John 6:48-59

Read John 6:48-59 Jesus calls us to eat his flesh and drink his blood

In verse 48, Jesus repeats, “I am the bread of life,” which he said in verse 35.  In verse 35, it marks a transition to new material, and it may be a transition in verse 48 also.  However, before turning to that new material where he commands us to eat his flesh and drink his blood, Jesus bridges the two sections by summarizing what he said in the previous passage.

What does Jesus say in verses 49, 50, and the first half of 51 that he has already said in verses 27-47?

Why does he emphasize these things?  Why are they so important?

Up to this point (through the first half of verse 51), most of Christendom is in general agreement about what Jesu is saying in this chapter.  The various denominations within Christianity all see verses 35-47 as an invitation to believe in Jesus, who was sent down from heaven by the Father, and to receive eternal life through him.  The major disagreements begin with the second half of verse 51 (John 6:51b) and what follows it.

Different Interpretations of John 6:51-59

The Christian churches diverge on how to interpret verses 51-59.  Is this passage merely saying in a different way what Jesus said in the previous passage, or is Jesus making a new point about what we call the Lord’s Supper/Holy Communion/the Eucharist?  More specifically, is this just another way of calling us to believe in Jesus, or is it calling us to embrace the real, literal presence of the risen Christ in the Eucharist/Holy Communion?  There is a wide range of views:

• The Roman Catholic Church teaches that in this passage Jesus is speaking literally and spelling out the nature of the Eucharist/Holy Communion: namely, that what is received in communion in a Catholic Mass is literally the flesh and blood of the risen and glorified Christ, even though they remain under the appearances of bread and wine.  Catholics call this “transubstantiation.” 

• The Orthodox Churches teach that the consecrated bread and wine in our Eucharistic celebrations become the body and blood of Christ and that there is a literal transformation of the bread and wine, but they do not try to define in dogma the mystery of that transformation and they do not accept the Roman Catholic doctrine of “transubstantiation.”

• Lutherans believe that the body and blood of Christ are “truly and substantially present” in the consecrated bread and wine but that it is still bread and wine.

• Episcopalians believe that Christ’s body and blood become “really present,” without any need for the consecrated elements to stop being bread and wine.

• Most evangelical churches reject the idea that the bread and wine literally become the body and blood of Christ.  They see the communion service as purely memorial in nature and interpret John 6:51-59 as figurative or symbolic language that calls us to be united to Christ spiritually by faith.  They say Jesus is telling us to feed on him in a spiritual sense and incorporate him spiritually into all we are.  They argue that in John 6:63 Jesus signals that he wasn’t speaking of literal flesh and blood.

There is also a debate over how this passage relates to other passages in the Bible.  To many scholars, there is a clear connection between (1) what Jesus teaches in John 6:51-59, (2) the Last Supper as described in the Synoptic Gospels, (3) what the apostle Paul describes uses similar language in 1 Corinthians 10:16, and (4) what we celebrate in our time as the Eucharist/Holy Communion/Lord’s Supper.  Some evangelical scholars deny that John 6 has a connection to the Last Supper, arguing that John’s material should be read as being in chronological order and the Last Supper hasn’t happened when Jesus says these things.  Other evangelicals do think these passages are related.  For example:

• In the International Bible Commentary, David J. Ellis says that the connection to the Lord’s Supper is “inescapable” and that “the teaching of the Lord Jesus” in this passage “can only be fully understood in the light of the feast which He inaugurated” – although  Ellis says the flesh and blood language is only “metaphorical” (Ellis, p. 1244).

• In Dr. Lloyd J. Ogilvie’s Communicator’s Commentary Series, Dr. Roger L. Fredrickson argues that although the “primary purpose of these verses is to teach us how to feed on the Son of Man, to take Him into our innermost being by faith,” this teaching is also about “the meaning of the Lord’s Supper.”  He suggests that there is “a particular sense in which Christ’s presence is made real among His people when we eat the bread and drink the wine” and that it “goes beyond a remembrance of Christ and His sacrifice” (Fredrickson, p. 138).

For those who would like to explore this further, some brief background reading might be useful.  In around AD 155, Justin Martyr summarized the thinking in the early church about the practice of the Lord’s Supper (which he called the “Eucharist”) in his First Apology, where he described the Eucharist as “the flesh and blood of that incarnate Jesus” (Justin, read paragraphs 65-66).  Evangelicals, Protestants, and even Catholics who wonder why Catholics don’t consider this a form of cannibalism might find this article helpful: “Are Catholics Cannibals?” (Staples).  An example of how evangelicals present their disagreement with transubstantiation can be found here: “What Did Jesus Mean in John 6:54”.

Notice that this entire debate is over what cannot be seen with our physical eyes.  Protestants and Catholics agree that the elements at communion have the appearance of bread and wine and that if you examined them under a microscope with the most advanced scientific instruments, you would see the molecules and cell structures that constitute bread and wine.  Evangelicals and Catholics agree that the bread and wine (or grape juice) used in an evangelical church is only bread and wine.  The disagreement is over whether the bread and wine used in a Catholic Mass literally becomes the body and blood of the glorified Christ even though it retains the appearance of bread and wine – and whether that transubstantiation is what Jesus meant by what he said in John 6:51-59.

What is your experience of communion?

Without judging anyone else’s views, what does it mean to you when Jesus says, “The bread I will give is my flesh for the life of the world” (verse 51)?

What do you think Jesus is saying in the rest of this passage (verses 52-59), and how does it relate to your celebration of the Eucharist/Holy Communion?

In verse 52, the Jewish religious leaders object to what Jesus is saying.  Why would this be objectionable to them?

It sounds like nonsense or cannibalism to them.  Moreover, in a moment, Jesus is going to add that we are called to drink his blood, and the drinking of blood was prohibited under Jewish Law.

Jesus knows that they are troubled by his words and that it sounds to them like cannibalism.  Yet he doesn’t soften his language.  Instead, he restates his point 4 more times, even more intensely and explicitly, in verses 43, 44, 45, and 46.  For Protestants: Why do you think Jesus does not rephrase it, if he isn’t actually saying that we are called to eat his flesh and drink his blood?  For Catholics: Why do you think Jesus makes such a big point about this?

In verse 54, Jesus says that those who eat his flesh and drink his blood have eternal life, and he will raise them up on the last day.  In verse 56, Jesus says that those who eat his flesh and drink his blood remain in him, and he remains in them.  In verse 57, he says that they will have life because of him.  In verse 58, he says they will live forever.  Which of these ways that he describes it is the most meaningful to you, and why?

Eating and drinking are essential to our physical life.  Jesus is essential to our spiritual life.  Jesus wants us to be as dependent on him and connected to him as we are to our physical food and drink.  How can we live our lives in a manner that is as dependent on Jesus as our bodies are dependent on food and drink?

How can your celebration of communion help you to become more fully united with Christ so that you can live a life more fully dedicated to serving him and him alone?

John begins the chapter about the feeding of the 5,000 and Jesus as the Bread of Life by saying, “The Passover feast was near” (John 6:4).  Why would he choose to make a point of that?  How does this chapter about Jesus as the Bread of Life connect to the Passover?

Jesus made the connection between himself and the unleavened bread of the Passover at the Last Supper, when he said: “Take, eat; this is my body” (Matt. 26:26) and shared the bread with his disciples.  The Jewish celebration of Passover remembered that the Israelites were “passed over” when the angel of death saw the blood of lambs on the lintels of their doors.  The Jewish celebration of Passover was immediately followed by the 7-day Feast of Unleavened Bread, which celebrated the Israelites’ hasty journey out of Egypt.  Jesus offered himself as a sacrifice for us.

John notes in verse 59 that this dialogue took place in the synagogue in Capernaum.  What stands out in your mind as you envision Jesus having this discussion in the synagogue with scribes and Pharisees who worship God there?

Take a step back and consider this:

People on all sides of the transubstantiation debate call attention to two sermons given by Augustine in the early 400s.  In what is now known as his Sermon 227, he spoke on Easter morning to newly initiated Christians who had been baptized the night before.  Here is how he began that sermon:

I had promised those of you who have just been baptized a sermon to explain the sacrament of the Lord’s table, which you can see right now, and which you shared in last night.  You ought to know what you have received, what you are about to receive, what you ought to receive every day.  That bread which you can see on the altar, sanctified by the word of God, is the body of Christ.  That cup, or rather what the cup contains, sanctified by the word of God, is the blood of Christ.  It was by means of these things that the Lord Christ wished to present us with his body and blood, which he shed for our sake for the forgiveness of sins.  If you receive them well, you are yourselves what you receive.  You see, the apostle [Paul] says, We, being many, are one loaf, one body (1 Cor 10: 17).  That’s how he explained the sacrament of the Lord’s table; one loaf, one body, is what we all are, many though we be. (Augustine, Volume 6, p. 254)

Augustine says that if you receive the body of Christ well (i.e., worthily), “you are . . . what you receive”; that is, when you receive the body of Christ, you are the body of Christ.

Similarly, in his Sermon 272, which he delivered on Pentecost to newly initiated Christians, Augustine says:

What you can see on the altar, you also saw last night; but what it was, what it meant, of what great reality it contained the sacrament, you had not yet heard.  So what you can see, then, is bread and a cup; that’s what even your eyes tell you; but as for what your faith asks to be instructed about, the bread is the body of Christ, the cup the blood of Christ....

[Somebody might ask,] “How can bread be his body?  And the cup, or what the cup contains, how can it be his blood?”

The reason these things, brothers and sisters, are called sacraments is that in them one thing is seen, another is to be understood.  What can be seen has a bodily appearance, what is to be understood provides spiritual fruit.  So if you want to understand the body of Christ, listen to the apostle telling the faithful, You, though, are the body of Christ and its members (1 Cor 12:27).  So if it’s you that are the body of Christ and its members, it’s the mystery meaning you that has been placed on the Lord’s table; what you receive is the mystery that means you.  It is to what you are that you reply Amen, and by so replying you express your assent.  What you hear, you see, is The body of Christ? and you answer, Amen.  So be a member of the body of Christ, in order to make that Amen true. (Augustine, Volume 7, p. 300)

Augustine sees the consecratedbread on the communion table as the body of Christ and also sees us at the communion table as the body of Christ.  This teaching of Augustine is sometimes paraphrased as: Be what you receive; receive what you are; that is: Be the body of Christ that you receive; receive the body of Christ that you are.

In both sermons, Augustine goes on to urge his listeners to live in unity with one another.  He argues that, as the bread is made from many grains that have become one loaf, and as the wine is made from many grapes that have become one cup, so too we must be one united body.

It is a sad irony that the Eucharistic celebration that Augustine saw as a sacrament of unity has become a central point of division among the Christian denominations.

How can you embrace the unity of the body of Christ in your celebration of communion?

How can we strive for some level of unity with those who do not agree with us about the meaning and application of John 6:51-59?