Eating The Flesh

In John chapter 6, Jesus says, I am your manna from heaven. I am your bread: and that bread is my flesh. If you drink my blood and eat my flesh, you will have eternal life; you will abide in me and I will abide in you.

The significant of the blood I’ve always found intuitively more understandable: God’s judgment requires substitutionary blood sacrifice, from the beginning when God presumably killed an animal to clothe Adam and Eve in animal skins after they sinned, through the countless animal sacrifices made in the old testament, through the final sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. Because of his blood, God’s judgment passes over me.

But eating the flesh I never got quite as well. In John 6, Jesus is speaking at the time of the Passover, so naturally everyone would have been thinking of Exodus 12. On the tenth day of the month, they were to pick a year-old, blemish-free lamb and keep it in their house for four days. Probably long enough for their kids to name it. Then at twilight of the fourteenth day, they were to kill this lamb. Most people remember the part about smearing its blood on the doorposts, but quite a lot of attention is directed to its flesh: it was to be roasted, not kept raw or boiled; the head, legs, and innards were to be roasted. The flesh was to be eaten, but in a hurry: with shoes on and luggage packed and ready to go. Leftovers were to be burned; nothing could remain till morning.

Later in Leviticus 4, God says animals killed as sin offerings were to have their flesh burned: the focus seems mainly on the blood. So why, in Exodus 12, do we eat the flesh? Why not just huddle in wait behind the bloody doorposts, ready for deliverance; surely this would have been more efficient? Why did Jesus, so many years later, say we have to not only drink his blood, but eat his flesh?

Well, I know I’m always trying to get my kids to eat before we have to leave for a trip: it seems God is saying, I don’t just want this lamb that you loved to spill its blood so you can be spared the judgment of death—I want its flesh to give you energy for the journey ahead. I want its flesh to give you physical life, as you leave behind your old life of slavery and step out into the new. And as you travel, I’m going to send down that flesh, that bread, again, so that you know: I am God; I do this; I give you life. I don’t just spare you judgment; I bring you new life. And hundreds of years later, Jesus comes and says: I am that flesh. I am that bread. “My flesh is true food” (John 6:55).

And surely it is no accident that we are creatures who need to eat. All the time. Does that ever strike you as odd? We can eat the most amazing meal of our lives, but the next day, we’ll always be hungry again. Sometimes it hits me that I have to feed six people three meals every day for the next decade: that’s a full-time job. I think some of why we were created this way must be Jesus saying: I want you to understand how it is that you need me. You need me every day. You need me to survive. You need me digestively: you need to chew on me, on the Word. You need to ingest, and the growth is a process; it’s not a shot you take, or a file you download. But in that process, there is enjoyment, just as food gives us delight, and in that process, there is life, and the life that he gives us, is not only life to the full, but it is eternal life. We won’t carry our physical bodies as they are into eternity, but we will carry the life we gain by feeding on Jesus.

And that is why we don’t just drink his blood, but we eat his flesh. “Whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. … Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever” (John 6:57-58).