John 6:51 “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”

In the preceding blogpost I indicated that when Jesus declared himself to be the bread of life he caused much anger on the part of the Jews and consternation for his disciples. He stated: “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.” (John 6:53-54) In explaining this, Jesus was careful to indicate that this would only be accepted by those whom the Father has drawn to him (Jesus) and that the words he had spoken to them “are spirit and they are life.”

It is recalled that in John 4:24 Jesus taught that “God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.” I believe that some of Christ’s teachings cannot be analyzed and comprehended with the mind, it is spirit to spirit. The Apostle Paul also made clear that: “The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.” (1 Corinthians 2:14)

To the degree that you must consume food and water daily to sustain your physical body, in the same way it is necessary to accept the fact that the broken body and shed blood of our Lord was for you personally. This is the sustenance for your spiritual life. Lose sight of that and you will not find the energy to daily take up your cross and follow Jesus. This is why the repeated observance of Holy Communion is valuable. It helps us remember Jesus and the sacrifice of his body and blood.

Jesus’ disciples, though they loved him, considered his teaching about being the bread of life as difficult to accept, perhaps because the Holy Spirit had not yet been given to them. But the Holy Spirit is now with us so we can ask him to lead us to acceptance of this truth. Some years ago while I grappled with this concept of Jesus being the bread of life, it was the Holy Spirit who opened my understanding with the following:

“My words are mysterious only to those who refuse to believe that I am who I say I am – the very Son of God. To those who believe they will understand that because of my love, I gave up my body, my earthly form that I might win them to the Father. In giving up my body and blood, it freed me to redeem them and return to my Father from whence I came, to now make intercession for them. So, in saying that they should eat my body and drink my blood, it signifies that they too can come to God and be partakers of His divine nature. The natural man has no part with God, only the redeemed who having accepted my sacrifice for them have a direct path to God.”