John 6:56–57

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.