Are We to Eat the Flesh of Jesus and Drink His Blood?

Tom:

Dave, as many of our listeners who have been tracking with us, been listening to the program for a number of months, even a year or so, we’ve been going through the Gospel of John—

Dave:

Trying to!

Tom:

Taking our time— 

Dave:

We’re getting there.

Tom:

Going line by line.  And our purpose is really two-fold, that all of us might grow in our personal relationship with Jesus, by increasing our understanding of what He’s communicated to us in His Word.  And, the reason we’ve started with John, [is] because we want to encourage others out there who have not maybe taken the time to read God’s Word.  You know, Jesus kept saying, “to the law and the prophets, it is written,” so if Jesus could keep referring to His Word for encouragement in the faith, to see that this just isn’t, as some people think, religion is wishful thinking, it’s qué sera, whatever anybody thinks is ok.  No, it’s according to His Word.That’s the truth.  That’s where we find the truth that will set us free, and John is the place to start.  It addresses most of all, salvation.  What must we do to be saved?  We’re in chapter 6, and we’re picking up with verse 48.  “I am the bread of life.  Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness and are dead.  This is the bread which cometh down from heaven that a man may eat thereof and not die.  I am the living bread which came down from heaven.  If any man eat of this bread, he shall live forever, and the bread that I will give is my flesh which I will give for the life of the world.”

Dave:

Well, Tom, you usually only read one verse.

Tom:

I thought “I am the bread of life,” would cut it off a little too soon.

Dave:

Well, yeah.  “I’m the bread of life” is an interesting statement.  Of course, all the verses you read He is talking about that, explaining what it means that He’s the bread of life.  First of all, it’s quite obvious—and we’ve emphasized this before—because of the fact that the Catholic Church says we must take Jesus literally.  That is the foundation for the Eucharist, the sacrifice of the Mass, they call it.  They claim their priests have the right to transform that little wafer into the body and blood, by the way, the wafer supposedly contains both the body and blood because very often only the priests drinks the wine—they used to, especially— 

Tom:

Right.  That’s the way it was when I grew up, when I was a Catholic.

Dave:

Right.  Now they’ve liberalized it a bit, so they had to say, I mean, I’ve been at Masses where nobody got to drink the wine but the priest.  And I asked the priest, well, I thought it said body and blood, oh well, the wafer, that includes the body and blood.  So, anyway, the point is, they say “we take Jesus literally.  He said you’ve got to eat my flesh and drink my blood.

And, you Protestants, or evangelicals, whoever you are, you say this is symbolic of a spiritual truth.”  Well, when Jesus says “I am that bread of life,” what do you mean?  What bread?  Show me.  Is this a loaf of bread?Is Jesus a loaf of bread?  What life is He talking about?  This physical life?  Is Jesus saying that He somehow is some kind bread, which if you eat Him, it will enhance or lengthen your physical life?  It’s quite clear that that’s not what He’s talking about. He’s talking about spiritual life, eternal life, and therefore the bread which gives eternal, spiritual life, can not itself be physical.  There is no physical loaf of bread that will do that for you.  He says, “Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness,” that was physical bread,  “and are dead.”  “This,” he’s speaking of Himself, “is the bread which cometh down from heaven that a man may eat thereof and not die.”  Tom, we know that Catholics die physically.  Protestants die physically.  The apostles to whom Jesus was speaking died physically.  So, Jesus cannot possibly be speaking physically.  He’s not speaking of physical bread; He’s not speaking of physical life.  He’s speaking of spiritual life, eternal life, and if that were not the case—we talked about it a few weeks ago, let’s go back and look at verse 35 again.Jesus said unto them, “I am the bread of life.  He that cometh unto me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on Me shall never thirst.”  If He’s talking about physical bread, or literally His physical flesh, and His physical blood, that we must ingest it, then you only have to go to the Mass once.  Not only wouldn’t you have to go to Mass again and eat of Him again, but you would never hunger or thirst physically.  It’s like when He said to the woman at the well, “You drink of this water you thirst again.  The water that I give you, you will never thirst again.”  He’s obviously not speaking physically.  So, I think it’s important that whether you’re a Catholic, or a Protestant, or atheist, or whoever you are, you understand what Jesus is saying.  Jesus is equating “eating of Him” with faith.  He said, go down to verse 40, “Everyone would seeth the Son,” that is, in the eyes of faith, understands who He is, “and believeth on Him may have everlasting life.”This is what He’s talking about.  He is the bread of life, the living bread that came down from heaven, verse 51, well, go ahead Tom.

Tom:

Well, I just wanted to add that there’s kind of an irony here, Dave.  If you ask someone to give a definition of a fundamentalist, more than likely they would say, “Well, he’s a person who reads the Bible and takes everything literally.”  I know, as a former Roman Catholic, we didn’t take things literally.  We accused the Protestants of doing that, except in this case.

And, it’s an interesting reversal.  We as evangelicals believe in taking things literally that are meant to be taken literally.  But if something is a metaphor, a simile, something is symbolic, figurative, that’s the way we’re to understand it.  This is an interesting twist here.

Dave:

It’s quite clear that Jesus is speaking spiritually, of spiritual life, eternal life.  He’s speaking figuratively of Himself as bread and then He must be speaking figuratively of eating His body and drinking His blood.  Now, He goes on, we’ll get to it, I guess, in a few weeks, Tom, who knows how fast you’re going to move us along here, but, He says “the flesh profits nothing.”

That’s towards the end of this chapter.  “The words that I speak unto you, they are spiritual, they are life.”  Interestingly, Jesus quoted it in His temptation in the wilderness, and Moses gave it as coming from God in Deuteronomy 8, where God Himself said “man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”  So, apparently, we “eat” words.  How do we “eat” words — the Word of God?  By believing it.  And, Jeremiah said, “thy words were found and I did eat them, and they were unto me the joy and rejoicing in my heart.”  So, Jesus is talking about believing in Him when He says “eating” Him.  He is the bread of life; He is the Word of life.  And, look, if we take this literally, physically, then it’s cannibalism.  First, of all, we don’t have the literal, physical body of Jesus.  He is in a resurrected, glorified body at the Father’s right hand — never to die again.  But, the Catholic Church teaches that He is continually being sacrificed.  This is the sacrifice of the Mass.  It is said to be propitiatory for the sins of the living and the dead, and the more you eat of it, the more often you go there, the more the sacrifice benefits you.  But, the Bible says He died once for all.  It’s through one sacrifice, by our faith in Him, that we are perfected.  So we have a contradiction.  But, if this is something physical, then the only benefit you’ll get from it is physical.

Tom:

Well, Dave, it’s worse than that.  The Bible condemns the eating of blood, the drinking of blood.  Deuteronomy is very clear on that.  You know, also, sometimes the doctor of the church, Augustine, St. Augustine to Catholics.  He didn’t agree with transubstantiation, that you literally even under the appearance of a the elements being under the appearance of bread and wine became the actual body and blood of Jesus, because he felt eating somebody’s flesh was evil and where he understood something to be evil he couldn’t take it literally.  It must be taken spiritually, or figuratively.

Dave:

Now, Tom— 

Tom:

So, how did they come up with this?

Dave:

Well, it gives them some special power; they have a special power to be able to do this.  Only the Catholic priesthood can change the wafer into the body and blood of Christ.  And that is the only way you can gain life.  You must continually ingest Christ.  You never get eternal life.  You never get what Christ promised that you would never thirst again.  That you would never hunger again, because you have to come back and keep eating this.  Tom, we’re not trying to just attack, and certainly we’re not attacking, we’re reasoning from the Scriptures.  We’re not just trying to oppose Catholicism.Jesus is saying something very important.  He’s saying, “I became a real flesh and blood man.  Unless you believe—” we’ve talked about the virgin birth, “unless you believe that I literally became a real man.I’m not only God, I became a real man so I could be the representative of the human race and die for the sins of the world.  And, if you believe in Me you have eternal life.”This is so important!  People who call themselves Christians or Catholics don’t even believe this.We’d better take what Jesus says literally and He’s telling us the only way to have eternal life is to believe in Him.

Tom:

It’s our only hope, Dave.  Only He could pay the full penalty for our sins.  Without Him, there’s no other way.