Did Jesus eat meat?
The question sounds like a matter of diet, but the Gospels answer it at the table: Jesus kept the Passover, was mocked for eating and drinking with the wrong people, and after He rose from the dead He ate fish in front of His disciples. What He ate, and why He ate it, turns out to touch His real humanity, His resurrection body, and the Christian's freedom over food.
The Passover Lamb
The Passover was the yearly meal in which Israel remembered being rescued from slavery in Egypt, and a roasted lamb was its centre. On the night before the cross, Jesus sat down to that meal. One writer answers those who claim He only presided without eating:
H H SnellWe have just seen that the Lord desired to eat the Passover with His disciples; that He sent Peter and John to find a room where He might eat the Passover with His disciples; that at the appointed hour He and the twelve sat down, and as they sat and ate, Jesus said, "I will not eat any more of it." Referring to Judas, He also said, "He who eats bread with me." Can there be any doubt, then, that our Lord did eat the Passover? How very serious for anyone, without a shadow of proof, to say, "He did not eat of it"!
The timing was not loose or improvised, and He kept the law He had given:
C E StuartThere is no authority for supposing that the Passover could be brought forward like that. Only on the evening of the 14th of Nisan was the lamb appointed to be killed. Clearly the Lord would not have broken the law.
Eating and drinking with sinners
Jesus did not live as a food-avoiding ascetic, and His enemies noticed. John the Baptist fasted; Jesus went to dinners — and both were criticised.
Leslie M. GrantThe Son of Man had come among men in grace, eating and drinking with them, and they resented the fact that He was not mourning; daring to accuse Him of being a gluttonous man and a wine drinker, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.
The habit was deliberate, not accidental:
The Bible TreasuryNotice that the blessed Lord entered warmly into the social life of the people, not banning their food and drink, and receiving in consequence the reproach of His enemies, "Behold a … wine drinker" (Matt. 11:19).
Broiled fish after the resurrection
The clearest recorded meal comes after He rose. In Luke 24 the disciples thought they were seeing a ghost, and He asked for something to eat — the ESV reads, "They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate before them" (older translations add "and of a honeycomb"). Commentators point out the difference between being able to eat and needing to:
William KellyIt is the Lord Himself, risen from the dead, but a real man, with hands and feet, able to be touched and seen, not a spirit, but a spiritual body. Of this He gave the fullest proof by going on to eat in their presence. As having a body He could eat; as having a spiritual body He did not need to eat.
A second fish meal follows in John 21, and one writer draws out how the two differ:
W. T. P. WolstonWhen the Lord was going to give them the most convincing proof of the reality of His Person, He eats the broiled fish and honeycomb which they had provided for themselves, to assure them it is really Himself. When you come to John 21, again there was broiled fish, but it was provided by Him, to assure them that He cared for them.
Food and defilement
Israel's law separated clean from unclean animals. Jesus Himself ended that distinction when He taught that what enters a person cannot defile him: one commentator notes that in Mark 7:19 He "put an end to … the taboo of meats" (William Kelly). Later Scripture treats a ban on certain foods as a spiritual danger rather than a higher devotion:
William KellyAsceticism is no more Christian than moral looseness, though it takes a fairer form. It is a pretentious attack on the Creator and Preserver of man, setting up a superior sanctity.
History also undercuts the claim that a meat-free table produces better people:
Arno Clemens GaebeleinIt seems clear that before the flood meat was not eaten. There are quite a few advocates of total abstinence from meat in our day… With all the abstinence from meat before the flood, the people were not better, but ended in the flesh and perished in it.
Summary
- Lamb. Jesus ate the Passover lamb with the twelve, at the legally appointed time — He kept the law He had given rather than bending it.
- Table. He shared ordinary meals so freely that His critics called Him a glutton and a drinker; He did not ban the food and drink of the people around Him.
- Fish. Risen from the dead, He ate broiled fish before the disciples' eyes — proof He was a real man, not a spirit; as having a body He could eat, though a spiritual body did not need to.
- Freedom. He ended the distinction of clean and unclean foods, teaching that defilement comes out of the heart, not into the mouth.
- Thanks. Every creature of God is good and nothing is to be refused when received with thanksgiving; forbidding foods is treated as an attack on the Creator, not a mark of holiness.