Eating and Drinking
TRANSLATION
(41) At this the Jews grumbled about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” (42) They said, “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I came down from heaven?’” (43) Jesus answered them, “Stop grumbling among yourselves. (44) None can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up on the last day. (45) It is written in the prophets, ‘They will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. (46) No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God. Only he has seen the Father. (47) Truly I tell you, the one who believes has eternal life. (48) I am the bread of life. (49) Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. (50) This is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat of it and not die. (51) I am the living bread which came down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live forever. Indeed, the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
(52) The Jews then disputed among themselves saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” (53) So Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. (54) Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day, (55) for my flesh is truly food and my blood is truly drink. (56) Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in them. (57) As the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me will also live because of me. (58) This is the bread which came down from heaven, not like (the manna) the ancestors ate and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.”
(59) Jesus said these things in the synagogue as he taught in Capernaum.
OBSERVATIONS
This passage remains to this day one of the most controversial in the New Testament. The large number of repetitions helps us determine its thrust and how it functioned as a crucial part of John’s Gospel. The repetition of “grumble(d)” (vss. 41 & 43) indicates how Jesus’ words disturbed the Jews who first heard his message. “Bread” is found six times in the first paragraph (in vss. 41, 48, 50, & 51) and three more times in the second segment (vs. 58) emphasizing that this entire chapter was centered around Jesus’ statement, “I am the bread of life.” The phrase “came/come down from heaven” occurred five times (vss. 41, 42, 50, 51, and 58). Jesus referred to God as “Father” four times (vss. 44, 45, & 46).
Jesus then switched from “bread” to “flesh” (vss. 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, & 56) in the second paragraph using terms like “eat” (vss. 52 & 53) and “feeds on” (vss. 54, 56, 57, & 58) to describe how we are to relate to his person. He also used the term “drinks my blood” four times (vss. 53, 54, 55, & 56). In referring to eternal life, Jesus employed phrases like “not die” (vs. 50), “live forever” (vs. 51), “eternal life” (vs. 54), and “live forever” (vs. 58). His purposeful use of graphically offensive terminology was designed to grab hold of the attention of his listeners and force them to understand the significance of his words. To this day, many who read John’s Gospel misinterpret these phrases, taking them literally rather than as figures of speech, the way in which Jesus clearly intended them to be understood.
OUTLINE
I. Only those drawn by the Father to the living Bread of Life will be given eternal life. (41-51)
II. Only those who “eat the flesh and drink the blood” of the Son of Man will gain eternal life. (52-59)
IDEA STATEMENT
Only those drawn by the Father into an intimate faith relationship with the Son who is the Bread of Life will be given eternal life.
APPLICATION
Discerning the essential meaning of “eating the flesh” and “drinking the blood” of the Son of Man is required of those who study this passage. Are these phrases to be taken literally, the view which eventually led to the Roman Catholic doctrine of “transubstantiation,” or are they figures of speech conveying a deeper spiritual significance? Since Christ uttered these profound statements while still in his body with blood coursing through his veins many months before establishing the New Covenant, it seems obvious that he did not intend that his hearers literally consume his flesh and drink his blood. Rather, through these rather shocking images, he challenged his hearers to understand that eternal life can only become ours when we enter into the most intimate of relationships with the Son who is the “bread of life.” In essence, we must assimilate his life into our very beings as if we were eating his flesh and drinking his blood.
We tend to ignore the other shocking statement Jesus made in this passage when we focus on “eating and drinking his flesh and blood.” That statement is found earlier in the passage where Jesus taught that we cannot come to the Son on our own initiative: “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him” (vs. 44). Our gaining eternal life is ultimately due to the gracious, sovereign work of God, the Father. While we are required to trust the Son and open our lives to him in order to partake of the living bread, our doing so can only be prompted by the Father’s drawing us into this life-transforming relationship. We may never fully understand how this takes place (the classical paradox of election vs. free will), but it is, nevertheless, an unassailable truth. We must believe and receive the very life of Christ in order to have eternal life, but only God can open our hearts so that we are willing to believe and receive.