“I, who cannot see, find hundreds of things to interest me through mere touch. I feel the delicate symmetry of a leaf. I pass my hands lovingly about the smooth skin of a silver birch or the rough shaggy bark of a pine. I feel the delightful, velvety texture of a flower and discover its remarkable convolutions and something of the miracle of nature is revealed to me. Occasionally, if I am very fortunate, I can place my hand gently on a small tree and feel the happy quiver of a bird in full song.
“At times, my heart cries out, longing to see these things. But if I can get so much pleasure in mere touch, how much more beauty must be revealed by sight?
“Yet those who have eyes apparently see little. The panorama of color and action which fill the world are taken for granted. It is a great pity that in the world of light the gift of sight is used only as a mere convenience, rather than as a means of adding fullness.” - Helen Keller
52 The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” 53 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. 54 Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. 55 For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. 56 Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. 57 As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. 58 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.” 59 Jesus said these things in the synagogue, as he taught at Capernaum.
60 When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” 61 But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, “Do you take offense at this? 62 Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? 63 It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. 64 But there are some of you who do not believe.” (For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him.) 65 And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.” 66 After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. 67 So Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?” 68 Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, 69 and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.” 70 Jesus answered them, “Did I not choose you, the twelve? And yet one of you is a devil.” 71 He spoke of Judas the son of Simon Iscariot, for he, one of the twelve, was going to betray him.
- John 6:52-71
Why Flesh and Blood?
Up to this point, Jesus has spoken (at first) somewhat elliptically about consuming Him. He began with “I am the Bread of Life; whoever comes to me shall never hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst” (John 6:35). He doesn’t outright speak about eating, but lets the symbol of bread and hunger do all the work.
Then, He dials it up a notch: “This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.” (John 6:50) I am bread, and if you eat this bread, you won’t die. A little more strange…
And then finally, He says, “the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” (John 6:51). I am bread—as in, my *flesh—*and you must eat that bread.
And the crowds rightly see what Jesus is getting at: “The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” (John 6:52). Jesus sounds like He is advocating cannibalism. He isn’t. But you can forgive the crowds for thinking that. Jesus seems to keep tilting towards something that sounds unthinkable. And, when He could have quite easily swept away misunderstandings, He instead doubles-down: “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.” (John 6:53).
Why did you have to say that, Jesus?
And He just continues, relentlessly beating this bizarre drum:
- Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. 55 For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. 56 Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. - John 6:54-56
These words sound so strange to us—and we will examine why Jesus seems to intentionally be offensive here in our next point—but before we look at that, let’s try to understand what the actual words mean.
So, why flesh and blood?
- “flesh and blood” is a euphemism in the Bible for a human being (see 1 Cor 15:50; Matt 16:17; Heb 2:14; Eph 6:12). But Jesus’ use here isn’t limited to just His status as a human being—but as a human being who is offered up as a sacrifice.
- Hebrews 2:14 tells us that Jesus took on “flesh and blood”—became a human—so that He might die to “destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil.”
- The consequences of sin is death. Blood represents life. The devil is the prosecuting attorney in the courtroom of God who demands blood.
- “Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God. 11 And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death. - Rev 12:10-11
- This shows us that Jesus holds nothing back from us. We talk about something of value to us by what we invested into it: I poured my heart and soul into that project…sweat and tears…I gave my flesh and blood to make that happen. When we say things like that, we are speaking metaphorically; we mean, “I gave up my time, my energy to make this happen.” We rarely speak literally like that. We mean two things: (1) this cost me dearly and (2) this is very valuable. So too, as Jesus looks at us and what it will take to redeem us from our sins, He knows: this will cost me dearly—I will in truth, not figuratively, give my flesh and blood. My body will be broken, my blood spilled. Because these people—sinful, wayward, unworthy people—are very dear to me, dear to the Father, dear to the Spirit. The heart of Christ for us is revealed in how He holds nothing back from us, not even His own body and blood.
- Jesus does not merely offer up his flesh and blood, but commands us to eat and drink them. We must have a personal encounter with Jesus. You must “taste and see” that the Lord is good.
- They feast on the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your delights. - Ps 36:8
- How do we have this personal encounter with Jesus? Jesus told us earlier in the chapter. Jesus tells the crowds: Do not work for the food that perishes, but the food that endures to eternal life. They reply, What work can we do to get that? Jesus answers: “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” (John 6:29). The work you must do to eat the bread of life is to believe in Jesus.
- Only believe, and you have eaten already. - Augustine
- The Lord’s Supper is a clear connection here.
- A message of union with Christ: this is my body…this is my blood.
“There is more good to be enjoyed in him than in everything or all things in this world….There is enough in him to answer all our wants and satisfy all our desires. Children, if they come to Christ and set their hearts on him, will find that in him it is better for them and will be sweeter to them than anything that is to be had in the…provision of their parents, and better than anything that is to be found in their parents' houses. Christ has the bread of life in him; their souls may feed and feast upon that which will be much better than anything they are ever entertained with at their fathers' tables.” (Edwards, Children Ought to Love the Lord)
Why Does Jesus Speak So Offensively?
To anyone, at first glance, Jesus’ words about eating flesh and drinking blood sound offensive, but they would have been exceptionally offensive to the Jewish audience because (1) Jesus is speaking in a synagogue (John 6:59) and (2) according to Old Testament law, Jews were not permitted to even eat meat that had blood in it, let alone drinking blood outright! **We are repulsed by that image, but for the Jews the natural aversion to something so graphic would have been strengthened by the purity laws of Moses—to consume blood in any form renders you impure, unclean.
60 When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” - John 6:60
It is a hard saying! And their question is more profound than they realize. Who can listen to the words of Jesus? I think that’s the main point of this passage—can you hear Jesus? Can you listen to Him?
In the Chronicles of Narnia, we are told about the story where Aslan the Lion creates Narnia through a song. Uncle Andrew, the skeptic, notices that he hears a song, And he had disliked the song very much. It made him think and feel things he did not want to think and feel. Then when he notices that it is a Lion singing, he scoffs and tells himself that there is no way a Lion could be making that noise because “Who ever heard of a Lion singing?”
And the longer and more beautiful the Lion sang, the harder Uncle Andrew tried to make himself believe that he could hear nothing but roaring. Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed. Uncle Andrew did. He soon did hear nothing but roaring in Aslan’s song. Soon he couldn’t have heard anything else even if he had wanted to. And when at last the Lion spoke and said, ‘Narnia awake,’ he didn’t hear any words: he heard only a snarl. - The Magician’s Nephew
What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing. It also depends on what sort of person you are. - The Magicians Nephew
But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, “Do you take offense at this? 62 Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? - John 6:61-62
Why does Jesus ask that question? He is referring to Himself as the Son of Man, the seemingly divine-human figure from Daniel 7 who ascends to the Ancient of Days upon a cloud and receives an eternal kingdom.
The question, I think, is to examine the cause of the unbelief in the crowd. Jesus has provided evidence to them, worked miracles, evoked the Biblical story of the Exodus…yet, they did not believe. And so, Jesus asks them: What if I dropped all modesty and you saw me in my unveiled glory, ascending to the Father, cementing my identity as the Son of God? Would you still find my teaching offensive?
Would they?
“A sight of the greatness of God in his attributes, may overwhelm men…[Seeing only his greatness] the enmity and opposition of the heart, may remain in its full strength, and the will remain inflexible.” (Jonathan Edwards, “True Grace, Distinguished from the Experience of Devils”)
Jesus may be able to overpower you externally with a shock and awe campaign of His power…but that will not change your heart. If you squeeze a rubber ball in your hand, it will change its shape as long as you keep squeezing. But as soon as you let go, it returns to its previous shape. The crowds could be bowled over by Jesus unveiling His glory, but it would not change their hearts. What would?
“It is a sight of the divine beauty of Christ, that bows the wills, and draws the hearts of men…one glimpse of the moral and spiritual glory of God, and supreme amiableness of Jesus Christ, shining into the heart, overcomes and abolishes this opposition, and inclines the soul to Christ, as it were, by an omnipotent power.” (Edwards)
How do you see that?
“It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all.” (John 6:63a)
It is the work of the Spirit to open your eyes to the supreme beauty of Christ; to see in His offer of bread of life real satisfaction, real forgiveness, real joy.
Flesh and blood cannot receive the True Flesh and True Blood, apart from the Spirit. Man left to himself, regardless of the evidence, cannot believe. The flesh is no help at all. Trying to persuade someone into faith in Christ without the Spirit is like trying to argue with the dead, or persuade the blind of how vibrant the sunrise is.
“The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. 64 But there are some of you who do not believe.” - John 6:63-64
I believe that Jesus speaks so starkly, so crudely here to underline this point. Jesus’ words—even these prickly ones—are “spirit and life.”
It takes a convert from central Africa and tells him to obey an enlightened universalist ethic: it takes a twentieth-century academic prig like me and tells me to go fasting to a Mystery, to drink the blood of the Lord. - C.S. Lewis, “Christian Apologetics”
Why Judas and Peter?
Did you notice that subtle shift to how John describes the listeners here? Throughout the whole of this conversation, the people whom Jesus has been in dialogue with have been the “crowds” or “the Jews.” But look at vs. 60: “When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” And again, vs. 66 “After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.” (John 6:66).
The unbelieving crowds are now described as “his disciples.” Why does John do that?
Sometimes the term “disciples” is used in the gospels to refer the twelve, and sometimes it refers to a broader group of people who follow Jesus’ teaching in some sense (John 4:1-3), but in John 6, Jesus has only been in the conversation with the crowd of Jews who followed Him to Capernaum after the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000. The twelve are there, but Jesus has not been speaking with them. John is fairly consistent when using the term the “crowds” and “the Jews” in his gospel to refer to people who are consistently opposed to Jesus. So when he pivots in the middle of the discussion to now refer to them as Jesus’ “disciples” he is trying to telegraph something to us:
- You can like Jesus, and not be truly born again. You can be near Jesus, and not follow Him. You can even receive benefits from Jesus, and not receive Him as Lord.
- Ultimately, I think John does this to highlight the glaring problem in the story: Judas. The reason he describes the crowds as “disciples” who nonetheless fall away illustrates and foreshadows that one of the twelve is going to fall away.
“But there are some of you who do not believe.” (For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him.) 65 And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.” (John 6:64-65)
And then again, at the very end, Jesus explains:
““Did I not choose you, the twelve? And yet one of you is a devil.” 71 He spoke of Judas the son of Simon Iscariot, for he, one of the twelve, was going to betray him.” (John 6:70-71)
Now compare that with Peter’s response:
After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. 67 So Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?” 68 Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, 69 and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.” 70 Jesus answered them, “Did I not choose you, the twelve? And yet one of you is a devil.” (John 6:66-70)
Peter has heard the exact same words that everyone else heard—the very words that have driven thousands away from Jesus, words that frankly sound bizarre and strange, and when Jesus says those words—eat my flesh and drink my blood—are Spirit and life, Peter hears that and he isn’t scandalized. At least, not in the way everyone else is. He is drawn in. He sees and believes. To the point where he realizes, as Jesus asks him if he would like to leave as well, there is nowhere else he could go—only Jesus possesses the words of eternal life.
This is John’s version of Peter’s confession of Jesus as the Christ that we read of in the other three gospels. In those, Jesus asks the disciples who they think He is, and Peter replies that Jesus is the Christ, and Jesus responds: “Blessed are you Simon, son of Jonah, for flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father in Heaven,’ (Matt 16:17). That sounds similar Jesus’ earlier words: “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all” (John 6:63)
So, why does Peter respond in faith, while Judas doesn’t?
Vs. 70 sounds troubling at first: “Did I not choose you, the twelve? And yet one of you is a devil” Was Judas chosen in the same way the eleven were? No:
But there are some of you who do not believe.” (For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him.) 65 And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.” (John 6:64-65)
God is in control. If the Church swells in converts, it is because it has been granted by the Father. And if thousands fall away, if there is a Judas in the mix, God is still in control. He will use satan’s work to undermine Satan's work.
