“Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.’
From this time many of his disciples turned back from following him.” John 6:53-59, 66 NIV
I’ve been meditating on this passage for some time now and there’s no getting over how gruesome this picture Jesus paints is: ripping flesh from his body with our teeth, chewing it and swallowing it, and then slurping down his blood. Ugh! No wonder many of his disciples left him when they heard him say this and no wonder early Christians were persecuted for cannibalism when sophisticated and cultured Greeks and Romans learned about this saying. (I’m thinking that just titling this post “Eating Jesus” will lose me a number of subscribers.)
And yet, here it is, one of Jesus’ “truly, truly” sayings. And notice the emphasis: he repeats the concept of eating his flesh and drinking his blood almost verbatim three times and then alludes to it three more times, all in just seven verses. Later, Jesus would memorialize this concept of eating his flesh and drinking his blood in Communion. He clearly does not want us to forget it.
But what exactly does he mean by insisting that our eternal life depends on us eating his flesh and drinking his blood? One thing I am sure of, he is not referring to Communion itself, because he made this statement in his ministry long before he instituted Communion at the Last Supper. In other words, simply partaking of the breaking of bread and of the cup at communion is not eating Jesus’ flesh and blood, but rather a memorial of our eating his flesh and blood.
Rather, my understanding of this saying is that when we sin, we are eating Jesus alive. And only when we acknowledge that our sin causes deep, personal trauma for God and that the process of propitiating (satisfying) God’s appropriate wrath for our sin caused deep, personal trauma for Jesus in the form of physical pain and suffering that resulted in his death can we come into an appropriate relationship with God.
For example, I have a wonderful dog named Dixie whom I love to walk. But suppose every now and then Dixie, for no good reason, turnes on me while we are walking and takes a huge bite out of my leg. Of course, I discipline her severely each time. But because I love Dixie, I don’t get rid of her or put her down. Instead, I put up with her intermittent acts of cruelty.
Over time Dixie responds to my punishment by not attacking me as often. But still it happens. But now imagine that, miraculously, Dixie develops the capability of understanding what she is doing to me and empathizes with the pain and suffering she is causing me. This would be a completely different relationship, wouldn’t it? Dixie might, as a result of her animal nature, still attack me. But it would be less and less, not because she fears my punishment, but because of her regret over the pain it was causing me personally.
That very inadequate analogy illustrates my point that eating Jesus means understanding what our sin does to him and what he had to do to propitiate God’s just wrath for our sin. In other words, our sin totally and painfully consumes him. Those who understand this have come into a very different relationship with Jesus and the Father than those who don’t because they now know what the Father and Son feel.
This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.
Learn how to mobilize your men’s ministry to meet every pressing need in your church here.
_______________________________________________________________
Learn how to form teams of men for every widow, single mom
and fatherless child in your church at NewCommandment.org.
_______________________________________________________________
