John 6:47-58 Truly, truly, I say to you, He that believes on me has everlasting life.… I. HOW CAN THE LORD JESUS GIVE US HIS FLESH TO EAT? 1. In all Christ said He realized that the body is not the man. He was always seeking to win the soul's faith which would be the man's life. We have bodies; we are souls. 2. Since we are spirits there is fitting food for us, and Christ warns us off from fleshly ideas by saying, "It is the Spirit that quickeneth." Christ is the soul's food in His humanity, character, example, sacrifice, spiritual communions. 3. Nothing else can satisfy like this. Every receptive faculty of our soul can live on that incarnate life and renew strength. "I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." 4. Christ is the food of the soul in that He provides and adapts God for man. (1) "In" God "we live, and move, and have our being."(2) But man has failed to live in God. "God is not in all his thoughts." Our souls have lost their home food, preferring to it "the husks which the swine do eat."(3) But God graciously offers Himself to us in Christ Jesus. II. HOW CAN WE BE SAID TO EAT THE FLESH OF THE LORD JESUS. We are obliged to speak of spiritual powers in language only worthy to represent the bodily powers. 1. There is a soul eye which receives the impression of the beauties of the Divine handiwork. The physical eye sees all things alike. 2. The soul ear can catch Divine harmonies to which the physical ear is deaf. 3. The hand of the soul gives all the meaning to what is done by the physical hand. 4. Christ only extended this when He represented the soul as having a mouth and a faculty of digestion. Eating and drinking is a going out of ourselves to lay hold of something outside ourselves that it may become part of ourselves. Men do not live on themselves. Only God being an all-sufficient Spirit can do that. The relation of the soul to outside food we call eating and drinking, believing, thinking, loving, communing. "Man does not live by bread alone."We eat the flesh of Jesus — 1. By the appropriations of faith. Whatever we believe we take into ourselves. 2. By the cherishing of thoughts; by meditations on the perfections of Christ. 3. By the communings of love. We know how two lovely souls in close fellowship nourish in one another all that is lovely, pure, and good.Conclusion: 1. What a dignity our Lord has put on the most ordinary acts of life. 2. Lest we should lose this sacredness out of our common eating and drinking, Christ has set apart one eating time peculiar to Himself. (R. Tuck, B. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life.WEB: Most certainly, I tell you, he who believes in me has eternal life. |
    |