Continuing With the Gospel of John

Tom:

We are going through the Gospel of John and we are currently in chapter 6.  Dave, we are going to jump right into this, beginning chapter 6: 57, and I’m going to read, probably, through 61.  “As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father:  so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me.”  “This is that bread which came down from heaven: not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead:  he that eateth of this bread shall live for ever.

These things said he in the synagogue, as he taught in Capernaum. Many therefore of his disciples, when they had heard this, said, This is a hard saying; who can hear it?  When Jesus knew in himself that his disciples murmured at it, he said unto them, Doth this offend you?”  Dave, one of the things that I would like to wrestle with on this is, we’ve been saying for the last few weeks as we have been going over this idea of eating his flesh and drinking his blood is yelling out that you’ve got to take that figuratively or you are in serious trouble, theologically, from the Old Testament standpoint, just so many reasons.  But now we have his disciples having problems with this.

Dave:

Well Tom, it’s a difficult saying on the one hand: on the other hand, if you take verse 57, “I live by the Father; he that eateth me shall live by me.”  Would anyone really think that Jesus meant you were going to take bites out of him, you are going to eat him?  The next verse, verse 58 says this is the bread that came down from heaven.  He’s not talking about a physical loaf of bread, obviously, and then he does, in fact, explain it, that this isn’t physical.  He says, “…not as your fathers did eat manna and are dead.” That was a physical bread that came down from heaven every morning, there it was, and they gathered it and ate it.  So, he says it’s not physical like that and it doesn’t give you the kind of life that comes to an end.  So he says, “…in contrast to the manna, and those who ate of it, died physically,” he says, “He that eateth of this bread shall live forever.”  Obviously, he doesn’t mean physically live forever anymore than he means this is a physical loaf of bread.  But Tom, I don’t like to go back over it again but, unfortunately, the Catholic Church wants to make it physical, and so they say—

Tom:

The Lutheran church, as well.

Dave:

Yes, and many Presbyterians, as well.  And they say that this bread, this is really the body of Jesus, the blood of Jesus is the cup, and so forth and we must recognize that this is really Christ that we are eating physically.  Well, then you shouldn’t ever die physically if this is physical.  I think, Tom, it should be very clear that he is speaking of spiritual life.  I don’t want physical life forever.  Is that what he is offering?  No, he is offering something far beyond that.  Well, let me look into that which is spiritual and accept what he is saying then.  Let’s not try to drag this down to the level of materialism.  This is a form of religious materialism which is tragic, really, but it says, verse 60, “Many therefore of his disciples, when they heard this said, ‘This is a hard saying, who can hear it?’”

Tom:

They didn’t understand.

Dave:

No, they were hung up on this, you’ve got to eat my flesh and drink my blood.  We need to go back to verse 40 again.  It’s clear in many verses.  He says, “Everyone which seeth the Son and believeth on him may have everlasting life.”  Now he didn’t mean, physically sees the Son.  If he meant, physically sees the Son, that is, the Son of God, we would have to limit this to those who physically saw Jesus when he walked this earth or those who are going to have some vision of Jesus.  No! And believeth on him!  It’s what we were talking about in our Q & A.  To believe on Christ is the only way that I can receive the gift of eternal life.  It’s not wrapped up in some package that I can physically take—Oh, it’s in an envelope here and I will physically take this and take physical possession of this and now this is eternal life that I now have in my hand and it’s some physical thing that I hold.  No!  That’s nonsense!  And anyone recognizes that.  So we by faith feed upon Christ:  as the scripture says, Man doesn’t live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.  It must be:  Oh, if I will take the physical word of God, written in ink on pages of the Bible and I will tear these pages out and I will chew this and swallow it.  Obviously, that is not what it is talking about; it’s speaking of something spiritual.  But to try to make it physical, we are missing eternal life; we are missing the spiritual truth that Christ wants to bring to us.  So, he says, you know, he realizes they are murmuring. He is trying to help them.  The end of verse 61, “Doth this offend you?”  You are offended by what I am saying.  And then he goes on and gets, maybe a little more difficult or maybe not.  Verse 62, “What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before?”  Well, he says, would that help you?  You want to see me, physically go back to heaven?  I’m the One who came down from heaven, I’m saying I am the bread that came down from heaven, [and] you want to see a loaf of bread go back up into heaven? Then would that terminate this feeding? You can’t feed on me anymore because I have gone back to heaven?  Now, the Catholic Church, of course, says, well, we can take this, we can transmute it, it’s called transubstantiation.  We can change the substance, in other words, into the body and blood of Christ, although it still looks like and tastes like and any chemical analysis would say this is bread, but under the appearance of bread it has been transformed into the body and blood of Christ.  That’s not what Jesus is talking about.

Tom:

Dave, verse 63, if somebody is not quite sure of what we have been saying, what we have been trying to explain, let’s hear it from the words of Jesus.

Dave:

Christ is saying this to try to help those who have been offended by what he said, to try to help them to understand.

Tom:

Verse 63, “It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing:  the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.”

Dave:

Here we go, Tom.  This is what he has been saying all along.  You are going to—oh Tom, I mean, it breaks my heart when I think of those who believe that they can change this little wafer or bread, whatever it is, into the flesh of Christ.  And Christ says the flesh profits nothing!  The words that I speak, they are spirit, they are life, I am offering you eternal life; it comes by faith if you will believe who I am.  Believe that God literally became a flesh and blood man. He had to!  You know, the Gnostics or the various heresies back in the first centuries and saying that Christ wasn’t really a man, he wasn’t really physical, this was some kind of a phantom, some spirit being, or whatever.  That will never do!  Paul, for example, argues in Romans 5, “It was by a man, Adam, that death came, sin came into this world.  So, it must be by a man, the last Adam, the second man,” we’ve talked about that before, 1 Corinthians 15.  Jesus is the second man; he’s the last Adam, the progenitor of the new race.  God himself alone could pay the price of our redemption, but he had to become a man in order to do it.  And, he died for our sins:  his blood was shed; his blood was poured out upon the cross.  The body of Jesus Christ lay in the grave without any blood in it and when he rose from the dead, he said to his disciples, “Handle me and see, a spirit doesn’t have flesh and bones as you see me have.”  The body of Jesus has no blood in it today, his resurrected glorified body, nor will ours.  The life of the flesh, that is, the old creation, the old flesh is in the blood.  That has been poured out upon the cross as the payment of our redemption and this is what he is saying.  There is something that I must take by faith and believe it and I can have this gift of eternal life if I will believe what Christ says.

Tom:

Dave, I am thinking about Thomas and the words of Jesus to Thomas after he doubted, because he didn’t literally see Jesus or physically handle him.  Jesus reminded him that—how does it go?

Dave:

“Blessed are those who have not seen but have believed.”