I am the living bread which has come down out of heaven if any one shall have eaten of this bread he shall live for ever; but the bread withal which I shall give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.
Jesus is speaking to a crowd who keep pointing back to the manna their ancestors ate in the desert. Here He calls Himself the living bread, and then points ahead to the death by which He will feed the world.
No ordinary teacher could say what He says here. He came down from heaven, and in the same breath He speaks of flesh He will give away. Commentators note that both sides of who He is stand in this one sentence. You cannot pull one from the other.
He speaks of Himself as the living bread come down from heaven. Yet in the same sentence He says that He, the One who came down from heaven, will give His flesh as bread for the life of the world. Two natures stand here in His Person: manhood and eternal deity. Yet no one can separate them in His actions.
The verse names two separate gifts. The Father gave Him by sending Him down. Now He speaks of something He will hand over Himself.
In coming down, in becoming man, He was the bread of God, His Father's gift. But there was bread which He Himself would give: His own flesh, which He would give for the life of the world. This giving of His flesh was the laying down of His life. It was His yielding Himself up to death. So He might become to sinners — to fallen, perishing men — what bread would be to a crowd of people starving with hunger.
The crowd had raised the subject of the manna, the food God rained down in the desert. One writer points out that nobody ate that bread as it fell. It had to be prepared first.
The crowd had drawn attention to the manna. The Lord here reminds them that, though it sustained life, it never did preserve from death. He, however, the living bread, as He now presents Himself, could give everlasting life to those who eat of it. But, as with the manna of old, so with the living bread: something more had to happen before anyone could eat it. The manna was first pounded in a mortar, or ground in a mill, and then baked in a pan (Num. 11:8). He who is the living bread had first to die; for to profit by Him as the bread of life they must eat His flesh and drink His blood.
Halfway through the verse the subject shifts. Up to now He has spoken of His coming from heaven. From here on He speaks of His death. The people in view widen too.
There is a marked change in our Lord's discourse. He turns from His incarnation to His death. In both cases He speaks of eating. In scripture it is the well-known picture for making something your own, or for close fellowship. He was not only the Living Bread that came down out of heaven, that one might eat and live for ever. He would give His flesh for the life not of Jews only but of mankind, or as He says "for the life of the world."
Bread does no good sitting on the table. The wording He uses tells us how a person takes Him in — and for how long.
The tense of the verb "eat" in verses 51 and 53 is worth noticing. Darby's New Translation translates them as "if anyone shall have eaten…" and "unless you shall have eaten…". It means an act of taking Christ for yourself, done once for all. This act must happen if a person is to live toward God. There is no life without taking hold of the death of Christ by faith. This, however, does not rule out eating as a habit. The word appears four more times, in verses 54, 56, 57 and 58. The life received has to be fed and kept up. So the one who has eaten still eats… He has believed, and he goes on believing.
Because the verse speaks of bread and flesh, it is often read as being about the Lord's Supper. Commentators distinguish the two sharply, on the grounds of who each is addressed to and what each does.
Eating Christ's flesh and drinking Christ's blood (John 6:53-54) gives life. Eating of the supper does not. As the Bread from heaven, the Lord presents Himself to the world (John 6:33, 51). But He set up the supper for disciples only… No one should eat of the supper who has not first eaten of His flesh and drunk of His blood. For who has a part now in the blessed results of His death, but those who believe on Him?
- Given — the Father gave Him as bread by sending Him down; He then gives His own flesh, and that second gift is His death.
- Ground — people pounded and baked the manna before eating it; in the same way the living bread had first to die.
- Wide — He gives His flesh for the life of the world, not for one nation only.
- Eaten — eating means taking Christ for yourself: one decisive act of faith, then a lifetime of feeding on the same Christ.
- Forever — the manna sustained people who still died; this bread gives life that does not end.
The Jews therefore contended among themselves, saying, How can he give us this flesh to eat?
Jesus had just said that the bread He would give is His own flesh, given for the life of the world. The crowd did not worship; they quarrelled over the question that decides everything — what does it mean to eat Him?
The dispute begins because the discourse has moved on. Up to this point Jesus had spoken of coming down from heaven. Now He speaks of the death ahead of Him.
There is a marked change in our Lord's discourse. He turns from His incarnation to His death. In both cases He speaks of eating. It is the well-known figure of Scripture for appropriation or communion. He was not only the Living Bread that came down out of heaven, that one might eat and live for ever. He would give His flesh for the life not of Jews only but of mankind, or as He says "for the life of the world."
These hearers grew up under strict food laws. Whole kinds of meat were off limits to them, so the offer sounded not just strange but impossible.
His opponents thought they heard what no sensible person among them could receive. His flesh to eat! Who had ever heard of such a proposal put before one of the chosen people? Had not God through Moses marked out the limits within which alone they might eat flesh? Much that others might lawfully feed on was directly barred to them.
Their earlier complaint had been about where He came from. Now the objection shifts, and each new truth exposes the same weakness.
Already the Jews had murmured among themselves about His Incarnation; now they reason about His death. Each fresh truth increasingly shows how completely unable the natural mind is to take in divine things. They say, "How can this man give us His flesh to eat?" They reject the Lord's words because those words do not appeal to man's reason.
Behind the objection lay a quiet confidence. They felt nothing was wrong between them and God.
His words only raised a new difficulty for them. If they had seen how hopeless their state under the law was, and how their position under Roman power showed it, they might have understood the voices of the prophets better. They might have grasped the witness the prophets bore to the sufferings of Christ on their behalf. Then the word of Jesus might not have seemed to them such a "hard saying." But in the pride of their hearts they imagined their relations with Him were all that they should be, and the idea that their souls needed a ransom was never allowed a place in their minds.
The people arguing were long-standing opponents, not honest seekers, and that shaped the Lord's reply.
The Jews here are probably the Judeans, in contrast with the Galileans, and always His bitterest opponents. There was in them no spiritual need to make them infer a spiritual meaning, and the Lord does not explain. We shall find soon that when He does explain, it does not stop many even of His professing disciples from dropping away from Him. Here He only insists the more on the truth and the necessity of what He is declaring.
The picture is deliberate. Blood named apart from the body is the plainest sign of a life laid down.
So here we have His death under the figure of the flesh to be eaten and the blood to be drunk. It is the life given up, the blood drunk as a separate thing, the most emphatic sign of death. Of this faith partakes, and finds in it atonement and communion. Without it there is no life. This mattered all the more because some professed to receive Him as the Christ but stumbled at His death. Those who receive His coming as man in faith receive His death with the same faith, and these only have eternal life. Both are objects and tests of faith, and the more decisive of the two is His death.
Readers often ask whether these verses are about the Lord's Supper. One writer answers with a plain test.
We do not think that John 6:50 refers to the Lord's Supper. Many, sadly, may eat the Lord's Supper and yet not have life at all. We believe that John 6:50-58 refers to the soul feeding by faith on the death of Christ. His death is life to us. It is quite true that the Lord's Supper displays that most precious mystery. To faith, the bread and wine picture the broken body and shed blood of Christ.
- Eat — in Scripture, eating pictures making something your own. Faith takes Christ; it does not just admire Him.
- Death — flesh and blood named apart are the strongest sign of a life laid down. That death is what faith feeds on.
- World — He gave His flesh not for one nation but "for the life of the world," so the offer reaches all mankind.
- Reason — they argued over how. The arguing exposed a mind closed to divine things and a heart that never felt its need of a ransom.
- Insist — Jesus gave unbelief no explanation. He pressed the same truth harder: without eating there is no life.
Jesus therefore said to them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Unless ye shall have eaten the flesh of the Son of man, and drunk his blood, ye have no life in yourselves.
Jesus warns the crowd that without eating His flesh and drinking His blood they have no life at all. Two questions follow: what does that eating and drinking mean, and is He describing a religious ceremony?
Jesus starts with a diagnosis. He names what they lack before He names what He gives:
There is a saying we repeat often: "There is an exception to every rule." In this beautiful verse of Scripture, spoken by the Lord Jesus Christ, we have a rule and an exception. The RULE is that as ordinary men and women, poor sinful mortals, we have no life in us. This rule includes each one of us. Every child born into the world starts out on life's journey without divine life. Here is the EXCEPTION: those who have eaten the flesh of the Son of Man and drunk His blood no longer stay in their hopeless state of moral and spiritual death, away from God, but have His life in them.
The two outcomes He names leave no middle ground, and that is the force of the argument:
But again, look at the alternatives: "you have no life in you"; "has eternal life." If eternal life is not really in you, then you could eat His flesh and drink His blood and still have no life in you! Otherwise there is no contrast, though a contrast is plainly intended: whether you eat or do not eat, it comes to the same thing! Who can credit the words with such a total lack of meaning?
Blood inside the body is life; blood spoken of separately is blood poured out. That is why the phrasing points to the cross and not to the manger:
He must be received in this character; and to receive Him in this character, in which alone is life, we cannot stop short of His death. We must eat His flesh and drink His blood. This is His death — the blood separate from the body. Incarnation is of no use for life unless death comes in: otherwise there is no atonement, sin is not put away. Eating the flesh comes first, because it stands for the first prominent point, the incarnation — Christ come in flesh for man, for the world. Drinking the blood is added, because this is available in a dead Christ — the blood out of the body.
So how is this eating done? Only one thing in a person can do it:
It is faith, and faith alone, which by the power of the Holy Spirit can and does eat His flesh and drink His blood. Flesh and blood separated means death. Feeding on the death of Christ by faith is what the poor sinner does when he realises he is guilty and condemned. The substitutionary death of Jesus, received in this way, brings him life.
Faith takes His death as its own. That has two effects at once:
In eating, I make what I eat my own. If I eat the flesh of Christ and drink His blood, I make His death mine, and I eat and drink death to everything I am in the flesh. So I part company with everything death applies to, and I live in His life in the power of the Spirit.
Many read the verse as a requirement to take communion. Commentators here reject that reading, while still valuing the Supper:
It is not His incarnation only but His death; it is communion by faith with that precious death. Again and again He shows that this is not a rite, but to believe on Him and have eternal life. It is not the Lord's Supper, but the infinite truth itself of which the Supper is the sign. Understood this way, and only this way, the words are absolutely true. Applied to eating and drinking in a ceremony, they become false at every point.
The order settles it. The eating comes before any life exists:
The Lord says that a person who has not eaten His flesh and drunk His blood has no life. That makes it completely impossible to apply His words to the Lord's Supper. The eating and drinking He speaks of is the first receiving of life: until they ate and drank, they had no life in them. Only dead souls can take part in this eating and so receive life. To talk of preserving or sustaining life runs straight against the plain terms of the passage.
- No life. Everyone is born without divine life; the verse states this as a rule with only one exception.
- His death. Flesh and blood named apart mean death. His birth as a man was not enough; without His death there is no atonement and no life.
- Your faith. The eating is not done with the mouth. Faith alone takes His death and makes it yours.
- Not a rite. The Supper is a sign of this truth, not the truth itself. The eating here is how life first begins, so it cannot mean a ceremony for people who are already alive.
- His life. Here is the exception to the rule: those who feed on His death by faith no longer stay in spiritual death. They have His life in them.
He that eats my flesh and drinks my blood has life eternal, and I will raise him up at the last day
Jesus has just told a shocked crowd that unless they eat His flesh and drink His blood they have no life in them (v. 53). Verse 54 turns that warning into a promise: life now, and resurrection later. But what does feeding on Him mean, and is this about the Lord's Supper?
Why does the Lord name His flesh and His blood separately?
"The flesh of the Son of man" and "His blood" can only refer to His death. The two things could not exist apart from each other except in death.
So the story could not stop at His birth among us.
But His birth into this world was not enough on its own to save us. He had to die, or He would have remained alone. The bread He gives is His flesh, which He had taken. He gives it for the life of the world. Here we have the cross.
Why did the Lord choose eating as the picture?
Eating and drinking are actions which one person cannot perform for another. The food, taken into the mouth, becomes one's own, and gives strength and nourishment to the body. So each person must make the death of Christ his own. The soul has to say, My Saviour, My Lord, My God.
Does He mean a physical meal?
In speaking of eating Him and drinking His blood, He means feeding on Christ spiritually, not any actual taking in of the Lord's body and blood. A person who eats in this sense lives by the life of Christ, has eternal life, remains in Him, and is raised up into glory.
The tense of the verb matters here.
The verb "to eat" appears in two different tenses. Whoever has eaten has eternal life... But in verses 54 and 56 we have the character of the man, and his eating is a present thing. Two things follow from it. First, he has eternal life and will be raised up. Second, whoever feeds on this bread lives in Jesus, and Jesus in him. So the general blessing comes first, with salvation present and to come. Then comes communion.
Once a person has tasted this, he does not walk away from the table.
If someone has eaten His flesh and drunk His blood, he will not be content with taking Him once. He will keep on finding in Him that best food... To have partaken of Him in death is life eternal. But there is more. To make Him in death our habitual spiritual food is to secure the communion of His love to the fullest.
Many read this verse as a description of communion. One writer tests that reading by following it to its end.
Suppose we wrongly apply John 6:54 to the Lord's Supper. It would then follow that every person who takes part in it has eternal life. It would follow too that each of them will be raised in the blessed resurrection at the last day. That reading is clearly wrong.
That does not empty the Supper of value. So where does it stand?
We must not confuse the Lord's Supper with John 6... There we have the substance, of which the Supper is the shadow. It means truly knowing Christ as the One who has died. Then, in faith and in the love of your heart, you turn back to the cross where Jesus suffered.
The promise reaches past the soul.
The teaching about the Bread from heaven involves the truth of the resurrection of the body. The body of the believer, as well as the soul, is to share in everlasting life... In chapter 5 He had already separated the resurrection to life from the resurrection to judgment. Here in chapter 6 He announces who can share in the resurrection to life: those who now eat His flesh and drink His blood. That is, they feed spiritually on Him as dead.
What is "the last day"?
Many suppose the "last day" is a day of twenty-four hours right at the close of all things. It is not. It is the great closing period. In it God makes clear the character and results of what man and Satan have done, and of His own eternal purposes.
- Death — Flesh and blood named apart can only mean a Christ who has died. This verse sets the cross before us, not only His coming.
- Appropriation — Eating means taking something in and making it your own. No one can do it for you. Each soul must say "my Saviour" for itself.
- Continuation — The present tense marks a man who keeps feeding. The first eating gives life. The ongoing feeding gives communion.
- Substance — The Supper is the shadow of what this verse describes. Read the verse as the Supper, and every person at the table would have eternal life. That is not true.
- Resurrection — The one who feeds already has eternal life. The pledge to raise him up carries that life through to the body, at the closing period God has fixed.
for my flesh is truly food and my blood is truly drink.
Jesus has just told the crowd that they have no life unless they eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood. Verse 55 gives the reason. Two questions follow. What does it mean to eat and drink a Person? And is this about a church ceremony?
Notice that Jesus names His flesh and His blood apart from each other.
Clearly, for the blood to be apart from the flesh, so that one is eaten and the other drunk, the blood must have been shed in death. So here, in the fullest way, we have the death of Christ and the shedding of His blood set before us. At the same time we have the most solemn testimony that it is absolutely necessary for each person, and that each must receive it individually… Life flows to us through His death. The soul whose hunger and thirst are met by what Scripture tells of Christ on the cross has not only eternal life, but a present fullness of nourishment and refreshing.
The law had its own sacrifices. The word "true" pushes them aside.
One feels at once that the Lord has left the realm of images and shadows behind. Shadow and substance could not stand together. The Man out of heaven alone could tell of heavenly things. He is here the living bread come down out of heaven, to be eaten if one is to live for ever… "My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink." Could such language describe the sacrifices God appointed under the law? Food indeed, drink indeed!
Commentators agree that this chapter is not about the bread and cup of the Lord's Supper. One of them gives a test anyone can apply.
The verses in this chapter which speak of eating His flesh and drinking His blood do not speak at all of the Lord's supper, but of Christ. The supper speaks of what the chapter speaks of. But the chapter does not speak of the supper — the symbol — it speaks of the thing symbolised. If the application of it to the supper were correct, then not one of those who have taken it would be lost. And anyone who had not taken it would be lost, whatever he might be.
Another writer turns the reader from the ceremony back to the Person.
The Lord's supper does indeed refer to Christ's death, which this part of John 6 also refers to. But He speaks only of faith in Him who died for sin and for sinners, so that believing on Him they may have life. So the Lord's assurance of eternal life is not to the person who takes the supper as such, but to the believer. Turn away, then, from every substitute for Himself, the only Saviour, the one substitute for your sins.
Why speak of eating at all? Consider what happens to food when we eat it.
But the bread must be broken before it can be used. He must die, for it is His flesh He gives for the life of the world. … It is set before us that we may eat and live for ever. In eating I make what I eat my own. If I eat the flesh of Christ and drink His blood, I make His death mine, and I eat and drink death to all that I am in the flesh.
The picture runs one step further.
Our bodies absorb the food we take, and it becomes part of our very selves. This wonderful food has in it the true and eternal life. We are the dead and it is the living, so it works the opposite way to nature and makes us like itself. So we abide in Him and He in us: Christ makes us His own, and then lives in us as His own.
If Christ is truly food, then one meal was never the point.
But the Lord means more. Anyone who has eaten His flesh and drunk His blood will not be content with taking Him once. He will keep on finding in Him that best food… To have taken Him in death is eternal life. But there is more: to make Him in death our regular spiritual food is to be sure of the fellowship of His love to the very fullest.
Neglecting this has visible results.
Is this not the secret of the weak and sickly character of our lives as Christians? We do not feed continually on Christ. What do we feed on? What sustains the life within us? What nourishes us? That is the question.
- Death — Jesus names His flesh and His blood separately because His blood was shed in death; the verse points to the cross.
- Food — His death gives us life, and then becomes the food God sets before us to live on.
- True — "true food" leaves shadows behind; the sacrifices under the law only pictured what God now really gives.
- Faith, not ceremony — the Lord's Supper points to this truth but is not this truth; the Lord assures life to the believer, not to the person who takes the supper.
- Daily — whoever eats once keeps eating, and the food changes the eater until Christ lives in him as His own.
He that eats my flesh and drinks my blood dwells in me and I in him.
In the synagogue at Capernaum, Jesus has just called His flesh true food and His blood true drink, and now He adds a promise to that eating. It raises the question every reader asks: is this eating a church ceremony, and what is it to live in Christ while He lives in you?
The words sound like the Lord's Supper. But commentators read it the other way round. The meal is a picture of this reality, and this reality does not depend on the meal.
Do not think that this means the communion — the Lord's Supper. No, no, this is the substance; the Lord's Supper is the shadow. This is the reality, the communion is the figure. A man might eat the Lord's Supper a thousand times, and yet spend eternity in hell. But no one could eat the flesh of the Son of Man and not have eternal life. In plain words He says to the believer, We are one.
The reason for that is simple, and you can test it. Notice what the verse promises the eater. Then ask whether that is true of everyone who takes bread and wine.
If John 6 applies to the supper itself, then everyone who takes it not only has eternal life now but is saved for ever. Jesus said, "Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day." Applying John 6 to "sacraments" is a delusion, though the sacraments may allude to the truths taught.
Everything here turns on what eating does to the thing eaten.
In eating I make what I eat my own. If I eat the flesh of Christ and drink His blood, I make His death mine, and I eat and drink death to all that I am in flesh. So I part company with everything that death applies to, and I live in His life in the power of the Spirit. If I make His death my death I am no longer in the flesh, I abide in Him, and He abides in me, for He is in me as my life.
The verbs change as the passage goes on, and that change matters.
There are two forms of expression here that we should tell apart: the act of having eaten His flesh and drunk His blood once, as in verse 53, and the continuous eating and drinking, as in verse 54. The believer has eternal life, but it is in the Son, not apart from Him. The believer eats His flesh and drinks His blood. He is not content that he ate once: if he were content with that, can such a person be supposed to have life in him? Certainly not. If his faith were real, he would always be eating His flesh and drinking His blood... if the heart has tasted that the Lord is so gracious, it perseveres, it can never tire, it feeds on Him again and again.
What this promise gives goes beyond being safe.
In John's Gospel, this abiding in Christ, and Christ in him, is one of the special privileges of the Christian. It is not merely security for the Christian, but Christ the home of the soul as it is of Christ. How unspeakable the nearness!
The two halves of the promise are not the same, and one moves with the other.
To abide in Christ is to live near Him. It is to depend on Him in communion, and to draw on the infinite resources in Him, where He now is in the Father's presence. He only abides in us in the measure that we abide in Him, and His abiding in us shows when we display His life. Christ dwells in our hearts by faith; as the eye and the heart are engaged with Him where He is, so He will have a dwelling place in our hearts.
Christ dwelling in a person is meant to show. The inward side turns outward.
The one who feeds on His death "abides in Me, and I in him". Before God, the believer is identified with Christ. Before other people, the believer represents the life of Christ.
- Feed — to eat His flesh and drink His blood is to receive His death by faith. The Lord's Supper only pictures it; it is never the thing itself.
- Keep feeding — the wording moves from a single act to a continuing one. A faith content with having eaten once is not real faith.
- Die — to make His death mine is to part company with all that I am in the flesh and live by His life instead.
- Dwell — the promise is more than safety. Christ becomes the home of the soul, and He abides in us as far as we abide in Him.
- Show — the believer whom God sees as one with Christ then shows Christ's life to other people.
As the living Father has sent me and I live on account of the Father, *he* also who eats me shall live also on account of me.
Jesus has been speaking about eating His flesh and drinking His blood. Now He points to His own life to explain the pattern behind it. The words turn on a small preposition — "because of" — and on a shift from eating His flesh and blood to eating Him.
The title Jesus gives His Father points to the source of His own life here.
Verse 51 has spoken of Christ as "the living Bread." Now we read of "the living Father" having sent Him (v. 57). In the Father, life in its pure and highest form is His own, from eternity to eternity. And Christ lived because of what the Father is. His essential, living unity with the Father is in view here. So the one who eats of Him, the living Bread, lives by Him. He gives this life and He keeps it going.
Older translations read "I live by the Father." That can sound as if the Father were only a source of power. The Greek says something else, as one writer explains in answer to a question.
In the Greek this is not dia with the genitive, which would mean "by means of" and might suggest sustaining power, as you put it. It is dia with the accusative, which has the force of "on account of." Notice carefully that it does not say the Father lived on account of the Son. It is the Son who lived on account of the Father. That is, the Father was the sole reason for the existence of the Son of God as come down here. We say that a mother lives for her child — she is so wrapped up in it. Or take Paul, writing by inspiration: "For to me to live is Christ." Christ had become the absorbing object of his life.
The verse sets two lives side by side and makes the first the template for the second.
Christ's own life as the Son of Man was a life of entire dependence on the Father. And ours is one of dependence on Christ Himself. But the one is the model for the other… Blessed Jesus, teach us to live like this, in hourly dependence on You!
Verse 57 does not simply repeat what came before. The object of the eating changes.
Now it is not eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Christ. It is feeding upon Christ Himself — upon Christ Himself in the place where He is, in His glorified state. Down here, as sent by the living Father, He lived "because of what the Father was and His living." Now the one who feeds upon Christ lives because of what Christ is. He is our life, and because He lives, we shall live also.
Eating Him is not one act you can finish and file away.
Verse 57 says the living Father had sent Him, and He lived because of the Father. So we live because of Him by eating Him. We have the two things: eating both to receive life and to maintain it. I remember a person once saying he ate Christ once for all, but it is not so here. In verses 54 and 56 the Greek has the present participle for "eating"; in the others it has the aorist tense. I come in by Christ's death, and eat His flesh and drink His blood — that is eating to have life. But I go on eating Him afterwards, though my life is the result of that eating.
Everyone lives by something. The verse exposes what happens when that something collapses.
Men live by this world, and when the world fails them they pine away and die. One has often seen it. But He is Bread for us… He is enough for us, and we need nothing else, and no other. The Father was enough for Him. He did not live by the power of the world. Things might turn out badly. In the eyes of men His circumstances might look most wretched. But He did not depend on them, for He lived because of the Father.
Feeding also leaves a mark on the one who feeds.
Eating is taking something in for our need. God would have our souls sustained by feeding upon Christ, and so making what Christ is our own. What we take in becomes part of ourselves. As we feed upon Him in our souls, we shall grow like Him… our lives will bear the stamp of those supremely beautiful features of the life of Jesus.
- Source. Life belongs to the Father in Himself, from eternity. The Son He sent lived here because of what the Father is.
- Reason. "Because of" is not "by means of." The Father was the sole reason for the Son's life here, and Christ is the sole reason for ours.
- Pattern. Christ's dependence is the model for ours. He lived because of the Father; we live because of Him.
- Reach. Verse 57 moves past eating His flesh and blood to eating Him. We receive life through His death, then keep feeding on Him — never a once-for-all meal.
- Result. What we feed on, we become. A life lived by Christ carries the marks of Christ, and stands when the world fails.
This is the bread which has come down out of heaven. Not as the fathers ate and died he that eats this bread shall live for ever.
These are the last words of Jesus in the synagogue at Capernaum. They close a long talk about bread from heaven with a contrast: the manna Israel ate in the desert, and Himself. Two questions follow. What is this "eating"? And why does manna, a gift God Himself sent, fall so far short?
This verse is not a fresh thought but a knot tying the two halves of the chapter together — the bread that came down from heaven, and the flesh and blood given in death.
After the rich testimony to His death as the object of faith, the Lord in verse 57 seems to me to shut out every excuse for missing what He meant. He meant Himself, not a symbolic act. The words "whoever feeds on me" should make that plain. He then joins the two parts of the talk together in the next verse. It closes the section about His flesh and His blood by going back to the picture of "the bread that came down from heaven," and "whoever feeds on this bread will live forever."
One detail rules out reading the verse as a description of the Eucharist — the shared bread and wine of the church service. Everyone described here is finally saved.
The Lord says, "If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever." Again, "Whoever feeds on My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day." This leaves no room for argument. He has everlasting life. Someone may say he could lose it. But the Lord shuts out that escape by adding, "I will raise him up on the last day." We all admit that not everyone who receives the Eucharist is finally saved. The people spoken of in John 6 are.
Manna kept a whole nation alive in the desert. Yet it could keep people alive without ever making them alive.
The manna sustained life, but it could not give life. It could not keep anyone from death. It could not guarantee resurrection to those who ate it. The Bread of Life, giving everlasting life to all who eat of it, secured resurrection at the last day.
The type carries further than most readers notice. Manna did not arrive on the table ready to eat.
The crowd had drawn attention to the manna. The Lord reminds them here that it sustained life, but never kept anyone from death. He, though, is the living bread, as He now presents Himself. He could give everlasting life to those who eat of it. But as with the manna of old, so with the living bread: something more had to happen before anyone could eat it. The people first pounded the manna in a mortar, or ground it in a mill, and then baked it in a pan. He who is the living bread had first to die.
The old bread had a fence around it. The living bread does not.
The manna was for Israel only. It was not for the Amalekites or the Moabites or any nation outside Israel. But Jesus says, "I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give is My flesh, which I will give for the life of the world."
The verse promises life to "the one who feeds," singular. That grammar is the whole point, and it rules out inheriting the blessing secondhand.
The living Bread is for us all, but it is like your natural bread — no one can eat it for you; you must eat for yourself, or starve. You cannot take Christ for your neighbour. Your neighbour must take Christ for himself. You cannot blame me if I lay hold of Christ for my own individual salvation. I need Him, and God has brought Him within reach of all.
"Forever" is not left as a vague word. Four times in this chapter the Lord attaches a bodily promise to it.
Here we learn that the teaching about the Bread from heaven involves the truth of the resurrection of the body. For the body, as well as the soul of the believer, is to share in everlasting life... Here in chapter 6 He announces who will share in the resurrection to life. They are those who now eat His flesh and drink His blood — that is, they feed on Him in spirit as the One who died. Such people live forever. The whole person of the saint is to share in this blessing. With this the Lord's discourse in the synagogue at Capernaum comes to a close. In John's Gospel He never taught there again.
- The gift. The manna kept Israel alive in the desert; it could not give life, stop death, or promise resurrection.
- The cost. Israel pounded and baked the manna before eating it; the living bread had first to die before anyone could feed on Him.
- The reach. Manna belonged to Israel alone; Christ gives His flesh for the life of the world.
- The taking. Eating is personal. No one can eat for you, and no ceremony can stand in for it, since everyone who eats here is raised up at the last day.
- The result. "Forever" covers the whole person: life now in the soul, and the body raised at the last day.