Please turn with me in your Bibles to the Gospel of John, chapter 6, beginning at verse 44. Jesus says, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day. It is written in the prophets, and they will all be taught by God. Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. Not that anyone who has seen the Father except he who is from God; he has seen the Father. Truly, truly I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. 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.”
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 will also 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.” And Jesus said these things in the synagogue as he taught in Capernaum.
From there we turn to the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians, chapter 11. Paul writes, “For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night when he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ’This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way also, he took the cup after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.’ For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. Whoever therefore eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.” This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your Word, the Word that became flesh in Jesus and the Word he has taught us, giving us his teaching, giving us truth, and giving us faith in him. Help us to believe and help us to be sustained by your Word, by our faith, and by your Holy Spirit. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
As Jesus began to conclude this occasion of teaching in Capernaum, he accused many of those following him of following him for the wrong reason, for following him only because they ate their fill after he had fed them for a day. He authoritatively declared that he is the bread of life, claiming that by believing in him and by trusting in him, they will receive eternal life and have hope for a resurrection into life on the last day.
Then he explained to them that all those who rightly and sincerely follow him do so only because God the Father is first drawing them to God the Son. Inversely and oppositely, Jesus is also clearly explaining that unless the Father draws them, then no one can come to Christ. The fact is that since a person can only choose Jesus because the Father draws them, a person cannot choose Jesus at all because they’re not capable of it if God the Father does not draw them.
And so, since some people are chosen by the Lord and drawn, all the rest therefore are chosen to not be drawn. Again, that is what we mean by double predestination.
But now Jesus concludes with a new teaching, yet one that is really an old scriptural truth. He says, “It is written in the prophets, and they will all be taught by God.” He’s referring back here to the prophet Isaiah, who wrote, “All your children shall be taught by the Lord, and great shall be the peace of your children,” as well as the prophet Jeremiah, who wrote, “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.”
These prophets were describing the New Covenant, wherein the Lord will inscribe his Torah, his law, into the chosen people who will then keep it. This New Covenant is the covenant that Jesus initiated during his last supper when he altered the Passover remembrance. He inaugurated it with his atoning death on the cross, established it with his resurrection on the third day, and confirmed it on Pentecost when his Holy Spirit was poured out onto all believers.
This covenant is the ultimate fulfillment of all the Lord’s promises, but especially that which was given to Abraham in Genesis 15:1-17, that Abraham’s descendants would be numbered like the stars and that they would possess the land of their sojournings as an everlasting possession, and that the Lord will be their God.
We also know this New Covenant as the Covenant of Grace because God has given us this gracious benefit on account of his love and mercy, rather than for any deservedness on our part. This covenant is different from the Covenant of Works, which the Lord made with Adam, whereby God promised him life upon the condition of perfect obedience, wherein the Lord commanded the man saying, “You may surely eat of every tree in the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for on that day, the day you eat of it, you shall surely die.”
So here, when Jesus connected the fact that the elect are sovereignly drawn to him by the Father with this prophesied and promised New Covenant, he was establishing and proclaiming himself as the mediator of that covenant in the same way that Moses was the mediator of the old covenant given by the Lord at Mount Sinai.
So Jesus is explaining how all those whom the Father has given him through the Father’s drawing are now being united with him as the members and beneficiaries of that New Covenant.
Drawing further upon the prophets and their understanding, Jesus continues to explain how we may know that we are covered by this covenant, saying, “Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me.” His evidence is the Holy Spirit’s work of regeneration and our cardiac transformation, along with his indwelling and our possession of the mind of Christ.
Since the Spirit is the one who will remind and teach us all things, if we believe and trust in Christ for our salvation, then we may know that we are regenerate because the Holy Spirit enables us to believe and trust Jesus because the Father is drawing us to Christ. But if a person does not come to Christ, then clearly they have not learned from the Father and they are not regenerate.
That is why nobody can be brought to faith by rational arguments or human persuasion alone. Remember, we cannot be convinced to believe in and trust Jesus Christ except that the Father first draws us and that the Holy Spirit teaches and persuades us.
Then, to conclude his argument concerning the bread, Jesus declared, “Truly, truly I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. 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.”
Jesus is contrasting pisto faith in him against the Jews’ reliance upon Moses, especially their oral Torah and traditions. Jesus implies that even somebody who trusts and obeys Moses fully, although they might live a good, decent, and moral life, they will still die and be condemned if their own righteousness is the source of their confidence, because no one is perfect and no one can perfectly keep the law of God except for the Son of Man.
But if the Jews would follow and trust Jesus and rely upon the righteousness of Christ as their confidence, then not only will they live good lives well, but they will also enjoy that eternal life to come.
See, the important key for us to remember is that Jesus is speaking plainly, using allegory. He uses metaphors and other figures of speech, and even while using allegory, he is still speaking literally, because while the plain literal meaning is also true, it’s only true because of the greater spiritual and figurative meaning that it supports.
Both the ancient Israelites and first-century Jews had the manna in the wilderness. That manna was the words and the teaching of Moses, a spiritual food given to guide and sustain their souls. However, that manna lacked something essential. The Jews possessed a framework, a facsimile or a copy, but they lacked the essence and true substance of the Divine teaching. They had been given enough to sustain them for a time, but they lacked the fullness that Christ brought and revealed.
Meanwhile, the teaching of Jesus is the true bread. It is the substance of which Moses’ manna was the shadow. Jesus brought the fullness, and he fills everyone drawn to him with the Holy Spirit and an understanding of the truth. Jesus gives us the reality because he is the ego eimi, the I Am, because he is the real possessing being within himself as the ultimate author and creator, as the Word of God, the Logos, who is Theos and Anthropos.
So, eating the manna means to obey and trust Moses, to participate in the grace that Moses mediated, whereas to eat the bread of Christ means to obey and trust Jesus, to participate in the grace that he mediates. We must remember that while Moses’s manna did not itself save, it was ultimately made effective by Christ on the cross, as the real completed and filled out the shadow.
The crux which precisely defines what this bread is that Jesus is talking about is when he says, “And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” The bread which the elect, everybody drawn by the Father to Christ, shall eat and enjoy and benefit from is the entirety of Jesus, the righteousness and righteous obedience of Christ for the sinfulness and rebellion of humanity—the life of his body, his sarx, which is given for the spiritual life of the world, the cosmos, and the resurrection of his body, his glorification, ascension, and enthronement above all creation.
See, his original Jewish audience, they did immediately hear and understand Jesus to be using the language of sacrifice. For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I’ve given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls. For it is the blood that makes atonement by the life. That’s what prompted them to be disputing among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” Because they were seriously questioning whether Jesus was suggesting a combination of human sacrifice and cannibalism. They were taking him literally when clearly he was speaking figuratively.
This allegory of bread—through it Jesus was plainly talking about a sacrifice of atonement, where he offers himself as the replacement for the many, the elect. It’s because Jesus clearly spoke literally and figuratively, and since the gospel writers and other New Testament authors often understood Old Testament prophecies literally and figuratively, it’s important that we do likewise.
The distinctions between literal and figurative understandings in scripture are a significant challenge for interpretation because we believe that the Bible is inherent, meaning it’s free from error and infallible, meaning that it’s unfailing. But it can only be understood if it’s also clear. So we must accept the Bible as being literally true—literally true as the inspired authoritative Word of God, literally true in both its recording of history’s scope and in the particular details, literally true in all that it implies and means, and literally true with all of its definitive statements, declarations, and decrees.
To believe that, we must also accept that the Bible uses different written genres to convey this literal truth, like historical narratives, legislative decrees, exposition and explanation of divine oracles, poetry, metaphors, similes, and other figures of speech, revelations, prophecies, symbols, allegories, and parables.
For when Jesus spoke literally by saying, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven,” he spoke literally through the use of allegory and metaphor, meaning that Jesus was not insinuating that he is literally bread or that bread is literally him. Bread remains bread and his body remains his body, even though the two are figuratively related.
Jesus did not suggest that he must be practically eaten or even that a physical act of eating must occur because eating is eating. But what is the figurative consequence of eating? Just generally, there is a unification between the eater and what’s eaten—a union of the substance and essence that preserves our life, something that we just naturally understand in a literal and figurative sense, even as we think of our lunch and our dinner.
But once again, these Jews demonstrate that they just did not get it. They missed the point that Jesus was making. It’s not the food that really matters but the sustaining and preservation of life that eating it symbolizes. It is not the thing itself which is substantially and substantively important, but what it represents.
That’s the critical understanding concerning the literal and figurative nature of our two sacraments: baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Between the thing and the thing symbolized—baptism, the washing with water like we just witnessed with Silas this morning, whether it’s done by sprinkling or full immersion—symbolizes both the washing away of our sins and our burial with Jesus as we become dead to our sin, signifying and sealing our union into and with Christ to partake in all the benefits of his Covenant of Grace.
And it’s also literally a physical and visible sign of our professed membership in the church—the visible church, the body of Christ—because Christians do not believe that bathing someone with water is what actually washes our sin away. Instead, we believe that it’s the righteous value of the Spirit’s application of Jesus’s shed blood to us, the imputation of his righteousness to us, and his taking our sin onto himself.
Christians do not believe that a person must be physically killed or buried in order to no longer be accountable for our sin, but it’s through our union with Jesus Christ because of his death, burial, and resurrection—dying in relation to sin—that counts as our having died to sin. So baptism and its spiritual effect is both literal and figurative.
Meanwhile, what Jesus says next closely relates to the Lord’s Supper and how we understand it, saying, “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 will also 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.”
So baptism is the sign and seal that shows forth our having been brought into the Covenant of Grace, this New Covenant that Jesus is talking about. This figurative meal he’s describing relates to an important element of covenant-making rights in the ancient Near East—a sacrifice and a concluding celebratory meal.
There are several elements identified as universally being present whenever a covenant was made: there’s a preamble and historical prologue that identifies the maker of the covenant, what they’ve done for the beneficiary. There’s an identification of the parties involved, a list of stipulations, rules, and commands, a list of consequences—blessings and benefits for obedience and fidelity and curses and penalties for disobedience or rebellion. There’s a confirming oath made before witnesses and a ritual sacrifice and meal.
All of those elements are identifiable within the Mosaic Covenant given at Mount Sinai, and they’re also identified here in this passage. Where the preamble is “I am the bread of life,” which parallels “I am the Lord your God.” The prologue, “Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness and they died,” parallels “Who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.”
The “I am” is “I am the living bread that comes down from heaven,” which parallels “And the Lord said to Moses, thus you shall say to the people of Israel, you have seen for yourselves that I have talked with you from heaven,” where they’re both swearing by heaven as their witness.
The stipulations, “If anyone eats this bread,” where eating represents our believing, parallels the entirety of the moral law—the Ten Commandments. The consequences of “he will live forever” parallels the blessings and curses of the covenant, by declaring that if anyone eats this bread, he will live forever—and also, if anyone does not eat this bread, he will perish.
There’s a sacrifice in the meal, and “the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh” parallels Moses sending young men of the people of Israel to offer burnt offerings and sacrifice peace offerings of ox to the Lord, and then they beheld God and ate and drank.
So yes, these Jews were partially correct when they took Jesus literally because he was talking about a literal human sacrifice—his willing sacrifice of himself as our substitute. But when he was speaking about the meal, he referenced the figurative and spiritual means of our participation and unification into the covenant.
When Moses ratified the covenant with Israel, after the young men offered their sacrifices, Moses took half the blood and put it in a basin, and half the blood he threw against the altar. Moses took the blood, the other half, and he threw it on the people, saying, “Behold, the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.”
So the altar was washed in half the blood, which symbolized the Lord’s participation in the covenant. The people were washed in half the blood, which symbolized their participation and their heirs in this covenant. The blood from these sacrifices was used because it represented the ultimate consequence of covenant faithlessness, transgression, and breaking—death.
Consumption of the sacrifice by both parties, eating it together, and by the application of the blood identified them with the animal sacrifice. If the people failed to keep their covenant obligation of obedience, then they would die just like the sacrifice. Or, if the Lord failed to keep his covenant obligation, namely all of his promises, then he would die—then it would be proven that the Lord is not and could not be God.
So here, Jesus’ declaration of, “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’ll raise him up on the last day,” describes something comparable to the Israelites being bathed in the blood of the covenant by Moses. If we eat the flesh and blood of the Son of Man, then we are united to Christ in this figurative and spiritual sense. This also means that we’re literally united with him in the New Covenant, his Covenant of Grace, which was made with the Father in heaven to redeem and rescue a people for himself as his treasured possession.
This same understanding of the covenant is found in Luke and in First Corinthians, where Luke and Paul describe Jesus’s final Passover meal as Paul says, “For I received from the Lord what I deliver to you,” talking about the breaking of the bread and the giving of the cup. Jesus’s breaking of the bread and saying, “This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me,” symbolizes the breaking of his body—the suffering of his tortuous and agonizing death when he sacrificed his life in our place as an atonement sacrifice—and our eating identifies us and unites us spiritually with his death and his expiation of our sin.
His giving of the cup and saying, “This cup is the New Covenant in my blood. Do this in remembrance of me,” symbolizes the shedding of his blood as part of this covenant-making process and our drinking identifies us with and unites us into the covering of his righteousness through the covenant.
So throughout this whole teaching, Jesus was never speaking about some kind of literal bread that would preserve human life forever, nor any other kind of literal food. Everything he said was concerned with the literal and spiritual substance of our substance—not the physical elements, but that essence and the substance that is faith in Jesus and the willing power of God to save.
See, Paul understood what Jesus taught here as he explained, “Whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.” He communicated the same connection between the Lord’s Supper and Jesus’s death as there was between the Israelites and Moses’s sacrifice through our claim of participation in Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection.
If we fail to obey our obligation under the Covenant of Grace, which is believing in Christ, then we justly suffer the fullness of the penalty and curse of death and condemnation that we deserve for our sin. Paul taught the literal identification and union with Christ in his new covenant through spiritual means by this figurative act. That’s why he warns those who eat and drink in an unworthy manner—which means those who do not believe or trust in Christ or those who willfully live in unrepentant sin and have no fear of God—that they are guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. They shall rightly bring judgment upon themselves by participating because, by partaking wrongly, they are still identifying themselves with the covenant and become liable to the fullness of its curse.
So although this teaching of Jesus is related and connected to the Lord’s Supper, the supper is not what it’s principally about. Communion is just one example of the full implication of Jesus’s teaching. The Lord draws us to Christ, and if we believe and trust in him because the Father’s given us to the Son and the Holy Spirit’s regenerated us, then we are brought into this Covenant of Grace as full beneficiaries.
As beneficiaries of the covenant, not only do we receive assurance of God’s love, peace of conscience, joy in the Holy Ghost, an increase of grace, and perseverance to the end, but we also get to enjoy our fellowship in the Lord with Christ along with all of our fellow believers. We enjoy this fellowship by the exercise of the ordinary means of grace: the sacraments, the Word, and prayer.
By baptism, we show our commitment to Christ, and his commitment to us is reaffirmed through the Lord’s Supper. We proclaim Christ’s death until he returns by remembering what he did for us on the cross, and we remember our union with him when we discern his presence spiritually in those elements we consume.
Through the reading, hearing, and preaching of scripture, God’s authoritative Word is communicated to us. His voice is heard, his will for our lives is made known, and his plan of salvation is explained so that our hope might be confidently increased and ensured. His promises are reminded to us for our comfort, and through prayer, we speak to God—not to change his mind—but because we know he loves us and he wants to hear from us. Not to ask him for what we want, but to receive what we need. Not to tell him our thoughts, but so that our thoughts would become more like his.
So ultimately, what it means for us to feed on his flesh and drink his blood is that we are in communion and fellowship with God, that we are united with Jesus now and forevermore, and that we will reign with him and eternally enjoy dominion in the blessed realm, living under his loving authority with all peace and justice. Surely you would agree that this is wonderfully good news!
So once again, finally, we are asked, why are you seeking Jesus? Is it just to enjoy some of the good things in this life—the temporary benefits of our Christian fellowship? Or is it because of who Jesus really is—the mediator of a better, of the best covenant, the guarantor of your salvation, the hope of life in the world to come, and your brother, King, and the Sovereign Lord? Amen.