Biblion Bible Commentary
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This Cup Is the New Covenant
Luke 22:14-23
14 When the hour had come, he sat down with the twelve apostles. · WEB
He says he has longed for this meal, and then gives the bread and the cup a meaning the Passover never had.
When the hour had come, he sat down with the twelve apostles Luke 22:14.
The institution is given in the earlier accounts Mark 14:22–42 Matthew 26:26–30, with the covenant language from Sinai and Jeremiah standing behind the cup. Three things belong to this telling.
The first is the opening sentence, and it is unlike anything else in the passion narratives.
"I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer" Luke 22:15.
The construction doubles the verb — desired with desire — and it is the strongest way that language had of saying it. He wanted this. Not endured it, not submitted to it; a man who knows what the night contains says he has been longing for the meal.
"For I tell you, I will no longer by any means eat of it until it is fulfilled in God's Kingdom" Luke 22:16, and the same again over the cup Luke 22:18. Twice he looks past the night to a table on the other side. The last supper is spoken of as an interrupted meal rather than a final one.
The second is that this account has two cups — one before the bread Luke 22:17 and one after Luke 22:20. The Passover liturgy used several, and the writer has kept the sequence of the meal as it ran rather than compressing it. It is the kind of detail a researcher keeps.
"This is my body which is given for you. Do this in memory of me" Luke 22:19.
The last clause is the third thing, and no other Gospel has it. Paul has it too, in the letter that quotes this tradition 1 Corinthians 11:24–25. What is established is not merely a meaning but a practice — an instruction to keep doing it, given at a meal that was itself a memorial of a deliverance.
In memory of me is worth pausing on. The Passover remembered an event; this remembers a person.
"This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you" Luke 22:20. Jeremiah's promise of a new covenant, with the law written inside people and sins remembered no more Jeremiah 31:31–34, is claimed over a cup by the man whose blood is named as its ratification.
"But behold, the hand of him who betrays me is with me on the table" Luke 22:21.
And in this account the announcement of the betrayal comes after the bread and the cup, not before. Judas is at the table for all of it. Nothing is withheld from him, and the notice that he is known comes when he has already taken what was given.
They began to question among themselves which of them it was who would do this thing Luke 22:23. Nobody points.
settled What this mark means