Did Jesus eat meat?

The call of the Lord on His disciples to handle Him was to convince them of the identity of His Person, that it was indeed just Himself, risen, and again in their midst. "And when he had thus spoken, he showed them his hands and his feet" (Luke 24:40). This is very touching. Here were the marks of the nails. Here in His side was the testimony of death. "And while they yet believed not for joy, and wondered, he said to them, Have ye here any meat?" (Luke 24:42). The object before His mind was plain. Wonder and joy were mingled in their minds, and I can understand the mixed state of their hearts. They were thrilled with joy, while hampered with unbelief and wonder. His words, "Have ye here any meat?" made the reality of His presence absolute to them. "And they gave him a piece of a broiled fish, and of an honeycomb. And he took it, and did eat before them" (Luke 24:41-42). All was now clear. Every mist of doubt rolled away as they saw Him eat.

It is very touching to notice the way God puts things in His Word. When the Lord was going to give them the most conclusive testimony as to 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. How rich and deep is the grace that ever provides that which will confirm our faith, and feed and sustain our souls.

In spite of seeing and handling Him, the disciples were slow to believe and still wondered, for the joy of it seemed too much. The Lord asked for food, and before them He ate a piece of broiled fish and honeycomb (v.42). We may be sure that His body did not require physical food, but this eating proved for them that He had a body capable of eating, an actual physical body. Wonderful assurance!

First of all His desire is to eat that paschal feast with His disciples. He was the only One who knew what it meant — the One to whom it spoke of such a burden as never was nor could be borne by mere man. And yet with desire He desired to eat of that passover before He suffered. He knew it was the immediate harbinger of His death upon the cross. Yet there was not one of the disciples that so desired to eat it with Him, as He desired to eat it with them. This is love, and love is self-sacrificing.

It was this cup that He told them to divide among themselves — not that of the Lord's supper. Our Lord Jesus never partook of His own supper. He partook of the paschal supper, but not of His own. For this is for us, being the witness of a redemption which He wrought for us (not for Himself, of course). The paschal supper was for Him as well as for the disciples, and He desired to eat it along with them. On the occasion of the passover, after its cup was passed round, He institutes His own supper; but before that He says He was no longer to drink of the fruit of the vine till the kingdom of God was come. He had done with the earth and had no fellowship more with men in flesh and blood. He took the supper, to Him not a sign of joy, but of the deepest suffering. The Lord's supper, which speaks to us of perfect peace through His suffering, He needed not: He gave it all to us.

We have just seen that the Lord desired to eat the Passover with His disciples; that He sent Peter and John to procure 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 did eat, Jesus said, "I will not eat any more thereof." Referring to Judas, He also said, "He that eats bread with me," etc. Can there be a doubt, then, that our Lord did eat the Passover? How very serious for any one without a shadow of proof to say, "He did not eat of it"!

The fact is, that the Passover having been eaten by our Lord with His disciples according to Jehovah's mind, for the last time on earth, before the kingdom comes, in the immediate anticipation of His rejection as Messiah, and His death as a Sacrifice for sin, His resurrection and ascension, He institutes another thing which was not a Jewish feast, but a Christian ordinance, and of very different import. Though they both set forth to faith the Saviour's death and blood-shedding, the Passover was a memorial of the blood of the paschal lamb in Egypt, sheltering from judgment; but in the Lord's Supper, the wine is to faith the memorial of the blood of Christ which speaks to the believer of remission of sins, and of his being perfected for ever by that one offering. (Matt 26:28; Heb. 10:2-20.) The blood of Christ assures us of redemption accomplished, sins purged, conscience purged, and the worshipper purged, thus having boldness to enter into the holiest. It would, therefore, be impossible for those who received God's testimony to the eternal efficacy of "the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all," to regard the Passover and the Lord's Supper as identical. It is then impossible that Matthew, Mark, and Luke could have assumed that "the Lord's Supper was the Passover feast."

And so it is taught us here, "And while they were talking these things, he himself stood in their midst, and says to them peace to you.612 But confounded and being frightened, they supposed they beheld a spirit."613 And he said to them, Why are ye troubled, and wherefore do reasonings613a rise in your hearts? See my hands and my feet that it is I myself; handle me and see, for a spirit has not flesh and bones even as ye see me have. And having said this, he showed them his hands and his feet.† And while they were yet unbelieving for joy and wondering, he said to them, Have ye anything to eat here? And they gave him part of a broiled fish [and of a honeycomb].‡ And having taken, he ate before them." It is the Lord Himself, risen from the dead, but a real man, with hands and feet, capable of being handled and seen, not a spirit, but a spiritual body. Of this He gave the fullest proof by proceeding to eat in their presence. As having a body He could eat; as having a spiritual body He did not need to eat.614 Thus the resurrection of the body had its glorious attestation in His own person, the needed and weightiest possible support of their faith. Christianity gives an immensely enlarged scope to the body as well as the soul; for our bodies are now the temple of the Holy Ghost as surely as we are bought with a price, and exhortations to Christian holiness are founded on this one wondrous fact. Christ was the great Exemplar of man; His body was the temple of God. We are only fitted for it through His redemption.615 "He himself": so Edd., as ℵBDL, Syrrcu sin Sah. "Jesus himself" is the reading of AEG, with later uncials and most minuscules (1, 33, 69) and Memph. The words, "and says to them, Peace to you," although accepted by Lachm. and Treg., are questioned by most of the Edd., because of absence from D and copies of Old Lat. See John 20:19. They are in all other MSS. and versions. †Verse 40 (cf. verse 12) is doubted by most Edd. from its omission in D, the Syrrcu sin and Old Lat., also because of likeness to John 20:20. It is in ℵAB, all later uncials but Beza's, in the cursives, the other Syrr. and the Egyptians, and is upheld by Lachm. and Treg. ‡["And a honeycomb"]: so EHKM and the other later uncials, the cursives 1, 33, 69, most Syrr. and Old Lat., Memph. Aeth. Arm. Edd. omit, following ℵABDLΠ, Syrsin.

Whatever appearances may say, the will and word of God stands for ever; and faith knows it. 'Him God raised on the third day and gave Him to be manifest, not to all the people but to witnesses that were chosen before by God, to us who did eat and drink with Him after He rose from the dead.' The resurrection is the pivoting and clenching of the gospel. If unbelief hold out against its testimony, what is clearer than that man hates both the love and the truth of God, and will not be saved at any price? The same resurrection of Jesus separates those who believe according to the value of Christ's death before God, making in their measure witnesses of Christ men who bowed to the testimony of the fore-appointed witnesses. He Whom they slew on a tree ate and drank with His own after He arose from the dead: not that He needed the food, but they needed the testimony that He was alive from the dead, a truly risen Man, Who having loved His own that were in the world, loved them to the uttermost.

Third, notice that the blessed Lord entered heartily into the social life of the people, not banning their meat and drink, and receiving, in consequence, the reproach of His enemies, "Behold a … winebibber" (Matt. 11:19).

In communion with their risen Lord, these seven men ate of the food brought by Him out of His secret storehouse; and He ate of the fruit of the labour in which He had guided their hands. He first knocked; they opened the door; He entered; they supped with Him, and He with them.

What care the Lord has for us as men “in the flesh”! Our blessed Lord is no ascetic. The Son of man came eating and drinking. Once, He said to the apostles, “Come ye apart into a desert place and rest awhile; for there were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat.”

Without descending into speculation about "secret things," which "belong to God," and which always tend to a degradation of Christ and the puffing up of the flesh (Col. 2:18), we may say that Scripture does not state that had man remained unfallen he would have remained permanently dependent upon food to have maintained life. In other words, the state in Eden is not declared to have been the eternal state. The possession of bodies similar to those of "the beasts that perish" would suggest that, had human righteousness been a possibility, God would have brought in the eternal state by a divine change, analogous to the changing of the bodies of saints at the coming of the Lord (1 Cor. 15:51-52), though without the taint of sin. In like manner, had the cross not been a necessity for our salvation, our Lord could have passed without dying from the condition of bodily existence suited to earth to that glorified body which He now has. He never saw corruption, and in that sense His resurrection would answer to that "change," though as His incarnation was voluntary, so would the change have been — no question of infirmity in any case. We also gather from Scripture that the resurrection-body is one which does not depend upon earthly conditions, but at the same time can come into them. He ate the broiled fish and honeycomb to show them His body was truly material, and yet it was no longer a body for the earth (Luke 24:42-43).

If one then eats freely with a good conscience, let him not dare to despise one who feels bound to a vegetarian diet — nor indeed let not the latter judge the former. It would be shameless to make a show before the other, or to seek to put one another in a wrong light. Certainly one must not be allowed to impose his conscience on the other.