John 6:53-55

“ Jesus therefore said to them: Verily, verily, I say to you, that unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you will not have life in yourselves. 54. He who 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 truly food and my blood is truly drink. ”

Verily: “It is so, whatever you may think of it!” The Lord attests this first in the negative form (John 6:53), then positively (John 6:54). The term Son of man, recalls the notion of the incarnation, by means of which the eternal life, realized in Him in a human life, is placed within reach of the faith of man. Reuss and Keil think that the terms flesh and blood may be understood here as in the passages where the expression flesh and blood denotes a living human person, for example, Galatians 1:16.

But in these cases the blood is regarded as contained in the flesh which lives by means of it, while in our passage the two elements are considered as separated. The blood is shed since it is drunk; and the flesh is broken since the blood is shed. These expressions imply that Jesus has present to His thought the type of the Paschal lamb. It was the blood of this victim which, sprinkled on the lintels of the doors, had in Egypt secured the people from the stroke of the angel of death and which, in the ceremony of the sacrifice of the lamb in the temple, was poured out on the horns of the altar, taking the place in this case of the doors of the Israelite houses; its flesh it was which formed the principal food of the Paschal supper. The shed blood represents expiation; and to drink this blood is to appropriate to oneself by faith the expiation and find in it reconciliation with God, the basis of salvation. The flesh broken represents the holy life of Christ; and to eat it, is to appropriate to oneself that life of obedience and love; it is to receive it through the action of the Spirit who makes it our life. In these two inward facts salvation is summed up. If then Jesus does not directly answer the How? of the Jews, He nevertheless does give indirectly, as He had done with Nicodemus, the desired explanation. As in chap. 3. He had substituted for the expression “ born anew ” the more explicit words “ born of water and Spirit,” so He here completes the expression “ to eat His flesh ” by the expression “ to drink His blood,” which was suited to recall the type of the lamb and to give these Jews, who celebrated the Paschal feast every year, a glimpse of the truth declared in this paradoxical form. The ἐν ἑαυτοῖς, in yourselves, recalls the word addressed to the Samaritan woman John 4:14. Here again is the idea of the possession in Christ of a fountain of life springing up continually within the believer.