Jesus was insisting we eat his flesh and drink his blood

JESUS WAS INSISTING WE EAT HIS FLESH AND DRINK HIS BLOOD
EDITED BY GLENN PEASE
John 6:53 53
Jesus saidto 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.
BIBLEHUB RESOURCES
Pulpit Commentary Homiletics
The FatherDraws The Soul To Christ
John 6:44
J.R. ThomsonWe have to acknowledgea debt of gratitude to God, first for
giving and sending his Sonto be our Saviour, and then for guiding us unto his
Son, in order that in fellowship with him we may experience the blessings of
salvation. For in these two ways does the Father furnish us with a complete
display of his love; in these two ways does he completely secure our highest
good.
I. THE DRAWING OF THE SOUL BY THE FATHER.
1. The soul needs to be divinely drawn. And this because:
(1) By reasonof sin it is estrangedfrom God, is far from God, is even at
enmity with God.
(2) There are other attractions, very powerful, and such as men are wont to
yield to, which draw man's nature in an opposite direction. "The world, the
flesh, and the devil" have great power;and in the case ofvery many exert that
powerefficaciouslyto keepthe soul from God, and even to increase the
distance by which it is so separated.
2. The instrumentalities, or spiritual forces, by which the Father draws
human souls to Christ.

(1) The presentation of truth adapted to man's intelligence. The next verse
brings this agencybefore us in explicit statement:"They shall be all taught of
God."
(2) The utterance of moral authority addressing the conscience. Passionand
interest may draw men from Christ; duty, with a mighty imperative, bids
them approach their Lord and Saviour.
(3) Love appeals to the heart of man with mystic power.
"The moon may draw the sea;
The cloud may stoopfrom heaven, and take the shape,
With fold to fold, of mountain or of cape." The attractionof Christ's
characterand life, of his gracious language, andabove all of his sacrifice upon
the cross, is the mightiest moral force the world has ever felt. "I," said he, "if
I am lifted up, will draw all men unto myself." Thus in many ways, adapted
by his own wisdom to the nature and circumstances ofmen, is the Father
drawing men unto Christ.
3. The manner in which the Fatherdraws the soul unto himself.
(1) This attraction is not of a physical, mechanical, forcible kind. Such
compulsion would be out of all character, would not harmonize with man's
moral freedom. And, indeed, it would not be the drawing of the soul.
(2) It is a moral, spiritual attraction, in accordance withthe nature both of
him who draws and of those who are drawn. The Holy Spirit of God is the
powerto whom we owe the actionof those moral constraints which are the
chief and most beneficentfactors in the moral life of mankind.
(3) Mighty though this drawing be, it is for the most part gentle and gradual.
Its influence is not always at once apparent; it becomes manifestwith the
growth of experience and the lapse of time. It is continuous, lasting in the case
of many from childhood to old age.
(4) The power and efficacyof this agencyis not to be disputed. The Father
calls, and the child answers. The magnetismis exercised, and the soul flies to
the attracting power. The light shines, and the eye turns towards the welcome
ray.
II. THE COMING OF THE SOUL TO CHRIST.
1. There is an indispensable condition without which no soul can come to
Christ. Christ must first come to the soul. The gospelmust be preached, and
must be received, for it is the Divine call, which alone can authorize the
approachof sinful man to the Holy One and Just.

2. The soul's method in coming. It is easyenoughto understand how when
Jesus was onearth men came to him; they came actually, bodily, locally. Yet
the principle of approachis everthe same;for our Lord said indifferently,"
Come unto me," and "Believe onme." The coming of the bodily form was
useless apartfrom spiritual approach, sympathy, and trust. As it is the soul
which the Father draws, so it is the soul which, being drawn, finds itself near
the Saviourand in fellowshipwith him.
3. The soul's purpose in coming. It is impelled by conscious needof the
Redeemer, as the Prophet, the Priest, the King, divinely appointed. It hopes to
find in him that fall satisfactionwhich, sought elsewhere,is sought in vain.
4. The soul's experience in coming.
(1) There is welcome and acceptance;for he who comes is never, in any wise,
castout.
(2) There is a perfect response to the desire and need. The hungry is fed, the
thirsty finds the water of life, the wearymeets with rest, and the man who
longs to serve has revealedto him the law and rule of consecration.
(3) There is the eternalabiding; for the soul that comes to Jesus neither leaves
him, nor is left by him.
5. The soul's obligationin coming.
(1) Gratefully to acknowledgethe infinite mercy by which this attractive
influence has been exercised, and to which the fellowship with Christ is due.
(2) Diligently to act as the Father's agentin bringing other souls to Jesus. We
can trace the Divine powerin the human agencywhich was employed to lead
us to the Saviour. The same God canstill use the same means to the same
result. - T.
Biblical Illustrator
He that believeth on Me hath everlasting life.

John 6:47-58
Everlasting life
W. Jay.I. THE BLESSING, "everlasting life." Everlasting life was never
proposedin the schools ofphilosophy to the faith of man, or urged as a
principle or motive to holiness. Those who taught were not sure of it
themselves. What does it mean? We may take three views of it.
1. It is opposedto eternal death. Eternal death does not mean annihilation or
destruction of being, bat of well-being, of happiness and of hope. So eternal
life is not mere existence, but complete well-being.
2. It is distinguished from natural life: is a state of freedom from all possible
evil, and the possessionof all possible good.
3. Its complete spirituality. The people of God are now quickenedand made
alive. They have spiritual appetites, senses,powers, passions.Theycan
perform spiritual exercises.But it doth not yet appear what we shall be.
II. THE OWNER OF THIS BLESSING. "He that believeth on Me."
1. The object of this faith — the Lord Jesus. How surprised would you be did
Paul, or Peter, or James express themselves in this way I But they well knew
that salvationwas not in them. Thus they preachednot themselves, but Christ
Jesus the Lord.
2. Its nature. Belief is the giving assentto a declarationas true. But credence
in itself is much like knowledge. We may know a thing, and not possessit, or
pursue it. Faith always operates towards Christas its object in a Way of trust
and dependence, and in a wayof application too.
III. THE SEASON OF POSSESSION— now. Not he shall have, but he
"hath." The believer has everlasting life —
1. As his aim. The mariner has the port in his eye from the day he sails till he
enters the desired haven. So is it with the Christian.
2. In promise. "In my Father's house," etc.;"WhenHe who is our life," etc.
3. In trust. And who is the trustee? The Lord Jesus, our Forerunner. He is
gone to take possession.
4. In participation. "If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of
His." But Christians have this Spirit, and by this Spirit is the Christian sealed
to the day of redemption.
5. When are Christians peculiarly indulged with these anticipations?(1)When
they are alone. "When I remember Thee on my bed, and meditate on Thee in

the night watches."(2)In the sanctuary services. "Aday in Thy courts is
better than a thousand."(3) In trouble. God acts upon the principle of the
truest friendship, He is most near in the time of trouble.(4) In death.
IV. THE GROUND OF THEIR CONFIDENCE. The fulness of their
assurance:"Verily, verily, I say unto you," etc. Here it is truth itself that
speaks;and yet Christ employs a double asseveration, so that we may learn —
1. The duty of belief, " O fools, and slow of heart to believe:"
2. The importance of our having the full assurance ofunderstanding, and the
full assurance offaith, to establish our hearts with grace.
(W. Jay.)
Believing must be on Christ only
S. Charnock.As the eye seeksfor no other light than that of the sun, and joins
no candles with it to dishonour the sufficiencyof its beams, so no createdthing
must be joined with Christ as an objectof faith. Who would join the weakness
of a bulrush with the strength of a rock for his protection! Who would fetch
waterfrom a muddy pond to make a pure fountain in his gardenmore
pleasant!Address yourselves only to Him to find a medicine for your miseries
and comfort in your troubles,
(S. Charnock.)
Certain salvationby believing
C. H. Spurgeon.One walking with me observed, with some emphasis, "I do not
believe as you do. I am an Agnostic." "Oh," I said to him. "Yes. That is a
Greek word, is it not? The Latin word, I think, is ignoramus." He did not like
it at all. Yet I only translatedhis language from Greek to Latin. These are
queer waters to get into, when all your philosophy brings you is the confession
that you know nothing, and the stolidity which enables you to glory in your
ignorance. As for those of us who restin Jesus, we know and have believed
something; for we have been taught eternal verities by Him who cannot lie.
Our Masterwas not wont to say, "It may be," or "It may not be"; but He had
an authoritative style, and testified, "Verily, verily, I say unto you." Heaven
and earth shall pass away, but not one jot or tittle of what He hath taught us
shall cease to be the creed of our souls. We feel safe in this assurance;but
should we quit it, we should expectsoonto find ourselves in troubled waters.
(C. H. Spurgeon.)
Faith in Christ must be personal

J. Spencer.InGideon's camp every soldierhad his ownpitcher; among
Solomon's men of valour every man wore his own sword; the five wise virgins
had every one oil in her own lamp. Whosoeverwillgo to God must have a
faith of his own; it must be "Thy faith hath savedthee."
(J. Spencer.)
Faith, though weak, savesthe soul
H. Muller.Faith is the eye by which we look to Jesus. A dim-sighted eye is still
an eye; a weeping eye is still an eye. Faith is the hand with which we lay hold
of Jesus. A trembling hand is still a hand. And he is a believer, whoso heart
within him trembles when he touches the hem of the Saviour's garment that
he may be healed. Faith is the tongue by which we taste how good the Lord is.
A feverish tongue. And even then we may believe, when we are without the
smallestportion of comfort; for our faith is founded, not upon feelings, but
upon the promises of God. Faith is the footby which we go to Jesus. A lame
foot is still a foot. He who comes slowly, nevertheless comes.
(H. Muller.)
Everlasting life
W. H. Van Doren, D. D.I. IN CHRIST'S PURCHASE.
II. IN GOD'S PROMISE.
III. IN THE FIRST FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT. Conclusions:
1. The exclusiveness ofthe gospel. Without faith in Christ there is no salvation
for any sinner.
2. The charity of the gospel. With faith there is salvationfor all.
(W. H. Van Doren, D. D.)
I am that Bread of Life
The Breadof Life
J. Irons.I. THE STAFF OF LIFE.
1. Christ is the life.
2. Where Christ is unknown there can be no life.
(1)Heathenism is death.
(2)Unbelief.
(3)Formalism.
3. This life is worth everything and is to be obtained for nothing.

4. This life supports, not by talking about it, believing in statements
concerning it, but by having and enjoying it.
II. The staff of life is USED ONLY BY FAITH. Faith —
1. Receives.
2. Handles.
3. Tastes.
4. Digests.
5. Enjoys.
6. Grows thereby.
III. PARTICIPATION IN IT IS THE PRIVILEGE OF THE LORD'S
FAMILY. It is household bread.
1. The ungodly are self-excluded.
2. The qualification is the robe of righteousness,wornonly by the Lord's
children.
3. The children participate through —
(1)The Word;
(2)the sacrament.
(J. Irons.)
The bread of life
Preacher's Analyst.I. A REPRESENTATION OF OUR SAVIOUR.
1. Life is more valuable than all beside.
2. The Scripture represents religionas life.
3. How many people look like life, having the form of godliness without the
power.
4. The relation of Christ to this life. Bread which —
(1)nourishes;
(2)is corn bruised: so Christ was bruised for our iniquities;
(3)must be eaten, or is nothing to us: so Christ is nothing till applied.
II. THE MEANS OF DERIVING THIS BENEFIT:coming to Christ and
believing on Him. This reminds us —
1. That Christ is accessible.
2. That faith is not mere sentiment, but a principle of life.

3. Faith is not an isolatedbut a continuous act.
III. THE HAPPINESS HIS FOLLOWERS SHALL ENJOY.
1. They shall never thirst for the world. Worldly men desire nothing else.
2. They shall not hunger or thirst in vain. The new creature has wants and
appetites, but ample provision is made for their complete satisfaction.
3. They will not hunger or thirst always. "I shall be satisfied," etc.Application:
The subject is a standard by which we may estimate —
1. Christ.
2. Our faith.
3. The Christian.
(Preacher's Analyst.)
Christ the bread of life
Ralph Robinson.The analogybetweenChrist and corporalmeat stands in
these three particulars:
1. Sustentation. Corporalmeat is for the preservation of the natural life. The
natural life is maintained by meat, through the concurrence of God's blessing.
It is pabulum vitae. Hence bread, under which all other provision is
comprehended, is calledthe staff of life (Isaiah 3:1). Keep the strongestman
from meat but a few days, and the life will extinguish and go out (1 Samuel
30:12). Jesus Christ is the maintainer and preserver of the spiritual life. As He
give it at first, so He upholds it. It is by continual influences from Him that the
life is kept from expiring. If He withdraw His influx never so little, the soul is
at the giving up of the ghost, even half-dead.
2. Vegetation. Corporalmeat is goodfor growth. It is by meat that the body is
brought from infancy to childhood, from childhood to youth, from youth to a
perfect man. Jesus Christ is He that carries on a Christian from infancy to
perfection. All the soul's growthand increase is from Christ. So the apostle,
"From Him the whole body having nourishment ministered," etc. (Colossians
2:19), The branches live and increase by virtue of the sap which is derived
from the root. Christians grow by virtue of the sapwhich is to them derived
from Jesus Christ. Every part grows by Christ.
3. Reparation. Meatis a repairer of nature's decays. Whenby some violent
sicknessthe spirits are consumed, the body wasted, the strength lost, meat,
fitly and seasonablytaken, helps, through the Divine blessing, to recallall
again:"his spirit came to him again" (1 Samuel 30:12). Jesus Christ is the
repairer of the soul's decays. Sometimes a believer, through the neglectof his

duty, through surfeiting upon sin, brings spiritual languishings upon himself;
his strength is decayed, his vigour is abated, his pulse beats very weakly, he
can scarcelycreepin the ways of God. In such a case JesusChristrecovers
him, repairs his breaches, andrenews his strength, as in former times, The
Psalmistspeaks ofthis: "He restorethmy soul: He leadeth me in the paths of
righteousness forHis name's sake" (Psalm23:3). The saints have every day
experience of this restoring virtue of Christ.
(Ralph Robinson.)
Christ alone is the bread of life
C. H. Spurgeon.Some have tried to stay their hunger by the narcotics of
scepticism, and others have endeavouredto get eatthrough the drugs of
fatalism. Many stave off hunger by indifference, like the bears in winter, who
are not hungry, because theyare asleep. But depend upon it the only way to
meet hunger is to get bread, and the only way to meet your soul's want is to
get Christ, in whom there is enoughand to spare, but nowhere else.
(C. H. Spurgeon.)
Your fathers did eat manna
The bread of life and manna
W. Baxendale.The Palestine ExplorationSociety, whenthey came to TelHum
(Capernaum), found what they believed to be the synagogue in which Jesus
delivered His discourse. In turning over the stones, it was with peculiarly
sacredfeelings that they found a large block with a pot of manna engraved on
its face. Every synagogue had its symbol — one a lamb, another a candlestick,
and this, the pot of manna. We .cansee Jesus in His synagogue pointing with
His finger to this device over the main entrance, and saying, " Our fathers did
eat manna," etc.
(W. Baxendale.)
If any man eatof this bread, he shall live for ever
Christ the chosenfood of earnestChristians
C. H. Spurgeon.Whenalone with Christ, it was heavenbelow; and in the
prayer-meetings, when God's people were warm at heart, how you delighted
to unite with them! The preaching was marrow and fatness to you. You did
not mind walking a long way on a wet night to hear about your Lord and
Masterthen. It may be there was no cushion to the seat, oryou had to stand in
the aisle. You did not mind that. You are getting wonderfully dainty now; you
cannot hear the poor preacherwhose voice was once like music to you. You

cannot enjoy the things of God as once you did. Whose fault is that? The
kitchen is the same, and the food the same:the appetite has gone, I fear. How
ravenous I was after God's Word! how I would wake early in the morning to
read those books that are full of the deep things of God! I wanted none of your
nonsensicalnovels, nor your weeklytales, for which some of you pine, like
children for sugarsticks.Thenone fed on manna that came from heaven, on
Christ Himself. Those were goodtimes in which everything was delightful.
(C. H. Spurgeon.)
The food of the soul
Bp. Ryle.Few passageshave been so wrestedas this. Men have turned meat
into poison.
I. WHAT THESE VERSES DO NOT MEAN.
1. Literal eating and drinking, or partaking of the Lord's Supper. We may eat
that, and yet not partake of Him. For —(1) A literal eating and drinking
would have been revolting to the Jews andcontradictory to their law.(2)To
take this literal view would be to interpose a bodily actbetweenthe soul and
salvation, for which there is no precedentin Scripture.(3) It would involve
most blasphemous and profane consequences. It would shut out from heaven
the penitent thief, and admit to heaventhousands of godless communicants.
2. This view arises from man's morbid habit of paltry and carnalsense on
Scriptural expressions. Mendislike that which makes the state of the heart the
principal thing.
II. WHAT THEY DO MEAN.
1. "Fleshand blood " means Christ's sacrifice.
2. "Eating and drinking" means receptionof Christ's sacrifice.
III. THE PRACTICAL LESSONS THEYSUGGEST.
1. That faith in Christ's atonement is necessaryto salvation.
2. That faith in the atonementunites us to the Saviour and entitles us to the
highest privileges.
3. That faith In the atonementis —
(1)A personalact;
(2)a daily act;
(3)a conscious act.
(Bp. Ryle.)

The food of the soul
J. M. Ludlow, D. D.I. In Christ alone can we have any CERTAIN
RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE.
1. Soul hungers for the knowledge which pertains to its nature and its relation
to its Creatorand destiny.
2. Christ is the Truth, and satisfies this hunger.
II. Christ is the food of the soul, because He alone SATISFIES OUR MORAL
NATURES.
1. Them is a sense in which every man hungers after righteousness. We seekto
relieve our troubled consciences —
(1)By extenuating our faults;
(2)by forgetting them;
(3)by seeking pardon through priests.
2. But there is no satisfactionbut in Christ. He sustains —
(1)By justifying grace;
(2)by positive holiness.
III. Christ is the bread of life in that from Him we have the HOPE OF THE
LIFE EVERLASTING.
1. No human speculationregarding the future, howeverpleasing, can kindle
real hope.
2. Christ hath brought life and immortality to light, and is "in us the hope of
glory."
(J. M. Ludlow, D. D.)
The food that Jesus gave to His own
W. Arnot, D. D.1. To finish His work was bread to Himself; His work finished
is bread to His people.
2. His words were startling but necessary. The rock must be laid down
although superficial disciples may stumble, for it is the foundation of the true
disciples'faith and hope.
3. The Lord's Supper is not the subject here. Both sacraments are omitted in
John, but he records the fundamental doctrines on which they rest. In the
conversationwith Nicodemus we have the ground of the one; here the ground
of the other. Wanting Christ's sacrifice forsin the Supper would have

containednothing for us, and wanting faith in Christ crucified, we canget
nothing from the sacrament.
4. Hunger centres naturally in human souls, and men have attempted to
satisfy it —
(1)With the good things of this life;
(2)with the inanities of self-righteousness.In the text Christ shows the
satisfactionofthis hunger. We have —
I. ON THE PART OF CHRIST —
1. His incarnation: the Son as Man. Not man, a man, a sonof man. Neither a
son of man nor a Sonof Godcould be our Saviour. The one is near, but has no
power; the other has power, but is not near. The Incarnation combines
nearness with power to save.
2. His sacrifice. The Incarnation could not save us. Without shedding of blood
is no remission. Christ convergedall the testimonies from Abel's sacrifice to
His lastpassoveron Himself, the Lamb of God.
II. ON THE PART OF CHRISTIANS. Theybelieve and live. Although it is a
spiritual and not a material food, it is a real supply of a real hunger. The
soul's hunger for righteousnessand peace and God is a greaterthing than
bodily hunger, and must have a corresponding supply. This is found by the
believer. Christ's incarnation brings God near to Him, and His sacrifice
brings peace and righteousness. The believer thus has the life of God in
Christ. This life is —
1. Present.
2. Everlasting.
(W. Arnot, D. D.)
The vital relation to Christ
J. A. Beith, D. D.I. HE PRESSES THE GREAT DUTY OF CLOSING WITH
HIM WHICH HE HAD ALREADY SET BEFORE THEM.
1. This He did by representing to them the danger to which they would expose
themselves if they declined (ver. 53).
2. By directly announcing the blessings whichare to be obtained by obedience
(vers. 54, 55). To partake of Christ by faith secures —
(1)"Eternallife";
(2)the resurrection of the last day.

II. HE STATES AND ILLUSTRATES THE RELATION IN WHICH, WHEN
THEY CLOSE WITH HIM BY FAITH, HE STANDS TO BELIEVING
MEN.
1. It is a mutual indwelling of believers in Christ and of Christ in them (ver.
56).
2. It is a relation of the same kind as subsists betweenChrist and the Father
(ver. 57).
3. It is a relation, the certain effects ofwhich is life for evermore (ver. 58).
(J. A. Beith, D. D.)
Except ye eatthe flesh of the Son of Man
Eating Christ's flesh
W. Brock, D. D.I. THE MEANING OF THE TEXT.
1. The Romanist holds that it refers to a participation of Christ's body in the
sacrament. But it cannot mean that; for —(1)The Lord's Supper had not been
instituted, and as Christ refers to a present duty and privilege, He could not
refer to something that did not then exist.(2)Judas partook of the Lord's
Supper; had he eternal life?(3)The dying thief did not partake of the Lord's
Supper, but he had eternal life.
2. The true meaning. Christ had said many things about bread, about Himself
as the true bread, and about their eating Him as this bread; and in ver: 51 He
declares that this bread and His flesh are one and the same thing. Let us, then,
try to understand —(1) What bread means. In ver. 35 belief, not literal
participation, is the process by which we become partakers ofeverlasting life.
But belief presupposes the existence ofsomething to be believed. Then what is
there in Christ that I am to believe? Why, that He is the bread of life. It
follows that by "bread" we are to understand truth, and by eating reception
of that truth. The bread of life, then, is the doctrine of life — the revelation
made by Him who "hath abolisheddeath," etc. This is confirmed by the fact
—
(a)That the Old Testamentspeaks ofdoctrine as meat and drink: "Wisdom
hath killed her beastand she crieth, Come and eatof my bread, and drink of
the wine," etc.;and nothing was more common among the Jews than the
representationof doctrine under this form. How natural, then, that the
greatestJewishteachers shouldhave used this familiar figure to signify "I am
the doctrine of life."

(b)In ver. 63 Christ fully meets the difficulty; and that He was correctly
understood is seenby ver. 68.Note, then —
(a)That if bread means doctrine, then flesh means doctrine;
(b)that I am not confounding Christ's doctrines with Himself, but expounding
them. It is one of the greatdoctrines of this book, and let those who deny
Christ's Divinity look to it, that He is evermore the subject of His own
discourse. You might as welltake the light out of the sun, and call it the sun
still, as take Christ out of His teaching and call it His teaching still. Christ and
His doctrine are the same: "I am the truth."(2) What eating and drinking
mean.
(a)A sense ofneed — appetite.
(b)Activity towards some appropriate objectfor the supply of that need.
(c)Enjoyment in the use of the object.
(d)Resultant strength. This is eating and drinking literally.Spiritually, meat
and drink are before us in the form of doctrine.
(i.)There is hungering and thirsting after it.
(ii.)There is actiontoward Christ to getthat need supplied: what He
commands we obey; what He promises we expect;what He offers we accept.
(iii.)Then there is delight in Christ.
(iv.)Finally, spiritual strength: temptation is resisted, trial endured, work
done for God and man; and the evidence of a man's living on Christ is his
living for Christ.
II. Let me ENFORCETHE SENTIMENTOF THE TEXT.
1. There is a lessonof obligation. You have heard of Christ, His incarnation,
death, resurrection, etc. What has come out of the hearing? Hunger and
thirst? You feel uneasy often, and fear. I want that uneasiness andfear to
develop into a sense ofspiritual need. Let this stimulate actiontowards Christ;
then joy in Christ; then doing what Christ enjoins and avoiding what Christ
forbids.
2. A lessonofprivilege.
(1)The believer dwells in Christ; hence his safety.
(2)Christ dwells in him; hence his honour.
(3)Hence the believer's satisfaction"shallnever hunger or thirst."

(4)To crown it all, "eternallife." Life is the fullest capacityfor enjoyment;
then what must eternal life be?
(W. Brock, D. D.)
Truly eating the flesh of Jesus
C. H. Spurgeon.I. WHAT IS MEANT BY EATING THE FLESH AND
DRINKING THE BLOOD OF CHRIST?
1. What is necessaryto it?(1) We must believe in the reality of Christ; not that
He was a myth, but that He was very God incarnate, who lived, died, and rose
again, and is now in His proper personality, sitting at the right hand of God,
from whence He will come to be our Judge.(2)We must believe in the death of
Christ, "blood," not as an example, but as the expiation of sin, a propitiation
through faith in His blood.
2. What is this act?(1)Appropriation. A man not only believes that bread is
proper food, he takes it. So we cannot feed on Christ until we make Him our
own, and for our individual selves:for we cannoteat for anybody else.(2)
Receiving into oneself. Breadis takennot to be laid aside or exhibited. Every
one must do this from the empress to the pauper: so the poorestand the
richest must receive Christ by faith.(3) Assimilation. Faith is to the soul what
the gastric juices are to the body; and so Christ by faith is taken up into the
understanding and heart, and becomes part of the renewedman. He becomes
our life.
3. Remarks to set this forth in a clearermanner.(1) Christ is as needful to the
soul as bread is to the body.(2) Meatand drink do really satisfy. The supply of
Christ is as real as the need of Him.(3) A hungry man is not appeasedby
talking about feeding, but by eating. So Christ beckons youto a banquet not
to look on, but to feast.(4)In healthy eating there is a relish.(5) Eating times as
to the body come severaltimes a day, so take care that you partake of Christ
often. Do not live on old experiences.(6)It is well to have set times for eating.
People are not likely to flourish who have no regular meals. So there should be
appointed times for communion with Christ.(7) The flesh and blood of Christ
are foods suitable for all conditions, for babes in Christ as well as old men, for
sick Christians and healthy.
II. WHAT ARE THE VIRTUES OF THIS EATING AND DRINKING?
1. Life is essential(ver. 53). If you have no life in you you have nothing that is
good. The sinner is dead, and there is no life to be "developed" and
"educated" in him. Any goodthat may come to him must be by impartation,
and it can never come to him but by eating the flesh, etc. Convictions of sin

are of no use, nor ordinances, nor profession, nor morality. This is vital (ver.
54) for soul and body.
2. Substantial. "Meatindeed," etc. The Jewishfeasting was a mere shadow:so
is pleasure, etc.
3. It produces union (ver. 56).
(1)To live in Christ is the peace of justification.
(2)ForChrist to live in us is the peace of sanctification.
(C. H. Spurgeon.)
The meat and drink of the new nature
C. H. Spurgeon.I. WHAT CHRIST MUST BE TO US. Our meat and drink,
our everything.
1. The doctrine of God incarnate must be the food of our soul.
2. We must feed on Christ's sufferings.
3. This meat is not intended to be lookedat, but to feedupon by the heart's
belief.
4. By this means the believer realizes union with Christ.
II. WHAT IS BOUND UP IN THIS EATING AND DRINKING?
1. He who has not so eatenand drank has no spiritual life at all.
2. All who have receivedJesus in this manner have eternal life.
3. They have efficient nourishment and satisfaction.
4. Christ dwells in them and is their strength.
5. They live in Christ and are secure.
III. WHAT REFLECTIONS ARISE OUT OF THIS TRUTH? If I have a life
that feeds on Christ!
1. What a wonderful life it must be!
2. How strong it must be!
3. How immortal it must be! —
4. How it must develop!
5. What company he that is fed must keep.
(C. H. Spurgeon.)
Meatand drink indeed

R. Tuck, B. A.I. HOW CAN THE LORD JESUS GIVE US HIS FLESH TO
EAT?
1. In all Christ said He realized that the body is not the man. He was always
seeking to win the soul's faith which would be the man's life. We have bodies;
we are souls.
2. Since we are spirits there is fitting food for us, and Christ warns us off from
fleshly ideas by saying, "It is the Spirit that quickeneth." Christ is the soul's
food in His humanity, character, example, sacrifice, spiritual communions.
3. Nothing else cansatisfy like this. Every receptive faculty of our soul canlive
on that incarnate life and renew strength. "I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in
me."
4. Christ is the food of the soulin that He provides and adapts Godfor
man.(1) "In" God "we live, and move, and have our being."(2)But man has
failed to live in God. "Godis not in all his thoughts." Our souls have lost their
home food, preferring to it "the husks which the swine do eat."(3)But God
graciouslyoffers Himself to us in Christ Jesus.
II. HOW CAN WE BE SAID TO EAT THE FLESH OF THE LORD JESUS.
We are obliged to speak of spiritual powers in language only worthy to
representthe bodily powers.
1. There is a soul eye which receives the impressionof the beauties of the
Divine handiwork. The physical eye sees allthings alike.
2. The soul ear can catchDivine harmonies to which the physical ear is deaf.
3. The hand of the soul gives all the meaning to what is done by the physical
hand.
4. Christ only extended this when He representedthe soul as having a mouth
and a faculty of digestion. Eating and drinking is a going out of ourselves to
lay hold of something outside ourselves that it may become part of ourselves.
Men do not live on themselves. Only God being an all-sufficient Spirit cando
that. The relation of the soul to outside food we call eating and drinking,
believing, thinking, loving, communing. "Mandoes not live by bread
alone."We eatthe flesh of Jesus —
1. By the appropriations of faith. Whateverwe believe we take into ourselves.
2. By the cherishing of thoughts; by meditations on the perfections of Christ.
3. By the communings of love. We know how two lovely souls in close
fellowship nourish in one another all that is lovely, pure, and
good.Conclusion:

1. What a dignity our Lord has put on the most ordinary acts of life.
2. Lest we should lose this sacrednessoutof our common eating and drinking,
Christ has set apart one eating time peculiar to Himself.
(R. Tuck, B. A.)
Bp. Beveridge.I. WHAT IS HERE UNDERSTOOD BYFLESH AND
BLOOD?
1. Notas the Capernaites did, in a carnalsense, but in a spiritual.
2. As symbolizing the effects ofHis body broken and His blood shed, or the
merits of His death and passion, as
(1)The pardon of sin by His merit (Matthew 26:28).
(2)The purification of our hearts by His Spirit.
3. The glorification of our souls in His presence (John17:24).
II. IN WHAT SENSE ARE THEY SAID TO BE MEAT AND DRINK?
1. Is the body preservedin health by meat and drink?
2. Made strong?
3. Kept in life?
4. Refreshed? So is the soul by the merits of Christ.
III. How is it called meat INDEED, and drink INDEED?
1. Negatively. Notas if Christ's body was really meat for the body, nor as if
His body and blood were substantially turned into realmeat and drink, nor as
if He referred to any corporealeating of Himself in the sacraments, as the
Papists hold, basing transubstantiation on this text; not considering(1)That
He speaks not of a sacramental, but of a spiritual eating, as appears
(a)in that the sacramentwas not ordained (John 6:4; John 7:2).
(b)In that he that eateth not of this bread shall die (ver. 53), whereas Every
one that eatethit shall live (vers. 51, 54, 56).(2)Suppose the Sacrament
referred to it, it would not import any transubstantiation of the bread and
wine into the body and blood of Christ, but rather the transubstantiation of
the body and blood of Christ into bread and wine.
2. Positively;because it really, and not only in show, does that for the soul
which food does for the body (see chap. John 15:1). Nay, in some sense, Christ
is more really our meat than bread canbe.(1) He nourishes our souls, this only
our bodies.(2)He so nourishes us that we shall be for ever satisfied(ver. 35),

this not.(3) Bodily food so preserves our lives that sometimes it destroys them;
but never so Christ.(4) Foodpreserves but our natural, Christ nourishes us to
an eternal life (vers. 51, 58).USES.
1. (ver. 27).
2. Do not only labour for it, but feed upon it —
(1)Believingly (ver. 35).
(2)Thankfully.
(Bp. Beveridge.)
J. Flavel.I. THE RESEMBLANCEBETWEENTHE FLESH AND BLOOD
OF CHRIST AND MEAT AND DRINK.
1. Both are necessary, the one for the soul, the other for the body.
2. Both are sweetand desirable to the hungry and thirsty.
3. Both have to undergo an alteration before they actually nourish. Corn has
to be ground, and Christ had to suffer.
4. Both have a natural union with us.
5. Both must be frequently partakenof.
II. THE TRANSCENDENT EXCELLENCYOF CHRIST'S FLESHAND
BLOOD.
1. They were assumedinto the nearestunion with the secondPersonin the
Holy Trinity.
2. They were offered up to God as the greatsacrifice for our sins and
purchase of our peace (Colossians 1:20;Ephesians 5:2).
3. They are the greatmedium of conveyance of all blessings and mercies to
believers (Colossians1:14-19).USES.
1. Of information.
(1)See here the love of the Saviour.
(2)Learn hence a ground of contentin the lowestcondition.
(3)Learn the necessityoffaith. What is a feastto him who cannot taste it?
(4)How excellentare gospelordinances whichset Christ forth.
2. Of exhortation.
(1)Come with hungry appetites.

(2)Feedheartily on Christ.
(J. Flavel.)
The food that gives life
A. Maclaren, D. D.I. THE FOOD. Familiarity with these words and mental
indolence have dulled our sense oftheir strangeness. Howeverunintelligible to
their hearers, they must have been felt in putting forth strange claims. On any
other lips they would have been felt to have been absurd and blasphemous.
Upon Christ's lips they are that or something very wonderful. He presents the
food of the soul in two forms.
1. He proposes Himself. "He that eatethMe."(1)Here you come across the
greatcharacteristic ofChristianity, that it is all in the personalChrist. The
greatnote is, "I bear witness of Myself."(2)He sets Himself forth here as the
sufficient nourishment for my whole nature.(a) Do I want truth of any kind
exceptmere physical or mathematicaltruth? I getit here, social, ethical,
spiritual, religious. He is Wisdom: He is Truth.(b) Does my heart want
nourishing with the selectedelixir of love? His love is the only food for the
hungry heart which does not bring bitterness or turn to ashes.(c)Doesmy will
want for its strength some law knownto be goodand deeply loved. I must go
to the Master, and in His loving personality find the authority which sways,
and by swaying emancipates the human will.(3) He proposes Himself as the
food for the whole world. If He is enough for me He is enoughfor all, and
comes in living contactwith all the generations right on to the end of time.
2. He offers His flesh and blood; His earthly life and violent death. It is not
enough to speak in generalterms of the personal Christ as being the food of
the spirit. We must feed upon the dying Christ, and lay hold of His sacrifice,
and realize that His shed blood transfused in mystical fashion into the veins of
our spirits is there the throbbing source oflife which circulates through the
whole of the inmost being.
II. THE ACT OF EATING THIS FOOD. The metaphysical language is
familiar in many applications. We speak of tasting sorrow, eating bitter
bread, feeding on love.
1. This participation is effectedby faith.(1) "He that cometh... believeth." By
the simple act of trust in Him. You may be beside Him for a thousand years,
and if there is no faith there is no union. You may be separatedfrom Him, as
we are, in time by nineteen centuries; in condition, by the difference between
mortality and glory; in distance, by all the measureless spacebetweenthe
footstooland the throne; and if there go from your heart an electric wire,
howsoeverslenderand fragile, you are knit to Him and derive into your heart

the fulness of His cleansing power.(2)This trust is the activity of the whole
nature, for faith has in it intellect, affection, and will.
2. The original expressionis employed to describe the actof eating by
ruminating animals; a leisurely and pleasurable partaking; an act slow and
meditative and repeated, which dwells upon Him. The reasonwhy so many
Christians are such poor weaklings is because they do not thus feed on Christ.
The cheaptripper cannot take in the beauty of the landscape. You cannot
know any man in a hurried interview, so in these hurrying days how few of us
ruminate about Christ.
3. Our Lord here uses a grammatical form which indicates the continual
persistance ofthis meditative faith. Yesterday's portion will not stay to-day's
hunger.
III. THE CONSEQUENTLIFE.
1. Separate from Christ we are dead. We may live the life of animals, an
intellectual life, a life of desires and hopes and fears, a moral life; but the true
life of man is not in these. It is only that which comes by union with and
derivation from God.
2. Breadnourishes life, 'this bread communicates life. The indwelling Christ is
the source oflife to me.
3. This spiritual life in the present has, as its necessaryconsequence, a future
completion. If Christ is in my heart the life He brings can never stop its
regenerative and transforming activities until it has influenced the whole of
my nature to the very circumference (ver. 54).
(A. Maclaren, D. D.)
We must feed upon Christ
C. H. Spurgeon.Whyshould we be hungering and thirsting, when Christ has
given us His flesh to be meat indeed, and His blood to be drink indeed? Why
should we be hanging down our heads like bulrushes to-day, when the Lord
loves us, and would have His joy to he in us, that our joy may be full? Why
are we so dispirited by our infirmities, when we know that Jehovahis our
strength and our song, He also has become our salvation? I tell you, brethren,
we do not possess ourpossessions. We are like an Israelite who should say,
"Yes, those terraces ofland are mine. Those vineyards and olives and figs and
pomegranates are mine. Those fields of wheatand barley are mine; yet I am
starving." Why do you not drink the blood of the grapes? He answers, "Ican
scarcelytell you why, but so it is — I walk through the vineyards, and I
admire the clusters, but I never taste them. I gather the harvest, and I thrash

it on the barn-floor; but I never grind it into corn, nor comfort my heart with
a morsel of bread." Surely this is wretchedwork I Is it not folly carried to an
extreme? I trust the children of God will not copy this madness. Let our
prayer be that we may use and enjoy to the utmost all that the Lord has given
us in His grace.
(C. H. Spurgeon.)
"No life" without feeding upon Christ
C. H. Spurgeon.Youknow the modern theory that there are germs alike in all
men which only need developing. This is a philosophicalnotion, but it is not
God's way of putting it. He says, "No life in you." No, not an atom of true life.
The sinner is dead, and in him is no life whatever. If ever there is to be any
goodthing come into him it will have to come into him; it must be an
importation, and it cannever come into him except in connectionwith his
eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Christ.
(C. H. Spurgeon.)
The blood of Christ our only hopeIt is recordedof SamuelPearce, a useful
and much blessedminister at Birmingham, that, at the time of his conversion,
having read Doddridge's "Rise and ProgressofReligionin the Soul," he took
up the idea suggestedin that book, and resolvedformally to dedicate himself
to the Lord. He drew up a covenantaccordingly, and to make it more solemn
and binding he signed it with blood drawn from his own body. But
afterwards, failing in his vows, he was plunged into great distress. Driven
therefore into a more complete examination of his motives, he was led to see
that he had been relying too much on his own strength; and, carrying the
blood-signedcovenant to the top of his father's house, he tore it into pieces
and scatteredit to the winds, and resolvedhenceforth to depend upon the
peace-making andpeace-keeping blood of Christ.
Christ the true food and drink of believers
Ralph Robinson.In respectof that typical meat which the Jews hadlately
spokenof (ver. 31), "Our fathers did eat manna in the desert," etc., our
Saviour tells them that is but typical bread, but His flesh is bread indeed; it is
the realsubstance, of which that was but a mere type and shadow. Thus for
explication. The observationis this.
1. That the Lord Jesus Christ is really and truly the food and meat of
believers. Fleshis here put for the whole person of Christ. Jesus Christ, as lie
is held out in the Scriptures, is the true, real, and very meat of believing
Christians; Christ, as He is propounded in the gospel, dead, broken, crucified.

Christ, in all His perfection, completeness, fulness, is meat indeed to a true
believer. It is the very scope of this sermon, from ver. 27 to 59, in which this
truth is inculcated over and over again, and all objections answeredwhichthe
carnalreasonand unbelief of man's heart canmake againstit. All other food,
in respectof this, is but "cibi tantummodo umbra et vana imago," as
Cameronsaith. As natural life, in respectof the spiritual, is but a shadow of
life; so the meat that is appointed for the natural life, if compared with the
meat of the spiritual life, is but a very image of meat. Christ's flesh is real
meat.
2. The blood of Jesus Christ is drink indeed. Blood is here put for the whole
person, as flesh was. And it is rather His blood is drink than that He is drink;
because the great efficacyof all Christ did lies principally in His blood
(Hebrews 9:22). And in the same respects as His flesh is said to be meat
indeed, His blood is said to be drink indeed. And those three things which
concur to the act of eating His flesh concur also to this actof drinking His
blood, the mystical union, saving faith, the ordinances.
(Ralph Robinson.)
How Christ is to be fed upon
Ralph Robinson.1. In the ordinances. These are the conduits. Jesus Christ
hath instituted and appointed His ordinances to be the means of carrying His
nourishing virtue to the soul. The ordinances are the dishes of gold upon
which this heavenly meat is brought. Prayer, reading, preaching, meditation,
holy conference, the sacrament;in these Christ presents Himself to the soul.
He that forsakes these canexpectno feeding from Christ. "In this mountain
will the Lord of hosts make a feastof fat things." etc. (Isaiah 25:6). The feast
is made in the mountain of God's house, and the ordinances are the dishes on
which this meat is set and the knives by which it is carvedout to the soul.
2. Saving lively faith. This is the instrument. What the hand and mouth and
stomachare in the corporal eating that is faith in this spiritual eating. Faith is
the hand that takes this meat, the mouth that eats it, and the stomachthat
digests it. Yea, faith is as the veins and arteries that do disperse and carry this
nourishment to every powerof the soul. This is abundantly clearedin this
very chapter (ver. 35), "He that cometh to Me shall never hunger; he that
believeth in Me shall never thirst." "Cometh" is expounded by "believeth."
Eating and drinking are here put for believing. Crede et manducasti. He that
believes eats, and he that eats not it is because he believes not; Hic edere est
credere.
(Ralph Robinson.)

We must feed upon Christ for ourselves
Sword and Trowel.Dr. Bonar, in his "Memoirof M'Cheyne," says ofhim:
"He seems invariably to have applied for his personalbenefit what he gave
out to his people. We have already noticed how he used to feed on the Word,
not in order to prepare himself for the people, but for personaledification. To
do so was a fundamental rule with him; and all pastors will feel that, if they
are to prosper in their own souls, they must so use the Word — sternly
refusing to admit the idea of feeding others until satiatedthem- selves. And
for similar ends it is needful that we let the truth we hear preached sink down
into our own souls. We, as well as our people, must drink in the falling
showers. Mr. M'Cheyne did so. It is common to find him speaking thus: "July
31, Sabbath afternoon — on Judas betraying Christ; much more tenderness
than ever I felt before. Oh, that I might abide in the bosom of Him who
washedJudas'feet, and dipped His hand in the same dish with him, and
warned him, and grieved over him — that I might catchthe infection of His
love, of His tenderness, so wonderful, so unfathomable!'"
(Sword and Trowel.)
COMMENTARIES
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(53) Then Jesus said unto them.—This is hardly
strong enough for the original. It is rather, Jesus therefore said unto them. The words follow
upon those he has heard from them.
Some of them have spoken of eating His flesh. Others may even have pressed this to the reductio
ad horribile. Eat His flesh! Shall we, then, drink His blood too? In no less than seven passages of
the Pentateuch had the eating of blood been forbidden (Genesis 9:4; Leviticus 3:17; Leviticus
7:26-27; Leviticus 17:10-14; Leviticus 19:26; Deuteronomy 12:16; Deuteronomy 12:23-24;
Deuteronomy 15:23); and we find in later times the strength of the feeling of abhorrence, as in
1Samuel 14:32, and Ezekiel 33:25, and in the decree of the first Judæo-Christian Council (Acts
15:29). In the fullest of these passages (Leviticus 17:10-14), the prohibition is grounded upon the
facts that the blood is the physical seat of animal life, and that the blood maketh atonement for
the soul. It was the life-element poured out before God instead of the life of the soul that sinned.
Such would be the thoughts of those who strove among themselves as to what His words could
mean; and to these thoughts He speaks with the “Verily, verily,” which ever expresses a spiritual
truth that He alone could reveal.
Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man.—The words point more definitely than those which
have gone before to His death. The blood is spoken of as distinct from the flesh, and in this is
involved physical death. The eating the flesh would itself involve, as we have seen above, the
thoughts of sacrifice and of sustenance, the removal of the death-penalty attached to sin, and the

strength of life sustained by food. But the spiritual truth is fuller and deeper than this; and the
true element of life in the soul depends upon such communion with Christ as is expressed by
drinking the blood itself: that is, by receiving into the human spirit the atonement represented by
it. and with this the very principle of life. They may not receive into the human frame the
principle of animal life, but no man really has spiritual life who does not receive into the inmost
source of his being the life-principle revealed in the person of Christ. This is to pass through and
through his moral frame, like the blood which traverses the body, hidden from sight, but passing
from the central heart through artery and vein, bearing life in its course to muscle, and nerve, and
tissue. It is to traverse the soul, passing from the Eternal Life and Love, which is the heart of the
universe, through the humanity of Christ, and carrying in its course life and energy for every
child of man.
Life in you.—More exactly, life in yourselves. This is more fully expressed in John 6:56-57.
Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary6:52-59 The flesh and blood of the Son of man, denote
the Redeemer in the nature of man; Christ and him crucified, and the redemption wrought out by
him, with all the precious benefits of redemption; pardon of sin, acceptance with God, the way to
the throne of grace, the promises of the covenant, and eternal life. These are called the flesh and
blood of Christ, because they are purchased by the breaking his body, and the shedding of his
blood. Also, because they are meat and drink to our souls. Eating this flesh and drinking this
blood mean believing in Christ. We partake of Christ and his benefits by faith. The soul that
rightly knows its state and wants, finds whatever can calm the conscience, and promote true
holiness, in the redeemer, God manifest in the flesh. Meditating upon the cross of Christ gives
life to our repentance, love, and gratitude. We live by him, as our bodies live by our food. We
live by him, as the members by the head, the branches by the root: because he lives we shall live
also.
Barnes' Notes on the BibleIn these verses Jesus repeats what he had in substance said before.
Except ye eat the flesh ... - He did not mean that this should be understood literally, for it was
never done, and it is absurd to suppose that it was intended to be so understood. Nothing can
possibly be more absurd than to suppose that when he instituted the Supper, and gave the bread
and wine to his disciples, they literally ate his flesh and drank his blood. Who can believe this?
There he stood, a living man - his body yet alive, his blood flowing in his veins; and how can it
be believed that this body was eaten and this blood drunk? Yet this absurdity must be held by
those who hold that the bread and wine at the communion are "changed into the body, blood, and
divinity of our Lord." So it is taught in the decrees of the Council of Trent; and to such
absurdities are men driven when they depart from the simple meaning of the Scriptures and from
common sense. It may be added that if the bread and wine used in the Lord's Supper were not
changed into his literal body and blood when it was first instituted, they have never been since.
The Lord Jesus would institute it just as he meant it should be observed, and there is nothing now
in that ordinance which there was not when the Saviour first appointed it. His body was offered
on the cross, and was raised up from the dead and received into heaven. Besides, there is no
evidence that he had any reference in this passage to the Lord's Supper. That was not yet
instituted, and in that there was no literal eating of his flesh and drinking of his blood. The plain
meaning of the passage is, that by his bloody death - his body and his blood offered in sacrifice
for sin - he would procure pardon and life for man; that they who partook of that, or had an

interest in that, should obtain eternal life. He uses the figure of eating and drinking because that
was the subject of discourse; because the Jews prided themselves much on the fact that their
fathers had eaten manna; and because, as he had said that he was the bread of life, it was natural
and easy, especially in the language which he used, to carry out the figure, and say that bread
must be eaten in order to be of any avail in supporting and saving men. To eat and to drink,
among the Jews, was also expressive of sharing in or partaking of the privileges of friendship.
The happiness of heaven and all spiritual blessings are often represented under this image,
Matthew 8:11; Matthew 26:29; Luke 14:15, etc.
Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary53-58. Except ye eat the flesh … and drink the
blood … no life, &c.—The harshest word He had yet uttered in their ears. They asked how it was
possible to eat His flesh. He answers, with great solemnity, "It is indispensable." Yet even here a
thoughtful hearer might find something to temper the harshness. He says they must not only "eat
His flesh" but "drink His blood," which could not but suggest the idea of His death—implied in
the separation of one's flesh from his blood. And as He had already hinted that it was to be
something very different from a natural death, saying, "My flesh I will give for the life of the
world" (Joh 6:51), it must have been pretty plain to candid hearers that He meant something
above the gross idea which the bare terms expressed. And farther, when He added that they "had
no life in them unless they thus ate and drank," it was impossible they should think He meant
that the temporal life they were then living was dependent on their eating and drinking, in this
gross sense, His flesh and blood. Yet the whole statement was certainly confounding, and
beyond doubt was meant to be so. Our Lord had told them that in spite of all they had "seen" in
Him, they "did not believe" (Joh 6:36). For their conviction therefore he does not here lay
Himself out; but having the ear not only of them but of the more candid and thoughtful in the
crowded synagogue, and the miracle of the loaves having led up to the most exalted of all views
of His Person and Office, He takes advantage of their very difficulties and objections to
announce, for all time, those most profound truths which are here expressed, regardless of the
disgust of the unteachable, and the prejudices even of the most sincere, which His language
would seem only designed to deepen. The truth really conveyed here is no other than that
expressed in Joh 6:51, though in more emphatic terms—that He Himself, in the virtue of His
sacrificial death, is the spiritual and eternal life of men; and that unless men voluntarily
appropriate to themselves this death, in its sacrificial virtue, so as to become the very life and
nourishment of their inner man, they have no spiritual and eternal life at all. Not as if His death
were the only thing of value, but it is what gives all else in Christ's Incarnate Person, Life, and
Office, their whole value to us sinners.
Matthew Poole's Commentary The short and true sense of these words is, that without a true
believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, as he who died for our sins, no man hath any thing in him of
true spiritual life, nor shall ever come to eternal life. Here are two questions arise from this verse
and what follows.
1. Whether the flesh of Christ, that is, his human nature, giveth life, or all our life floweth from
the Divine nature? That is a question between the Lutherans and the Calvinists; the former
affirming, that there is a quickening virtue in the human nature of Christ by virtue of its personal
union with the Divine nature. It is a curious question, serving to up great edification; those who
have a mind to be satisfied in it, and to read what is said on either side, may read Tarnovius on
this text, and Zanchy, in his book Deu Incarnatione, p. 540.

2. The other is a question between the papists and us, Whether this and the following verses
spake any thing about the eating of the flesh and drinking the blood of Christ in the sacrament.
All protestants deny it, both Lutherans and Calvinists. The papists most absurdly affirm it, to
maintain their most absurd doctrine of transubstantiation.
The vanity of their assertion, as to this text, appears:
1. Because it was a year and upwards after this before the sacrament of the Lord’s supper was
instituted; and it is very absurd to think that our Saviour should speak of an institution not in
being, his doctrine about it being what it was impossible people should understand. Nor:
2. Is the proposition true, of sacramental eating; for many may have never sacramentally eaten
the flesh and drank the blood of Christ, and yet be spiritually alive, and be saved eternally.
Besides that mere sacramental eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Christ will not give life;
but the eating here spoken of giveth life, eternal life, John 6:56,58.
3. Besides, it is plain from John 6:29, that the eating here spoken of is believing; but it is plain,
that eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Christ in the sacrament is not believing. By all
which, it is apparent, that our Saviour saith nothing in this text of a sacramental eating the flesh
and drinking the blood of Christ.
Gill's Exposition of the Entire BibleThen Jesus said unto them,.... The Jews, who were litigating
this point among themselves:
verily, verily, I say unto you; or you may assure yourselves of the truth of what follows,
except ye eat the flesh of the son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you: by "the son
of man", Christ means himself; under which title he often speaks of himself; because it was a
title of the Messiah under the Old Testament; and was expressive of the truth of his human
nature, though as attended with weakness and infirmities. The "flesh" and "blood" of Christ do
not design those distinct parts of his body; much less as separate from each other; nor the whole
body of Christ, but his whole human nature; or Christ, as having united a perfect human nature to
him, in order to shed his blood for the remission of sin, and to offer up his soul and body a
sacrifice for it: and the eating of these is not to be understood of a corporeal eating of them, as
the Capernaites understood them; and since them the Papists, who affirm, that the bread and
wine in the Lord's supper are transubstantiated into the very body and blood of Christ, and so
eaten: but this is not to be understood of eating and drinking in the Lord's supper, which, as yet,
was not instituted; and some, without participating of this, have spiritual life in them now, and
will enjoy eternal life hereafter; and all that partake of that ordinance have not the one, nor shall
have the other: and besides, having a principle of spiritual life in the soul, is previously necessary
to a right eating of the supper of the Lord. These words, understood in this sense, once
introduced infants to the Lord's supper; as misinterpretation of John 3:5 brought in the baptism of
them. But the words design a spiritual eating of Christ by faith. To eat the flesh, and drink the
blood of Christ, is to believe that Christ is come in the flesh, and is truly and really man; that his
flesh is given for the life of his people, and his blood is shed for their sins, and this with some
view and application to themselves: it is to partake of, and enjoy the several blessings of grace
procured by him, such as redemption, pardon, peace, justification, &c. and such a feeding upon
him as is attended with growth in grace, and in the knowledge of him, and is daily to be repeated,

as our corporeal food is, otherwise persons have no life in them: without this there, is no
evidence of life in them; not such live as feed on sinful pleasures, or on their own righteousness;
only such that believe in Christ are living souls; and without this there is nothing to support life;
everything else that a man eats tends to death; but this is what will maintain and preserve a
spiritual life; and without this there is no just expectation of eternal life; but where there is this,
there is good reason to expect it, and such shall enjoy it: some copies and versions read, "ye shall
not have life in you"; eternal life. Now, though the acts of eating and drinking do not give the
right to eternal life, but the flesh, blood, and righteousness of Christ, which faith lays hold, and
feeds upon; yet it is by faith the right is claimed; and between these acts of faith, and eternal life,
there is an inseparable connection.
Geneva Study BibleThen Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the
flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have {s} no life in you.
(s) If Christ is present, life is present, but when Christ is absent, then death is present.
EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)
Expositor's Greek TestamentHYPERLINK "/context/john/6-53.htm"John 6:53-54. εἶπεν οὖν …
ἡμέρᾳ. Instead of explaining the mode Jesus merely reiterates the statement. The reason of this is
that their attention was thus more likely to be fixed on the necessity of using Him as the living
bread. The difficulty of the statement disappears when it is perceived that the figure of speech is
not to be found in the words “flesh” and “blood,” but in the words “eating” and “drinking”. The
actual flesh and blood, the human life of Christ, was given for men; and men eat His flesh and
drink His blood, when they use for their own advantage His sacrifice, when they assimilate to
their own being all the virtue that was in Him, and that was manifested for their sakes. As Lücke
points out, the σὰρξ καὶ αἷμα form together one conception and are equivalent to the με of John
6:57. If αἷμα stood alone it might refer especially to the death of Christ, but taken along with
σάρξ it is more natural to refer the double expression to the whole manifestation of Christ; and
the “eating and drinking” can only mean the complete acceptance of Him and union with Him as
thus manifested. [τρώγω, originally the munching of herbivorous animals, was latterly applied to
ordinary human eating.]
Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges53. Then said Jesus] Better, Therefore said Jesus: see
on John 6:45.
and drink his blood] Christ not only accepts what they have added to His words, but still further
startles them by telling them that they must drink His Blood; an amazing statement to a Jew, who
was forbidden to taste even the blood of animals (Genesis 9:4; Leviticus 17:10-16). These words
point still more distinctly to His propitiatory death; for ‘the blood is the life’ which He offered up
for the sins of the world. The eating and drinking are not faith, but the appropriation of His
death; faith leads us to eat and drink and is the means of appropriation. Taken separately, the
Flesh represents sacrifice and sustenance, the Blood represents atonement and life.
no life in you] Literally, no life in yourselves: for the source of life is absent. The next four
verses explain more fully how this is.
Bengel's GnomenHYPERLINK "/john/6-53.htm"John 6:53. Ἐὰν μή, if you do not) The Jews
were questioning as to the possibility: Jesus replies as to the necessity: for in fact the latter infers
the former.

Pulpit CommentaryVerses 53, 54. - Jesus said to them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye
have eaten the flesh of the Son of man, and have drunk his blood, ye have not life in yourselves.
He that eateth (τρώγων, "eateth with pleasure, eagerness," is repeated four times, as perhaps a
stronger expression than φάγων) my flesh and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will
raise him up at the last day. This result, it should be seen, is identical with the promises made to
"beholding," "coming," "believing." Life and resurrection will really follow these acts and
conditions; but then it is obvious that "beholding," "coming," "believing," must veritably cover
what is contained in this last statement. There is no mere tautology. These words express more
fully the original condition. They are not new conditions, but a further imaginative exposition of
the former ones. The believing involves an assimilation into the very substance of the believer's
nature of that which he here specifies as "flesh and blood." Reuss and Luthardt, and to some
extent Moulton, admit that by "flesh and blood" he means no more than "flesh;" that under
"flesh" is included "blood;" that by both he simply means "himself." Lunge urges that by "flesh"
is meant "human nature" - his "manhood;" but by "flesh and blood" (see Matthew 16:17;
Galatians 1:16), "inherited nature" - the humanity of Christ in "historical manifestation." But he
passes on to say that this manifestation culminates, is completed, in death, and, thus completed,
the life of Christ is the nourishment of the real life of man. Tholuck: "The addition of αῖμα to
σὸρξ only expresses, by its main constituents, the sensible human nature." The great bulk of
interpreters take the additional mention of drinking of his blood to connote an entire acceptance
of the atoning sacrifice, of the Paschal blood shedding, to be effected for the deliverance of the
world (so Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Grotius, Lucke, Neander, Keim, Meyer, Weiss, etc.).
"Eating of the flesh," then, would mean acceptance of his humanity, of the manifestation of the
eternal love in the Son of man; and "drinking his blood" would mean entire mental assimilation
also of the terrible culmination of his mission in violent, sacrificial death. This momentous
condition of life eternal is stated both negatively and positively. Without the participation in this
twofold aspect of the Lord and his work, there is no life. Unless "coming to him," "believing on
him," means an acceptance of his humanity, an apprehension of that Personality in whom the
Word was incarnate, and an utter surrender of the soul to the rending of that flesh and shedding
of the blood which is the life, i.e. to the death of the Son of man, it is not the coming to him and
believing on him of which he has already spoken. He that does thus eat and drink will satisfy a
craving after nourishment and refreshment. Unless a man consciously or unconsciously accepts,
absorbs, the sublime and wondrous gift of the Divine humanity from the second Man, the Lord
from heaven, rather than from the first man, he has no life in himself. Human nature apart item
the new creation and the new beginning is a dying, not a living, entity. The new life quickened
by the Incarnation is not all that Christ would give. The blood of the Son of man, to be accepted
in the same way. is a further exposition of the object of faith. The "eating" and "drinking" are
therefore phrases which portray the very intimate and close form of that contact with, and
dependence upon, the incarnation and the sacrifice of the Son of God, which Christ erewhile
defines in broader, vaguer metaphor. A great question has arisen on these verses - whether our
Lord is pointing to, or making prophetic reference to, the institution of the Eucharist, about
which the fourth evangelist is strangely silent. Certain of the early Fathers - Chrysostom, Cyril,
and Theophylact - have given it this meaning, though the great bulk of the patristic writers -
Ignatius, Irenseus, Origen, Clemens Alex., Tertullian, and even Cyprian (though the passage may
be applied by them to the Eucharist as one way or method of spiritually eating and drinking the
Son of man) - do most obviously interpret the passage itself of direct and spiritual, not the
indirect and sacramental manducation of the living Bread. The same view is presented by

Eusebius, Athanasius, and Cyril of Alexandria. For the first four centuries all that was done was
to apply the argument of ch. 6, in order to press the importance of communicating sacramentally.
This led the Romanist writers to go further, and regard the participation in the sacramental body
and blood as essential to life eternal. Pope Innocent I., Bishop of Rome, A.D. 402, was the first
distinguished man who brought up out of this passage "the necessity of communicating infants;"
and from the time of his synodical epistle (A.D. 417) the Latin Chinches interpreted the passage,
"Except you receive the Eucharist, you have no life in you." The views of Augustine were
vacillating or are dubious. Fulgentius shows that he had, to some extent, broken loose from this
narrow view when he concluded that baptism without the Eucharist did convey all the benefits of
the body and blood of Christ. Numerous Schoolmen (see Albertinus, 'De Eucharistia,' lib. i.e. 30;
and Wake, 'Disc. of the Eucharist,' p. 20) rejected the sacramental interpretation, and the
Reformers most justly repudiated it. Luther, Melancthon, Beza, Grotius, Owen, Lampe,
Cocceius, asserted that the whole construction of the passage, which treats "coming,"
"believing," as the complete conditions of life and resurrection, must not be held to transform an,
as yet, uninstituted ceremonial into the sole method of "believing." Notwithstanding this wide
protest, the opponents of the authenticity of the Fourth Gospel - Bretschneider, Strauss, Baur,
Thoma, Hilgenfeld, and numerous others - see in this passage the conception of a mystically
disposed second-century divine, who placed the Eucharistic ceremony in the lips of Jesus long
before the institution. But while this view can be without hesitation rejected, it is obvious that
there was a spiritual participation in the "humanity" and the "sacrifice" of the Son of God which
Christ called upon the Capernaites to experience - one which must have been possible to Old
Testament saints, to little children; to all who are acceptable to God and accepted by him. Such
participation is, without doubt, aided and rendered peculiarly possible, thinkable, in the
Eucharist. These words were timed, therefore, to bear the rich and twofold sense of Holy
Scripture. Observe:
(1) The use of σῶμα rather than σάρξ, in every account of the institution of the Supper, is not
without special meaning; σάρξ and αῖμα meaning the whole of his humanity, and the entire
fulness of the sacrifice for the world; while σῶμα καὶ αῖμα suggest that organized personal life in
which the Incarnation culminated, and the blood which was shed for the remission of sins. The
σῶμα is not without reference to the new "body" in which the spirit would be ultimately
enshrined.
(2) The phrase, "drinking of the blood," is peculiar to these verses. In the Eucharist we "drink of
the cup which is the new covenant in the blood of Christ." "The hand of history," says
Edersheim, "has drawn out the telescope; and, as we gaze through it, every sentence and word
sheds light upon the cross, and light from the cross carrying to us the twofold meaning - his
death and its celebration in the great Christian sacrament."
Vincent's Word StudiesEat the flesh
Appropriate the life. Compare Galatians 2:20; Ephesians 3:17.
Drink His blood
Appropriate the saving merit of His death. The passover was approaching, and the reference may
well have been to the flesh and blood of the paschal lamb.
Have no life in you (οὐκ ἔχετε ζωὴν ἐν ἑαυτοῖς)

Not according to the Greek. Rightly, as Rev., ye have not life in yourselves. All true life must be
in Christ. Compare Colossians 3:3.
PRECEPT AUSTIN RESOURCES
TRULY EATING THE FLESHOF JESUS NO. 1288
A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD’S-DAYMORNING, APRIL 9, 1876,
BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE,
NEWINGTON.
“Then Jesus saidunto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except you eatthe
flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoso
eats my flesh, and drinks my blood, has eternallife; and I will raise him up at
the lastday. Formy flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He
that eats my flesh, and drinks my blood, dwells in me, and I in him.” John
6:53-56.
OUR Lord Jesus did not in this passage,allude to the Lord’s Supper, as some
desiring to maintain their sacramentalsuperstitions have dared to affirm. I
will not dwell upon the argument that there was no Lord’s Supper at the time
to allude to, though there is certainly some force in it, but I will rather remind
you that with such an interpretation this passage wouldnot be true. It must be
confessedevenby the most ardent advocate ofthe sacramentalmeaning that
the expressions usedby our Lord are not universally and without exception
true if used in that sense, forit is not true that those who have never eatenthe
Lord’s Supper have no life in them, since it is confessedon all hands that
hundreds and thousands of children dying in childhood, are undoubtedly

saved, and yet they have never eaten the flesh of Christ nor drank His blood,
if the Lord’s Supper be here meant. There have been also many others in
bygone times who, by their conduct, proved that the life of God was in their
souls, and yet they were not able to eatbread at the sacramentaltable, from
sickness, banishment, imprisonment, and other causes.Surely there are some
others, though I would not excuse them, who have neglectedto come to that
blessedcommemorative ordinance, and yet nevertheless forall that they are
truly children of God. Would the highest of high Churchmen send every
Quaker, howeverholy and devout, down to the bottomless pit? If this should
refer to the Lord’s Supper, then it is certain that the dying thief could not
have entered heaven, for he never sat down at the communion table, but was
convertedon the cross, and without either baptism or the Lord’s Supper,
went straight awaywith his Masterinto Paradise. It can never be proved,
indeed, is utterly false that no one has eternallife if he has not receivedthe
bread and wine of the communion table, and on the other hand, it is certainly
equally untrue that whosoevereats Christ’s flesh has eternal life, if by that is
meant everyone who partakes ofthe Eucharist, for there are unworthy
receivers, nothere and there, but to be found by the hundreds. Alas, there are
apostates who leave the Lord’s Table for the table of devils, who profane the
holy name they once professedto love, there are also many who have received
the sacramentalbreadand wine, and yet live in sin, who increase their sin by
daring to come to the table, and who, alas, we fear, will die in their sins as
many others have done. Unregenerate persons are very apt to make much of
the sacrament and nothing of Christ. They think a greatdeal of the bread and
wine of the (so-called)altar, but they have never known what it is to eat the
flesh and drink the blood of Christ. These eatand drink unworthily—carnally
eating bread, but not spiritually eating the Redeemer’s flesh, to them the
ordinance is a curse rather than a blessing. Our Lord did not refer to the feast
of His supper, for the language will not bear such an interpretation. It is
evident that the Jews misunderstoodthe Saviorand thought that He referred
to the literal eating of His flesh. It is no wonder that they strove among
themselves over such a saying, for, understood literally, it is horrible and
revolting to the last degree, fargreateris the wonder that there are millions of
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people who acceptso monstrous an error as actualtruth, and believe in
literally feeding upon the body of the Lord Jesus. This is probably the highest
point of profane absurdity to which superstition has yet reached—to believe
that such an act of cannibalism as could be implied in the literal eating of the
flesh of Christ could convey grace to the personguilty of such a horror. While
we wonder that the Jews so misunderstoodthe Savior, we wonder a thousand
times more that there should remain upon the face of the earth men in their
senses notyet committed to a lunatic asylum who endeavorto defend such a
dreadful error from Holy Scripture, and instead of being staggered, as the
Jews were, by so fearful a statement, actually considerit to be a vital doctrine
of their faith—that they are literally to eatthe flesh of Christ, and to drink
His blood. Brethren, if it were possible that our Lord required us to believe
such a dogma, it would certainly need the most stupendous effort of credulity
on the part of a reasonable man, and the laying aside of all the decenciesof
nature, in fact, it would appear to be necessarybefore you could be a
Christian that you should altogetherdivest yourself of your reasonand your
humanity. It were a Gospelcertainly more fitted for savagesand madmen
than for persons in the possessionoftheir senses, andin the leastdegree
removed from absolute barbarism. I greatlyquestion whether the creedof the
king of Dahomey contains a more unnatural doctrine. We are not required,
however, to believe anything so impossible, so degrading, so blasphemous, so
horrifying to all the decenciesoflife. No man ever did eatthe flesh of Christ
or drink His blood in a literal and corporealsense, a deedso beastlike, nay, so
devilish, never was yet perpetrated, or could be. No, brethren, the Jews were
under an error, they made the mistake of taking literally what Christ meant
spiritually. Judicially blinded, as the result of unbelief, they stumbled at
noonday as in the night, and refused to see where all was plainly setforth. The
veil was on their hearts. Ah, how prone is man to pervert the words of the
Lord! I believe that if Christ had meant this word literally, they would have
spirited it away, but such is the perversity of the human mind, that when He

intended it spiritually then straightwaythey interpreted it in a grosslycarnal
manner. Let us not fall into their error, but may divine grace lead us to see
that our Lord’s words are spirit and life. Let us not be held in bondage by the
letter which kills, but follow the spirit which quickens. The spiritual meaning
is clearenough to spiritual men, for to them belong spiritual discernment, but
as for the unregenerate, these things are spokenunto them in parables, that
seeing they might not see, and perceiving they might not understand. Our
first head will be, what is meant then by eating the flesh and drinking the
blood of Christ? and our secondpoint of inquiry shall be, what are the virtues
of this act? I. First, then, WHAT IS MEANT BY EATING THE FLESH
AND DRINKING THE BLOOD OF CHRIST? It is a very beautiful and
simple metaphor, when understood to refer spiritually to the personof our
Lord. The actof eating and drinking is transferred from the body to the soul,
and the soul is representedas feeding—feeding upon Jesus as the bread of life.
Eating is the taking into yourself of something which exists externally, which
you receive into yourself, and which becomes a part of yourself and helps to
build you up, and sustain you. That something supplies a greatneed of your
nature, and when you receive it, it nourishes your life. That is the essenceof
the metaphor, and it welldescribes the act and the result of faith. To eat the
flesh and drink the blood of Christ, first, we must believe in the reality of
Christ—we must not regardHim as a myth, an imaginary personage, an
invention of genius, or a conceptionof the Oriental mind, but we must believe
that such a personactually and in very deed lived, and still lives. We must
believe that He was God, and yet condescendedto be incarnate on earth, and
here lived, died, was buried, and rose again. “Excepta man eatmy flesh and
drink my blood.” It is a mode of expressing the actual existence and true
materialism of our Lord’s body, and the sureness and truthfulness of His
existence in human nature. You cannot be saved unless you believe in an
historicalChrist, a realpersonage—
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“A man there was, a real man, Who once on Calvary died, And streams of
blood and waterran Downfrom His wounded side.”
That same actualperson has in His own proper personality ascendedto the
skies, He is now sitting at the right hand of the Father, and is ordained to
descendere long to be the judge of the quick and the dead. We should not use
the terms flesh and blood unless we meant to indicate an actualperson, such
language could not describe the creationof a dream, a phantom, or a symbol.
Before all things, if you would be saved, you must believe in Jesus Christ the
Son of God as having been really manifested in human nature among the sons
of men. “The word was made flesh and tabernacledamong us,” and the
apostles declare that they beheld His glory, the glory as of the Only-begotten
of the Father, full of grace and truth. We must believe not only in the reality
of the Savior, but in the reality of His incarnation, acknowledging thatwhile
He was divine He was human also, that He did not assume human nature in
outward appearance, as certainheretics have said, but that Jesus came in the
flesh, and as such was heard and seen, and touched and handled. He was in an
actualbody really nailed to a tree, was really laid in the grave, and Thomas
did in real deed put his finger into the print of the nails, and thrust his hand
into His side. We must also believe that He did assuredlyand in very deed rise
againfrom the dead, and that in His own real body He ascendedinto heaven.
There must be no doubts about these foundational facts, if we would feed
upon Christ He must be realto us, for a man does not eatand drink shadows
and fancies. We must also truly believe in the death of the incarnate Son of
God. The mention of His flesh as eaten, apart from His blood which is drunk,
indicates death, for the blood is in the flesh while there is life. His death is
more than hinted at in the fifty-first verse, where our Lord says, “And the
bread that I will give him is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the
world.” Brethren, we must believe in our Lord’s death, as it accomplishesthe
expiation of sin, for so faith feeds on His body as given for the life of the
world. There are some who profess to believe in Christ’s life, and they hold
Him forth as a greatexample who will save us from selfishness and other evils

if we follow Him. Such is not the teaching of the text, the blessing of eternal
life is not promised to following Christ’s example, but to eating and drinking
His flesh and blood, or, in other words, taking Christ into oneself, and the
promise is not made to receiving His example or His doctrine, but His person,
His flesh, His blood—His flesh and blood as separated, and therefore Himself
as dead for us and made a sacrifice for us. Just as in the peace-offeringsthe
offerer satdown and feastedwith the priest upon the victim which he had
presented, so Jesus Christ, our Passover, is sacrificedforus, and we are to
feed upon Him as the Lamb of God, receiving Him in His sacrificialand
propitiatory characterinto our souls. It is vain for us to hope for salvation
apart from this. The Fathersets Him forth as a propitiation through faith in
His blood, and if we refuse Him in this characterChrist has become of none
effectunto us. Christ the exemplar cannotsave you if you rejectHim as the
Christ who bowed His head to death, even the death of the cross, suffering in
His people’s stead. Christ as a King cannot save you unless you believe in
Christ as a victim. This is absolutely necessaryto saving faith, except you eat
His flesh and drink His blood, that is, acceptHim in His real personality,
offered as a sacrifice for sin, you have no life in you. This is what is to be
believed. But in order to eat, a man not only believes that there is bread
before him and accepts that bread as being proper food for his body, but the
next thing he does is to appropriate it. This is a greatpart of the actof feeding
upon Christ. As a man in eating takes the morsels to himself and says, “This is
bread which I believe nourishes the body, and it shall now nourish me, I take
it to be my bread,” so must we do with Christ.
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Dearbrothers and sisters, we must say, “JesusChrist is setforth as a
propitiation for sin, I acceptHim as the propitiation for my sin. God gives
Him to be the foundation upon which sinners’ hopes are to be built, I take
Him to be the foundation of my hopes. He has opened a fountain for sin and

for uncleanness, Icome to Him and desire to washawaymy sin and my
uncleanness in the fountain of His blood.” You cannot eat, you know, unless
you make the foodyour own, in fact, nothing is more speciallya man’s own
than what he has eaten, his possessionofit cannot be denied, nor can it be
takenawayfrom him. So you must take Christ to be as much your own as the
bread you eat or the water you drink—He must beyond question be yours
personally and inwardly. Looking up to Him upon the cross, youhave to say,
“Saviorof sinners, those who trust in You are redeemed. I also trust You as
my Savior, and I am therefore assuredly redeemedby Your most precious
blood.” Eating lies in part in appropriating food, and so except you
appropriate the flesh and blood of Christ to be your own personalhope and
confidence, you cannot be saved. I have laid stress upon a personal
appropriation, for eachman eats for himself, not for anyone else. You cannot
eat for anybody but yourself, and so in taking Christ you take Him for
yourself, faith is your own actand deed, nobody canbelieve for you, nor can
you savingly believe for another. I say it with reverence, the Holy Ghost
Himself cannot believe for us, although He can and does lead us to believe,
and indeed, if the divine Spirit did believe for us, we should not obtain the
promise, since it is not made to proxy faith, but solelyand alone to personal
believing. We are not passive in believing, we must be active, and perform the
personalact of appropriating the Lord Jesus to be our soul’s meat and drink.
This believing in Jesus and appropriating Him go far to explain what is meant
by eating His flesh and drinking His blood. Eating and drinking also consist
principally in receiving. What a man eats and drinks he appropriates to
himself, and that not by laying it on one side in a treasury or casket, but by
receiving it into himself. You appropriate money and you put it in your
pocket—youmay lose it, you secure a piece of land, and you put your hedge
about it, but that hedge may be broken down, but when you receive by eating
and drinking you have placedthe goodthings where you will never be robbed
of them, you have receivedthem in the truest and surestsense, for you have
real possessionand enjoyment in your own person. Now, to say“Christ is
mine” is a blessedthing, but really to take Christ into you by the act of faith,
is at once the vitality and the pleasure of faith. In eating and drinking, a man
is not a producer, but a consumer, he is not a doer or a giver forth, he simply
takes in. If a queen should eat, if an empress should eat, she would become as

completely a receiveras the pauper in the workhouse. Eating is an actof
receptionin every case. So it is with faith, you have not to do, to be, or to feel,
but only to receive, the saving point is not a something which comes forth of
you, but the receptionof a something imparted to you. Faith is an actwhich
the poorestsinner, the vilest sinner, the weakestsinner, the most condemned
sinner may perform because it is not an actrequiring power on his part, nor
the going forth of anything from him, but simply the receiving into himself.
An empty vesselcanreceive, and receive all the better because it is empty.
Oh soul, are you willing to receive Jesus Christ as the free gift of divine
mercy? Do you this day say, “I have so receivedHim”? Well then, you have
eatenHis flesh and drunk His blood. If you have receivedthe incarnate God
as suffering in your room and place and stead, so that you now trust in Him
and in Him alone, then you have eatenHis flesh and drunk His blood. The
process ofeating involves another matter, which I can hardly call part of it,
but yet it is indissolubly connectedwith it, namely, that of assimilation. What
is receivedin eating descends into the inward parts, and is there digestedand
takenup into the body, even so faith takes up and absorbs into the man the
heavenly bread, Christ crucified. “The word preached,” we read in one place,
“did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it.” Now,
in the original, there is the idea of food taken into the body, but never getting
mixed with the gastric juices, and consequently remaining undigested,
unassimilated, unprofitable, and even injurious. Faith is to the soul what the
gastric juices
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are to the body, as soonas Christ is receivedinto the man, faith begins to act
upon Him, to extract nutriment from His person, work, and offices, and so
Christ becomes takenup into the understanding and the heart, builds up the
entire system of manhood, and becomes part and parcelof the renewedman.
Just as bread when it is eatenbecomes dissolvedand absorbed and afterwards

is turned into blood, and flows through all the veins and goes to make up the
body, even so is Christ the soul, He becomes our life, and enters mysteriously
into vital union with us. As the piece of bread which we ate yesterday could
not now be takenawayfrom us, because it is a part of ourself, even so does
Jesus become one with us. You ate the bread yesterday, and whereabouts it is
now no philosopher can tell, part of it may have gone to form brain, and other
portions to make bone, sinew and muscle, but its substance is taken up into
your substance, so that the bread dwells in you now and you in it, since it
makes up your bodily house. This is to feed upon Jesus Christ, so to take
Him in that your life is hid with Him, till you grow to be like Him, till your
very life is Christ, and the greatfact that Jesus lived and died becomes the
mightiest truth under heaven to your mind, swaying your whole soul,
subduing it to itself, and then elevating it to the highest degree. “Forthe love
of Christ constrains us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then
were all dead: and that he died for all, that they which live should not
henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose
again.” Evenas flowers drink in the sunlight till they are tinted with rainbow
hues, so do we receive the Lord Jesus till we become comely with His
comeliness, andHe lives againin us. This it is to eat His flesh and drink His
blood. But now I will make a series ofremarks somewhatout of order with
the view of setting forth this mysterious eating and drinking in a clearer
manner. Observe that Christ is as needful to the soul as bread is to the body.
Meatand drink are absolutelyrequisite, and so you must have Christ or you
cannot live in the true sense ofthat word. Take awayfoodfrom the body it
must die, deny Christ to a man, and he is dead while he lives. There is in us a
natural desire after meat and drink, an appetite which springs out of our
necessity, and reminds us of it, labor to feel just such an appetite after Christ.
Your wisdom lies in your knowing that you must have Jesus to be your
personalSavior, and in owning that you will perish if you do not receive Him,
and it is well with you when this knowledge makes youcrave, and pine, and
pant for Him. Hunger after Him, thirst after Him, blessedare they that
hunger and thirst after Him, for He will fill them. Meatand drink do really
satisfy. When a man gets bread and water, having eatenenough, he has what
his nature requires. The need is real, and so is the supply. When you get
Christ your heart will obtain exactly what it wants. You do not yourself fully

know what the needs of your soul are, but rest assuredthat, known or
unknown, your necessitieswillall be supplied in the person of Jesus Christ,
and if you acceptHim, as surely as meat and drink stay hunger and thirst so
surely will He satisfythe cravings of your soul. Dreamno longerof any
satisfactionapartfrom Him, and ask for nothing beyond or beside Him.
Christ is all, and more than all, He is meat and drink too. Be content with
Him, and with nothing short of Him, hunger after Him more and more, but
never leave Him to spend your money for that which is not bread, and your
labor for that which satisfies not. Beloved, a hungry man never gets rid of his
hunger by talking about feeding, but by actually eating. Therefore do not so
much talk about Christ as actually receive Him. Look not on the viands and
say, “Yes, these will satisfyme, oh, that I had them,” but eatat once. The
Lord beckons you to the banquet, not to look on, but to sit down and feast. Sit
down at once. Ask not for a secondinvitation, but sit down and feed on what
is freely presented to you in the personof our Lord Jesus Christ. You need
Him to be formed in you, the hope of glory, but this can never be unless you
receive Him into your inmost soul. In healthy eating there is a relish. No
healthy personneeds to be floggedto make him eat, for the palate is conscious
of pleasure while we are feeding, and truly, in feeding upon Jesus there is a
delicious sweetnesspervading the whole soul. Right royal are His dainties. No
“cates ambrosial” or“nectaredbowls” canmore delight immortal banqueters
than Jesus delights believers. He satiates the soul. A thousand heavens are
tastedin the Savior’s body and blood. If ever you lose your relish for Christ,
rest
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assuredthat you are out of health. There can be no surer sign of a sad state of
heart than not to delight in the Lord Jesus Christ, but when He is very sweet
to your taste, when even a word about Him, like a drop from the honeycomb,
falls sweetlyupon your tongue, then there is not much the matter with you,

your heart is sound at the core. Eventhough you should feel faint it is a
faintness of nature, and not a failure of grace, and if you feel sick, if it is
sicknessafterHim whom your soul loves, it is a disease whichit were well to
die of. Eating times as to our bodies come severaltimes a day, so take care
that you partake of the flesh and blood of Jesus oftenand often. Do not be
satisfiedwith yesterday’s receiving of Jesus, but receive Him againtoday. Do
not live upon old fellowships and experiences, but go to Jesus hourly, and be
not contenttill He fills you againand againwith His love. I wish that we could
become spiritually like certain animals that I know of, which stand in the stall
and eatall day long and half through the night too. Here I would fain possess
the appetite of the horse-leech, and never feel that I must pause. Happy is that
Christian who can eatabundantly of heavenly meat, as the spouse bids him,
and never cease eating while Christ is near, but feed on and on till far into the
night, and then awakewith the dawning to feed on the bread of heaven. It is
well to have set tines for eating. People are not likely to flourish who pick up
their food just as they can, and have no regular meals. It is wellto have settled
times when you can sit down to the table and take your food properly.
Assuredly, it is wise to have appointed periods for communing with Christ, for
meditating upon Him, for considering His work, and for receiving His grace.
You know with children it is “little and often,” and so with us, let it be line
upon line, and precept upon precept, here a little, and there a little. A bit
betweenregular meals often comes very sweetto a laboring man, and so,
though you have specialseasonsforgetting alone with Christ, do not deny
yourself a snatch by the way, get a wafermade with honey betweenwhiles,
and lay it on your tongue to sweetenyour mouth—a choice thought, a
Scripture text, or a precious promise about Jesus. I am sure there is one
thing I can sayabout this feeding upon Christ that never was a man guilty of
gluttony or of surfeit in feeding upon Christ’s flesh and blood. The more you
eat of Christ the more you will be able to eatof Him. We readily wearyof any
other food, but never of this heavenly bread. We are often in an ill condition
in reference to our Lord because we have not had enough of Him, but we can
never have too much. When we receive Him to the full, we still find that He
enlarges our capacity, and we all the more are able to enjoy His preciousness.
Observe that the text tells us that the believer is to eat His flesh and drink His
blood, for observe that Christ is meat and drink too, He is all in all, and all in

one. A man must not only eat Christ, but he must drink Christ, that is to say,
he must not receive Christ one way only but all ways, and not a part of Christ
but all of Christ, not merely Christ’s flesh as incarnate, but Christ’s blood as
the slaughteredsacrifice andbleeding Lamb. You must have a whole Christ,
and not a divided Christ. You have not truly receivedChrist if you have only
said I selectthis and that virtue in Him, you must open the door and let a full
Christ come in to take possessionofyour soul. You must receive not merely
His work, offices, graces, but Himself, His whole self. Those receive no grace
at all who reject the blood of Christ, for that has specialmention. Oh, what
hard things I have heard said, even of late, about those that preach the blood
of Christ. Let them say on if they will, it is at their peril, but as for me, my
brethren, I hope I shall deserve their censures more and more, and preach the
blood of Christ yet more abundantly, for there is nothing that can give
satisfactionto the soul and quench that fierce, strong thirst which is aroused
within our nature, but the blood of Jesus as of a Lamb slain from before the
foundation of the world. Beloved, it is one sweetthought that the flesh and
blood of Christ are food suitable for all conditions. This suits babes in grace,
and is equally suitable for old men. This suits sick Christians, they cannot
have a daintier morsel, and this suits Christians in the full vigor of their
strength. This is meat for morning and meat for night, and meat for midday,
this is meat to live by and meat to die by—ay, he that eats it shall never see
death. This is meat for feastdays, and this is meat for days when we mourn
and
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sorrow, meatfor the wilderness, and meat for the royal gardens—meat, I was
about to say, for heaven itself, for what better food shall our souls find even
there than His flesh and blood? And remember all the Lord’s people are free
to eat it—ay, and every soul that hungers for it is welcome. No one needs to
ask whether he may have it. It is setforth to be food for all believing souls,

Jesus was insisting we eat his flesh and drink his blood

Jesus was insisting we eat his flesh and drink his blood

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