John 6:56
He that eateth . . . dwelleth in me and I in him—As our food becomes incorporated with ourselves, so Christ and those who eat His flesh and drink His blood become spiritually one life, though personally distinct.
54 aWhoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.
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 aThis is the bread which came down from heaven—not bas 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.
Many Disciples Turn Away
60 aTherefore many of His disciples, when they heard this, said, “This is a1 hard saying; who can understand it?”
61 When Jesus knew in Himself that His disciples1 complained about this, He said to them, “Does this2 offend you?
63 aIt is the Spirit who gives life; the bflesh profits nothing. The cwords that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life.
64 But athere are some of you who do not believe.” For bJesus knew from the beginning who they were who did not believe, and who would betray Him.
65 And He said, “Therefore aI have said to you that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted to him by My Father.”
66 aFrom that time many of His disciples went1 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 athe words of eternal life.
69 aAlso we have come to believe and know that You are the1 Christ, the Son of the living God.”
71 He spoke of aJudas Iscariot, the son of Simon, for it was he who would bbetray Him, being one of the twelve.
New King James Version®, Copyright© 1982, Thomas Nelson. All rights reserved.
Commentaries:
Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown
| << John 6:55 | John 6:57 >> |
John 6:53-58
Except ye eat the flesh . . . and drink the blood . . . no life, etc.—The harshest word He had yet uttered in their ears. They asked how it was possible to eat His flesh. He answers, with great solemnity, "It is indispensable." Yet even here a thoughtful hearer might find something to temper the harshness. He says they must not only "eat His flesh" but "drink His blood," which could not but suggest the idea of His death—implied in the separation of one's flesh from his blood. And as He had already hinted that it was to be something very different from a natural death, saying, "My flesh I will give for the life of the world" (John 6:51), it must have been pretty plain to candid hearers that He meant something above the gross idea which the bare terms expressed. And farther, when He added that they "had no life in them unless they thus ate and drank," it was impossible they should think He meant that the temporal life they were then living was dependent on their eating and drinking, in this gross sense, His flesh and blood. Yet the whole statement was certainly confounding, and beyond doubt was meant to be so. Our Lord had told them that in spite of all they had "seen" in Him, they "did not believe" (John 6:36). For their conviction therefore he does not here lay Himself out; but having the ear not only of them but of the more candid and thoughtful in the crowded synagogue, and the miracle of the loaves having led up to the most exalted of all views of His Person and Office, He takes advantage of their very difficulties and objections to announce, for all time, those most profound truths which are here expressed, regardless of the disgust of the unteachable, and the prejudices even of the most sincere, which His language would seem only designed to deepen. The truth really conveyed here is no other than that expressed in John 6:51, though in more emphatic terms—that He Himself, in the virtue of His sacrificial death, is the spiritual and eternal life of men; and that unless men voluntarily appropriate to themselves this death, in its sacrificial virtue, so as to become the very life and nourishment of their inner man, they have no spiritual and eternal life at all. Not as if His death were the only thing of value, but it is what gives all else in Christ's Incarnate Person, Life, and Office, their whole value to us sinners.
Other Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown entries containing John 6:56:
Song of Solomon 5:1
1 Corinthians 10:16
Revelation 3:20
| << John 6:55 | John 6:57 >> |
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