Feeding on Christ · The Daily Man

The synagogue in Capernaum broke into an argument. Jesus had just said the bread He’d give was His own flesh, and the Jews started fighting among themselves over how this man could possibly hand them His body to eat (John 6:52).

They heard Him the way men always hear Him when God hasn’t opened their ears. Nicodemus asked how a grown man could climb back into his mother’s womb, and the woman at the well wanted water so she’d never have to haul a jar again (John 3:4, 4:15). This crowd hears flesh and thinks of a butcher’s table. The natural man can’t take in the things of God, because they’re only understood spiritually (1 Corinthians 2:14).

John 6:53 — He doesn’t back down

A man trying to win a crowd would’ve softened it. Jesus makes it harder. He puts His double amen on it and tells them there’s no life in any man who doesn’t feed on the Son of Man, His body and His blood both (John 6:53).

Every Jew in that room would’ve flinched at the blood. God had forbidden it since Noah, because the life is in the blood (Genesis 9:4) (Leviticus 17:10-11, 14). And that’s the point. Blood poured out means a life given up. Jesus is telling them the life they need comes through His death, and they can’t have Him without the cross (Hebrews 9:22) (1 Peter 1:18-19).

John 6:54 — Eating is believing

So what does it mean to eat Him? Jesus has already told us. Put this verse beside an earlier one and they say the same thing two ways. The man who looks to the Son and believes has eternal life and will be raised on the last day, and the man who feeds on His flesh and blood has eternal life and will be raised on the last day (John 6:40, 54). He’d already tied hunger to coming and thirst to believing (John 6:35). Coming and believing, eating and drinking, it’s all one act of the soul toward Christ.

Eating is what faith does with Christ. A man doesn’t just admire bread on a shelf. He takes it in, and it becomes part of him. Faith doesn’t stand at a distance nodding at facts about Jesus. It receives Him and rests on Him (John 1:12) (Galatians 2:20).

That’s why this isn’t mainly about the Lord’s Supper. The Supper hadn’t been given yet, and Jesus is preaching to an unbelieving crowd with a whole Passover still ahead before the upper room (John 6:4, 13:1). And His words here are absolute. Every man who eats has life, and every man who refuses is left dead. You can’t say that of a rite. The thief on the cross never took the bread and the cup, and he was with Christ in Paradise that day (Luke 23:42-43). Plenty of men have taken them and eaten judgment on themselves (1 Corinthians 11:27-29). The Supper later pictures and seals this feeding for believers, and it’s a real means of grace, but it doesn’t create it (1 Corinthians 10:16, 11:26).

And look at who’s at the table. This is the fourth time in the chapter Jesus has promised to raise His own on the last day (John 6:39-40, 44, 54). The men who feed on Him aren’t a random slice of the crowd. They’re the ones the Father gave and drew, and Jesus will soon say no man can come unless the Father grants it (John 6:37, 44, 65). God picks the guests, sets the table, and raises every one of them from the grave (Romans 8:30) (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17).

John 6:55-56 — Real food, real union

Jesus won’t let them shrug this off as a figure of speech. His flesh and blood feed a man in the fullest sense, more truly than any loaf ever fed a body (John 6:55). Faith doesn’t feed on a symbol. It feeds on Christ Himself, by the Spirit (John 6:63) (Ephesians 3:16-17).

Then He says what the feeding does. The man who feeds on Him lives in Him, and Christ lives in that man (John 6:56). That’s union with Christ. It isn’t a mood or a membership card. A believer is joined to Him the way a branch is joined to the vine and a body to its head (John 15:4-5) (Ephesians 5:30) (Colossians 1:18). Everything Christ won, that man has, because he’s in Him (1 Corinthians 1:30).

John 6:57-59 — Life handed down

Jesus traces where this life comes from. The Father is the fountain of it, and He sent the Son, who has life from the Father in Himself. The man who feeds on the Son draws his life from the Son in the same way (John 5:26, 6:57).

That’s the whole chain, and men don’t supply a single link. The life starts in God and runs to the believer through Christ. Your life is hidden with Christ in God, and when He appears, you’ll appear with Him (Colossians 3:3-4).

Then He brings them back to where this started. Their fathers ate manna for forty years and still died. This bread came down from Heaven, and the man who eats it never dies (John 6:58) (Exodus 16:35).

John adds one more detail. Jesus said all this while teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum (John 6:59). It wasn’t a secret rite whispered to insiders. He preached it in the open to men who’d go home and argue about it, and many of them would walk away (John 6:66, 18:20).

For the man who reads this morning

Faith isn’t a meal you ate once at an altar call and can live off forever. You feed on Christ the way you eat, every day. Read His Word, sit under preaching, come to His table, and take Him in each time. A man who hasn’t eaten in weeks shouldn’t be surprised that he’s weak.

Don’t be the man in the synagogue arguing about mechanics. You can spend years debating how the bread works and never eat it. The question isn’t whether you can explain union with Christ. It’s whether you’re feeding on Him.

And if you’re His, rest. The life in you didn’t start with you, and it won’t end at your grave. It came from the Father through the Son, and the Son has promised to raise you on the last day.

As you pray, ask God to give you a real hunger for Christ and not just for His gifts. Ask Him to keep you feeding on His Son through His Word and His table, so you grow stronger in Him day by day. And ask Him to fix your hope on the day Jesus raises you up.