The Mystery Of Jesus' Body And Blood

We continue our study of John 6, especially these words of Jesus:

I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh." The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" So Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever." - Jhn 6:51-58 ESV

The longing for immortality continues. It always will. This longing also serves as a strong entertainment theme. Last year the movie The Immortals was a big hit. Once again Hollywood drew upon Greek mythology to portray a mortal man, Theseus, chosen by Zeus to lead the fight against the ruthless King Hyperion, who is on a rampage across Greece to obtain a weapon that can destroy humanity. 

We who follow Jesus know the true name of the king on a rampage across the planet. He indeed has a weapon that not only can, but is destroying humanity. Satan's weapon is sin. He tempts us all to rebel against our true King. He began to wield his weapon as the first man and first woman appeared in the Garden (Gen. 3:1-27). As a result all of us are denied access to Eden and the tree of life. Our Creator's curse is upon us (Gen. 2:16-17). We all die since we all are descended from Adam and Eve. The Apostle puts it this way,

For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. - 1 Cor 15:21-22 ESV

 As in Adam all die . . . What does Paul mean when he says we are all in Adam? Is he saying that we are all descended from this one man? At this point I won't get into any discussion about evolution, etc. I've done that earlier. Indeed, Paul's point is that all men can trace their lineage back to Adam and his wife Eve. In that sense, Christ Jesus is the Second Adam. In speaking about how we will be filled with and controlled by the Holy Spirit in the resurrection, Paul continues,

Thus it is written, "The first man Adam became a living being"(Gen 2:7); the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. - 1 Cor 15:45-49 ESV

We know much about DNA and genetics in our day. Consequently, it is no longer difficult to conceive of a man or woman passing on to his or her descendants various physical characteristics, as well as tendencies to develop various diseases. In that sense, I bear the image of my father. I look very much like him. I also have developed heart disease, just as he and as my maternal grandfather did. So it goes on the physical level. 

Paul writes about another level of human existence, namely the inner life of a man, his soul if you will. We are by nature sinful, inwardly filled with the desire to disobey the commands of God to love only Him and to love others as ourselves (Ps. 51:5; 58:3; Eph 2:1-3). This is the course and direction of the entire world of man. In that sense we all are children of Adam and the curse of death rests upon us as it did upon our father Adam. We bear his image.

By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return." - Gen 3:19 ESV

Jesus came to change all of this. He is the Bread from heaven and whoever feeds on him will live forever. As he said,

Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me.

What does it possibly mean to eat his flesh and drink his blood? Is this figurative or literal language? My answer is Yes! It is both, for we are dealing with a paradox, a mystery as profound and wondrous as the fact that Jesus is both God and Man! Were he but a man, his sacrificial death would never suffice as payment for the sins of the entire world. Yet Jesus himself said he came to offer his life as the ransom for all men's sins (Matt. 20:28). And Paul concludes

. . . that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised. - 2 Cor 5:14-15 ESV

For this to be possible, he must also be God, very God of very God, of one substance with the Father, as the Father himself said: this is my beloved Son (Matt. 3:17; 17:5. See the Nicene creed ). He bears the image of his Father (Col. 1:15). Thus he is the Bread that came down from heaven and whoever believes on him will be saved (1 Tim. 4:10). In that sense to believe in him is to eat his flesh and drink his blood.

But there is more to this mystery. Jesus took the bread of the Passover, broke it and give it to his disciples and said,

"Take, eat; this is my body." And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, "Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins." - Matt 26:26-28 ESV

Is this also a figure of speech? More on this profound mystery next time.

Some Hard Words Of Jesus

If you're familiar with Bible stories at all, you've heard about Manna, that strange bread that the Children of Israel found on the ground each morning during their 40 years of wandering in the Sinai peninsula. But what was it? And that's the very point. We don't know what it was. In fact, that's is what the Hebrew word Manna means, what is it?

Of course there are many speculations and attempts to find some kind of natural explanation for what was going on. Here's what the Bible says about it.

And when the dew had gone up, there was on the face of the wilderness a fine, flake-like thing, fine as frost on the ground.When the people of Israel saw it, they said to one another, "What is it?" (Hebrew man hu) For they did not know what it was. And Moses said to them, "It is the bread that the LORD has given you to eat. . . When the people of Israel saw it, they said to one another, "What is it?" For they did not know what it was. And Moses said to them, "It is the bread that the LORD has given you to eat. ... 

Now the house of Israel called its name manna. It was like coriander seed, white, and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey. 

Moses said, "This is what the LORD has commanded: 'Let an omer of it be kept throughout your generations, so that they may see the bread with which I fed you in the wilderness, when I brought you out of the land of Egypt.'" And Moses said to Aaron, "Take a jar, and put an omer of manna in it, and place it before the LORD to be kept throughout your generations." As the LORD commanded Moses, so Aaron placed it before the testimony to be kept. 

The people of Israel ate the manna forty years, till they came to a habitable land. They ate the manna till they came to the border of the land of Canaan. - Exd 16:14-15, 31-35 ESV

Now the manna was like coriander seed, and its appearance like that of bdellium (resin). The people went about and gathered it and ground it in handmills or beat it in mortars and boiled it in pots and made cakes of it. And the taste of it was like the taste of cakes baked with oil. - Num 11:7-8 ESV

And the manna ceased the day after they ate of the produce of the land. And there was no longer manna for the people of Israel, but they ate of the fruit of the land of Canaan that year. - Jos 5:12 ESV

The Wikipedia article offers scholarly attempts to provide a natural explanation for Manna.

Some scholars have proposed that manna is cognate with the Egyptian term mennu, meaning "food".[13] At the turn of the twentieth century, Arabs of the Sinai Peninsula were selling resin from the tamarisk tree as man es-simma, roughly meaning "heavenly manna".[12] Tamarisk trees (particularly Tamarix gallica) were once comparatively extensive throughout the southern Sinai, and their resin is similar to wax, melts in the sun, is sweet and aromatic (like honey), and has a dirty-yellow color, fitting somewhat with the Biblical descriptions of manna.[14][15] However, this resin is mostly composed from sugar, so it would be unlikely to provide sufficient nutrition for a population to survive over long periods of time,[14] and it would be very difficult for it to have been compacted to become cakes.[15]

So back to Jesus' argument with the people who followed him after he had provided bread for thousands out in the wilderness north of the Sea of Galilee as recorded in John 6. They pointed to the Manna provided to the people of the Exodus. Jesus' response:

I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh." - Jhn 6:48-51 ESV

When the people heard him say this they took it literally and began to dispute among themselves, saying, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" - Jhn 6:52 ESV. Jesus made no attempt to correct their understanding. He simply said

"Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven,not like the bread the fathers ate and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever." - Jhn 6:53-58 ESV

So there it is—right in the face of the people who followed Jesus to Capernaum after the sign he had provided by feeding thousands. Did he literally feed thousands with five loaves of bread and two small fish from a little boy's lunch? There was no natural explanation for it, even though many unbelievers have suggested such silly things as that he gave them an example and so encouraged people to share their lunches with one another. Those who came after him to Capernaum knew otherwise. They did not dispute the wonder. They had witnessed it and wanted Jesus to do it again and again. The feeding had literally happened.

And now Jesus is literally saying, "Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him."

Is there any indication in John's account of Jesus' words that we should take this in any other manner than literal? The Israelites literally ate Manna, even though they did not know what it was. That bread literally sustained them for all forty years of their journey and it stopped as soon as they crossed the Jordan river. No one, neither the Jews of Capernaum nor Jesus disputed it.

Likewise, nobody argued with Jesus about what he had done. He literally fed thousands and thousands of people with a little boy's lunch. This is why they wanted to make him their king. No more working for food. With Jesus as the head of this new government, all they had to do was line up and accept the daily handout. The miraculous Manna would once again be available. What a deal!

So now when Jesus says that he is the Bread that provides eternal life, where do we find the right to say he's talking symbolically or in picture language? It certainly sounds like he means us to take him literally, like he really does want us to eat his flesh and drink his blood. At least that's how the text reads.

It also appears that this is John's account of Jesus pointing to what was later called the Lord's Supper in which, as Jesus and his disciples were eating the Passover, he took unleavened bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to them, and said,

"Take, eat; this is my body." And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, "Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom." - Mat 26:26-29 ESV

So we're facing the same dilemma as many of his disciples at Capernaum. When they heard his words, they said, "This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?" - Jhn 6:60 ESV

A hard saying indeed. Who can listen to words that seem literally to say eat my flesh and drink my blood? It just doesn't make sense. There has to be another explanation, a more natural one. Many, many disciples of Jesus right up to the present day try very, very hard to soften his words.

We'll have to pursue these hard words next time.