EAT THE FLESH OF THE SON OF MAN

These words are sometimes interpreted as though Jesus commanded people to eat His physical flesh and drink His literal blood through a religious ceremony.

The passage is then used to teach that bread and wine become the actual body and blood of Christ or that participating in a sacrament produces or maintains eternal life.

But Jesus had already explained His meaning throughout the chapter. The person who comes to Him will never hunger, and the person who believes on Him will never thirst. Eating and drinking describe coming to Christ and receiving Him by faith.

Jesus had fed a multitude with five loaves and two fishes. The people followed Him afterward, but many were more interested in another meal than in the spiritual meaning of the miracle.

They wanted a king who could satisfy physical hunger, improve earthly conditions, and provide material benefits.

Jesus exposed their motive. They were seeking the gift while failing to recognize the Giver standing before them.

Ordinary food sustains the body temporarily. Even the miraculous bread multiplied by Jesus could not prevent physical death.

Christ directed the people beyond temporary satisfaction to the eternal life that only the Son of man could give.

The true bread in John 6 is not merely something Christ places in a person’s hands. The true bread is Christ Himself.

The people asked what works they needed to perform. Jesus did not direct them to a ceremony, sacrifice, sacrament, or religious achievement.

He directed them to believe on the One whom God had sent.

This answer establishes the meaning of everything that follows. Eternal life is received by faith in Christ.

Jesus explains His own illustration. Coming to Him answers to hunger, and believing on Him answers to thirst.

A person eats the bread of life by coming to Christ. He drinks by believing on Christ.

The language is spiritual, but the salvation described is real. The believer receives Christ as personally and completely as a hungry person receives food.

Jesus says that the person who sees the Son and believes on Him possesses everlasting life and will be raised at the last day.

No physical eating or drinking is mentioned. Faith in the Son is the stated condition.

Later, Jesus gives the same promises to the person who eats His flesh and drinks His blood. The matching promises show that the expressions describe the same response of faith.

Immediately before calling Himself the bread of life again, Jesus gives one of the clearest statements of salvation in Scripture.

The believer does not wait until a future ceremony to discover whether eternal life has been granted. He “hath” everlasting life.

The life is received through faith because the object of faith is the Son of God who gives Himself for sinners.

Christ would give His flesh by offering His body in death. His language points toward the sacrifice He would make upon the cross.

The world did not need merely another teacher, moral example, or provider of physical bread. Sinners needed a substitute who would bear sin and shed His blood.

Eating His flesh means personally receiving the benefit of the body He gave. Drinking His blood means trusting the saving value of the blood He shed.

The Jews interpreted Christ’s words in a crude physical manner. Their literal misunderstanding caused argument and confusion.

This pattern appears repeatedly in John. Nicodemus misunderstood the new birth physically. The woman at the well first understood living water physically. The crowd understood heavenly bread physically.

Jesus was using familiar earthly realities to reveal spiritual truth.

Food may be prepared, offered, and placed before a hungry person, but it does not nourish him until he receives it.

In the same way, Christ gave Himself for the world, but a person must personally believe on Him. Knowing facts about the cross does not save someone who refuses the Saviour.

No one can believe for another person. Christ must be personally received by faith.

John 6:40 says that the believer has everlasting life and will be raised at the last day.

John 6:54 says that the one who eats Christ’s flesh and drinks His blood has eternal life and will be raised at the last day.

These are not two different ways of salvation. Eating and drinking are vivid descriptions of believing on and receiving the Son.

Scripture connects blood with life given in sacrifice. Christ’s reference to His blood points toward His death for sinners.

His flesh and blood are spoken of separately because His life would be poured out in death.

The sinner receives life by trusting the One whose blood makes atonement, not by physically consuming blood.

God repeatedly forbade the literal consumption of blood. Jesus was not overturning that command by instructing Jewish hearers to practice physical blood drinking.

The apostles later instructed Gentile believers to abstain from blood. This would be impossible to reconcile with the claim that Christians must literally drink Christ’s blood.

The meaning must therefore be spiritual: believers receive by faith the life secured through Christ’s shed blood.

The Jerusalem council did not tell believers that consuming Christ’s literal blood was necessary for eternal life.

Instead, believers were told to abstain from blood. The apostolic instruction agrees with the spiritual meaning of John 6.

Salvation comes through faith in Christ’s blood, not through physically drinking it.

Christ directly identifies His words as spirit and life. He was not teaching that eternal life comes through the physical digestion of flesh.

The phrase “the flesh profiteth nothing” does not mean that Christ’s body given upon the cross was worthless. His sacrifice is essential to salvation.

It means that a merely physical response cannot produce spiritual life. The Holy Spirit gives life as the words of Christ are heard and believed.

John 6 does not present the institution of the Lord’s Supper. Jesus speaks of believing on Him and receiving eternal life.

When the Lord later instituted the supper, He commanded His disciples to observe it in remembrance of Him. The bread and cup proclaim His death.

They are visible memorials of His body given and His blood shed. They do not repeatedly transform into the sacrifice itself.

Communion looks back to the death Christ already accomplished and forward to His return.

The believer does not receive eternal life by repeatedly eating ceremonial bread. He participates because he has already believed on Christ.

The ordinance remembers and proclaims salvation; it does not reproduce the sacrifice that obtained it.

Jesus offered His body once for all. His sacrifice was complete, sufficient, and accepted by God.

No priest, church, altar, ceremony, or sacrament can offer Christ again or add saving value to His finished work.

The believer rests in the sacrifice already made rather than seeking repeated access to Christ’s body through a ritual.

Old Testament priests stood continually because their sacrifices could never permanently remove sin.

Christ sat down because His one sacrifice fully accomplished what God required.

Eternal life rests upon the finality of His cross, not upon the repetition of a sacramental offering.

Many who followed Jesus for bread and miracles abandoned Him when His teaching confronted their unbelief.

They wanted life on their own terms. They did not want to depend completely upon Christ or accept that His sacrificial death was necessary.

A difficult saying did not cause genuine truth to become false. It revealed which hearers were unwilling to believe.

Peter did not answer by asking for literal flesh or blood. He confessed faith in Christ and in His words.

The correct response to the bread of life discourse is belief that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God.

Eternal life is found in Him alone. There is nowhere else to go.

John describes receiving Christ as believing on His name. The sinner does not receive merely a religious object or symbolic substance. He receives the Son.

Eating and drinking in John 6 communicate the same personal dependence. Christ is not merely admired from a distance. He is trusted as the only source of life.

The believer rests upon who Christ is and what He accomplished through His body and blood.

John 6:53 does not teach cannibalism, literal blood drinking, transubstantiation, or salvation through participation in a religious sacrament.

It does not teach that Christ’s sacrifice must be repeatedly offered or that ceremonial bread can give spiritual life.

The passage teaches that sinners must personally receive Christ by faith and depend upon His body given and His blood shed for their salvation.

A literal or sacramental interpretation moves attention away from faith in Christ and places confidence in a ceremony administered by men.

It also obscures the finality of the cross by suggesting that Christ’s body and blood must continually be offered or consumed to provide life.

The correct meaning directs the sinner to the living Christ, whose one sacrifice is sufficient and whose promise is clear: he that believeth on Him hath everlasting life.