John 6:54 "Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day."
This statement was very mystifying to those whom Jesus was speaking. I admit
there is a mystery surrounding this verse and this entire conversation that
Jesus was having. One thing needs to be clarified before looking at the
mysterious side of it. I was not a good English student in school and still
cannot speak good "Southernese", much less good English. But I am
learning to pay attention to the tense of verbs and actually using the art of
diagramming sentences as I try to study God's Word.
Why do I use space and time for that first paragraph? Looking at the tense of
the verbs tells us something is already in place before the other verbs can
happen. I first look at the phrase, "hath eternal life." Jesus
did not say, 'If you do these things, you can have eternal life." The
tense of the verb is present tense. Eternal life is already in place in order
for the other things of the verse to take place. It was the same as in John
3:16. Whoever believes has eternal life. Whoever eats the flesh of Jesus and
drinks His blood HAS eternal life and WILL BE raised at the last day.
So how can you and I, as children of God, eat the flesh of Jesus and drink His
blood? In one sense, we symbolically eat of His flesh and drink His blood
when we partake of the unleavened bread and wine of communion. But those
elements are symbols of the flesh and blood of Christ. How do we eat, as Jesus
was teaching in our text? First, it is by faith that we are partakers of
His flesh and blood. Communion is only properly observed when we, by faith,
think upon the work of our precious Lord as we reach to take of the bread and
drink of the wine.
I realize my thoughts are jumping around this morning, but when you sit down to
eat a meal, you take of the food that has been prepared and eat it. As you
place it in your mouth, you chew and enjoy the taste of the food. You swallow
the food into your stomach where it is broken down into the elements that can
be stored in the body. That food becomes nourishment as it is taken into the
basic elements in the body and distributed to the places where it is needed.
Isn't God good? He has made us in such a way that we do not have to think
about where the nutrients are needed. We are fearfully and wonderfully made in
such a way the body does that without our having to tell it where to place it.
I go from the health lesson back to our text. As we read and study the Word of
God, we are "eating the flesh and drinking the blood" of Jesus. We
are reading, "chewing", meditating, pondering, rehearsing in our
hearts and minds those things concerning our Lord. The Spirit of God then takes
those things and brings them to our remembrance (our spiritual nourishment)
just when we need them. We will see this when we get to John chapters 14, 15,
and 16.
We do not neglect to feed our natural bodies and we should not neglect to feed
our Spiritual souls. Feeding on the Word of God gives us the energy and
direction for each day we live. AND renews constantly within us the great hope
that one day the Lord will indeed raise our corruptible bodies and change them
to incorruptible where we shall live for all eternity in His presence.