What Is the Reason Jesus Chose To Use Wine In the Lord's Supper?
By Dr. Derek Carlsen
It is significant that Christ's first miracle was to make an abundance of good wine (John 2). Why was this? And why was John careful to emphasize the fact that this was the first miracle Jesus did? Because this miracle was very significant in connecting Christ to the prophecies about the Messianic Kingdom. Jesus made a lot of very good wine and this was a sign that led His disciples to believe in Him (John 2:11). The prophet Isaiah said, referring to the Messianic age, "Ho! Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat. Yes, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price" (Isa.55:1). A godly picture of the gospel, according to God, is free and abundant wine with a call for all to come and drink.
The righteous vine in Judges 9 would not stop making wine because it cheered the heart of God and man (Judges 9:13). It is the blood of Christ's sacrifice that makes the heart glad, and God says wine is a picture of this. According to Christ, it is wine that most accurately portrays the meaning of His sacrificial death. The Old Testament pictured the coming Kingdom as a sumptuous banquet where there was a great abundance of wine. "Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, When the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him who sows seed; The mountains shall drip with sweet wine, and all the hills shall flow with it" (Amos 9:13). Sweet wine and new wine were alcoholic as Acts 2:13 clearly proves (full of new wine). The prophet Zechariah, speaking about Ephraim's spiritual revival and restoration said, "Those of Ephraim shall be like a mighty man, and their heart shall rejoice as if with wine. Yes, their children shall see it and be glad; Their heart shall rejoice in the Lord" (Zech.10:7).
As the marriage relationship is meant to be an image of Christ and His bride (Eph.5:32), so too, in the Song of Solomon, we see that wine is used as a picture of the intimate richness of communion and sexual union in the marriage relationship (Song 1:2,4; 2:4; 4:10; 7:9; 8:2). Wine pictures the joyful communion of the marriage relationship as well as our relationship with the Eternal Bridegroom at the Communion Table. Holding to wine in the communion celebration is not arguing over minor issues, like how many hymns to sing in a worship service. There are only two sacraments given to the church by the Lord and the details are not arbitrary. For example, would it legitimate to baptize with rose petals? They won't startle the baby, like water does; they are pretty; they can be easily seen by everyone in the church; and you can match the color of the petals with the person's outfit. After all, there is also water in rose petals.
On the contrary we realize that the elements Christ chose have significance: bread and wine. Bread nourishes. Rome likes the wafer, which is not much more than air and hardly nourishing in its essence. Thus the wafer is ultimately a 'magical symbol' since it is not communicating what the Lord intended to communicate by bread. When we use bread we are instructed that as our bodies are nourished by healthy bread, so too our souls are nourished by feasting upon Christ by faith in our hearts. The bread we use is healthy bread, because it is the Lord who says we need this connection in order to strengthen our faith and relationship with Him. When we are hungry, the only way to satisfy that hunger is to eat and bread was the staple food in Israel and is still significant in this way in our day. The use of bread in communion communicates the fact that our spiritual hunger can only be satisfied by feasting upon Christ's flesh. We don't only need good physical food, but also good spiritual food and Christ says one of the ways we are fed spiritually is by partaking of and feeding upon the symbols that He instituted and that instruct our senses.
We use wine because it communicates a message of God's rich, long abiding love. Isaiah says, "And in this mountain The Lord of hosts will make for all people A feast of choice pieces, A feast of wines on the lees, Of fat things full of marrow, Of well-refined wines on the lees" (Isa.25:6). From everlasting, the love of God has rested upon us. This rich, full bodied love is pictured by wine, a wine that only time can produce---wine on the lees, which is rich in aroma and flavour. Such wine is made by careful and precise actions and God's love in Christ for us entails careful and precise actions on His part. This love is mature and very valuable and is the source of real joy---the joy of the richness of grace. God says our communion with Christ is properly described by comparing it to drinking good, mature wine---wine on the lees. We are told to renew our minds, not the text of Scripture!
According to the wisdom of God, our communion with Christ is best described as drinking good wine. Our communion with Christ is not best described as a roller-coaster rush, or sunset fishing on a still lake, nor the excitement of a camel derby, nor the exhilaration of a parachute jump. No, good wine on the lees God says, is the way we are to understand our communion with Him. Wine that has stood long on the lees has drawn out all the virtue and flavour, it is wine that has no impediments in it, that is, all the coarse sediments have been removed. Well refined wine describes the richness of our communion with the Lord. Communion is not just a matter of putting some kind of liquid in our mouth. No, the Lord says our faith is not irrational and thus in our communing with Him through the Supper, He is communicating to our minds a particular message. It is His message that we are to feast upon by faith. In the same way that we are built up by feasting upon the preached word and the words we find in Scripture. It is by His message, communicated in the way He deems best, that our holy faith is built up and we are strengthened. And He said it is wine that is best able to portray and communicate to us the reality of our communion with Him.
We are not to cringe and apologize because the Lord says wine presents the best picture of our communion with Him. We are to receive it with thanksgiving and feast upon the reality that it is communicating to us. It communicates the fullness and richness of the Lord's love for us; it speaks of the joy and peace that fill our hearts due to being in relationship with Him. As we smell the aroma of the wine, as we savour its deep flavour and sense the warmth of the alcohol, the Lord is touching our senses with truth that He has explained in His word---truth about our communion with Him. He is not polluting us, He is strengthening us in accordance with His wisdom and His definition of reality. Now we might not like God's definition of reality, but then it is the nature of sin to find fault with how God has set things up. Do we bow our hearts to the Lord's wisdom or make our own wisdom supreme?
When Peter had the vision from God about clean and unclean animals (Acts 10), it would not have been a very difficult thing for Peter if the Lord had said, "Your Gentile brothers can eat all of these animals." Peter could have made a higher road, lower road distinction. "The Gentiles are walking on a lower road to me, but that is to be expected." Instead, God said, "Peter, you kill and eat" (Acts 10:13). Peter was horrified. He had never allowed such meats to pass his lips and was convinced that he would defile himself should he change this long held practice. He argued with the Lord three times. The Lord was saying, "Peter eat!" Whereas Peter responded by saying, "No, Lord!" Peter was struggling with a like long understanding, tradition and practice. Yet the Lord rebuked him saying, "What God has declared clean, must not be called profane." Peter had to submit his religious perception of taste, smell and what was holy, to God's definition. To refrain from eating certain meats today on religious grounds is perverse, because it contradicts God's testimony with respect to all meats that are to be received with gratefulness and thanksgiving. To look askance upon God's good gifts is to make oneself holier than Him. To call unholy what God calls holy, is legalism. The 'fruit of the vine' is wine and it is a gracious gift given to us to use in communion so that we might be strengthened by the reality it communicates about our relationship with the Lord. Let's bow our hearts and feast, by faith, on the richness of the fruit of the vine at the Table of the Lord.
For further discussion, see our sermon on the topic at SermonAudio: The Lord's Supper and the Fruit of the Vine or our posted article by Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr. Th.D. on the Biblical Use of Alcoholic Beverages.