#DailyDevotion You Must Eat Jesus’ Flesh & Blood To Have Eternal Life
John 6:51–58 [Jesus said, ] 51I am the living Bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats this Bread, he will live forever. The bread I’ll give to bring life to the world is My flesh.” 52Then the Jews argued with one another: “How can He give us His flesh to eat?” 53“I tell you the truth,” Jesus answered them, “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you don’t have any life in you. 54If you eat My flesh and drink My blood, you have everlasting life, and I will raise you on the last day. 55My flesh is a true food, and My blood is a true drink. 56If you eat My flesh and drink My blood, you stay in Me and I in you. 57As the living Father sent Me and I live because of the Father, so if you feed on Me, you will live because of Me. 58This is the Bread that came down from heaven. It isn’t like the bread the fathers ate. They died. Eat this Bread, and you will live forever.”
In John 6 we go from true bread from heaven to Bread of Life, the bread that came down from heaven, to living bread and then to top it all off Jesus’ flesh and blood. Which tells us Jesus’ flesh and blood here in John 6 has to do with Jesus being the Bread of Life, the Living Bread which comes down from heaven.
Jesus as the true bread from heaven, the Bread of Life, is the Word of God, the Torah, in the flesh. If the Jews believed the Torah, they would believe in and trust Jesus. Jesus as the Word includes the Torah but is greater than the Torah. The Torah (first five books of the Old Testament) gave life to those who believed it. It also condemned those who did not believe it. Those who didn’t believe it made it a dead letter because they did not believe the One who gave it to them, the Word of God who is Jesus.
As Jesus is the Torah and greater than the Torah in the flesh, his flesh and blood do give life as it fulfills all that the Torah spoke of him and Israel’s and the world’s redemption. Jesus’ offering up his flesh and blood on the altar of the cross made atonement for the sin of the world. It was a propitiatory sacrifice for our sins. The death of his flesh and blood become our ransom from dead. His offering of his flesh and blood to us on the cross is his work on the cross to give us life, eternal life.
If we may return earlier to chapter 6 Jesus said whoever came to him would not hunger and whoever believed in him would not thirst. To eat Jesus flesh and to drink his blood is therefore to come to him and to believe in him. It is this eating and this drinking that gives eternal life. It is this eating and drinking we must partake in to possess eternal life. Jesus is every Word that comes from the mouth of God that feeds us with everlasting life. All who eat Jesus flesh and drink his blood Jesus will raise to eternal life on the Last Day.
Jesus is not instituting his supper here. He certainly is preparing his disciples for it. Here Jesus uses sarx. In the Supper Jesus uses soma. Jesus is telling us here what John wrote in chapter 1, he is the Word made flesh. He is God in the flesh. As such his flesh gives us life when we believe this for as we believe in his work in the flesh, his death and resurrection, we are regenerated from a dead soul to a living soul, a living soul like he gave to Adam when he made him.
Heavenly Father, grant us faith in Jesus so we may be partakers of his flesh and blood, receive eternal life in him and be raised by him on the Last Day. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.