Notes from Darby’s Writings

Reference

With what simplicity the Lord announces that which was to happen!  He already arrived at Bethany, six days before the Passover (John 12:1): there He abode, with the exception of the last supper, until He was taken captive in the garden of Gethsemane, although He visited Jerusalem, and partook of His last meal there.

He then points out that it is the slain Saviour slain who is to be remembered. His pathway as the living Messiah was over. It was no longer the remembrance of Israel’s deliverance from the slavery of Egypt. Christ, and Christ slain, began an entirely new order of things.  He draws the disciples’ attention to the blood of the new covenant, saying that it was ‘shed for many.’ – i.e. Jew and Gentile.  It was shed for the remission of sins.

But the time drew near for the last feast of the Passover that took place during the life of Jesus, the one in which He was Himself to be the Lamb.  The memorial to faith was that of Himself and of His work. He therefore sends His disciples to prepare all that was needed to keep the feast. In the evening He sits with His disciples, to converse with them, and to testify His love for them as their companion, for the last time. But it is to tell them (for He must suffer everything) that one of them should betray Him.

It was Himself, His sacrifice, not a temporal deliverance, that they were to remember. All was now absorbed in Him, and in Him dying on the cross. Afterwards, in giving them the cup, He lays the foundation of the new covenant in His blood (in a figure), giving it to them as participation in His death. When they had all drunk of it, He announces to them that it is the seal of the new covenant a thing well known to the Jews, according to Jeremiah; adding that it was shed for many. Death was to come in for the establishment of the new covenant, and for the ransom of many.  Death was necessary, and the bonds of earthly association between Jesus and His disciples were dissolved

The new covenant is founded on the blood here drunk in figure. The old was done away. Blood was required to establish the new. At the same time the covenant itself was not established; but everything was done on God’s part. The blood was not shed to give force to a covenant of judgment like the first; it was shed for those who received Jesus, while waiting for the time when the covenant itself should be established with Israel in grace.

Now the Lord institutes the supper, a precious sign and memorial of His love and of His death. Up to that time, the Passover had been the commemoration of the deliverance of the people out of the captivity in Egypt, when the blood of the Lamb was put upon the doors of the houses where the Israelites were. Now the blood of a more excellent Lamb has been sprinkled upon the mercy-seat in heaven, before the eye of God; when Christ, the Lamb of God, accomplished everything for the glory of God and for the salvation of all believers.  Without shedding of blood there is no remission.  The work has been done: in the sacrifice of the cross Jesus drank the cup of malediction and cannot drink it again; He perfectly glorified God about sin.  He bore the sins of many, and can never bear them again; He cannot offer Himself again, He is for ever seated at the right hand of God; Hebrews 9: 24-26. He would have had to suffer often, if His one offering upon the cross had not taken away for ever all the sins of all believers.  The Lord said, ‘This is my body … do this in remembrance of me’ (See Matt 26:26, Mark 14:22, Luke 22:19, 1 Cor 11:24).

Note on the Sacraments

Note on  Luke 22

Note on  Luke 22