Imperishable Inheritance

I got the chance to speak in per­son with my good friend Nick last night at a wed­ding. We talked about much, but he asked me in par­tic­u­lar if I believe that wine or grape juice should be insti­tuted at The Lord’s Sup­per. After a I bab­bled, I real­ized I hadn’t put the thought into this I should have. This is espe­cially true being that I am writ­ing a sys­tem­atic intro­duc­tion to Eccle­si­ol­ogy.

Before I start, it is worth not­ing that this arti­cle is not writ­ten on or for the topic of tee­toal­ism. That is for another day.

“Yayin”

The ques­tion of debate is whether we can take “wine” to be the fer­mented or unfer­mented fruit (grape juice) of the vine. We know that wine does refer to an alco­holic bev­er­age by the Hebrew word “yayin” (in Greek, the word for wine is “oinos/oy-nos”). Yayin is used in the fol­low­ing pas­sage refer­ring to Noah being drunk.

Then Noah began farm­ing and planted a vine­yard. He drank of the wine [yayin] and became drunk, and uncov­ered him­self inside his tent.
Gen­e­sis 9:20–21 (empha­sis added)

So, we’ve estab­lished that “wine” can indeed refer to an alco­holic bev­er­age and not only to unfer­mented fruit. Of course, to come to a Bib­li­cal con­clu­sion we must prac­tice proper exeget­i­cal, sys­tem­atic the­ol­ogy. Let us look at the verses where Jesus insti­tutes the Lord’s Supper.

Verses on The Insti­tu­tion of The Lord’s Supper

While they were eat­ing, Jesus took some bread, and after a bless­ing, He broke it and gave it to the dis­ci­ples, and said, “Take, eat; this is My body.” And when He had taken a cup and given thanks, He gave it to them, say­ing, “Drink from it, all of you; for this is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for for­give­ness of sins. “But I say to you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in My Father’s king­dom.“
Matthew 26:26–29

While they were eat­ing, He took some bread, and after a bless­ing He broke it, and gave it to them, and said, “Take it; this is My body.” And when He had taken a cup and given thanks, He gave it to them, and they all drank from it. And He said to them, “This is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. “Truly I say to you, I will never again drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the king­dom of God.“
Mark 14:22–25

And He said to them, “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suf­fer; for I say to you, I shall never again eat it until it is ful­filled in the king­dom of God.” And when He had taken a cup and given thanks, He said, “Take this and share it among your­selves; for I say to you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine from now on until the king­dom of God comes.” And when He had taken some bread and given thanks, He broke it and gave it to them, say­ing, “This is My body which is given for you; do this in remem­brance of Me.” And in the same way He took the cup after they had eaten, say­ing, “This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in My blood.
Luke 22:15–20

Jesus speaks of the “fruit of the vine” in each account, but noth­ing is gath­ered to where we can deci­sively say whether Jesus insti­tuted this sacra­ment with wine or grape juice (or sim­il­iar bev­er­age). One arti­cle does try to exegete “fruit of the vine” as fer­mented wine, but the argu­ment is not strong. What about the Passover in the Old Testament?

and there shall be one-tenth of an ephah of fine flour mixed with one-fourth of a hin of beaten oil, and one-fourth of a hin of wine for a drink offer­ing with one lamb.
Exo­dus 29:40

This is inter­est­ing, because the word for fer­mented wine, yayin, is used here, but “fer­mented wine is the Greek “oinos,” used 28 times in the New Tes­ta­ment, but NEVER for the con­tents of the Passover cup.“¹ And we must remem­ber that Passover in the Old Tes­ta­ment and The Lord’s Sup­per are two par­al­lel but dif­fer­ent events.

“That the Jews used fer­mented wine in their per­verted cel­e­bra­tion of the Passover may or may not be true, but this in no way proves that it was used by Jesus and the dis­ci­ples, and it is a purely gra­tu­itous assump­tion to claim it. It is irrel­e­vant, what the Jews used in the Passover, for if the New Tes­ta­ment does not com­mand the use of fer­mented wine, or show an exam­ple of it, we are not oblig­ated to use it, nor should we use it.”

Preser­va­tion?

“Another objec­tion is that grape juice could not be pre­served for any length of time apart from fer­men­ta­tion, and so this must have been the most com­mon ele­ment in use. ANSWER: William Pat­ton in his “Bible Wines, or The Laws of Fer­men­ta­tion”, a very infor­ma­tive book in this con­tro­versy, shows that grape juice could be pre­served in at least five other ways than fer­men­ta­tion, and that all were com­mon meth­ods of preser­va­tion in ancient times, so that any­one who desired to, could have unfer­mented grape juice at any sea­son of the year for use as a bev­er­age, or in the Lord’s Sup­per.“²

Paul on The Lord’s Supper

There­fore when you meet together, it is not to eat the Lord’s Sup­per, for in your eat­ing each one takes his own sup­per first; and one is hun­gry and another is drunk.
1 Corinthi­ans 11:20–21

When we “take [our] own sup­per” is that when they were drink­ing fer­mented wine, but this was not uti­lized in The Lord’s Sup­per? (The con­text of this pas­sage also pro­vides good argu­ments for open communion.)

Unleav­end Bread

Another issue in this is the use of unleav­ened bread:

Now the Feast of Unleav­ened Bread, which is called the Passover, was approach­ing.
Luke 22:1

“Unleav­ened bread shall be eaten through­out the seven days; and noth­ing leav­ened shall be seen among you, nor shall any leaven be seen among you in all your bor­ders.
Exo­dus 13:7

“In the first month, on the four­teenth day of the month, you shall have the Passover, a feast of seven days; unleav­ened bread shall be eaten.
Ezekiel 45:21

Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleav­ened. For Christ our Passover also has been sac­ri­ficed.
1 Corinthi­ans 5:7

“Unleav­ened” sim­ply means to make with­out a ris­ing agent (yeast). This would pro­vide a deduc­tion of a more “nat­ural” bread, and would it be to much to apply this thought to the “purer” drink at The Lord’s Sup­per (grape juice).

Con­clu­sion

After really look­ing at this (and there is more to go), I would be inclined to believe that the Scrip­tures speak of grape juice being ordained and not alco­hol, but I still have ques­tions. It is note­wor­thy that we must fight the doc­tri­nal errors of trans and con­sub­stan­ti­a­tion first.

Addi­tional Reading

• Wine or Grape Juice?
• Wine or Grape Juice For Passover?