11 - John 6:53

’Verily, verily I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.’ -John 6:53.

Christ had already spoken of himself as the bread of heaven come down from heaven to give life unto the world. They had wished him to give them their daily bread miraculously; and had been told by him that the life he came to give was life that they had not; not bodily life but spiritual; the hunger he came to satisfy was that of the soul. His exposition of the miracle of the multiplied loaves indicated that the life they needed was in himself, and was to be appropriated by them by means of faith in himself. He goes on to point out another feature of the parallel; bread must be broken to be eaten; he must die that the life in him may be communicated; they must eat his flesh and drink his blood. The language is startling; but the very boldness of the metaphor shows that it is a metaphor. The prophets of the Old Testament had spoken of eating the words of God; "thy words were found, and I did eat them;" but no one ever thought of taking this in a literal sense. Elsewhere we hear of some who are washed in the blood of Christ; and of some whose robes are made white in the blood of the Lamb. Christ is called Christ our Passover; and this expression directly bears upon the words of our text. Forbidden by the very strength of the metaphor to take it literally, the hearers should have known for themselves that Christ’s words were the life he had spoken of: "the flesh profiteth nothing, my words they are spirit and they are life;" the flesh even of Christ profiteth nothing except as a means of manifesting himself, his spirit; in the words of Christ the believer finds the spirit and the life of Christ. The passover lamb was life to the Israelites when the destroying angel passed through the land: its blood sprinkled upon the doorpost was like the signature of the King of heaven, exempting them from harm. Then they ate the lamb, whose bones were unbroken. This was a notable prefiguring of Christ in his relations to the believer. He dies for us atoningly; his blood absolves from sin; but there must be an appropriation of his spirit and life; he dies on the cross that he may live in his people. "If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his." "Let the same mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus." "Christ our life." And in the parable of the vine, he says, "Abide in me, and I in you," and then immediately, "Abide in me, and my words in you." So the apostle Peter: "Born again, of the incorruptible word, desire the sincere milk of the word that ye may grow thereby." When Christ tells us that the bread of communion is his body and the wine his blood, the believer, well aware that his flesh profiteth nothing, and hungering and thirsting after the life and spirit of Christ, recognises the institution as one helpful preeminently to faith. It wonderfully assists him to understand that Christ died for him individually and for his brethren individually; that his sins are remitted; that the fulness that was in Christ is made over to him; that as he was, so we may be in the world; as the love of the Father was in him, so it is in us. ’My peace I leave unto you; my joy be with you; my Father’s love be yours; the Father and I and the Holy Ghost shall come to you; the words given to me I have given you:’ all these assurances are symbolised and emphasised and brought more home to our faith by the bread and by the wine. And only they who by faith enter into the peace and joy and righteousness of Christ, can apprehend the true meaning of the Lord’s Supper, and appropriate its singular blessings. But what a strange announcement is here made by Christ that men, all men, are without life! To say that they are without understanding, without sensibility, without power, without virtue, would be very little in comparison with the declaration that they are without life. They have something that they call life, and cling to as their all in all; but they are told that there is a something high above this beyond comparison, their true life forfeited by them and notified to them by no experience, what they call life being nothing but death, the privation of the true life. But inasmuch as their experience tells them not of it, they fail to form any such conception of it as would make it an object of desire; in fact, it is a part of their death that they are without desires for it. There is in their heart an unsatisfied void, a sense of need; but their imagination cheats them as to what the need is, and disguises to their minds the life which is of God in Christ. What then can the Gospel do? It can speak to them of unending life; of deliverance from fear and from self condemnation; of the friendship of an Almighty Being; of exemption from much that is sad in their experience. And when those who have tasted of the river of the water of life are enabled to rejoice in the Lord always, to abstain contentedly from that which is appetising and attractive in the world, to encounter humiliations and losses and manifold trials with a serene courage and a victorious faith, men are much helped to understand that there is a higher life.

Christ came that we might have life, and have it more abundantly. It is of unspeakable importance that we should have it more abundantly; with a fulness that shall enable us to triumph over the world at every point, and to joy in Christ with joy unspeakable and full of glory. Hast thou life? be not satisfied till it is thine so abundantly that it shall demonstrate itself to men around, and convince them by the grace of God that they are really dead in trespasses and sins. The branch that bringeth forth fruit must be purged to bring forth more fruit.

What a hearty and thorough appropriation of Christ is signified by the expression, ’To eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of man.’ If it means anything it means that he gives himself wholly to each believing sinner; gives all his influence at the throne of his Father, gives all his omnipotent power over the heart, gives all the fulness of the blessings of his word, gives his presence and his boundless sympathy. With too much reason, alas! may he say to us, ’Have I been so long time with you, and yet have ye not known me? Have ye so long had my promises, and yet do you understand so little the plenitude of my grace? Have I in vain raised up for you Paul to give you an example from what and to what my grace can elevate? You are astonished at your own faith: to me it appears less than a grain of mustard seed.’