This is a great mystery, but it has nothing to do with transubstantiation.
Just previous to His declaration to the Jews after feeding the five thousand, Jesus spoke something similar to the Woman at the Well of Samaria. Jesus mercifully opened her eyes to her sinfulness and her need for true water that springs up to eternal life. He tells her in this conversation that He is indeed the Messiah. She believes and rushes into the town, abandoning her precious water pot, and tells anyone and everyone that she has possibly met the Messiah. And surely it is more than a possibility for her to rush into her town, without her water pot, and to sound like a madwoman about this long-awaited Messiah. I mean, haven’t people learnt yet that the Messiah is just the stuff of legends? Not so.
He speaks of living waters to the woman and real food to His disciples. Then in John 6:47-58 he reveals to the Jews what real food is—His flesh, the propitiation of all of humankind’s sins—and real drink, His blood, or the cross and suffering of carrying the Cross, and ultimately the infilling of the Holy Spirit. It is all connected. Let us examine.
Firstly, the propitiation, or His flesh, is the sacrifice once for all the sins of the world. Once we believe in His work on the Cross, and His resurrection for the sake of our sins so we won’t go to Hell, and we confess Jesus Christ as our Saviour and Lord, we are saved. This is true food.
Secondly, the blood represents His suffering on the Cross and how we must also hate our very lives for the sake of Christ. This is our Cross. This is true drink…but He doesn’t stop there for in John 7:37-39, Jesus says that “If anyone is thirsty, let him (her) come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water.’ “ But this He spoke of the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive…” So oddly enough, and I have yet to figure out if this is just a semantic connection or if it is truly related, the blood of Christ seems to tie in both the Cross and the Holy Spirit’s indwelling. I wonder if we could have one without the other—this I believe we can’t; we must have both to be truly Christian and truly victorious as a Christian.
That’s all fine and dandy, but how does that translate into our modern lives now? Believing takes His work in us. But the Cross, once we believe, is difficult only because we don’t hate ourselves (our fleshly lives) unto death with the vision of Christ as our prize, and eternal life as our goal. Hence if we take up His burden we shall find that His “yoke is easy” and His “burden is light”, for the Spirit teaches us all things and comforts us. In every way the Holy Spirit guides us and speaks through us without any preparation or previous training. He also heals. He gives us the water that springs unto eternal life because it comes from God, Himself.
I have many things I need take care of in the next many months or years as the Lord leads. Each of them means denying the self (the flesh) and picking up the Cross of Christ to follow Him. One thing is a Chinese craft book full of stories and customs of ancient China that I gave to a young daughter of a friend. I have tried asking for it back, to no avail. For “woe to the man who presents himself as a stumbling block…to these little ones…better if he had had a millstone tied around his neck and was thrown into the sea…” And “if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. Better to have one hand than to have both hands and be thrown into the Lake of Fire…Be not afraid of him who destroys the body, but Him who has the power to destroy both body and soul in Hell.” This is serious. I haven’t been able to get this off my mind that I might have led this poor little one astray…so I have to reckon with it. I am giving her a much nicer book that I personally like a lot to induce her to give back the old one that I might destroy that superstitious book. You may think now that I brag to get my reward from you, but truth is I get no reward from the One Father whose reward from whom it truly matters because I have made it public. But I do this as an illustration to help you, my readers, in knowing that you are not alone in tizzies and dilemmas. For the Devil, that old Serpent, loves to get us into dilemmas, real or imagined. He loves to confound the sincere Christian as well as those just escaping the vice grip of sin. If in doubt, ask God the Father for wisdom and believe that God gives wisdom freely without finding fault. Then ask for the Holy Spirit to help you to obey. (For His burden is easy and His yoke is light!) Amen.
Do not be discouraged if you are rebuked by a God or convicted quietly by the Holy Spirit to repent. It is life. It is truth. It is food and drink. Eat and drink, and desire more.
