do this as often as you gather in remembrance of me

All that we know is that believers met on the first day of the week to remember the Lord Jesus. If they were following a Gentile, non- Jewish, day, then the breaking of bread came at the end of the day. If they were keeping the Jewish day and met in the evening that started the first day of the week, then it could be argued that the breaking of bread was the first meeting of the day. The Jewish day began at 6.00 in the evening and went on until 6.00 the following day. We are not told whether this was the evening that started the Lord’s Day or that ended it, because we do not know whether the disciples in Troas were following a Jewish or a Gentile day. This breaking of bread meeting appears to have been held in the evening, because Paul preached until midnight. It would appear that Paul, arriving in Troas too late on the first day of the week and possibly not knowing where the believers met in that city, waited for seven days until, ‘upon the first of the week the disciples came together to break bread’, he was there and preached to them, Acts 20. But it is probable that believers in New Testament times met together to break bread on the first day of every week. They mean ‘whenever’ you break bread, you show the Lord’s death. We would not say that the words ‘as oft’ in this passage teach that we must do it often. ‘as oft as ye eat this bread and drink this cup…’ During this time, hymns that speak of our Lord are sung, passages of the Bible that speak of Him are read and believers pray publicly, leading the rest of us to remember the Lord Jesus.

That is why many assemblies of Christians give themselves an hour or more of open worship before they take the bread. In taking the bread and the wine, we remember the Lord Jesus. We only take and break the bread or drink from the cup to remind ourselves of the immense cost by which we were saved. There is no salvation for us, then, in taking the bread and the wine and we certainly do not bow before the emblems because they have become ‘God’s body’. The bread is a symbol of His body that was given for us the cup is a symbol of His blood poured out for us. We do not believe for a moment that a priest has the power to change these emblems into the actual body and blood of the Lord Jesus. When we give thanks for the bread and the cup, nothing happens to them: they remain bread and wine. this is my blood’, He meant it in a figurative way. Although our Lord told His disciples, ‘This is my body. There is nothing supernatural about the bread and the wine. We are obeying our Lord when we pass around the bread and the cup. That is why the ‘breaking of bread’ is such an important occasion. One of these commands was to take the bread and wine, in the same way as He had done with His disciples. They were to go into all the world to preach the gospel, they were to baptize believers in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and they were to teach converts to ‘observe all things that I have commanded you’. Now our Lord instructed His disciples to do several things. The apostle Paul took up this incident when he wrote to Christians in the local church at Corinth and reminded them that the Lord had said, ‘Do this in remembrance of me’, 1 Cor. Then He took a cup of wine which He gave to them, saying, ‘Drink ye all of it for this is my blood’, Matt.

That night, the final night before His sufferings on the cross, the Lord Jesus took some bread, broke it, and said to His disciples, ‘Take, eat, this is my body’. How do you ‘break bread’? What attitudes should we show when we do? We should break bread: Some take the opportunity to have an hour or more of worship before the bread and cup are taken, some tack the remembrance on at the end of a sermon. Some celebrate it occasionally, some once a month and some once a week only one denomination never does it at all. Some denominations call it taking ‘communion’, or ‘the Holy Eucharist’. 46, but in the context of formal gatherings or meetings of believers, which is what we have in the list in Acts chapter 2 verse 42, the breaking of bread was obviously the commemoration of the Lord’s Supper, a re-enactment of the meal the Lord had with His disciples ‘the night in which he was betrayed’. Sometimes the phrase ‘breaking bread’ means sharing a meal at home, Luke 24. We find the very first Christians in Jerusalem continuing steadfastly ‘in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship and in breaking of bread and in prayers’, Acts 2. Ever since our Lord sat down with eleven of His disciples in a room upstairs in a house in Jerusalem, Christians the world over have remembered the occasion.

Do this as often as you gather in remembrance of me