“Then the people began arguing with each other about what he meant. “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” they asked. So Jesus said again, “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you cannot have eternal life within you. But anyone who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise that person at the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Anyone who eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. I live because of the living Father who sent me; in the same way, anyone who feeds on me will live because of me. I am the true bread that came down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will not die as your ancestors did (even though they ate the manna) but will live forever.” He said these things while he was teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.”
John 6:52-59 NLT
John recorded that the people listening to Jesus’ teaching were arguing with each other. This implied that some of them had grasped what He meant, and others, probably the majority, were still living in a physical world. Of course, Jesus was not teaching cannibalism. He was referring to the spiritual food that would be found through a relationship with Him. Flesh and blood, the very essence of who we are, has spiritual connotations as well. We of course know that as we eat meat we will digest it in our stomachs and the nutrients contained within the food will be absorbed into our bodies to provide the energy and the necessary components for a healthy life. There is a similar process with spiritual food, and Jesus is the source of all that our spirits will ever need. As we feed on Him, through His teachings, through God’s Word, through prayer, and so on, our spirits will find all that they need for life, and life that will extend into eternity at that.
Jesus made it clear that for those who depend only on physical foods, like their ancestors depending on manna in the wilderness, there would come a time when they would die. “Your ancestors ate manna in the wilderness, but they all died” (John 6:49). It does not matter what food we consume, even so called super foods, but one day our natural bodies will come to the end of their useful and natural lives. But our spirits will live forever, whether with Jesus or not. For all those who believe in Jesus and follow Him, they will experience eternal life. He said, “But anyone who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise that person at the last day”. Later, the Apostle Paul wrote, “That is why we never give up. Though our bodies are dying, our spirits are being renewed every day” (2 Corinthians 4:16). The alternative for those who don’t believe in Him, and who don’t feed on all the spiritual resources He possesses, is therefore death. But that death will still be somewhere eternal.
This difficult to understand teaching from Jesus still hangs in the air today, because we live in a season of God’s grace, and His Son’s work continues through the Holy Spirit. We need to see beyond the physical connotations of what Jesus was saying through to the spiritual meaning. And we need to explore in increasing depth what it really means for our spirits to feed on Jesus’ body and blood. Jesus said that He will raise up all those who have a relationship with Him “at the last day”. This does not mean the last day of the person’s physical life, but the day when all spirits will be resurrected and provided with a physical body. Paul wrote what would happen to believers – “And now, dear brothers and sisters, we want you to know what will happen to the believers who have died so you will not grieve like people who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and was raised to life again, we also believe that when Jesus returns, God will bring back with him the believers who have died” (1 Thessalonians 4:13-14). And to unbelievers we turn to Revelation 20:5,12, “This is the first resurrection. (The rest of the dead did not come back to life until the thousand years had ended.) … I saw the dead, both great and small, standing before God’s throne. And the books were opened, including the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to what they had done, as recorded in the books”.
So the Jews sitting in the pews in the synagogue in Capernaum were arguing. But have we pilgrims never argued with each other about teaching we have heard from a pulpit somewhere? Not often of course, but it does happen, and particularly when there is a new move of God sweeping over His church. But when something potentially contentious emerges in the spiritual domain, we have a simple remedy – turn to Jesus and feed on His body and blood. At such times we will find refreshing and new life for our spirits, and the issues causing the difficulty will fade away.
Dear Lord Jesus. Only You have the words of eternal life. Only You can lead us in the right paths and feed us all the nutrients we will ever need. We worship You today. Amen.
Being a Pilgrim 