What did HE say? (continued)
Bread of Life (Part 6)
We must remember that the words that Jesus spoke over 2000 years ago were meant first for those people, the Jews in Palestine, and secondarily for all those that followed over the centuries. There are sayings that confound us today but that may have made real sense to the people of that day; phrases and idioms that are quite meaningless to us. There is much in the gospels that we still today do not understand as a people and much that cannot be readily understood by people who focus on the physical side of life or who interpret scripture only as it effects the life of the flesh. Much of what we have been discussing in this series, Bread of Life, falls outside of the range of human understanding and is difficult to understand even when interpreted spiritually as we have been trying to do.
Continuing with our text we pick up with the Jews commenting to each other about what the Master is saying causing Jesus to reply. The text is: ‘The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying, How can this man give us his flesh to eat? Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him. As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me. This is that bread which came down from heaven: not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead: he that eateth of this bread shall live for ever” (John 6:52-58).
Now this is exceedingly difficult to understand and the Jews did not understand including many that were considered His disciples. There are however some clues to His meaning; one in an earlier verse and two others in later verses. Let us list these before we address the quote above.
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“Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you: for him hath God the Father sealed” (John 6:27).
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“It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life” (John 6:63).
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“Therefore said I unto you, that no man can come unto me, except it were given unto him of my Father” (John 6:65).
In these three verses lies much of the understanding necessary to interpret His sayings. We begin with the Jews bewildered and murmuring among themselves How can this man give us his flesh to eat? We know that they are believing that Jesus is telling them that they have to eat His flesh literally and we know that this cannot be true. Jesus reply is that not only do they need to eat His flesh but also they need to drink His blood and this He says twice; once saying that ye have no life in you if you do it not and in the second saying that if you do it you will have eternal life. It is commonly believed that Jesus reply refers in some way to His crucifixion and that the flesh and the blood are the product of this event; that we should figuratively eat His crucified flesh and drink His blood become a sort of symbol of believing.
Let us look at this in the light of our discussion from yesterday as well as in relation to the three ‘clue’ verses above. Yesterday, with Vincent’s help, we determined that the idea of flesh was not to do with His body but with His nature imbued with the fullness of the Spirit of God. He is the Word; He is with God; He is God; and He became flesh. So His nature is as God here on the Earth. This idea is all from the prologue of the Gospel of John which is the spiritual perspective of who Christ Jesus is. Jesus tells us in the three verses above that we should labour for the meat or bread that endures and that He gives this to us; He tells us that the words that He speaks are Spirit and Life and He tells us that we cannot come to Him unless the Father gives us the ‘it’ required. This should tell us that the whole matter needs to be seen in these ways. We need to be spiritually awake and focused on the Kingdom, it is here that we are drawn to the Father. We need to be seeking the things of the Kingdom and not the things of the world and we need to see the words of the Master as Spirit and as renewing our conscious lives. Taking this all as a whole, His flesh, His nature, is at one with God and it is God; we must ‘eat’ it or partake of it to nourish our spiritual lives. We ‘eat’ it by prayer, meditation, reading and doing the words of the Master; by focusing on the Spirit life and not the carnal; by doing all those things that enable us to be in His Presence, in the Kingdom of God.
The above is our understanding of the Master’s use of the word for flesh; but what about the idea of blood. As with flesh the lexicon and Strong’s list the normal understanding of the word and Vincent does not cover it as all except in a possible relationship to the Passover. Let us look; the Greek word for blood is haima and the lexicon says of this: blood, of man or animals; refers to the seat of life; of those things that resemble blood, grape juice; blood shed, to be shed by violence, slay, murder**. From Strong’s we get: blood; extended meanings: killing, death, sacrifice***. Vincent tells us that drink his blood means appropriate the saving merit of His death****. None of these helps us to see the reality of the blood, as we can see His nature quite clearly in flesh, unless we consider them as meaning the same thing. Some clues to this can be found in the 1828 version of Webster’s and these definitions are scripture based as well. Listing only the appropriate ones: Life, (Shall I not require his blood at your hands? 2 Sam.4.); Fleshly nature; the carnal part of man; as opposed to spiritual nature, or divine life, (Who were born, not of flesh and blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. John 1.); Man, or human wisdom, or reason, (Flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee, but my Father who is in heaven. Matt.16)*. Using this we can say that the Master’s reference to both flesh and blood is the same; for our purposes we will look at them in that way.
Jesus is telling them and telling them again that they must eat His flesh and now that they must drink His blood and we know from the dialogue that they do not understand. The Master goes on to to explain further the significance of this saying: “For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed” which Vincent tells us should read true meat and true drink****. He goes on to say that “he that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him” which is the true evidence of the Christ Within. The Father, the Inner Man, the Spirit, draws the attention of the personality and the personality responds and the Christ is born in the heart of man and this is the I in him. At the same time we should understand that same Christ Within is Christ in the larger sense and so dwelleth in Him. The Christ Within is the working of the Spirit self in the personality consciousness and in this sense the Christian claim that He comes to live in us true.
The Master ends this segment in saying that “as the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me“. Vincent tells us that the King James Version (KJV) translated this wrong and it should be rendered “As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father; so he that eateth me, he also shall live because of me” as it is in the Authorized Standard Version (ASV)****. This also makes more sense especially in our context. We live spiritually in our personality lives because we nourish ourselves and the Christ Within on the spiritual food that He gives to us.
We should notice that Jesus repeats again in this segment “I will raise him up at the last day“. Four times He makes this statement for which we have no understanding. Christian thought puts this into the realm of a final resurrection but if we have eternal life of what use would a resurrection have. Spiritually there seems no answer for the idea of last day or raise him up and this phrase is used only in John’s Gospel. As we said earlier, we will have to wait for some revelation knowledge to properly understand this saying.
This is the end of the dialogue. The next segment deals with the disciples and their unbelief and we will cover this in the next post along with a summary of this entire theme and what it should mean to us. For now I leave you with some food for thought regarding the leaving of many of the disciples. The problem with those who leave the Master can be seen as one where the Inner Man has not awakened in the life of the personality. The carnal man, the conscious personality, living his life in form knowing the pain and suffering of everyday life with its desires and its lusts. He believes that he has found something in the teaching of the Christ that can make a difference in his life and help to ease his pain. He follows Jesus and listens to His words and does them until something difficult arises that he is not prepared to accept or to do. He falls then into the realm of the Parable of the Sower and finds himself as one of the places where the seed, the word, the Christ has fallen. Looking at this from the perspective of the personality we can see that some of them were the way side, others were stony places, some were thorns and some, the ones that stayed, were good ground.
“When any one heareth the word of the kingdom, and understandeth it not, then cometh the wicked one, and catcheth away that which was sown in his heart. This is he which received seedby the way side. But he that received the seed into stony places, the same is he that heareth the word, and anon with joy receiveth it; Yet hath he not root in himself, but dureth for a while: for when tribulation or persecution ariseth because of the word, by and by he is offended. He also that received seed among the thorns is he that heareth the word; and the care of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, choke the word, and he becometh unfruitful. But he that received seed into the good ground is he that heareth the word, and understandeth it; which also beareth fruit, and bringeth forth, some an hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty” (Matthew 13:19-23)
Note on the Quote of the Day
This daily blog also has a Quote of the Day which may not be in any way related to the essay. Many of these will be from the Bible and some just prayers or meditations that may have an influence on you and are in line with the subject matter of this blog. As the quote will change daily and will not store with the post, it is repeated in this section with the book reference and comment.
Leaving this Quote of the Day for another day.
I send out thoughts of love and peace and healing to the whole universe: to all trees and plants and growing things, to all beasts and birds and fishes, and to every man, woman and child on earth, without any distinction. If anyone has ever injured me or done me any kind of harm, I fully and freely forgive him now, and the thing is done forever. I loose him and let him go. I am free and he is free. (from The Presence by Emmet Fox; 1886 – 1951).
A prayer of universal Love for all of Gods Great Creation. A selfless prayer for all.
- * Websters Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1828 and 1913
- ** from New Testament Greek Lexicon on BibleStudyTools.com
- *** Strongest Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible – 2001
- **** Word Studies in the New Testament; Marvin R Vincent D.D. 2nd edition, 1888
