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In the previous chapter we fellowshipped concerning eating and drinking, based on John 6. In this chapter we will say more concerning eating and drinking.
When we come before the Lord, we must see that He wants us to eat, drink, and enjoy Him; therefore, He is a tree and a river. We should not think that God wants us to be good, to do good, or to please Him. We must drop such concepts because they are from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and not from the tree of life. God does not want man to pay attention to good and evil. He wants us to focus on how He can be our life. He wants to feed us. He wants to be our food and our living water so that we may eat and drink Him in order to be satisfied. Then we will not only do good, but we will have a holy living. Holiness surpasses good, because holiness is God. God wants to feed us, fill us, satisfy us, and overflow from within us. This divine thought far surpasses the good that man focuses on.
We all believe that Christians should zealously preach the gospel, and we are often exhorted to be zealous for the gospel. I do not like to exhort others in this way, because zealous gospel preaching can often be merely behavior, which is of little value before God. Moreover, such behavior will not last, for the Christian walk is not mere behavior. The Christian walk is the expression of life. It is the expression of eating and drinking the Lord to our satisfaction.
There is no need to exhort a tangerine tree to bear tangerines. Such an exhortation is useless, for bearing tangerines is the spontaneous expression of the life within the tangerine tree. If the tree has water, good soil, fertilizer, sunshine, and air, it will spontaneously bear tangerines in abundance. If the tree does not have adequate water, soil, fertilizer, sunshine, and air, it will not bear fruit, no matter how much it is exhorted.
A brother who does not eat or drink God does not have any spiritual fertilizer or spiritual water. Exhorting him to preach the gospel zealously can be compared to exhorting a dead person to stand up. However, a brother who fellowships with the Lord daily, enjoys Him as his daily satisfaction, and lives because of Him is one who is filled with the Lord; hence, he does not need to be exhorted in order to preach the gospel. A brother who is filled with the Lord will have a fire burning within and will not be able to stop preaching the gospel. He will not be able to stop himself from overflowing with the Lord and expressing the Lord. This is the living of a person who is full of the divine life.
Man’s concept is always related to outward behavior and doing things, but God’s way is to enter into man in order to supply and transform him. God is both water and fire. He wants to enter into us and to cleanse and burn us. Then He can occupy us and be expressed through us. This is God’s way, and this is the true significance of the Christian life. The Christian life is not a matter of behavior or of being good. The Christian life is a matter of Christ entering into us to be our life and life supply so that He can be expressed through us. The Christian faith is also not a matter of exhorting believers to honor their parents. We cannot honor our parents in ourselves; we need to allow Christ to fill us as our life by eating Him as our food and drinking Him as our living water. When we are filled with Christ, we will express Him by honoring our parents. This is the proper Christian life.
I hope that we can distinguish between behavior and the Christian life. Religion tells people to improve and cultivate their character. Christianity tells people that Jesus can change them. The proper Christian faith teaches people that Jesus Christ is their life, their food, and their living water. Hence, they need to receive Him by eating, drinking, and enjoying Him so that He will fill them, and they will live out His divine life. The chorus of Hymns, #509 says, “God is in Christ to be my supply, / God as the Spirit nourisheth me; / If upon Christ in spirit I feed, / Filled with His life I’ll be.” When God lives in us, fills us, and occupies us, He will be expressed through us. This is glorious. The proper Christian faith involves eating and drinking Christ. This is the Christian life. It is a life of enjoying Christ.
In John 6 the Lord Jesus mentioned some crucial points concerning our eating and drinking Him.
The Lord said, “I am the bread of life...This is the bread which comes down out of heaven, that anyone may eat of it and not die” (vv. 48, 50). The Lord is the bread of life; hence, there is life within this bread. Those who eat this bread receive His life.
There is a turning point in verse 51. In this verse the Lord said, “The bread which I will give is My flesh.” Here bread becomes flesh. Bread comes from the vegetable life, but flesh comes from the animal life. In verse 51 the Lord turned from bread to flesh; that is, He turned from vegetable life to animal life.
The Jews did not understand what the Lord said; hence, they asked, “How can this man give us His flesh to eat?” (v. 52). The Lord Jesus then said, “My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink” (v. 55). In this verse the Lord spoke of His blood. The Jews should have understood the Lord’s words because of their knowledge of the passover. During the passover every Jewish household killed a lamb, put the blood on the doorposts and the lintel, and ate the flesh of the lamb (Exo. 12:1-8). When the Lord spoke of flesh and blood, the Jews should have remembered the story of the passover. However, what the Lord said in John 6:55 went further than what the Jews did during the passover, because the Jews ate the lamb; they did not drink its blood. But in this verse the Lord said, “My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink.”
In order for the Lord to be our food, He cannot be merely bread, which is of the vegetable life. If we had not sinned, it would have been sufficient for Him to be of the vegetable life. However, He would not be able to solve the problem of sin if He were merely of the vegetable life. God has ordained that without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness (Heb. 9:22). If the Lord were merely bread, there would be no shedding of blood, and as a result, our sins would not be forgiven. Unforgiven sins are a barrier that keeps us from contacting and enjoying the Lord. In order to deal with our sins, the Lord could not be merely bread. He had to be a lamb in order to be slain for the shedding of His blood. His blood had to be shed in order to wash away our sins. Then His flesh could be given for us to eat as our true food.
During the passover in Exodus 12 the children of Israel killed the passover lamb, ate its flesh, and put its blood on the doorposts and the lintel. The children of Israel ate the passover lamb with unleavened bread (v. 8). In the Bible leaven denotes sin (1 Cor. 5:6, 8). Eating unleavened bread signifies enjoying the Lord’s sinless life. The Lord died and shed His blood to wash away our sins so that we may eat Him as the bread and thus enjoy His sinless life. Hence, eating the passover lamb with unleavened bread signifies eating the Lord’s flesh and drinking His blood. It is important to see that in John 6 there is a turn from the vegetable life — wheat bread — to animal flesh. Only the animal life can shed blood, which is needed to solve the problem of our sins so that we can enjoy the Lord’s life.
Every time we come to enjoy the Lord and sense our sins, we must realize that the Lord is not only bread but also a slain lamb. His blood solved our problem of sin so that we could eat His flesh. We must be clear that when we eat and drink the Lord, we are enjoying the One who was slain, whose blood was shed, and whose life was given for us. He said that His flesh is true food and that His blood is true drink. By His death and the shedding of His blood, He accomplished redemption and solved the problem of sin. Now He can be our food and our supply.
The first thing that we sense whenever we come to enjoy the Lord is our need for the cleansing of His blood. If we enter into His presence in the afternoon, we need the cleansing of His blood, even though we were cleansed in the morning. When we come before Him again in the evening, we need the cleansing of His blood yet again. We can come forward with boldness to contact and enjoy the Lord because He died, shed His blood, and gave His body for us.
We should always remember that we are still fallen sinners and that we have a fallen nature. If the Lord were merely the bread of life and not the Lamb of God who shed His blood, sinners such as we would not have the way to eat Him as bread. Our sins can prevent us from enjoying Him, but we thank and praise the Lord that He is not only bread but that He is also the Lamb that was slain for us. His blood was separated from His flesh; now He can say to us, “My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink.”
In John 6 the Lord also spoke of the result of eating His flesh and drinking His blood.
A person who eats the Lord’s flesh and drinks His blood has eternal life; that is, he has the Lord’s life (v. 54). When a person eats lamb, the element of the lamb enters into him. Likewise, when we eat the Lord, His element enters into us to be our eternal life.
A person who eats the Lord’s flesh and drinks His blood abides in the Lord, and the Lord abides in him (v. 56). This indicates a union. Those who eat the Lord’s flesh and drink His blood enter into a union with Him. They abide in the Lord, and He, in them. There is a union between a person and what he eats. A person who eats fish is joined to the fish, a person who eats chicken is joined to the chicken, and a person who eats beef is joined to the cow. Although these illustrations do not sound pleasant, the principle is correct. We are joined to the Lord by eating and drinking Him. “He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me and I in him” (v. 56). We abide in the Lord, and He abides in us.
A person who eats the Lord’s flesh and drinks His blood lives because of the Lord. “He who eats Me, he also shall live because of Me” (v. 57). A brother has the energy to give a message because he eats breakfast, lunch, and dinner. He lives because of the food he eats. If he did not eat for three days, he would not have the strength to give a message. Similarly, when we eat the Lord, we have His life, we are joined to Him, He abides in us as our supply, and we live because of Him.
Many years ago the Chinese greeted one another by asking, “Have you eaten to your satisfaction?” This is a provincial expression, but it is according to the principle of life. A person who does not eat will not have the energy to live or to work. A person who is satisfied has the means to live, because he lives by what he eats. As Christians, we should care not only for being satisfied physically but also for being satisfied in our spirit. We should ask one another, “Have you fed your spirit?” We must eat the Lord until our spirit is satisfied so that we may live because of the Lord.
Believing in the Lord and obtaining His life is once and for all. But in order to live by Him, we need to eat Him every day. This is a very practical matter. I am not concerned about profound doctrines, but I want to ask, “Do you eat and drink the Lord until you are full every day?” We should not focus on understanding many doctrines, but we need to know this one fundamental matter: the Lord is the bread of life, and we must eat Him and enjoy Him daily.
John 6 also tells us to turn from the flesh to the Spirit. After the Lord said that His flesh is edible and His blood is drinkable, there is another turn in the first half of verse 63: “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing.” This verse shows that the word flesh in verse 55 does not refer to the Lord’s physical flesh. Physical flesh cannot give us the Lord’s life; it cannot enable us to live because of the Lord, and thus, it profits nothing. The Spirit can give us the Lord’s life and enable us to live because of the Lord.
The Lord went on to say, “The words which I have spoken to you are spirit and are life” (v. 63). In chapter 6 there are three turns: from bread to flesh, from flesh to the Spirit, and from the Spirit to the word. The Lord first said, “I am the bread of life” (v. 48). Then there is a turn: “My flesh is true food” (v. 55). This is followed by another turn: “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing” (v. 63), which is followed by yet another turn: “The words which I have spoken to you are spirit and are life” (v. 63). We need to know the three turns in this chapter so that we will know what it means to eat and enjoy the Lord. In order to eat and enjoy the Lord, we must first see that He is the bread of life. This bread is the flesh of the One who died and whose blood was shed. However, this is not physical flesh; it is in spirit. Furthermore, the spirit is embodied in His words. His words are spirit. Thus, there are three turns: from bread to the flesh, from the flesh to the Spirit, and from the Spirit to the word. We may also say that to touch the word is to touch the Spirit, and to touch the Spirit is to eat the Lord’s flesh, and to eat the Lord’s flesh is to eat the bread of life, which is to receive the Lord as our life supply. In order to eat the Lord, we must pay close attention to the Spirit and to the Lord’s words.
