Communion is one of the most familiar acts in Christian worship, yet it is often one of the least understood. When Jesus took bread on the night He was betrayed, broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is given for you,” He was not offering a ritual without meaning. He was declaring the heart of the gospel.
Scripture gives us a fuller picture of this moment through passages like 1 Corinthians 11 and Isaiah 53. Communion is not only remembrance – it is participation. In the breaking of the bread and the sharing of the cup, believers proclaim what Christ has already accomplished.
Jesus bore our pain and carried our sorrows in His body. He experienced betrayal, rejection, abandonment, and brutal suffering, yet He freely gave His life out of love. His wounds were not random acts of violence; they were purposeful acts of redemption. His hands were pierced for the sins committed by our hands. His feet were nailed for the ways we walked away from God. A crown of thorns pressed into His head for sins born in our thoughts – doubt, fear, pride, and unbelief.
In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus resisted sin to the point of sweating blood, carrying the weight of human anguish and spiritual warfare. On the cross, a spear pierced His side, and blood and water flowed – symbols of forgiveness and cleansing. He was beaten beyond recognition, fully broken so that we might be made whole.
Isaiah tells us that “the chastisement for our peace was upon Him.” The Hebrew word shalom means more than peace – it means wholeness, harmony, nothing missing and nothing broken. Communion declares that this wholeness has already been secured through Christ. As Peter later writes, “By His stripes you were healed” – past tense. The work was finished at the cross.
When believers receive Communion, they declare that they have died with Christ to sin and are now alive through His resurrection life. They proclaim that Jesus took upon Himself the power and consequences of sin so that forgiveness, restoration, and new life could be freely received by faith.
For generations, Communion has anchored the Church in this truth. For Swanson, that same truth has guided our calling for more than 90 years as we serve churches across the nation with Communion supplies. This work is more than a business. It is a calling to support worship, discipleship, and the ongoing work of the Kingdom.
In the simple elements of bread and cup, the Church remembers: Christ was given, Christ was broken, and Christ still invites us – “Do this in remembrance of Me.”
Make Him Known!
—Adam Swanson, CEO
Swanson Christian Products, www.swansoninc.com
