

Instituting the Supper at Passover was not incidental. The Passover “is not only an act of remembering the liberation from Egypt, but also a sign and pledge of liberation from the bondage of sin and of communion with God in the person of the promised Messiah,” and “when Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper he deliberately associated it with the celebration of the Passover.”¹ That association is Christological: John’s Gospel times Jesus’s death to the slaughter of the Passover lambs (John 19:33, 36), and Paul states outright that “our paschal lamb, Christ, has been slain.”¹

The footwashing carried a related, humbler significance. Jesus did not act merely for effect or as a bare example: “his washing of the disciples’ feet was the fit beginning of the paschal supper and the symbol of his laying aside his heavenly glory to purify us for the marriage supper of the Lamb.”²

Historical Development

The Last Supper falls at the point where the old covenant gives way to the new covenant. From the exodus onward, Passover had been “the start and foundation of the covenant that God had established with Israel in the wilderness,” a sacrificial meal signifying God’s communion with his people.¹ Michael Kruger reads Jesus’s own words at the table as deliberately covenantal: “The Last Supper was interpreted as a covenantal meal as Jesus declared, ‘This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood’ (Lk 22:20)… a vivid echo of Jeremiah 31:31.”³ Jesus kept the old feast one final time, then reinterpreted its bread and cup in terms of his own body and blood: “Just as Passover and the old covenant are connected,” Bavinck writes, “so also the Supper and the new covenant belong together.” “The time of promise is past,” he continues; “the time of fulfillment is dawning. The old is over; behold, all things are new.”¹

Related Doctrines

References

Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 22, “The Spirit’s Means of Grace.” ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵
Augustus Hopkins Strong, Systematic Theology: A Compendium and Commonplace-Book Designed for the Use of Theological Students, vol. 1 (Philadelphia: The Griffith & Rowland Press, 1907), 190-191. ↩
Michael J. Kruger, The Question of Canon: Challenging the Status Quo in the New Testament Debate (Nottingham: Apollos, 2013), chap. 2, “The Origins of Canon,” 47-78. ↩