Our Indwelling God
Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. Just as the living Father has sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your forefathers ate manna and died, but he who feeds on this bread will live forever John 6:53-58
John carefully organised his gospel around eight miracles, seven before Jesus’ resurrection and one after. The miracles and the discourses around them were designed to reveal who Jesus really was and to create faith in Him (20:35).
We are in the discourse that followed the fourth and fifth miracles, the feeding of the five thousand and walking on water. These miracles are related because each brings to mind the exodus. God brought His people through the sea as Jesus brought His own disciples through the storm, and then, God fed them on manna in the wilderness, as Jesus fed the hungry multitude.
This is how John has intentionally brought his material together. If we parallel Jesus’ earlier words, ‘Everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day’ (6:40) with His words from our text ‘Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day’ we see that ‘eating Jesus’ flesh and drinking his blood’ is a metaphor for ‘looking to the Son and believing in him.’ Continuing the metaphor, Jesus then adds, ‘For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink.’ When the metaphor is unpacked, it means Jesus is the source of true satisfaction; believing in Him who gave His life for the world is the only way to satisfy human hunger and thirst for God. This was never meant to be taken out of context and understood literally. Leviticus 17:10-14 and other scriptures outlawed drinking blood.
‘Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him.’ Those who believe in Him (equivalent to eating His flesh and drinking His blood), Jesus said, would remain in Him and He in them. In 17:20,21 this mutual indwelling of Jesus and His disciples is modelled on the mutual indwelling of the Father and the Son and is brought about by the Holy Spirit who dwells in the disciples (14:15-20).
‘Just as the living Father has sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me.’ So there is a parallel between the mutual indwelling of the Son in the Father on the one hand, and the disciples in Jesus on the other. The Father sent the Son and the Son continues to live His life in and through the Father. The Son sends His disciples and they continue to live their lives in and through the Son.
‘This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your forefathers ate manna and died, but he who feeds on this bread will live forever.’ There was bread from heaven in Moses’ time but those who ate it, while nourished for forty years, finally died. Jesus is the bread from heaven today but those who feed on Him will live forever. This does not mean they will never die, but it does mean they will experience eternal life now in relationship with God and this relationship will not be broken because of death; and more than this, Jesus will raise them up on the last day.
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