For this is my blood of the new testament. — Better, this is My blood of the Covenant; the best MSS. omitting the word “new” both here and in St. Mark. It was probably introduced into the later MSS. to bring the text into harmony with St. Luke’s report. Assuming the word “new” to have been actually spoken by our Lord, we can understand its being passed over by some reporters or transcribers whose attention had not been specially called to the great prophecy of Jeremiah 31:31-34. That prophecy was, however, certain to have a prominent place in the minds of those who had come into contact, as St. Luke must have done, with the line of thought indicated in the Epistle to the Hebrews (Matthew 8:9), and therefore we cannot wonder that we find it in the report of the words given by him (Matthew 22:20) and by St. Paul (1 Corinthians 11:25). If we were to accept the other alternative, it would still be true that the covenant of which our Lord spoke was ipso facto new, and was therefore that of which Jeremiah had spoken, and that the insertion of the word (looking to the general freedom of the Gospels in reporting our Lord’s discourses) was a legitimate way of emphasising that fact.
Dealing with the words, we note (1) that the word “covenant” is everywhere (with, possibly, the one exception of Hebrews 9:16, but see Note there) the best equivalent for the Greek word. The popular use of the “New Testament” for the collected writings of the apostolic age, makes its employment here and in the parallel passages singularly infelicitous. (2) That the “blood of the covenant” is obviously a reference to the history of Exodus 24:4-8. The blood which the Son of Man was about to shed was to be to the true Israel of God what the blood which Moses had sprinkled on the people had been to the outward Israel. It was the true “blood of sprinkling” (Hebrews 12:24), and Jesus was thus the “Mediator” of the New Covenant as Moses had been of the Old (Galatians 3:19). (3) That so far as this was, in fact or words, the sign of a new covenant, it turned the thoughts of the disciples to that of which Jeremiah had spoken. The essence of that covenant was to be the inward working of the divine law, which had before been brought before the conscience as an external standard of duty — (“I will put My law in their inward parts,” Jeremiah 31:33) — a truer knowledge of God, and through that knowledge the forgiveness of iniquity; and all this, they were told, was to be brought about through the sacrifice of the death of Christ.
Which is shed for many. — The participle is, as before, in the present tense — which is being shed — the immediate future being presented to them as if it were actually passing before their eyes. As in Matthew 20:28, our Lord uses the indefinite “for many,” as equivalent to the universal “for all.” St, Paul’s language in 1 Timothy 2:6 shows, beyond the shadow of a doubt, how the words “for many” had been interpreted.
For the remission of sins. — This had been from the outset the substance of the gospel which our Lord had preached, both to the people collectively (Luke 4:16-19) and to individual souls (Matthew 9:2; Luke 7:48). What was new in the words now was this connection with the shedding of His blood as that which was instrumental in obtaining the forgiveness. Returning, with the thoughts thus brought together, to the command of Matthew 26:27, “Drink ye all of it,” we may see, as before in the case of the bread, an allusive reference to the mysterious words of John 6:53-54. In the contrast between the “sprinkling” of Exodus 24:6 and the “drinking” here enjoined, we may legitimately see a symbol, not only of the participation of believers in the life of Christ, as represented by the blood, but also of the difference between the outward character of the Old Covenant and the inward nature of the New. It is, perhaps, not altogether outside the range of associations thus suggested to note that to drink together of a cup filled with human blood had come to be regarded as a kind of sacrament of closest and perpetual union, and as such was chosen by evildoers — as in the case of Catiline (Sallust, Catil. c. 22) — to bind their partners in guilt more closely to themselves. The cup which our Lord gave His disciples, though filled with wine, was to be to them the pledge of a union in holiness as deep and true as that which bound others in a league of evil.
We cannot pass, however, from these words without dwelling for a moment on their evidential aspect. For eighteen centuries — without, so far as we can trace, any interruption, even for a single week — the Christian Church, in all its manifold divisions, under every conceivable variety of form and ritual, has had its meetings to break bread and to drink wine, not as a social feast (from a very early date, if not from the beginning, the limited quantity of bread and wine must have excluded that idea), but as a commemorative act. It has referred its observance to the command thus recorded, and no other explanation has ever been suggested. But this being granted, we have in our Lord’s words, at the very time when He had spoken of the guilt of the Traitor and His own approaching death, the proof of a divine prescience. He knew that His true work was beginning and not ending; that He was giving a commandment that would last to the end of time; that He had obtained a greater honour than Moses, and was the Mediator of a better covenant (Hebrews 3:3; Hebrews 8:6).