When believers gather at the Lord’s Table, the body of Christ is represented in two loafs, the loaf of bread and the loaf of people (see 1 Corinthians 10:16). To ask which representation is more important would be to frame the question unhelpfully, as if we could do away with whichever one we deemed less important. Yet many Christians in our circles would, practically, do away with the people as long as they could have a personal ordinance experience.

Christ instituted communion. He told His disciples to keep on eating and drinking in remembrance of Him until He comes. To turn over the obvious a little bit, though, Christ did not die in order to redeem bread and wine. Bread has never sinned, neither has wine. They will be in heaven on their own merits. Christ died in order to redeem men. They too will be in heaven but only because of the merit of Christ.

Grain and grapes are gifts. We are commanded to receive them as reminders. But the reminders should make us look around at the spiritual fruit, the family of brothers and sisters with whom we share the meal.

We don’t acknowledge a common ancestry from impersonal and random elements that eventually grew legs and started to talk. We receive the truth of the Triune God who made us to share fellowship like He does and who forgave us through Christ’s sacrifice so that we could. The bread and the cup on the Table remind us what God is doing around the Table.