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Friday, March 27th
John 6:52-59
The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, 'How can this man give us his flesh to eat?' So Jesus said to them, 'Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Creator sent me, and I live because of the Creator, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live for ever.' He said these things while he was teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum.
What did Jesus mean when he said unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you? John was a writer whose words literally dripped with imagery, not unlike Jesus himself who often told exaggerated parables to make a strong point. When we think about eating and drinking blood, we imagine taking the very life of something inside of ourselves. We eat and drink to sustain life. The point seems to be that to accept Christ as the Messiah, the Savior of the world, is to believe in him and accept his presence in our lives as the true giver and sustainer of life. When we accept Christ's gift and live in a way that shows others the love of Christ that dwells within us, life is continually sustained within us. We live abundantly now and have the promise of life everlasting.
When we live outwardly as a reflection of the life of Christ that is within us, we literally are transformed into the people God created us to be. Romans 8:29: For those whom God foreknew, God also predestined to be conformed to the image of the Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family. When we strive to live and love as Jesus did, allowing his life within us to sustain and flow out of us, we are conformed to his image and find ourselves to be a part of his family. God called us and as verse 32 points out, God did not withhold God's own Son, but gave him up for all of us.
As we meditate on accepting the gift of love that Christ gave us, realizing that he laid down his very life so we might live, that we have the privilege to take it in and be sustained by his life within us, let us not forget that the motivation was ultimately love. The next time someone tries to condemn you and accuse that Christ does not live within you, remember God gave him up for ALL of us. Romans 8:35, 37-39: Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?...No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Christ who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. kdd
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