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.