Radical

Joseph R Stinson

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Radical

John 6:53–69 NKJV

53 Then Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, 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 eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. 55 For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. 56 He who eats 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 he who feeds on Me will live because of Me. 58 This is the bread which came down from heaven—not as your fathers ate the manna, and are dead. He who eats this bread will live forever.” 59 These things He said in the synagogue as He taught in Capernaum. 60 Therefore many of His disciples, when they heard this, said, “This is a hard saying; who can understand it?” 61 When Jesus knew in Himself that His disciples complained about this, He said to them, “Does this offend you? 62 What then if you should see the Son of Man ascend where He was before? 63 It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life. 64 But there are some of you who do not believe.” For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were who did not believe, and who would betray Him. 65 And He said, “Therefore I have said to you that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted to him by My Father.” 66 From that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more. 67 Then Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you also want to go away?” 68 But Simon Peter answered Him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. 69 Also we have come to believe and know that You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

John 6:53-69

John

radical adjective (SUPPORTING CHANGE)

John 6:53–69 NKJV

Then Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, 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 food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me. This is the bread which came down from heaven—not as your fathers ate the manna, and are dead. He who eats this bread will live forever.” These things He said in the synagogue as He taught in Capernaum. Therefore many of His disciples, when they heard this, said, “This is a hard saying; who can understand it?” When Jesus knew in Himself that His disciples complained about this, He said to them, “Does this offend you? What then if you should see the Son of Man ascend where He was before? It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life. But there are some of you who do not believe.” For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were who did not believe, and who would betray Him. And He said, “Therefore I have said to you that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted to him by My Father.” From that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more. Then Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you also want to go away?” But Simon Peter answered Him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. Also we have come to believe and know that You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

believing or expressing the belief that there should be great or extreme social,economic, or political change:

causing or being an example of great change; extreme:

a person who supports great social, economic, or political change

Kneeling during the National Anthem

The current debate over kneeling or sitting in protest during the national anthem was ignited by Colin Kaepernick in 2016 and has escalated to become a nationally divisive issue. San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick first refused to stand during "The Star-Spangled Banner" on Aug. 26, 2016 to protest racial injustice and police brutality in the United States. Since that time, many other professional football players, [7] high school athletes, and [8] professional athletes in other sports [9] have refused to stand for the national anthem. These protests have generated controversy and sparked a public conversation about the protesters' messages and how they've chosen to deliver them.

Martin Luther King Jr. - Biography

https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1964/king.jpgMartin Luther King, Jr., (January 15, 1929-April 4, 1968) was born Michael Luther King, Jr., but later had his name changed to Martin. His grandfather began the family's long tenure as pastors of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, serving from 1914 to 1931; his father has served from then until the present, and from 1960 until his death Martin Luther acted as co-pastor. Martin Luther attended segregated public schools in Georgia, graduating from high school at the age of fifteen; he received the B. A. degree in 1948 from Morehouse College, a distinguished Negro institution of Atlanta from which both his father and grandfather had graduated. After three years of theological study at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania where he was elected president of a predominantly white senior class, he was awarded the B.D. in 1951. With a fellowship won at Crozer, he enrolled in graduate studies at Boston University, completing his residence for the doctorate in 1953 and receiving the degree in 1955. In Boston he met and married Coretta Scott, a young woman of uncommon intellectual and artistic attainments. Two sons and two daughters were born into the family.

In 1954, Martin Luther King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. Always a strong worker for civil rights for members of his race, King was, by this time, a member of the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the leading organization of its kind in the nation. He was ready, then, early in December, 1955, to accept the leadership of the first great Negro nonviolent demonstration of contemporary times in the United States, the bus boycott described by Gunnar Jahn in his presentation speech in honor of the laureate. The boycott lasted 382 days. On December 21, 1956, after the Supreme Court of the United States had declared unconstitutional the laws requiring segregation on buses, Negroes and whites rode the buses as equals. During these days of boycott, King was arrested, his home was bombed, he was subjected to personal abuse, but at the same time he emerged as a Negro leader of the first rank. In 1957 he was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization formed to provide new leadership for the now burgeoning civil rights movement. The ideals for this organization he took from Christianity; its operational techniques from Gandhi. In the eleven-year period between 1957 and 1968, King traveled over six million miles and spoke over twenty-five hundred times, appearing wherever there was injustice, protest, and action; and meanwhile he wrote five books as well as numerous articles. In these years, he led a massive protest in Birmingham, Alabama, that caught the attention of the entire world, providing what he called a coalition of conscience. and inspiring his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail", a manifesto of the Negro revolution; he planned the drives in Alabama for the registration of Negroes as voters; he directed the peaceful march on Washington, D.C., of 250,000 people to whom he delivered his address, "l Have a Dream", he conferred with President John F. Kennedy and campaigned for President Lyndon B. Johnson; he was arrested upwards of twenty times and assaulted at least four times; he was awarded five honorary degrees; was named Man of the Year by Time magazine in 1963; and became not only the symbolic leader of American blacks but also a world figure. At the age of thirty-five, Martin Luther King, Jr., was the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize. When notified of his selection, he announced that he would turn over the prize money of $54,123 to the furtherance of the civil rights movement. On the evening of April 4, 1968, while standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was to lead a protest march in sympathy with striking garbage workers of that city, he was assassinated.

Harriet Tubman (born Araminta Ross; c. 1822[1] – March 10, 1913) was an American abolitionist, humanitarian, and an armed scout and spy for the United States Army during the American Civil War. Born into slavery, Tubman escaped and subsequently made some thirteen missions to rescue approximately seventy enslaved people, family and friends,[2] using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad. She later helped abolitionist John Brown recruit men for his raid on Harpers Ferry, and in the post-war era was an active participant in the struggle for women's suffrage.

Born a slave in Dorchester County, Maryland, Tubman was beaten and whipped by her various masters as a child. Early in life, she suffered a traumatic head wound when an irate slave owner threw a heavy metal weight intending to hit another slave and hit her instead. The injury caused dizziness, pain, and spells of hypersomnia, which occurred throughout her life. She was a devout Christian and experienced strange visions and vivid dreams, which she ascribed to premonitions from God.

In 1849, Tubman escaped to Philadelphia, then immediately returned to Maryland to rescue her family. Slowly, one group at a time, she brought relatives with her out of the state, and eventually guided dozens of other slaves to freedom. Traveling by night and in extreme secrecy, Tubman (or "Moses", as she was called) "never lost a passenger". After the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was passed, she helped guide fugitives farther north into British North America, and helped newly freed slaves find work.

When the Civil War began, Tubman worked for the Union Army, first as a cook and nurse, and then as an armed scout and spy. The first woman to lead an armed expedition in the war, she guided the raid at Combahee Ferry, which liberated more than 700 slaves. After the war, she retired to the family home on property she had purchased in 1859 in Auburn, New York, where she cared for her aging parents. She was active in the women's suffrage movement until illness overtook her and she had to be admitted to a home for elderly African Americans that she had helped to establish years earlier. After she died in 1913, she became an icon of American courage and freedom.

John Brown (May 9, 1800 – December 2, 1859) was an American abolitionist who believed and advocated that armed insurrection was the only way to overthrow the institution of slavery in the United States. Brown first gained attention when he led small groups of volunteers during the Bleeding Kansas crisis of 1856. Dissatisfied with the pacifism of the organized abolitionist movement, he said, "These men are all talk. What we need is action—action!" During the Kansas campaign, Brown commanded forces at the Battle of Black Jack and the Battle of Osawatomie. He and his supporters killed five supporters of slavery in the Pottawatomie massacre of May 1856 in response to the sacking of Lawrence by pro-slavery forces.

In 1859, Brown led a raid on the federal armory at Harpers Ferry to start a liberation movement among the slaves there. During the raid, he seized the armory; seven people were killed, and ten or more were injured. He intended to arm slaves with weapons from the arsenal, but the attack failed. Within 36 hours, Brown's men had fled or been killed or captured by local pro-slavery farmers, militiamen, and U.S. Marines led by Robert E. Lee. He was tried for treason against the Commonwealth of Virginia, the murder of five men, and inciting a slave insurrection. He was found guilty on all counts and was hanged. Brown's raid captured the nation's attention, as Southerners feared it was just the first of many Northern plots to cause a slave rebellion that might endanger their lives, while Republicans dismissed the notion and claimed they would not interfere with slavery in the South.

Historians agree that the Harpers Ferry raid escalated tensions that, a year later, led to the South's secession and Civil War. David Potter has said the emotional effect of Brown's raid was greater than the philosophical effect of the Lincoln–Douglas debates, and that it reaffirmed a deep division between North and South. Some writers, including Bruce Olds, describe him as a monomaniacal zealot; others, such as Stephen B. Oates, regard him as "one of the most perceptive human beings of his generation".[1] David S. Reynolds hails him as the man who "killed slavery, sparked the civil war, and seeded civil rights" and Richard Owen Boyer emphasizes that Brown was "an American who gave his life that millions of other Americans might be free".[2] "John Brown's Body" was a popular Union marching song during the Civil War and made him a martyr.

Brown's actions prior to the Civil War as an abolitionist, and the tactics he chose, still make him a controversial figure today. He is sometimes memorialized as a heroic martyr and a visionary, and sometimes vilified as a madman and a terrorist.

John the baptist

Matthew 3:1 NKJV

In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea,

Matthew 14:2 NKJV

and said to his servants, “This is John the Baptist; he is risen from the dead, and therefore these powers are at work in him.”

Matthew 11:12 NKJV

And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force.

Luke 9:19 NKJV

So they answered and said, “John the Baptist, but some say Elijah; and others say that one of the old prophets has risen again.”

Matthew 11:11 NKJV

“Assuredly, I say to you, among those born of women there has not risen one greater than John the Baptist; but he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.

lk 7:

Luke 7:20 NKJV

When the men had come to Him, they said, “John the Baptist has sent us to You, saying, ‘Are You the Coming One, or do we look for another?’ ”

Mark 6:25 NKJV

Immediately she came in with haste to the king and asked, saying, “I want you to give me at once the head of John the Baptist on a platter.”

mk 6:

Mark 6:14 NKJV

Now King Herod heard of Him, for His name had become well known. And he said, “John the Baptist is risen from the dead, and therefore these powers are at work in him.”

The Gospel of John, Volume 1 His Body and His Blood (John 6:51–9)

TO most of us, this is a very difﬁcult passage. It speaks in language and moves in a world of ideas which are quite strange to us and which may seem even fantastic and grotesque. But to those who heard it ﬁrst, it was moving among familiar ideas which went back to the very childhood of the race.

These ideas would be quite normal to anyone brought up in ancient sacriﬁce. The animal was very seldom burned in its entirety. Usually only a token part was burned on the altar, although the whole animal was offered to the god. Part of the ﬂesh was given to the priests as their ‘perk’, and part to the worshippers to make a feast for themselves and their friends within the temple precincts. At that feast, the god himself was held to be a guest. More, once the ﬂesh had been offered to the god, it was held that he had entered into it; and therefore when the worshipper ate it he was literally eating the god. When people rose from such a feast they went out, as they believed, literally god-ﬁlled. We may think of it as idolatrous worship, we may think of it as a vast delusion; yet the fact remains that these people went out quite certain that in them there was now the dynamic vitality of their god. To people used to that kind of experience, a section like this presented no difﬁculties at all.

Further, in that ancient world, the one live form of religion was to be found in the mystery religions. The one thing the mystery religions offered was communion and even identity with some god. The way it was done was this. All the mystery religions were essentially passion plays. They were stories of a god who had lived and suffered terribly and who died and rose again. The story was turned into a moving play. Before the initiate could see it, he had to undergo a long course of instruction in the inner meaning of the story. He had to undergo all kinds of ceremonial puriﬁcations. He had to pass through a long period of fasting and abstention from sexual relationships.

At the actual presentation of a passion play, everything was designed to produce a highly emotional atmosphere. There was carefully calculated lighting, sensuous incense, exciting music, a wonderful liturgy; everything was designed to work up the initiate to a height of emotion and expectation that he had never experienced before. Call it hallucination if you like; call it a combination of hypnotism and self-hypnotism. But something happened; and that something was identity with the god. As the carefully prepared initiate watched, he became one with the god. He shared the sorrows and the griefs; he shared the death and the resurrection. He and the god became forever one; and he was safe in life and in death.

Some of the sayings and prayers of the mystery religions are very beautiful. In the Mysteries of Mithra, the initiate prayed: ‘Abide with my soul; leave me not, that I may be initiated and that the holy spirit may dwell within me.’ In the Hermetic Mysteries, the initiate said: ‘I know thee Hermes, and thou knowest me; I am thou and thou art I.’ In the same mysteries, a prayer runs: ‘Come to me, Lord Hermes, as babes to mothers’ wombs.’ In the Mysteries of Isis, the worshipper said: ‘As truly as Osiris lives, so shall his followers live. As truly as Osiris is not dead, his followers shall die no more.’

We must remember that those ancient people knew all about the striving, the longing, the dreaming for identity with their god and for the bliss of taking him into themselves. They would not read phrases like eating Christ’s body and drinking his blood with crude and shocked literalism. They would know something of that ineffable experience of union, closer than any earthly union, of which these words speak. This is language that the ancient world could understand—and so can we.

It may be well that we should remember that here John is doing what he so often does. He is not giving, or trying to give, the actual words of Jesus. He has been thinking for seventy years about what Jesus said; and now, led by the Holy Spirit, he is giving the inner signiﬁcance of his words. It is not the words that he reports; that would merely have been a feat of memory. It is the essential meaning of the words; that is the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

HIS BODY AND HIS BLOOD

John 6:51–9 (contd)

LET us see now if we can ﬁnd out something of what Jesus meant and of what John understood from words like this. There are two ways in which we may take this passage.

(1) We may take it in a quite general sense. Jesus spoke about eating his ﬂesh and drinking his blood.

Now the ﬂesh of Jesus was his complete humanity. John in his First Letter lays it down almost passionately: ‘Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the ﬂesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God.’ In fact, the spirit which denies that Jesus has come in the ﬂesh is of the antichrist (1 John 4:2–3). John insisted that we must grasp and never let go the full humanity of Jesus, that he was bone of our bone and ﬂesh of our ﬂesh. What does this mean? Jesus, as we have seen again and again, was the mind of God become a person. This means that in Jesus we see God taking human life upon him, facing our human situation, struggling with our human problems, battling with our human temptations, working out our human relationships.

Therefore it is as if Jesus said: ‘Feed your heart, feed your mind, feed your soul on the thought of my humanity. When you are discouraged and in despair, when you are beaten to your knees and disgusted with life and living—remember I took that life of yours and these struggles of yours on me.’ Suddenly life and the ﬂesh are clad with glory, for they are touched with God. It was and is the great belief of the Greek Orthodox christology that Jesus deiﬁed our ﬂesh by taking it on himself. To eat Christ’s body is to feed on the thought of his humanity until our own humanity is strengthened and cleansed and irradiated by his.

Jesus said we must drink his blood. In Jewish thought, the blood stands for the life. It is easy to understand why. As the blood ﬂows from a wound, life ebbs away; and to the Jews, the blood belonged to God. That is why to this day a true Jew will never eat any meat which has not been completely drained of blood. ‘Only, you shall not eat ﬂesh with its life, that is, its blood’ (Genesis 9:4). ‘Its blood, however, you must not eat’ (Deuteronomy 15:23). Now see what Jesus is saying—‘You must drink my blood—you must take my life into the very centre of your being—and that life of mine is the life which belongs to God.’ When Jesus said we must drink his blood, he meant that we must take his life into the very core of our hearts.

What does that mean? Think of it this way. Here in a bookcase is a book which you never read. It may be the glory and the wonder of the tragedies of Shakespeare; but as long as it remains unread upon your bookshelves, it is external to you. One day, you take it down and read it. You are thrilled and fascinated and moved. The story sticks to you; the great lines remain in your memory; now when you want to, you can take that wonder out from inside yourself and remember it and think about it and feed your mind and your heart upon it. Once the book was outside you. Now it is inside you and you can feed upon it. It is that way with any great experience in life. It remains external until we take it within ourselves.

It is so with Jesus. As long as he remains a ﬁgure in a book, he is external to us; but when he enters into our hearts, we can feed upon the life and the strength and the dynamic vitality that he gives to us. Jesus said that we must drink his blood. He is saying: ‘You must stop thinking of me as a subject for theological debate; you must take me into you, and you must come into me; and then you will have real life.’ That is what Jesus meant when he spoke about us abiding in him and himself abiding in us.

When he told us to eat his ﬂesh and drink his blood, he was telling us to feed our hearts and souls and minds on his humanity, and to revitalize our lives with his life until we are ﬁlled with the life of God.

(2) But John meant more than that, and was thinking also of the Lord’s Supper. He was saying: ‘If you want life, you must come and sit at that table where you eat that broken bread and drink that poured-out wine which somehow, in the grace of God, bring you into contact with the love and the life of Jesus Christ.’ But—and here is the sheer wonder of his point of view—John has no account of the Last Supper. He brings in his teaching about it, not in the narrative of the upper room, but in the story of a picnic meal on a hillside near Bethsaida Julias by the blue waters of the Sea of Galilee.

There is no doubt that John is saying that for the true Christian every meal has become a sacrament. It may well be that there were those who—if the phrase is allowed—were making too much of the sacrament within the Church, making a magic of it, implying that it was the only place where we might enter into the nearer presence of the risen Christ. It is true that the sacrament is a special appointment with God; but John held with all his heart that every meal in the humblest home, in the richest palace, beneath the canopy of the sky with only the grass for carpet, was a sacrament. He refused to limit the presence of Christ to an ecclesiastical environment and a correctly liturgical service. He said: ‘At any meal you can ﬁnd again that bread which speaks of the humanity of the Master, that wine which speaks of the blood which is life.’

In John’s thought, the communion table and the dinner table and the picnic on the seashore or the hillside are all alike in that at all of them we may taste and touch and handle the bread and the wine which brings us Christ. Christianity would be a poor thing if Christ were conﬁned to churches. It is John’s belief that we can ﬁnd him anywhere in a Christ-ﬁlled world. It is not that he belittles the sacrament; but he expands it, so that we ﬁnd Christ at his table in church, and then go out to ﬁnd him everywhere where men and women meet together to enjoy the gifts of God.

THE ALL-IMPORTANT SPIRIT

John 6:59–65

When they had heard this discourse many of his disciples said: ‘This word is hard! Who is able to listen to it?’ Jesus well knew within himself that his disciples were murmuring about this; so he said to them: ‘Does this cause you to stumble? What then if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he formerly was? The life-giving power is the Spirit; the ﬂesh is of no help. The words which I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some who do not believe.’ For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were who did not believe, and who it was who was going to betray him. So that was why he often said: ‘No man can come to me, except it has been given to him by the Father to do so.’

IT is little wonder that the disciples found the discourse of Jesus hard. The Greek word is sklēros, which means not hard to understand but hard to accept. The disciples knew quite well that Jesus had been claiming to be the very life of God come down from heaven, and that no one could live this life or face eternity without submitting to him.

Here we come upon a truth that re-emerges in every age. Time and again it is not the intellectual difﬁculty which keeps men and women from becoming Christians; it is the height of Christ’s moral demand. At the heart of all religion there must be mystery, for the simple reason that at that heart there is God. In the nature of things, we cannot ever fully understand God. Any honest thinker will accept that there must be mystery.

The real difﬁculty of Christianity is twofold. It demands an act of surrender to Christ, an acceptance of him as the ﬁnal authority; and it demands a moral standard of the highest level. The disciples were well aware that Jesus had claimed to be the very life and mind of God come down to earth; their difﬁculty was to accept that as true, with all its implications. To this day many refuse Christ, not because he puzzles intellect, but because he challenges their lives.

Jesus goes on, not to try to prove his claim, but to state that some day events will prove it. What he is saying is this: ‘You ﬁnd it difﬁcult to believe that I am the bread, the essential of life, which came down from heaven. Well then, you will have no difﬁculty in accepting that claim when some day you see me ascending back to heaven.’ It is a forecast of the ascension. It means that the resurrection is the guarantee of the claims of Jesus. He was not one who lived nobly and died gallantly for a lost cause; he was the one whose claims were vindicated by the fact that he rose again.

Jesus goes on to say that the all-important thing is the life-giving power of the Spirit; the ﬂesh is of no help. We can put that very simply in a way which will give us at least something of its meaning—the most important thing is the spirit in which any action is done. It has been put this way: ‘All human things are trivial if they exist for nothing beyond themselves.’ The real value of anything depends on its aim. If we eat simply for the sake of eating, we become gluttons, and it is likely to do us far more harm than good; if we eat to sustain life, to do our work better, to maintain the ﬁtness of our body at its highest peak, food has a real signiﬁcance. If people spend a great deal of time on sport simply for the sake of sport, they are at least to some extent wasting their time. But if they spend that time in order to keep their bodies ﬁt and thereby to do their work for God and for others better, sport ceases to be trivial and becomes important. The things of the ﬂesh all gain their value from the spirit in which they are done.

Jesus goes on: ‘My words are spirit and life.’ He alone can tell us what life is, put into us the spirit in which it must be lived, give us the strength so to live it. Life takes its value from its purpose and its goal. Christ alone can give us true purpose in life and the power to work out that purpose against the constant opposition that comes from without and within.

Jesus was well aware that some would not only reject his offer but would reject it with hostility. No one can accept him unless moved by the Spirit of God to do so, but to the end of the day anyone can resist that Spirit. Such people are shut out not by God but by themselves.

John 6:53–69 NKJV

John 6:53-69

The Bible Knowledge Commentary 6:53–54

6:53–54. This revelation by Jesus is marked out as important by the fourth use of the phrase, I tell you the truth (cf. vv. 26, 32, 47). Sacramental interpretations appeal to the words eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood as evidence that Jesus was speaking of the eucharist. As stated earlier, the basic objection to this approach is historical: Jesus did not institute the Communion service until a year later. Drinking “His blood” is another bold figure of speech. The Jews knew the command, “You must not eat … any blood” (Lev. 3:17; cf. Lev. 17:10–14). And yet blood was the means of atonement. It is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life (Lev. 17:11). Jesus’ hearers must have been shocked and puzzled by His enigmatic words. But the puzzle is unlocked by understanding that Jesus was speaking of His making atonement by His death and giving life to those who personally appropriate Him (cf. John 6:63). Faith in Christ’s death brings eternal life (cf. vv. 40, 47, 50–51) and (later) bodily resurrection (cf. vv. 39–40, 44).

6:55. Just as good food and drink sustain physical life, so Jesus, the real (reliable) spiritual food and drink, sustains His followers spiritually. His flesh and blood give eternal life to those who receive Him.

6:56–57. One who partakes of Christ enjoys a mutual abiding relationship with Christ. He remains (menei) in Christ, and Christ remains in him. Menō is one of the most important theological terms in John’s Gospel (cf. comments on 1:38). The Father “remains” in the Son (14:10), the Spirit “remains” on Jesus (1:32), and believers “remain” in Jesus and He in them (6:56; 15:4). The implications of this “remaining” are many. A believer enjoys intimacy with and security in Jesus. Just as He has His life from the Father, so believers have life because of Jesus.

6:58–59. Jesus gave this discourse on the Bread of Life in the synagogue in Capernaum. He often spoke in Jewish synagogues, where men had opportunities to give expositions and exhortations (Mark 6:1–6; Luke 4:16–28; Acts 13:15–42). The services were not as formal as those of traditional American churches; “laymen” usually spoke. The conclusion to Jesus’ exposition and exhortation, based on the manna incident from Exodus 16, repeats the major themes: Moses’ bread did not give lasting life (salvation does not come by the Law); God has given the genuine life-giving Bread … from heaven; those who trust Jesus have eternal life.

6:60. As the people began to understand His teaching, they found it to be totally unacceptable. Besides the hostile Jewish leaders, many of the Galilean disciples turned away from Him. The popular enthusiasm for Jesus as a political Messiah (v. 15) was then over. They saw that He was not going to deliver them from Rome. He might be a great Healer, but His words were a hard (i.e., harsh) teaching. Who could accept it, that is, obey it? How could they personally appropriate Him?

Believer’s Bible Commentary D. Jesus, the Bread of Life (6:35–65)

6:53 Once again Jesus, knowing all things, realized exactly what they were thinking and saying. And so He warned them solemnly that if they did not eat His flesh and drink His blood, they would have no life in them. This could not refer to the bread and the wine used at the Lord’s Supper. When the Lord instituted His Supper, on the night in which He was betrayed, his body had not yet been broken and His blood had not yet been shed. The disciples partook of the bread and the wine, but they did not literally eat His flesh and drink His blood. The Lord Jesus was simply stating that unless we appropriate to ourselves by faith the value of His death for us on Calvary, we can never be saved. We must believe on Him, receive Him, trust Him, and make Him our very own.

6:54 By comparing this verse with verse 47, it can be definitely shown that to eat His flesh and to drink His blood means to believe on Him. In verse 47 we read that “He who believes in Me has everlasting life.” In verse 54, we learn that whoever eats His flesh and drinks His blood has eternal life. Now things equal to the same thing are equal to each other. To eat His flesh and to drink His blood is to believe on Him. All who believe on Him will be raised up at the last day. This refers, of course, to the bodies of those who have died trusting in the Lord Jesus.

6:55 The flesh of the Lord Jesus is food indeed, and His blood is drink indeed. This is in contrast to the food and drink of this world which is only of temporary value. The value of the death of the Lord Jesus is never-ending. Those who partake of Him by faith receive life that goes on forever.

6:56 A very close union exists between Himself and those who are believers in Him. Whoever eats His flesh and drinks His blood abides in Him, and He abides in that person. Nothing could be closer or more intimate than this. When we eat literal food, we take it into our very being; and it becomes a part of us. When we accept the Lord Jesus as our Redeemer, He comes into our lives to abide, and we, too, abide (continually dwell) in Him.

6:57 Now the Lord gave another illustration of the close bond that existed between Himself and His people. The illustration was His own connection with God the Father. The living Father had sent the Lord Jesus into the world. (The expression living Father means the Father who is the Source of life). As a Man here in the world, Jesus lived because of the Father, that is, by reason of the Father. His life was lived in closest union and harmony with God the Father. God was the center and circumference of His life. His purpose was to be occupied with God the Father. He was here as a Man in the world, and the world did not realize that He was God manifest in the flesh. Although He was misunderstood by the world, yet He and His Father were one. They lived in closest intimacy. That is exactly the way it is with believers in the Lord Jesus. They are here in the world, misunderstood by the world, hated and often persecuted. But because they have put their faith and trust in the Lord Jesus, they live because of Him. Their lives are closely bound up with His life, and this life shall endure forever.

6:58 This verse seems to summarize all that the Lord has said in the previous verses. He is the bread which came down from heaven. He is superior to the manna which the fathers ate in the wilderness. That bread was only of temporary value. It was only for this life. But Christ is the Bread of God who gives eternal life to all who feed on Him.

6:59 The crowd had followed Jesus and His disciples to Capernaum from the northeast side of the Sea of Galilee. Apparently the multitude had found Jesus in the synagogue and it was there that He delivered the message on the Bread of Life to them.

6:60 By this time, the Lord Jesus had many more disciples than the original twelve. Anyone who followed Him and professed to accept His teachings was known as a disciple. However, not all who were known as His disciples were real believers. Now many of those who professed to be His disciples said, “This is a hard saying.” They meant that His teaching was offensive. It was not so much that it was hard for them to understand, as that it was distasteful for them to receive. When they said, “Who can understand it” (literally “hear”), they meant, “Who can stand and listen to such offensive doctrine?”

6:61 Here again we find evidence that the Lord had complete knowledge. Jesus knew exactly what the disciples were saying. He knew that they were complaining at His claim to have come down from heaven and that they did not like it when He said that men must eat His flesh and drink His blood to have everlasting life. And so He asked them, “Does this offend you?”

6:62 They took offense because He said that He had come down from heaven. Now He asked them what will they think if they should see Him ascend back into heaven, which He knew He would do after His resurrection. They were also offended by His saying that men must eat His flesh. What would they think, then, if they should see that body of flesh ascend where He was before? How would men be able to eat His literal flesh and drink His literal blood after He had gone back to the Father?

6:63 These people had been thinking in terms of Christ’s literal flesh, but here He told them that eternal life was not gained by eating flesh but by the work of the Holy Spirit of God. Flesh cannot give life; only the Spirit can do this. They had taken His words literally and had not realized that they were to be understood spiritually. And so here the Lord Jesus explained that the words that He spoke were spirit and they were life; when His sayings about eating His flesh and drinking His blood were understood in a spiritual way, as meaning belief in Him, then those who accepted the message would receive eternal life.

6:64 Even as He said these things, the Lord realized that some of His listeners did not understand Him because they would not believe. The difficulty lay not so much in their inability as in their unwillingness. Jesus knew from the beginning that some of His professed followers would not believe on Him and that one of His disciples would betray Him. Of course, Jesus knew all this from eternity, but here it probably means that He was aware of it from the very start of His ministry on earth.

6:65 Now He explained that it was because of their unbelief that He had previously told them that no one could come to Him unless it were granted to him by His Father. Such words are an attack on the pride of man, who thinks that he can earn or merit salvation. The Lord Jesus told men that even the power to come to Him can only be received from God the Father.

E. Mixed Reactions to the Savior’s Words (6:66–71)

6:66 These sayings of the Lord Jesus proved so distasteful to many who had followed Him that they now left Him and were no longer willing to associate with Him. These disciples were never true believers. They followed the Lord for various reasons, but not out of genuine love for Him or appreciation of who He was.

6:67 At this point Jesus turned to the twelve disciples and challenged them with the question as to whether they, too, would leave Him.

6:68 Peter’s answer is worthy of note. He said in effect, “Lord, how could we leave You? You teach the doctrines which lead to eternal life. If we leave You, there is no one else to whom we could go. To leave You would be to seal our doom.”

6:69 Speaking for the twelve, Peter further said that they had come to believe and know that the Lord Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of the living God. Notice again the order of the words “believe and know.” First of all, they had put their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and then they came to know that He was indeed all that He professed to be.

The Bible Exposition Commentary Chapter Six: Jesus Loses His Crowd (John 6)

Striving (vv. 52–59). The word striving means “to fight and quarrel.” Being orthodox Jews, the listeners knew the divine prohibition against eating human flesh or any kind of blood (Gen. 9:3–4; Lev. 17:10–16; 19:26). Here we have another example in John’s Gospel of the people misunderstanding a spiritual truth by treating it literally (see John 2:19–21; 3:4; 4:11). All Jesus said was, “Just as you take food and drink within your body and it becomes a part of you, so you must receive Me within your innermost being so that I can give you life.”

Some interpreters tell us that Jesus was speaking about the Lord’s Supper, and that we eat His flesh and drink His blood when we partake of the elements at the table, the bread and the cup. I do not believe that Jesus had the Communion (or eucharist) in mind when He spoke these words.

For one thing, why would He discuss the Lord’s Supper with a group of disagreeable unbelievers? He had not even shared that truth with His own disciples! Why would He cast this precious pearl before the swine?

Second, He made it clear that He was not speaking in literal terms (John 6:63). He was using a human analogy to convey a spiritual truth, just as He did with Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman.

Third, Jesus made it plain that this eating and drinking were absolutely essential for eternal life. He made no exceptions. If, then, He was speaking about a church ordinance (or sacrament), then everybody who has never shared in that experience is spiritually dead and is going to hell. This would include all the Old Testament saints, the thief on the cross, and a host of people who have trusted Christ in emergency situations (hospitals, accidents, foxholes, etc.). I personally cannot believe that our gracious God has excluded from salvation all who cannot participate in a church ceremony.

Another factor is the tense of the Greek verbs in John 6:50–51, and 53. It is the aorist tense which signifies a once-for-all action. The Communion service is a repeated thing; in fact, it is likely that the early church observed the Lord’s Supper daily (Acts 2:46).

It is significant that the word flesh is never used in any of the reports of the Lord’s Supper, either in the Gospels or in 1 Corinthians 11:23–34. The word used is “body.”

If a person holds that our Lord was speaking about the Communion service, then he must believe that somehow the two elements, the bread and the fruit of the vine, turn into the very body and blood of Christ; for He said, “So he that eateth Me, even he shall live by Me” (John 6:57, italics mine). How does this “miracle” take place? What is the secret of accomplishing it? Why is it not apparent?

Our Lord’s messages recorded in the Gospel of John are filled with symbolism and imagery. To take them literally is to make the same mistake the people made who first heard them.

Departing (vv. 60–71). Our Lord’s teaching was not hard to understand but hard to accept once you understood it. The Jewish religious leaders both misunderstood His words and rejected them. They were “offended” by what He taught. (The Greek word is “scandalized.”) They stumbled over the fact that He claimed to come down from heaven. They also stumbled over the idea that they had to eat His flesh and drink His blood in order to be saved. But if they stumbled over these two matters, what would they do if they saw Him ascend back into heaven? (John 6:62)

Jesus explained that His language was figurative and spiritual, not literal. There is no salvation in “flesh.” In fact, the New Testament has nothing good to say about “the flesh.” There is nothing good in it (Rom. 7:18) and we must not have confidence in it (Phil. 3:3).

How, then, do we “eat His flesh and drink His blood”? Through the Word. “The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life” (John 6:63). “And the Word became flesh” (John 1:14). Our Lord said the same thing: “He that heareth My word and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath everlasting life” (John 5:24). The scribes who knew Jeremiah 31:31–34 would have understood the concept of receiving God’s Word into one’s inner being.

The result of this message was the loss of most of our Lord’s disciples. They went back to the old life, the old religion, and the old hopeless situation. Jesus Christ is “the way” (John 14:6), but they would not walk with Him. This was no surprise to the Lord, because He knows the hearts of all people.

When Jesus asked His 12 Apostles if they planned to desert Him too, it was Peter who spoke up and declared their faith. Where else could they go? “Thou hast the words of eternal life.” Peter got the message! He knew that Jesus was speaking about the Word and not about literal flesh and blood.

Peter was one of several people who declared their belief that Jesus is the Son of God (see John 1:34, 49; 3:18; 5:25; 9:35; 10:36; 11:4, 27; 19:7; 20:31). The only mistake he made was to bear witness for the entire group. Peter was sure that all of the Apostles were believers, which shows how convincing Judas was. Even Peter did not know that Judas was an unbeliever!

The preaching of the Word of God always leads to a sifting of the hearts of the listeners. God draws sinners to the Saviour through the power of truth, His Word. Those who reject the Word will reject the Saviour. Those who receive the Word will receive the Saviour and experience the new birth, eternal life.

Do you feel your need because there is a spiritual hunger within? Are you willing to admit that need and come to the Saviour? If you will, He will save you and satisfy you forever!

Question: "What is cheap grace?"

Answer: The term “cheap grace” can be traced back to a book written by German theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, called The Cost of Discipleship, published in 1937. In that book, Bonhoeffer defined “cheap grace” as “the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline. Communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ.” Notice what is emphasized in Bonhoeffer’s definition of cheap grace and what is de-emphasized. The emphasis is on the benefits of Christianity without the costs involved; hence, the adjective cheap to describe it.

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