João 6

João 6

Boice says: Is he as real to you spiritually as something you can taste or handle? Is he as much a part of you as that which you eat? Do not think me blasphemous when I say that he must be as real and as useful to you as a hamburger and french fries. I say this because, although he is obviously far more real and useful than these, the unfortunate thing is that for many people he is much less. Is he substantially real to you? That is what is involved in treating him as the bread of life. This is one of the continental divides in the life of the soul, and this is where thousands flounder....What else does bread suggest? Christ is absolutely indispensable. Since bread was the staple of life in those days, it was difficult for people to conceive of life without bread. Is it difficult for us to conceive of life without Christ? What if there were no Christ? How would that change our lives? The refrain from an old Peggy Lee song asks, “Is that all there is? Is that all there is?” What is your life like? Is that all there is? I cannot conceive of going on living without Christ. He is our bread. He is our all, our everything. Joy Davidman, in her book Smoke on the Mountain, brilliantly commented on the first commandment (“Thou shalt have no other gods before me”) by turning it around to positively read, “Thou shalt have me.”4 Is not that what it is all about? “You shall have me. I am the bread of life. Partake of me. I want you to have me. I want to be bread to you.” What else does bread suggest? A daily partaking. How often do we partake of Christ? Is he more than a hamburger and french fries to us? He wants to give us himself, which demands that we be constantly partaking of him, ingesting him into our lives. (Borrow John: That You May Believe) Trench - “He gave them a further statement which they, doctors of the Law well versed in the theory of Sacrifices, would not fail to understand. The ‘eating of the flesh and drinking of the blood’ was a plain allusion to the Sacrificial idea.” Leon