What “Break Bread” Means But does this text not say, as many claim today, that the disciples always held communion every first day of the week? NOT AT ALL! In the first place, it says nothing about anything being done EVERY first day of the week. It relates the events of this one particular first day of the week, ONLY. It is not speaking of any CUSTOMS, but of the events occurring as Paul and his companions concluded their seven-day visit in passing by this town. Jesus had introduced the “Lord’s Supper” as part of the Passover, at the beginning of the annual “days of unleavened bread.” No longer need they kill lambs or eat the roasted body of Passover lambs, after Christ, OUR Passover, had been once slain for us. Yet the Passover was ordained FOREVER (Exodus 12:24). At His last Passover supper, Jesus substituted the wine as the emblem of His blood, instead of the blood of the slain lamb. He substituted the unleavened bread for the roast body of the lamb as the symbol of His body, broken for us. The disciples continued to observe the Passover annually, now in the form of “the Lord’s Supper” using only the bread and wine, as a MEMORIAL (1Corinthians 11:24) of Christ’s DEATH (1Corinthians 11:26), showing His death till He comes again. They continued to observe the Days of Unleavened Bread (Acts 20:6). This year they had observed the Days of Unleavened Bread and the “Communion” service at Philippi, after which they came to Troas in five days, where they remained seven days. After the Sabbath day had ended, at sunset, “upon the first day of the week…the disciples came together to BREAK BREAD.” People have ASSUMED this expression to mean the taking of “Communion.” But notice! Paul preached, and continued preaching until midnight. They had no opportunity to stop and “break bread” until then. When Paul “therefore was come up again”—after restoring the one who had fallen down from the third balcony—“and had broken bread, AND EATEN” (Acts 20:11). Note it! “[B]roken bread, AND EATEN.” This breaking bread was not Communion—it was simply eating a meal. This expression was commonly used of old to designate a meal. It still is used in that sense in parts of even the United States. Notice Luke 22:16, where Jesus was introducing the Lord’s Supper, taking it with His disciples. He said, “I will not any more eat thereof, until it be fulfilled in the kingdom of God.” Yet, the day after His resurrection, after walking with the two disciples to Emmaus, “…as he sat at MEAT with them, he took bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them” (Luke 24:30). Here Jesus “brake bread,” but it was not the Lord’s Supper, which He said He would NOT take again. It was a meal—“he sat AT MEAT.” Notice Acts 2:46. The disciples, “continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness.…” Here again, “breaking bread” means EATING A MEAL. Not on the first day of the week, but DAILY. Again, when Paul was shipwrecked on the voyage to Rome, the sailors had been fasting out of fright. But “Paul besought them all to take MEAT, saying, This day is the fourteenth day that ye have tarried and continued fasting, having taken nothing. Wherefore I pray you to take some MEAT: for this is for your health.… And when he had thus spoken, he took bread, and gave thanks to God in presence of them all: and when he had broken it, he began to eat” (Acts 27:33-35). Here Paul broke bread to give to unconverted sailors who were hungry. The truth is, NOWHERE IN THE BIBLE is the expression “breaking of bread,” or “to break bread,” used to signify observance of “the Lord’s Supper.” In all these texts it means, simply, eating a meal. So, when we read in Acts 20:7, 11, “the disciples came together to break bread,” and how Paul had “broken bread, and EATEN,” we know by Scripture interpretation it referred only to eating food as a meal, not to a Communion service.
Posted on: Wed, 27 Aug 2014 12:48:12 +0000
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