When Is the Bible Literal, And When is It Not?

Tom:

The name of our program, if you have just tuned in and are listening to us for the first time, is Search the Scriptures Daily.  We try to encourage our listeners to look to the Bible as their chief source for discerning the truth about all things which pertain to life and godliness.  And that’s what the Bible claims: to have the definitive answers on such things.  And, at the heart of this is the gospel of salvation.  In this segment of our program we are going to the gospel of John verse by verse for at least two very good reasons.  One, it’s a great place to start if you have never read the Bible before and if you don’t read the Bible you are left with trying to figure out God on your own, which is hopeless. And two, it’s spelled out very simply what one needs to do to spend eternity with God.  We are currently in chapter 6 and picking up with verse 52.  “The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying, ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’”

Dave:

Well Tom, let me just go back because the previous verse is where he says—

Tom:

We’re used to going back, Dave.

Dave:

Yeah, right.

Tom:

I mean, we want to explain as best we can these verses.

Dave:

Right.  It’s the previous verse where he talks about giving his flesh so let me just go back to that for a moment.  Verse 51, “I am the living bread which came down from heaven:”—now Tom, we’ve emphasized it but lets remind our listeners and maybe some new listeners, one of the problems here is: are you going to take this literally or is it figurative?  And, as you’ve said often, we take it literally when it’s literal, when it should be taken literally, though there are places where it is obvious that it is not to be taken literally.  Now, let’s take this verse literally.  “I am the living bread which came down from heaven”—then Jesus is a loaf of bread:  if any man eat of this bread, he shall live forever—how often do you have to eat of this bread?  It just says, if anyone eats, so just take one bite and swallow it you will never die.  Now, if this is literal we are talking about physical death, this is physical bread, it must be physical life, okay?  So, if the Catholic says this is the Eucharist, you only need to go once.  You’ve eaten of Jesus, you will never physically die, and you don’t need to eat of him again.  And yet they say we’ve got to go back again, and again, and again to get another installment.

Tom:

The thing would apply to evangelicals if they took this literally with regard to their celebration of the last supper.

Dave:

Well, there are some, for example, the Lutherans, Presbyterians, at least the Lutherans, take this as, at least this is his body, they don’t believe in transubstantiation.  John Calvin taught that this was his body so some Calvinists must say that the real presence of Christ is in this bread—

Tom:

The Lutherans call it consubstantiation.

Dave:

Right.  But it must be very clear, he is not physical bread, he is speaking spiritually, he is speaking of spiritual life.  In fact, Deuteronomy 8: “God says man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”  Jesus is the living Word of God; this is what he is talking about.  When he says, “You will live forever,” he means spiritually.  You want to have eternal life? Then you must believe in Jesus.  It’s very clear, we have seen it in previous verses when he said, “You eat of me—that means you believe in me.”  So, he says, “The bread that I will give is my flesh which I will give for the life of the world.” Now, we can’t take it literally, it can’t be his literal flesh because he’s not literally a loaf of bread and how could it be bread and flesh at the same time? That’s not literal and it’s not literal physical life that he is talking about, obviously, but spiritual life.  So, it can’t be that he means you must eat my flesh.  The only way you could eat his flesh would be through transubstantiation.  Someone is going to have to change this wafer, this piece of bread, into the body and blood of Christ.  Never, ever, ever does it say that, never once is there a hint that anyone has the power to transform bread into the body and blood of Christ.  Now, at the Last Supper, Jesus is sitting there in his physical body, he is holding the bread in his hands, he says, “Take, eat this, this is my body.”  I don’t believe any disciple there thought that the bread, that piece of bread, had turned into Christ’s physical body, he’s in his physical body, or that the wine had turned into his physical blood.  It’s obviously a symbol.  This is symbolic and “when you take this you are doing this in remembrance of me,” Christ said, “of the sacrifice once for all that I offered of myself upon the cross.”  The Last Supper, of course, was yet in the future.  And, bringing us back to this chapter, verse 52, Tom, the verse you opened with, before I got us going back one verse—“The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying, How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”  That’s after his statement; “…the bread that I will give is my flesh which I will give for the life of the world.”  Obviously, they don’t understand what he is saying; they are trying to take him literally.  And Tom, another good example of misunderstanding of this nature, is Nicodemus, when Jesus said, “You must be born again.”  Nicodemus takes him literally and he says, “Well, how can a man be born when he is old? Must he enter his mother’s womb again and be born?”  And Jesus says, “That’s not what I am talking about, I’m talking about spiritual life and spiritual birth and so the Jews, “—Jesus says, “I will give you my flesh, I will give it for the life of the world,” and they say, “Well, how can this man give us his flesh?”  And Jesus said, “Well of course, it’s going to be through transubstantiation and the priests will have the power to take a loaf of bread and turn it into my flesh”— No, he doesn’t say that!  Jesus says—well, he emphasizes it again—“Verily, verily,” verse 53, “I say unto you, Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you have no life in you.  Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life:  and I will raise him up at the last day.  For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.”  Tom, as you know—

Tom:

Dave, lets keep going.

Dave:

Okay.

Tom:

“He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him.”  Now my question for these verses from 53 on and we read verses earlier in John 6.  Why?  Why would Jesus use this terminology? And it grossed a lot of people out.  They wouldn’t use that term back then but they thought it—

Dave:

It caused some misunderstanding, for sure.

Tom:

And, you know, normally figurative language is expressive.  It’s trying to communicate something that, it’s not beyond words but it pictures things in maybe a broader or in a way that is richer in some ways.  But this doesn’t seem to have that affect.

Dave:

Okay, two things, Tom.  First of all, the Catholic Church, which says we must take it, literally, does not take it literally.  There were popes, who said a child or a baby, although he had been baptized, if it had not eaten the Eucharist, it went to hell.  They were overruled by later popes.But if you are going to take it literally, a baby that dies, lets say, a few hours after it has been born, it has not eaten this bread of the Eucharist, it’s gone because Jesus, I think that’s one of the reasons he is emphasizing this, he is saying this is something that you must do.  And you say why is he saying this?  I think there is only one reason why he is emphasizing it; he is the sacrifice for our sins.  He is the fulfillment of the Old Testament sacrifices.  In the Old Testament, the priest had to eat of the sacrifice, so he is teaching us the preset of all believers, number one, every person must eat of this sacrifice.  Number two, he is telling us that he is the fulfillment of the Old Testament sacrifices.  But he has made it very clear, “He that cometh to me and believeth on me has everlasting life.”  So, he is saying you’ve got to believe that I am a real physical man, I became a flesh and blood man, I’m not just a spirit, but God literally became a man.  Jesus is the only begotten, he is the one and only God/man and we’ve got to believe that.  And furthermore, as I think you have mentioned in past programs, it was against the law to drink blood.

Tom:

That makes it all the more interesting because, as you said, he is the sacrifice but the Old Testament condemned one aspect of what he is talking about.  Unless you drink my blood—how do you resolve that?

Dave:

Then it is obvious, it would be obvious to the Jews you would think, that he is not speaking physically, or he is leading them into deliberate disregard of and disobedience of the law where this is a very strong statement from God and it’s one of the elements of kosher.  And to this day Jews do not take blood.  So, it cannot be literal.  Furthermore, it’s not literal—how can millions of wafers simultaneously be the whole person of Christ and what is the value of physically ingesting him?  We are talking about spiritual life, eternal life; it does not come through anything physical.  But he is emphasizing, “You must believe.  I am a real flesh and blood man.”  In fact, God himself can’t make a bookkeeping entry in heaven.  God had to become a man to pay the penalty for our sins and it’s tough the way he is stating it but, Tom, we began this program with a supposed contradiction and we have said that that causes us to dig deeper and Jesus is causing us to think very carefully about who he really is and how eternal life is given to us.