These serve only as a substantial, physical substance designed to draw out attention to the Person and Work of Jesus. Partaking of the bread and wine serves only as a picture of assimilating Christ's life into our lives. For example, when Jesus said, "I am the bread of life.The bread which I shall give for the life of the world is My flesh.He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life" (John 6:48-58), we can be quite certain that His Jewish followers did not think that they were going to chew and digest Jesus' physical body. Such an idea would have been distasteful to Jewish thinking, for they shunned the eating of human flesh and the drinking of any blood. They knew that Jesus was speaking symbolically of receiving the spiritual reality of His life, using the technique of hyperbole. Likewise, at the Last Supper the disciples of Jesus, who were very familiar with the metaphorical word-pictures that Jesus employed, would have understood that the bread and wine represented the significance of receiving Jesus Christ, and in the ensuing days after the crucifixion and resurrection would have understood the symbolisation even more completely. At first glance, Luke 22:15-18 appears to be without similar in Matthew's and Mark's gospels. Jesus says that "he greatly desired" to eat this Passover with his disciples before he is to suffer, since he will not eat again until it finds fulfilment in the Kingdom of God. Then Jesus takes the cup, gives thanks and commands his disciples to take the cup and share it among themselves. After the distribution of the cup he adds that he will not drink again from the fruit of the vine until the Kingdom of God has come. Luke's version of the introduction to the word over the bread in 22:19 similars both Mark and Matthew and 1 Corinthians at various points.
