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.