The Last Supper
This Is My Body — This Is My Blood of the New Covenant
Luke 22:1–38The city of Jerusalem is buzzing with excitement. Thousands of Jewish families are preparing for the Passover feast — the great celebration that remembers how God rescued His people from slavery in Egypt long ago. But this Passover is different from every other one that has ever happened. This Passover is the one all the others were pointing to.
Jesus gathers His twelve disciples in a large, furnished upper room. The table is set. The lamb has been prepared. The cups of wine are ready. Everything looks like an ordinary Passover meal — but Jesus knows something His disciples do not yet understand.
As they recline at the table, Jesus says something that must surprise them: 'I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.' He knows that before the sun rises again, He will be handed over to His enemies. He knows what is coming. And still He sits down to share this meal with the people He loves.
Then Jesus does something new. He takes the bread, gives thanks to His Father, breaks it, and gives it to His disciples. 'This is My body,' He tells them, 'which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of Me.' The bread of the Passover meal — bread eaten every year to remember God's rescue from Egypt — now points to something even greater. Jesus is saying that His own body will be broken as a sacrifice for His people.
Then Jesus takes the cup. He says, 'This cup is the new covenant in My blood, which is poured out for you.' Do you hear that word — covenant? A covenant is a solemn, unbreakable promise between God and His people. God made covenants with Noah, with Abraham, with Moses, and with David. But now Jesus is announcing a new covenant — the greatest one of all — sealed not with the blood of an animal, but with His very own blood.
Every Passover lamb that was ever sacrificed was a picture, a shadow, of this moment. The lamb's blood on the doorframes in Egypt protected God's people from judgment. Now Jesus, the true Lamb of God, is about to shed His blood so that God's people will be protected from sin and death forever. This is the great atonement — the payment that takes away sin — that all those animal sacrifices could never fully make.
The disciples do not completely understand yet. But Jesus is patient. He tells them He will not drink from the fruit of the vine again until the kingdom of God comes. He is looking forward to the great feast that is coming — when He and His people will celebrate together forever. This meal is not the end. It is the beginning of everything new.
Christ in This Story
Every Passover lamb sacrificed in Israel was a God-given picture pointing forward to Jesus, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). At the Last Supper, Jesus reveals that He Himself is the true and final sacrifice — His body broken and His blood shed to make atonement for all who belong to Him. The new covenant He announces is the covenant promised by the prophet Jeremiah (Jeremiah 31:31–34), where God pledges to forgive His people's sins completely and write His law on their hearts. Every time the Lord's Supper is celebrated in church today, God's children remember and proclaim that Jesus has fulfilled every covenant promise perfectly.
Historical Context
The Passover feast that Jesus and His disciples celebrated followed traditions rooted in Exodus 12, where God commanded Israel to eat a roasted lamb with unleavened bread and bitter herbs, and to remember His great act of deliverance from Egypt. By the first century, the Passover meal (called the Seder) had developed a structured order including multiple cups of wine, the retelling of the Exodus story, and the singing of Psalms 113–118 (the Hallel). Luke 22:17–20 likely refers to specific cups within this liturgy, with the 'cup after supper' being the third cup, traditionally called the 'cup of redemption' — a deeply meaningful choice for Jesus to connect to His own blood of the new covenant.
The phrase 'new covenant' (Greek: kainē diathēkē) directly echoes Jeremiah 31:31–34, a passage every Jewish listener would have recognized as a breathtaking promise of God's future redemptive work. The idea that a covenant could be ratified by blood was deeply familiar in the ancient Near East — covenants were solemn, binding agreements often accompanied by sacrifice (see Genesis 15 and Exodus 24:8). By saying the cup represents 'my blood of the covenant,' Jesus is deliberately placing Himself in the role of both the covenant mediator and the covenant sacrifice, claiming to fulfill everything the old sacrificial system anticipated.
✦ This story also appears in the Quran
For parents: This biblical account has a parallel in the Quran (Islam's holy book), but the two versions differ in important ways. The Quran retells many Old and New Testament stories — sometimes similarly, sometimes with significant changes in detail, meaning, or theology.
This is a great opportunity to help your children know the biblical account well, so they can recognize differences if they ever encounter them. The Bible is our authoritative source; where the Quran diverges, we hold to what God's Word says.
Let's Pray
Dear heavenly Father, thank You for keeping every promise You have ever made. Thank You for sending Jesus to be the true Passover Lamb, whose blood covers our sin forever. Help us remember, every time we hear about the Lord's Supper, that Jesus gave Himself for us because He loves us. We praise You for the new covenant that can never be broken. Amen.