What About John 6
The Catholic church places a lot of weight on the words of Jesus in John chapter 6 when he states, “Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood you have no part with me.” This passage of Scripture frightens many people because it makes a solid requirement for having a relationship with Jesus. This is alarming because whatever, “Eat my flesh and drink my blood” means it at least means that our salvation is tied to this. For this reason many in the Catholic tradition view an ex-communication from the Eucharist as an eternal death sentence. But further analysis is required to understand what Jesus meant by these words.
In John 6:28 Jesus tells them that the requirement to do the “Works of God” is to believe in the one in whom He sent (Jesus Christ). This puts faith back where it belongs as the ONLY requirement for salvation. We also see that at the end of the chapter, after Jesus has said that we must eat his flesh and drink his blood he says this:
63 It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life.
John 6:62-63 (NKJV)
Considering that Jesus has both affirmed that it is faith and the Spirit who give life we can rest easy that life is neither given nor denied in the eating and drinking of physical bread and wine. There are many spiritual examples given in the book of John and I think this verse about eating my flesh and drinking my blood is one of these. Here is a passage in John chapter 4 where we see this very clearly:
10 Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.” 11 The woman said to Him, “Sir, You have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where then do You get that living water? 12 Are You greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, as well as his sons and his livestock?” 13 Jesus answered and said to her, “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.” 15 The woman said to Him, “Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw.”
John 4:9-15 (NKJV)
The woman at the well took Jesus words to be physical and literal. As a result she asked for “Living water” so she wouldn’t have to keep coming to the well to draw water. Although Jesus spoke truth we understand that He was not offering her a drink of magic water that would allow her to live without drinking liquids ever again in her life. Instead, He was speaking in the same spiritual way as in John 6. The woman at the well misunderstood what Jesus meant by living water. In similar fashion what is taught by the Roman Catholic church is a misunderstanding of what Jesus meant by His flesh and blood. Instead, His flesh and blood are Spirit and they are Truth.
Previously I expounded on the Eucharist being an unbloody sacrifice in the Catholic Church. What this means is that Jesus is sacrificed upon the altar over and over at every Mass in every Catholic church throughout the world. This seems to contradict Scripture in several places. For one, Romans 6:9 says that Christ dies no more after being raised from the dead. 1 Peter 3:18 says that Christ suffered once for sins. Hebrews 7:27 says that He died once for all. And Hebrews 10:14 says that by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified. For this reason it is a lie that Jesus is sacrificed and resacrificed for the congregation to partake of every service.
We also have Old Testament passages against the eating of drinking of blood. These were not revoked in the New Testament. Even though there were some dietary changes made the eating of blood is still something that God does not want His people doing.
As a final note on this passage in John 6 let us also recognize that this is before Jesus has instituted the Lord’s Supper. He is speaking to the crowds and brings up this eating and drinking at a time when they couldn’t possibly comply because there was no way to fulfill the requirements of something that has not even been offered. That being said I have to believe that Jesus, being a just and fair Lord, would not give them a requirement for salvation that they had no means to attain to. This would be equal to denying them salvation on the grounds that He doesn’t want them to be saved so He has given them an impossible task so they cannot obey even if they wanted to. So, He must mean something different than the taking of bread and wine that He offered on the night of the Lord’s Supper.
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