"This is My body which is given for you this do in remembrance of Me" (Luke 22:19).
It is the personal element in the Lord's Supper that makes it so attractive to all who love Him. This is the one arresting thing in the words that He used when He instituted it on the night of His betrayal: "This is My body which is given for YOU: this do in remembrance of ME." We must all feel that the emphasis rests upon the personal pronouns in these wonderful words. His heart was set with an unquenchable love upon those whom He addresses as "YOU," for them He gave His holy body in sacrifice even to death; for them He shed His blood. It was not for a vague, intangible theory that He suffered; it was not for some great and important principle that He died, as some who profess to admire Him but don't know Him assert; it was for persons, "FOR YOU." His outlook on that night when treachery and hatred conspired to destroy Him was the "YOU" of whom He spoke.
Every Christian can, of course, make this an individual matter, indeed all must begin there, and from a full heart exclaim as Paul did: "The Son of God loved ME, and gave Himself for ME." But the "you" that filled the Lord's thoughts in those hours of darkness was the Christian "you." Every individual of that company had a place in His thoughts, was an object of His love; but it was an indivisible company upon which He looked, and the love that filled His heart for them made Him die for them. "Christ also loved the Church and gave Himself for it." Not for crowns and kingdoms did He do battle on that great day, though these He shall have, for they are His inalienable right, and a defeated foe must yield to Him all that he had seized in presumptuous usurpation; but He fought and suffered for persons, for those whom He loved: to deliver them, to redeem them by His blood, that they might be free and for Him, moved by His love to responsive devotion and love: His own forever.
It is wonderful to recall the sufferings of the cross, and to remember that they were for us, and that no consideration for Himself made our great Saviour hesitate for a moment in what His heart had purposed. "This be far from Thee," said Peter, who did not understand. "Save Thyself"; "Come down from the cross," cried His foes with bitter taunts. But He would not save Himself. He thought of us — persons who could never have been saved if His blood had not been poured out for our salvation, but whom He knew would appreciate His love when, by the Spirit of God, we perceived its greatness and felt its power, and respond to it with joy, and thus be a recompense to Him for all He suffered.
When we come to the Supper it is not to a mere ordinance we come; we do not sit down to perform an empty rite, but to remember a Person. "This do," He said, "in remembrance of ME." If at the cross the "YOU" filled His thoughts, at the Supper the "ME" must fill ours. We may rejoice in what He has done for us, and be grateful for deliverance from sin and Satan's power and judgment to come; cold would our hearts be, and hard, if we forgot all this, or were not thrilled at the remembrance of it. Our deliverance is real, we gather together in the joy of this, we are spiritually free, and we must sing our song of praise to Him who has done it for us; but it is not that that gives its own precious character to the Supper, the personal element eclipses all else. It is Himself that must fill our thoughts. He said, "Remember ME."
As He looked onward amid those never-to-be-forgotten sorrows to the "YOU," so we look backward at the Supper to the "ME." It is Himself, but it is Himself pouring out unspeakable love in immeasurable sacrifice. Only in that way could He fully reveal Himself to us, and it is by that we know Him.
"Wouldst thou know My glory, beloved?
Know Me, the great I AM?
First must thine eyes behold Me,
The slain and stricken Lamb.
"My visage so marred more than any,
My form than the sons of men;
Yet to the heart I have won Me,
I am the fairest then.
"Thou knowest the sun by his glory —
Thou knowest the rose by her breath,
Thou knowest the fire by its glowing —
Thou knowest My love by death."
Praise and thanksgiving there must be for what He has done and for what we have received, but in this act of remembrance it is Himself, and as He rises up before our souls and we realize His great love by the Spirit, we forget ourselves, and these lesser notes give place to worship that may deepen into silent adoration, silent because too deep for words.
"Silent at His feet we lie
Lost in love's immensity."
"YOU" and "ME" and only love between! Love that holds us in an embrace which is eternal, and from which no power can take us! What joy it must yield to the heart of the Lord when we realize this! He finding His joy in us, and we absorbed with Him! The natural man cannot understand this, for it is not a mere natural emotion, it is the outflow from the new spiritual nature within us that delights in the Lord, whom having not seen we love; in whom, though now we see Him not, yet believing, we rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.
It is here that we find our truest and holiest fellowship, for where every heart bows down before the Lord there must be one mind. About many things at other times we may differ, and that will be no credit to us, but not here, surely. The love that has bound us all together in that blessed "YOU" forbids discord and division, it rebukes all selfishness and pride, and sets us in happy unity before Him, and "we being many are one bread and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread" (1 Cor. 10:17). How wonderful it is to know that we are part of the "YOU" for whom He gave Himself, and to know in truth what His words mean, "Remember ME"! It is this that soothes the restless spirit and blends all into heavenly harmony, and draws from us the adoration of wondering and satisfied hearts, which is to our Lord as fragrant as was the spikenard, very costly, that Mary poured upon His sacred feet in other days.