This Is My Body

This Is My Body
by Mitch Cervinka

Objection #1. When He instituted the use of bread in the Lord's Supper, our Lord simply said "This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me." He did not say that unleavened bread must be used, nor did He say that unleavened bread represents His sinlessness.
Objection #2. Unleavened bread was a reminder of the haste with which Israel fled from Egypt—nothing more.
Objection #3. In John 6:29-58, our Lord explained that He is the bread of life, given for the life of the world. Therefore, the significance of the bread used in the Lord's Supper is that it is nutritious. Since leavened bread is just as nutritious as unleavened bread, it does not matter which kind is used.
Objection #4. Scripture uses the generic word "bread" (artos) rather than the specific term "unleavened bread" (azumos), when describing the Lord's Supper. Thus, God does not care whether the bread is unleavened or not.
Objection #5. If God had meant for the church to use unleavened bread for the Lord's Supper, then He would have explicitly said so. By using only the generic word for bread, He teaches us that it does not matter whether the bread is unleavened.
Objection #6. The use of leavened bread belongs, with circumcision and animal sacrifices, to the circumstantial rituals of the Old Covenant and should not be carried over into the New Covenant.
Objection #7. Leaven is used in both a good sense and a bad sense in scripture. It is therefore fallacious to assume that it always represents sin or evil.
Objection #8. God prescribed the ritual use of bread in other contexts in the Old Testament, for example, the showbread, where it was not required to be unleavened bread. We therefore should not assume that leaven necessarily signifies sin, nor that it is necessarily wrong to use leavened bread for formal worship.
Objection #9. In 1 Corinthians 5:7-8, Paul speaks of the "unleavened bread" of "sincerity and truth". He is not addressing the type of bread to be used in communion, but is describing the spiritual life of the believer.
Objection #10. In 1 Corinthians 5:7-8, when Paul invites us to "celebrate the festival", he is not speaking of a literal festival, nor of the observance of the Lord's Supper, but of living a life of truth and sincerity.
Objection #11. In 1 Corinthians 5:7-8, Paul is describing the believers' righteousness, not Christ's righteousness. Therefore, it is not valid to apply the figure of unleavened bread to the body of Christ.
Objection #12. The immediate context of 1 Corinthians 5:7-8 is not discussing the Lord's Supper. Both preceding and following this passage, he is discussing church discipline, and how to respond to the professing Christian who engages in serious public sin.
Objection #13. When our Lord instituted the Lord's Supper, he only said that the bread represents his body; he did not explain the meaning of leaven. Therefore, he did not expect his people to assign any particular significance to leaven, or to suppose that unleavened bread is representative of righteousness. Paul's explanation recorded in 1 Corinthians 5:7-8 came many years later and cannot be applied after the fact to the Lord's Supper.
Objection #14. The gospel transcends cultures and customs, and God expects us to use whatever bread is commonly used in any particular culture, rather than using a type of bread that was unique to the Jewish culture.
Objection #15. Christians, from the post-apostolic age to the present, have been virtually unanimous in their opinion that leavened bread is acceptable for use in the Lord's Supper.
Objection #16. When we use leavened bread for the Lord's Supper, we acknowledge our communion with the vast majority of the historic church of various centuries, cultures and theological traditions who use leavened bread.
Objection #17. Christians should accept whatever type of bread the church uses. If the church is serving the wrong type of bread for the Lord's Supper, then the elders must answer to the Lord for this. Christians, on the other hand, are accountable to obey their elders.
Objection #18. For the Lord's Supper, Christians should use whatever bread and wine is readily available. At the Last Supper, Jesus used unleavened bread only because that is what was readily available to them at the time.
Objection #19. God does not care what you eat or drink for the Lord's Supper. Any food and drink will do, so long as you think of Christ's body broken for you, and his blood shed for you when you eat and drink it.
Objection #20. Most Reformed scholars of the past 500 years have observed the Lord's Supper using leavened bread. It is arrogance to question their views.