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“Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except 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 meat, indeed, and My blood is drink indeed.
He that eats My flesh, and drinks My blood, dwells in Me, and I in him.”
John 6:53-56.
OUR Lord Jesus did not, in this passage, allude to the Lord’s Supper, as some, desiring to maintain their sacramental
superstitions, have dared to affirm!
I will not dwell upon the argument that there was no Lord’s Supper at the time to
allude to, though there is certainly some force in it, but I will rather remind you that with such an interpretation this
passage would not be true.
It must be confessed, even by the most ardent advocate of the sacramental meaning, that the
expressions used by our Lord are not universally and, without exception, true if used in that sense, for it is not true that
those who have never eaten the Lord’s Supper have no life in them, since it is confessed on all hands that hundreds and
thousands of children dying in childhood are, undoubtedly saved, and yet they have never eaten the flesh of Christ nor
drank His blood, if the Lord’s Supper is here meant.
There have also been many others in bygone times who, by their conduct, proved that the life of God was in their
souls, and yet they were not able to eat bread at the sacramental table, because of sickness, banishment, imprisonment
and other causes.
Surely there are some others, though I would not excuse them, who have neglected to come to that
blessed commemorative ordinance, and yet, nevertheless, for all that, they are truly children of God.
Would the highest
of high churchmen send every Quaker, however holy and devout, down to the bottomless pit?
If this should refer to the
Lord’s Supper, then it is certain that the dying thief could not have entered Heaven, for he never sat down at the communion
table, but was converted on the Cross—and without either Baptism or the Lord’s Supper—went straight away
with his Master into Paradise!
It can never be proved, indeed, is utterly false that no one has eternal life if he has not received the bread and wine of
the communion table.
But on the other hand, it is certainly equally untrue that whoever eats Christ’s flesh has eternal
life, if by that is meant everyone who partakes of the Eucharist, for there are unworthy receivers, not here and there, but
to be found by the hundreds.
Alas, there are apostates who leave the Lord’s Table for the table of devils and who profane
the holy name they once professed to love!
There are also many who have received the sacramental bread and wine and yet
live in sin—who increase their sin by daring to come to the table and who, alas, we fear, will die in their sins as many
others have done.
Unregenerate persons are very apt to make much of the sacrament and nothing of Christ.
They think a great deal of
the bread and wine of the (so-called) “altar,” but they have never known what it is to eat the flesh and drink the blood of
Christ.
These eat and drink unworthily—carnally eating bread, but not spiritually eating the Redeemer’s flesh—to them
the ordinance is a curse rather than a blessing.
Our Lord did not refer to the feast of His supper, for the language will not
bear such an interpretation.
It is evident that the Jews misunderstood the Savior and thought that He referred to the literal
eating of His flesh.
It is no wonder that they strove among themselves over such a saying, for, understood literally, it
is horrible and revolting to the last degree!
But far greater is the wonder that there are millions of people who accept so monstrous an error as actual truth and
believe in literally feeding upon the body of the Lord Jesus!
This is probably the highest point of profane absurdity to
which superstition has yet reached—to believe that such an act of cannibalism as could be implied in the literal eating of
Truly Eating the Flesh of Jesus Sermon #1288
www.spurgeongems.org
Volume 22
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the flesh of Christ could convey Grace to the person guilty of such a horror!
While we wonder that the Jews so misunderstood
the Savior, we wonder a thousand times more that there should remain upon the face of the earth men in their
senses not yet committed to a lunatic asylum who endeavor to defend such a dreadful error from Holy Scripture and, instead
of being staggered, as the Jews were, by so fearful a statement, actually consider it to be a vital doctrine of their
faith—that they are literally to eat the flesh of Christ and to drink His blood!
Brothers and Sisters, if it were possible that our Lord required us to believe such a dogma, it would certainly need
the most stupendous effort of credulity on the part of a reasonable man—and the laying aside of all the decencies of nature.
In fact, it would appear to be necessary, before you could be a Christian, that you should altogether divest yourself
of your reason and your humanity!
It were a Gospel certainly more fitted for savages and madmen than for persons in the
possession of their senses and in the least degree removed from absolute barbarism!
I greatly question whether the creed
of the king of Dahomey contains a more unnatural doctrine.
We are not required, however, to believe anything so impossible, so degrading, so blasphemous, so horrifying to all
the decencies of life!
No man ever did eat the flesh of Christ or drink His blood in a literal and corporeal sense.
A deed so
beastlike, no, so devilish, was never yet perpetrated, or could be.
No, Brethren, the Jews were under an error—they
made the mistake of taking literally what Christ meant spiritually.
Judicially blinded as the result of unbelief, they stumbled
at noonday as in the night and refused to see what was plainly set forth.
The veil was on their hearts.
Ah, how prone
is man to pervert the Words of the Lord!
I believe that if Christ had meant this word literally, they would have spirited it away, but such is the perversity of
the human mind, that when He intended it spiritually then straightway they interpreted it in a grossly carnal manner.
Let us not fall into their error, but may Divine Grace lead us to see that our Lord’s Words are spirit and life.
Let us not
be held in bondage by the letter which kills, but follow the spirit which quickens.
The spiritual meaning is clear enough
to spiritual men, for to them belong spiritual discernment.
But as for the unregenerate, these things are spoken unto
them in parables, that seeing they might not see, and perceiving they might not understand.
Our first head will be, what is meant, then, by eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Christ?
And our second point
of enquiry shall be, what are the virtues of this act?
I. First, then, WHAT IS MEANT BY EATING THE FLESH AND DRINKING THE BLOOD OF CHRIST?
It is a
very beautiful and simple metaphor, when understood to refer spiritually to the Person of our Lord.
The act of eating
and drinking is transferred from the body to the soul and the soul is represented as feeding—feeding upon Jesus as the
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