Eat and Live
In John 6:57 our Lord gives the secret of His inner life. At the beginning of His ministry He told the tempter that man did not live by bread alone, but by God's Word. Here He goes further and says that He lived not only by the words of God, but by God Himself. There is also this other truth, that each of us is called to exercise toward Christ the same attitude and dependence that He exercised toward the Father. It is impossible by one illustration to set forth the eternal facts of the spiritual world. Metaphor has to be heaped on metaphor. Already our Lord had dealt with the symbol of manna and bread; He now goes further in order to emphasize the truth that the power to communicate life can only be acquired through death. Our Lord, therefore, describes the bread of the soul-life as His flesh, which he would give for the life of the world. Obviously flesh is that which has passed through death. But it should always be borne in mind that the Christian soul does not dwell exclusively on the death of Jesus, but on the life of Him who died. It is the risen and ascended Christ, who died for our sins but whom God exalted to His right hand, that should fill our thoughts.