The New Testament preserves the account of the Lord’s Supper in multiple places, offering a striking example of intertextual continuity within the earliest Christian witness. Luke embeds the event within Jesus’ final meal with his disciples, while Paul invokes the same tradition in order to correct abuses in the Corinthian church. Read together, these texts reveal a firmly established practice circulating widely among early Christian communities, grounded not only in theological reflection but also in the remembered words and actions of Jesus.
Luke situates the event within the Passover meal on the night before Jesus’ death: “He took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.’ Likewise he also took the cup after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is shed for you’” (Luke 22:19–20). Bread and wine are thus interpreted in light of his impending death, while the language of covenant situates the moment within the larger narrative of God’s redemptive dealings with his people.
Paul echoes this tradition with striking similarity in 1 Corinthians 11:23–25: “The Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way also he took the cup after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.’” Paul presents this teaching not as innovation but as received tradition: “For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you.” The verbs he employs reflect the language of authoritative transmission, indicating that this instruction had already become part of the shared teaching of the early churches.
Paul’s concern in 1 Corinthians 11 also extends beyond the bread and cup to the community’s life together. The Corinthians’ practice of eating in ways that exposed rich-poor divisions undermined the very unity the meal was meant to embody (1 Cor 11:17–22). Thus, Paul’s call to “discern the body” (1 Cor 11:29) carries a communal thrust: the Lord’s Supper was not just a memorial of Christ’s death but a practice designed to forge the gathered believers as Christ’s body.
This emphasis reveals that early Christian instruction was understood as a living tradition rooted in remembered events rather than abstract ideas. The breaking of bread rehearses the meaning of Christ’s death and continually reaffirms its significance within the life of the community. Paul adds, “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Cor 11:26). The Supper therefore functions in a dual way: it remembers the past while proclaiming the hope of the future consummation.
Luke’s Passover context intensifies the significance of the meal. Passover commemorated Israel’s redemption from Egypt, when the LORD brought his people out with “a mighty hand and an outstretched arm” (Deut 5:15). The feast therefore celebrated not merely Israel’s escape, but the saving action of God himself. When Jesus interprets the bread and the cup in relation to his own body and blood, the ancient pattern becomes unmistakable. The redemption once accomplished by the mighty hand of the LORD is now revealed in the death of Christ. The language of the cup echoes the promise of the new covenant (Jer 31), indicating that the long-awaited restoration of God’s people was now being realized.
When Luke and Paul are read together, their witness aligns with remarkable coherence. Narrative and epistle preserve both the event itself and its significance for the life of the church. This continuity demonstrates that the Lord’s Supper was not confined to a single Gospel narrative but formed part of the shared inheritance of the earliest Christian communities. In gathering to break bread, believers interpreted the death of Christ as the defining moment in the covenant story of Scripture, a remembrance stretching from the night of betrayal to the hope of the Lord’s return.
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