The bread that had been prepared for the Passover supper (see on Matt. 26:26).

 Literally, “was being betrayed.” The plot for Christ’s betrayal was in progress, and had not yet been fulfilled. At the very time Jesus was giving instructions for the memorial ordinance of His death to be observed, His enemies were putting into operation their plan to seize Him. The solemnity and pathos of the holy supper stood in sharp contrast with the careless and flippant attitude of the Corinthians at their love feast. The night of His betrayal confronted Christ with one of the bitterest experiences that mortals can endure. Persecution and trial at the hands of avowed enemies are hard to bear, but they do not inflict the same mental pain that treachery or desertion on the part of friends brings to a trusting heart (see Job 19:21; Ps. 38:11; Zech. 13:6; John 13:21, 26, 27, 30; DA 655). By reminding the Corinthian church of the events of that night of suffering, Paul no doubt sought to impress them with a sense of the solemn nature of the ordinance, and thus teach them that it was altogether improper for them to celebrate it with gluttony, drunkenness, and proud exclusiveness. To appreciate the deep significance of the ordinance, it is necessary to meditate upon the events clustering around its institution; and one of those events, the memory of which is calculated to produce in the mind a feeling of sympathy for the Saviour, was His betrayal by one who had professed to be a friend (see Ps. 41:9).

 Paul had faithfully delivered to them what the Lord had revealed to him as to the manner in which the Lord’s Supper was to be observed. In view of this lack of perception of the real import of the ordinance, which produced the present abuses, Paul set forth the solemn circumstances in which it was first observed by Jesus and His disciples in the upper room at Jerusalem (see Luke 22:13, 14).

 Paul was not one of those present when Christ instituted the Lord’s Supper. Nevertheless he had learned of it, not merely from other apostles or by tradition, but directly from the Saviour Himself, during one of the revelations given to him by the Lord (see 2 Cor. 12:7; Gal. 1:12).