What Did Jesus Mean By: 'We Will Never Hunger?'

Tom:

We’re going through the gospel of John with a particular emphasis on the gospel and the salvation we have in Christ, and as we have been saying, our life in Christ begins with our understanding of the gospel and our acceptance of it by faith.  And John, for those who have never read the Bible, there’s the place to start, this is our encouragement.  Dave, I want to pick up with John:6:35And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.
See All....  “And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life:  he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.”  Dave, lots of people come to Jesus and they get hungry, they get thirsty.

Dave:

Tom, I’m sorry but we have to just tie it in with verse 34.  They had been talking about manna and God fed our fathers, now what sign do you show?  These guys are hungry and they want Jesus to do another miracle and feed them and they say:  “Lord, evermore give us this bread,” verse 34.  They think he is talking about physical bread and that’s when we have verse 35.  Jesus says, “I am the bread of life…”—Wow!  “He that cometh to me shall never hunger, he that believeth on me shall never thirst.”  We are just repeating what you just read.  Obviously Tom and we sort of got into this last week—obviously he is not talking about something physical because otherwise he is not telling the truth.  You just said it, you said many people come to Christ, they believe in him and they still hunger and thirst.

Tom:

I’ve come to Christ but I had breakfast this morning and I’m ready for lunch.

Dave:

Yes.  So, we have to understand first of all, and Tom, again, we get into an area—we don’t want to offend the Catholics, but we would like them to check it out from the Bible and from common sense to understand that receiving Christ is something that you do by faith.  We believe on him; we don’t eat him physically.  In fact, Tom, lets just jump over to verse 63—we’ll get there eventually—but Jesus says:  “It is the spirit that quickeneth; or that giveth life, the flesh profiteth nothing:  the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.”  Jesus is talking about believing what you just said earlier, the gospel.  That’s how our life begins in Christ, when we believe that Christ died for our sins, was buried and rose again the third day and so forth, and this is what Jesus is talking about.  So he says:  “He that cometh to me,” that means comes and believes on me, “shall never hunger; he that believeth on me shall never thirst.”  It’s like he said to the woman at the well, we mentioned it last week; “You drink of this water and you will thirst again.  You drink of the water that I give you, you will never thirst,”—and she said:  Oh, give me that water, again, thinking he’s talking about something physical.  No, he is not.  So now, the tragedy is that the Catholic turns this into something physical.  And, when we get on to these other verses where Jesus said:  Except you eat my flesh and verse 53:  “Except you eat the flesh of the Son man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.”  And they say well, that’s the Eucharist and our priests have the power to turn that into the body and blood of Christ.  Now they say Christ did it first at the Last Supper.  He took bread, he said, “Take, eat, this is my body and they gave him a cup; This is my blood shed for you.”  Well now, I don’t think anyone sitting at that table, any of those twelve disciples seeing Jesus sitting there in his physical body, handing them a piece of bread, would think that he meant that this bread was his physical flesh.  It’s not, it’s a symbol.  And again, we have mentioned it before, whenever Jesus spoke to the multitude it says that he always spoke in parables.  You get that in Matthew:13:34All these things spake Jesus unto the multitude in parables; and without a parable spake he not unto them:
See All..., for example.  When ever he spoke to the multitude he spoke in parables.  He’s not speaking literally; he is giving a physical illustration of a spiritual truth. When he says I am the true vine and you are the branches, nobody takes that literally.  When he says I am the shepherd, you are the sheep, you don’t take that literally.  He says I am the door, you don’t take that literally but here, the only place the Catholic says, but we must take this literally, we must literally eat his physical body and drink his physical blood.  But it’s clear, then if that is the way you want to interpret it, then you have to be consistent.  And if he is speaking physically when he says you will never hunger and you will never thirst, that must mean you will never hunger physically and you will never thirst physically again.  Furthermore, even if you only applied it to the Mass, to the Eucharist, you would only have to take it once, right?  He says, “you come.”

Tom:

Dave that was my point.  As a former Catholic I received the Eucharist, I received it by faith.  I took these elements, consumed them, but it never worked out that way.  I hungered, I thirst physically.

Dave:

Well yes Tom, not only that, for physical food, but you had to come back and take the Eucharist again right?

Tom:

Right.

Dave:

You have, in fact the Catholic Church says the more often, the better.The more often, the more blessings that—

Tom:

It’s contradicting what Jesus said.

Dave:

Yes, he says you just eat of me once and you will never have to eat of me again.  You could only apply that to faith.

Tom:

To the gospel, to belief in him.

Dave:

That’s right.  When I believe in Christ I don’t have to keep coming back to him again and again.  That’s why I like to ask people—somebody says, well, I believe in Jesus, I’m a Christian.Well, have you ever just come to him personally, opened your heart to him?  Because the scripture does say as many as receive him.  Have you received him?  I am knocking at the door of your heart.  Have you opened the door?  Have you received him by faith?  I have had people say, well, I have done that many times.  Wait a minute!  You can’t do it many times—either he came into your heart, came into your life, either he became your Savior, you received him by faith or you didn’t.  But you don’t do it again and again.  It’s like paying off a mortgage.  Wow!  What a great day when the mortgage is paid off!  But then, you still keep trying to make that monthly payment and you still keep going back to the bank.  Tom, you owe a lot of money to the bank—I pay it off for you, but you keep trying to give me your payments.  You can’t do it.  Either you have received Christ by faith, you have opened the door of your heart to him, he is come in and you have believed in him or you haven’t.  If you have, Jesus said, let’s read it again.  “He that comet to me shall never hunger; he that believeth on me shall never thirst.”  What about John:5:24Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.
See All...?  We had it a few weeks ago—“Verily, verily I say unto you, he that hears my word…” that means he gives heed to it, he believes it—“…he that hears my word and believes on him that sent me has everlasting life and shall not come into condemnation but has passed from death to life.” First John:5:13And he that was healed wist not who it was: for Jesus had conveyed himself away, a multitude being in that place.
See All..., “These things have I written unto you that believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know (present knowledge) that you have (present possession) eternal life.”  Now if you have eternal life today, you couldn’t not have it tomorrow, that wouldn’t be eternal.  So, there is so much here that is so clear.  He’s talking, not about physical eating of him and someone turning a wafer into his body. That just detracts from what he is saying and that gives people a false faith.  They think they are ingesting Christ into their stomachs; they need to receive him into their hearts.  And, when you receive him, when you believe his promise that when he said on the cross, it is finished, and by one sacrifice he has paid the penalty for sin, you are saved eternally and you don’t come back and try to get saved again and again and try to get him to come into your heart again.  It doesn’t happen in installments, it either happens, or it doesn’t happen.  Sorry Tom, I took too long with that.

Tom:

No, Dave, that’s really important.  But look at verse 36:  “But I said unto you, That ye also have seen me, and believe not.”  Again, it keeps coming back to faith, to belief.

Dave:

That’s the problem.  Now we get into some verses that the Calvinists take.  “All that the Father giveth me shall come to me.  Him that cometh to me I will nowise cast out.”  The Father has given us to the Son.  He has given us to the Son in that in honor of his word and fulfillment of his promise, when Christ paid the penalty for our sins, that was accepted of the Father and the Father raised him from the dead.  Now Jesus is one with the Father.  So, we don’t have time to get into that.

Tom:

Dave:

Yeah, Tom, I can’t deal with Calvinism in one minute because it really comes down here where the Calvinist will say, well, you have to be predestined, you have to be regenerated by God, you can’t even understand the gospel and God does this sovereignly.  He sends some people to heaven, he sends some people to hell, [and] that Satan could take a long vacation; he doesn’t need to blind people’s eyes, because God has already predestined some.

Tom:

Well, he’s a relative, really.

Dave:

Yeah, really, but we don’t have time.  I shouldn’t have even said that, Tom.  We couldn’t deal with it but what we have—

Tom:

We will deal with it next week.

Dave:

Right.  What we have been trying to say though, Tom, is so important.  You either believe what Christ said, you have either received him or you haven’t and if you have, you will never hunger or thirst again, you have eternal life as a free gift, and you don’t get that through physically eating a wafer or any other physical food.  Jesus said the flesh profits nothing, the words I speak, these are spirit, and these are life.