(53) Then Jesus said unto them.--This is hardly strong enough for the original. It is rather, Jesus therefore said unto them. The words follow upon those he has heard from them.

Some of them have spoken of eating His flesh. Others may even have pressed this to the reductio ad horribile. Eat His flesh! Shall we, then, drink His blood too? In no less than seven passages of the Pentateuch had the eating of blood been forbidden (Genesis 9:4; Leviticus 3:17; Leviticus 7:26-27; Leviticus 17:10-14; Leviticus 19:26; Deuteronomy 12:16; Deuteronomy 12:23-24; Deuteronomy 15:23); and we find in later times the strength of the feeling of abhorrence, as in 1Samuel 14:32, and Ezekiel 33:25, and in the decree of the first Judaeo-Christian Council (Acts 15:29). In the fullest of these passages (Leviticus 17:10-14), the prohibition is grounded upon the facts that the blood is the physical seat of animal life, and that the blood maketh atonement for the soul. It was the life-element poured out before God instead of the life of the soul that sinned. Such would be the thoughts of those who strove among themselves as to what His words could mean; and to these thoughts He speaks with the "Verily, verily," which ever expresses a spiritual truth that He alone could reveal. . . .

Verses 53, 54. - Jesus said to them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye have eaten the flesh of the Son of man, and have drunk his blood, ye have not life in yourselves. He that eateth (τρώγων, "eateth with pleasure, eagerness," is repeated four times, as perhaps a stronger expression than φάγων) my flesh and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. This result, it should be seen, is identical with the promises made to "beholding," "coming," "believing." Life and resurrection will really follow these acts and conditions; but then it is obvious that "beholding," "coming," "believing," must veritably cover what is contained in this last statement. There is no mere tautology. These words express more fully the original condition. They are not new conditions, but a further imaginative exposition of the former ones. The believing involves an assimilation into the very substance of the believer's nature of that which he here specifies as "flesh and blood." Reuss and Luthardt, and to some extent Moulton, admit that by "flesh and blood" he means no more than "flesh;" that under "flesh" is included "blood;" that by both he simply means "himself." Lunge urges that by "flesh" is meant "human nature" - his "manhood;" but by "flesh and blood" (see Matthew 16:17; Galatians 1:16), "inherited nature" - the humanity of Christ in "historical manifestation." But he passes on to say that this manifestation culminates, is completed, in death, and, thus completed, the life of Christ is the nourishment of the real life of man. Tholuck: "The addition of αῖμα to σὸρξ only expresses, by its main constituents, the sensible human nature." The great bulk of interpreters take the additional mention of drinking of his blood to connote an entire acceptance of the atoning sacrifice, of the Paschal blood shedding, to be effected for the deliverance of the world (so Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Grotius, Lucke, Neander, Keim, Meyer, Weiss, etc.). "Eating of the flesh," then, would mean acceptance of his humanity, of the manifestation of the eternal love in the Son of man; and "drinking his blood" would mean entire mental assimilation also of the terrible culmination of his mission in violent, sacrificial death. This momentous condition of life eternal is stated both negatively and positively. Without the participation in this twofold aspect of the Lord and his work, there is no life. Unless "coming to him," "believing on him," means an acceptance of his humanity, an apprehension of that Personality in whom the Word was incarnate, and an utter surrender of the soul to the rending of that flesh and shedding of the blood which is the life, i.e. to the death of the Son of man, it is not the coming to him and believing on him of which he has already spoken. He that does thus eat and drink will satisfy a craving after nourishment and refreshment. Unless a man consciously or unconsciously accepts, absorbs, the sublime and wondrous gift of the Divine humanity from the second Man, the Lord from heaven, rather than from the first man, he has no life in himself. Human nature apart item the new creation and the new beginning is a dying, not a living, entity. The new life quickened by the Incarnation is not all that Christ would give. The blood of the Son of man, to be accepted in the same way. is a further exposition of the object of faith. The "eating" and "drinking" are therefore phrases which portray the very intimate and close form of that contact with, and dependence upon, the incarnation and the sacrifice of the Son of God, which Christ erewhile defines in broader, vaguer metaphor. A great question has arisen on these verses - whether our Lord is pointing to, or making prophetic reference to, the institution of the Eucharist, about which the fourth evangelist is strangely silent. Certain of the early Fathers - Chrysostom, Cyril, and Theophylact - have given it this meaning, though the great bulk of the patristic writers - Ignatius, Irenseus, Origen, Clemens Alex., Tertullian, and even Cyprian (though the passage may be applied by them to the Eucharist as one way or method of spiritually eating and drinking the Son of man) - do most obviously interpret the passage itself of direct and spiritual, not the indirect and sacramental manducation of the living Bread. The same view is presented by Eusebius, Athanasius, and Cyril of Alexandria. For the first four centuries all that was done was to apply the argument of ch. 6, in order to press the importance of communicating sacramentally. This led the Romanist writers to go further, and regard the participation in the sacramental body and blood as essential to life eternal. Pope Innocent I., Bishop of Rome, A.D. 402, was the first distinguished man who brought up out of this passage "the necessity of communicating infants;" and from the time of his synodical epistle (A.D. 417) the Latin Chinches interpreted the passage, "Except you receive the Eucharist, you have no life in you." The views of Augustine were vacillating or are dubious. Fulgentius shows that he had, to some extent, broken loose from this narrow view when he concluded that baptism without the Eucharist did convey all the benefits of the body and blood of Christ. Numerous Schoolmen (see Albertinus, 'De Eucharistia,' lib. i.e. 30; and Wake, 'Disc. of the Eucharist,' p. 20) rejected the sacramental interpretation, and the Reformers most justly repudiated it. Luther, Melancthon, Beza, Grotius, Owen, Lampe, Cocceius, asserted that the whole construction of the passage, which treats "coming," "believing," as the complete conditions of life and resurrection, must not be held to transform an, as yet, uninstituted ceremonial into the sole method of "believing." Notwithstanding this wide protest, the opponents of the authenticity of the Fourth Gospel - Bretschneider, Strauss, Baur, Thoma, Hilgenfeld, and numerous others - see in this passage the conception of a mystically disposed second-century divine, who placed the Eucharistic ceremony in the lips of Jesus long before the institution. But while this view can be without hesitation rejected, it is obvious that there was a spiritual participation in the "humanity" and the "sacrifice" of the Son of God which Christ called upon the Capernaites to experience - one which must have been possible to Old Testament saints, to little children; to all who are acceptable to God and accepted by him. Such participation is, without doubt, aided and rendered peculiarly possible, thinkable, in the Eucharist. These words were timed, therefore, to bear the rich and twofold sense of Holy Scripture. Observe:

(1) The use of σῶμα rather than σάρξ, in every account of the institution of the Supper, is not without special meaning; σάρξ and αῖμα meaning the whole of his humanity, and the entire fulness of the sacrifice for the world; while σῶμα καὶ αῖμα suggest that organized personal life in which the Incarnation culminated, and the blood which was shed for the remission of sins. The σῶμα is not without reference to the new "body" in which the spirit would be ultimately enshrined.

(2) The phrase, "drinking of the blood," is peculiar to these verses. In the Eucharist we "drink of the cup which is the new covenant in the blood of Christ." "The hand of history," says Edersheim, "has drawn out the telescope; and, as we gaze through it, every sentence and word sheds light upon the cross, and light from the cross carrying to us the twofold meaning - his death and its celebration in the great Christian sacrament."

Parallel Commentaries ...

So
οὖν (oun)
Conjunction
Strong's 3767: Therefore, then. Apparently a primary word; certainly, or accordingly.

Jesus
Ἰησοῦς (Iēsous)
Noun - Nominative Masculine Singular
Strong's 2424: Of Hebrew origin; Jesus, the name of our Lord and two other Israelites.

said
Εἶπεν (Eipen)
Verb - Aorist Indicative Active - 3rd Person Singular
Strong's 2036: Answer, bid, bring word, command. A primary verb; to speak or say.

to them,
αὐτοῖς (autois)
Personal / Possessive Pronoun - Dative Masculine 3rd Person Plural
Strong's 846: He, she, it, they, them, same. From the particle au; the reflexive pronoun self, used of the third person, and of the other persons.

“Truly,
Ἀμὴν (Amēn)
Hebrew Word
Strong's 281: Of Hebrew origin; properly, firm, i.e. trustworthy; adverbially, surely.

truly,
ἀμὴν (amēn)
Hebrew Word
Strong's 281: Of Hebrew origin; properly, firm, i.e. trustworthy; adverbially, surely.

I tell
λέγω (legō)
Verb - Present Indicative Active - 1st Person Singular
Strong's 3004: (a) I say, speak; I mean, mention, tell, (b) I call, name, especially in the pass., (c) I tell, command.

you,
ὑμῖν (hymin)
Personal / Possessive Pronoun - Dative 2nd Person Plural
Strong's 4771: You. The person pronoun of the second person singular; thou.

unless
ἐὰν (ean)
Conjunction
Strong's 1437: If. From ei and an; a conditional particle; in case that, provided, etc.

you eat
φάγητε (phagēte)
Verb - Aorist Subjunctive Active - 2nd Person Plural
Strong's 5315: A primary verb; to eat.

the
τὴν (tēn)
Article - Accusative Feminine Singular
Strong's 3588: The, the definite article. Including the feminine he, and the neuter to in all their inflections; the definite article; the.

flesh
σάρκα (sarka)
Noun - Accusative Feminine Singular
Strong's 4561: Flesh, body, human nature, materiality; kindred.

and
καὶ (kai)
Conjunction
Strong's 2532: And, even, also, namely.

drink
πίητε (piēte)
Verb - Aorist Subjunctive Active - 2nd Person Plural
Strong's 4095: To drink, imbibe. A prolonged form of pio, which poo occurs only as an alternate in certain tenses; to imbibe.

the
τὸ (to)
Article - Accusative Neuter Singular
Strong's 3588: The, the definite article. Including the feminine he, and the neuter to in all their inflections; the definite article; the.

blood
αἷμα (haima)
Noun - Accusative Neuter Singular
Strong's 129: Blood, literally, figuratively or specially; by implication, bloodshed, also kindred.

of the
τοῦ (tou)
Article - Genitive Masculine Singular
Strong's 3588: The, the definite article. Including the feminine he, and the neuter to in all their inflections; the definite article; the.

Son
Υἱοῦ (Huiou)
Noun - Genitive Masculine Singular
Strong's 5207: A son, descendent. Apparently a primary word; a 'son', used very widely of immediate, remote or figuratively, kinship.

of Man,
ἀνθρώπου (anthrōpou)
Noun - Genitive Masculine Singular
Strong's 444: A man, one of the human race. From aner and ops; man-faced, i.e. A human being.

you have
ἔχετε (echete)
Verb - Present Indicative Active - 2nd Person Plural
Strong's 2192: To have, hold, possess. Including an alternate form scheo skheh'-o; a primary verb; to hold.

no
οὐκ (ouk)
Adverb
Strong's 3756: No, not. Also ouk, and ouch a primary word; the absolute negative adverb; no or not.

life
ζωὴν (zōēn)
Noun - Accusative Feminine Singular
Strong's 2222: Life, both of physical (present) and of spiritual (particularly future) existence. From zao; life.

in
ἐν (en)
Preposition
Strong's 1722: In, on, among. A primary preposition denoting position, and instrumentality, i.e. A relation of rest; 'in, ' at, on, by, etc.

you.
ἑαυτοῖς (heautois)
Reflexive Pronoun - Dative Masculine 3rd Person Plural
Strong's 1438: Himself, herself, itself.


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NT Gospels: John 6:53 Jesus therefore said to them Most certainly (Jhn Jo Jn)